Hain: Fool
Peter Hain is a fool. Not being the sharpest tool in the Cabinet - and against some blunt competition as well - his brief for the election campaign seems to be to shed what little dignity and integrity he has left by trying to get liberals onside to vote for his grubby, civilian-exploding, privatising, bullying, big business-promoting “political party”.
His one tactic seemed to be endlessly parroting on about the Tories getting into Number 10 via “the back door”. When that didn’t seem to work, and short of his own ideas, he nicks a line from David Aaronovitch, and decides that being insulting is the better way to go about things:
‘There’s now a kind of dinner party critics who quaff shiraz or chardonnay and just sneeringly say, “You are no different from the Tories”,’ he said. ‘Most of the people in this category are pretty comfortably off: it’s not going to be the end of the world if they get a Tory government. In a working-class constituency like mine, this is a lifeline. It’s not a luxury.’
Now, I’m from Blackpool and ended up in a shitty part of Brighton by way of Huddersfield Polytechnic. I don’t drink shiraz or chardonnay. I’m not a Hampstead or Islington liberal or wherever-they’re-supposed-to-skulk liberal. I arrived at my personal humanitarian morality not through the bottom of a wine bottle or by consorting with intellectuals in uptown salons.
I’m not going to vote New Labour. Not because, I’m a sneerer. Not because I think New Labour are the same as the Tories. And certainly not because I’m rich enough to ride out a Tory Government. I’ll spell it out again:
I’M NOT VOTING NEW LABOUR BECAUSE THE PARTY ALLOWED ITSELF TO BE LED BY THE NOSE BY A MESSIANIC CHARLATAN INTO A WAR IN WHICH - AT LEAST - 16,000 PEOPLE WERE KILLED IN A VARIETY OF UNSPEAKABLY AWFUL WAYS.
The leader of the party responsible for this carnage is still in his job despite the fact that his reasons for going to war were completely discredited and Iraq in the - unplanned for - aftermath has resembled an abbatoir.
And as for Hain, well they say the empty vessel makes most noise. Insulting me isn’t going to win my vote - who’s bright idea was that? It’s so inept I actually think it was his. What’s worse, it’s insults from a once honourable man who campaigned against Apartheid but now, suckling at the teat of power without purpose, advocates house arrest without trial and the bombing of civilians. I’ve got more morality in my little finger than a turncoat like Hain has in his entire orange body.
You want my vote, Hain? Here are my terms.
This week, I will be starting a Hove chapter of the Backing Blair campaign.
Posted on April 10th, 2005 at 1:01 pm
| See also • On Message • Shake for me, girl. I wanna be your back door man. • Hain: At it again |
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Filed under 2005 General Election, New Labour, UK politics |
Enjoyed this post. Unlike you, however, I’m not completely disgusted with the Iraq war. I’m very much of the liberal interventionist mindset. Disgusted with how (and why) we were taken into it, for sure - which is why I marched in Feb 2003. It was obvious to anyone with a brain that the 45 min claim was bollocks and that the decision had been made by Tony and George at least a year previously, and anyway that the morality of acting in Iraq when we have failed to do anything about Palestine for decades was questionable to say the least.
No, what stops me voting Lab is:
1. their depriving us of liberties guaranteed by centuries of common law and practice
2. their refusal to allow a democratically elected second chamber
3. (related) their refusal to allow a fair voting system for the lower house even to be discussed - by which I mean proper PR (which would probably have stopped the war, BTW)
4. the casual and unfettered expansion of religious influence in schools on their watch
…and any number of points from your Backing Blair list that don’t spring to mind right now.
One more reason why Hain is a prat: any fool knows that shiraz and chardonnay are far better ways for us working classes to get pissed than whatever he thinks we all drink (mild or porter, perhaps?).
Well the “make poverty history” campaign might, which you’ve inserted the code to strip across the top of yr blog might as well pack up and go home, if you carry on with this blair’s not getting my vote hissy fit.
One more time for Richard Curtis surely.
Can’t accept “messianic charlatan” - Blair is clearly informed by some kind of moral/religious zeal, and the thought of liberating Iraq from a murderous despot (something which we do seem to have forgotten) is therefore quite understandable. Getting off the fence somewhat, I’d say that’s a very good moral case. Unfortunately that required great loss of life (no doubt some were blown to bits). Any leader who makes such decisions has ‘blood on his hands’ if you like that kind of romantic imagery. Certain cigar-smoking PM ‘war-heroes’ who had to fight total wars came close to ordering anthrax and poison gas over Germany, so this singling-out of Blair is really politics for a dumbed-down age.
Of course the “45 minute” and WMD aspects were ludicrous. Blair should have made his conviction clear and thumped the podium with his passion - surely that would have helped his case, and put the skids under the self-styled “Respect coalition”.
As there are only 2 parties that can ever win under the current FPP system, you have one that is somewhat in favour of moderate reform, and another whose history is utterly dependent upon the current system. Therefore if you want proportional representation, you have to support a Labour govt. Personally, I support PR.
As for religious schools, I’m happy as long as all are taught to respect other beliefs and cultures, including atheism (that’s me). A liberal ought to respect all such, given that nobody can prove one is better than the other. For the secularist (as, perhaps, in France) the key to treating religions equally is to deny them all, which (in my book) is illiberal and goes against multi-culturalism.
http://www.hovelabour.org/
I think you are being rather generous in calling Hain a fool. Maybe that’s just my rough Scottish manner though. ;o)
BB said: “Therefore if you want proportional representation, you have to support a Labour govt. Personally, I support PR.”
So do I. It was in the ‘97 Labour manifesto 8 years ago. IMHO I can’t see this happening until Blairites think they’ll lose a FPTP election.
It may well be that Labour introduces PR as it faces defeat (at some future FPP General Election), but that’s the only game in town.
Unless there’s a tremendous constitutional crisis of some sort…
The only way the Tories would introduce PR is if they were hammered so badly on May 5 that they faced another 10 years in the wilderness.
So that’s two reasons to vote Lab.
But don’t you think it’s an anomaly that people may decide to vote Conservative, get a hung Parliament, a Lab-Lib coalition, and then reform on the electoral system?
PR should have been the first reform. Now it’s too late, and Labour are quite cosy with the FPTP system giving them healthy victories even when the Tories poll a similar number to them. It’s how the Tories retained power for so long, but now the tables have turned.
Before long the Tories will be supporting electoral reform.
Getting off the fence somewhat, I’d say that’s a very good moral case. Unfortunately that required great loss of life (no doubt some were blown to bits)
So, the “you can’t make an omlette without breaking a few eggs” line makes yet another appearance.
BB would you care to quantify that “great loss of life”? Are you able to weigh the cost in human suffering against a reasonable prediction of what might have happened if we hadn’t gone to war? Do you have any idea how many lives might have been saved or bettered elsewhere with the (literally) hundreds of billions of dollars that were spent on munitions and troops? Do you actually have any data at all to substantiate this ‘very good moral case’?
You can’t build a utilitarian moral argument without hard facts: that’s why some of us have petitioned the FCO to carry out a detailed mortality survey in Iraq. It hasn’t happened. The only conclusion we can draw is that our ‘leaders’ are actually uninterested in the argument they espouse - in fact they are hypocrites.
Regards,
Charlie
Considering the current system is weighted in favour of Labour (if both Labour and the Tories get 36% of the vote, Labour end up with a 40 seat majority, I read somewhere), I wouldn’t be too surprised if the Tories start pushing for PR for the next election. Assuming Labour’s share of the vote goes down even more then, and the Tories will still be rubbish (let’s face it, they’ve got no one remotely impressive waiting in the wings) it would be by far their best chance of beating a Labour party led by Gordon Brown.
As for Peter Hain: patronising twat would be my take on the man.
What I find most buttock-clenching about this Hain/Aaronovitch approach is its Pythonesque ‘four Yorkshiremen’ attitude. A bunch of middle class tossers trying to outdo each other for metaphors for their own class. Does Peter Hain, even in his dreams, imagine that the working class people of this country identify with him for one second. When sipping shiraz and exchanging platitudes with Aaronovitch over their bruschetta… do these people give a toss for anyone other than themselves. Anyway… you can get chardonnay at Savacentre in Oldbury for £3.39, so if they’re not careful they might find more anti-New Labour amongst the chardonnay sippers than they bargained for.
Hain is a working class bigot with the luxury of a middle/upper class income.
Al
I’m certainly ‘Backing Hain’
Nosemonkey (!), the voting system is not weighted in favour of Labour. It isn’t even particularly a problem with FPP, it’s the use of “swing” as the basis of the electoral calculations that says that Labour could win when in 3rd place on votes. Swing only represents half the combined change in voting % between the two parties, and assumes that what happened in 2001 is a valid basis for what is to happen on May 5th. In the real world, parties need to win something of the order of 11 million votes, and nobody can say how that’ll happen. You could come back at me and say “postal vote fraud” but that’s just low-level corruption IMO.
====
Charlie, I deliberately didn’t specify a body count because it isn’t a utilitarian decision. Anyone who thinks otherwise is lacking in principles, or needs an understanding of what freedom might mean to someone. Saddam might never have had another person killed - does that make it an incorrect decision to overthrow him?
Finally, I have no particular opinion of Hain. I can vaguely remember him saying a few inane things in the past, but that’s not enough for me to label him an idiot.
I’m assuming, then, BB, that (as an atheist) you are happy to sit in Church for a few weeks to get a certificate that says your child is allowed to be schooled at the nearest/best school round your way. Even though your taxes are paying for that school anyway.
Or that increasing numbers of Muslim children are educated separately from their neighbours and are then expected, on joining the rest of society, to somehow instantly feel ‘integrated’.
Or that private donors who put up 10% of the launch costs for a new Academy are perfectly entitled to hire who they like to work in the school (no membership of GTC necessary) and teach creationism in science and/or RE classes.
If you’re in favour of all those, then I guess you will be voting Labour. I’ll pass, thanks.
BB, you say that Iraq was not “a utilitarian decision”. Tony Blair seems to have thought otherwise. On 18 February 2003 he said:
… if we do have to take military action and people are worried about the consequences of military action and the possible bloodshed that will be caused, at least it is worth people understanding that there are also consequences of not taking action in terms of bloodshed because there are people in Iraq who are suffering daily, dying daily, thousands of children dying, people routinely executed or imprisoned because they speak out against the regime. And surely if it is our worry about the consequences of war that deter us, we should at least put on the other side of the balance sheet if you like, of the ledger in this argument, the fact that there also horrendous consequences for people in Iraq if we do not take action.
I think he should be held to account for that judgement, don’t you?
Incidentally, in the same press briefing he also said:
The reason for doing so [contemplating war] is not because the nature of the regime can in itself provide justification for war
As to whether a utilitarian judgement was appropriate, I have to say I don’t see any other way of evaluating a decision to invade a country. Is abstract ‘freedom’ really worth any price? Practical results matter. I value my (relative) freedoms but I would also like to retain my limbs. And I would like my family and friends to live. If I were to make a sacrifice for a cause, I would want that to be my decision, not that of a foreign power.
Even so, I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of Iraqis living today - the fortunately unscathed - were pleased that their circumstances have changed. But that doesn’t excuse the crime that has been committed: there were alternatives.
We can move forwards in British politics but it first requires an acceptance that Iraq was wrong.
Regards,
Charlie
“As there are only 2 parties that can ever win under the current FPP system,”
“Ever” eh? That’s what they said in 1906.
EVERYONE knows that no self-respecting Tory voter actually drinks Shiraz or Chardonnay. It’s frightfully NEW world and, I might add, New Labour, to call wine by the grape variety. Truly conservative old worlders only name their beverage of choice by the appellation.