An interesting article from Nick Cohen in the New Humanist on who humanists/secularists should vote for in the forthcoming election.

He says we should put our tick in the Lib Dem, Green or, amazingly, Tory box.

Cohen himself is voting Labour for a number of reasons including, rather perversely I thought, “as a protest against the failure of the opponents of the war against Iraq to show the smallest sign of solidarity with the victims of Saddam’s murderous regime”. A now familiar generalisation from him which, had he applied it to an ethnic minority, would have had him vociferously shouted down.

I’m a huge fan of Cohen’s, a journalist who did much to fire my own ambitions in that direction, but it’s odd to to hear him say he’s voting Labour after probably being responsible for encouraging large numbers of people to do the opposite.

But his tarring the whole of the anti-war Left with the brush of deserting the Iraqi people wore thin quite a while ago as well. It’s a simplistic if-you’re-against-us-your-for-them “argument” more worthy of those, like Blair and Bush, frightened of intellectual engagement. Particulary as, as far as I am aware, Cohen has yet to address in any of his columns the unmitigating disaster post-war Iraq has become. Even a New Labour lickspittle like David Aaronovitch has made half-hearted attempts at reconciling his pre-war, pro-war stance with the post-war reality.

Unfortunately, like many on the pro-war Left, it seems, Cohen’s quite happy to count Saddam’s corpses but not Bush’s and Blair’s.