Unless I was fortunate to miss something, Madeleine Bunting hasn’t been writing too much in the Guardian lately on (in the broad sense) war-related topics. I inferred that this might be because when she was last so writing regularly about them, she didn’t exactly cover herself in glory. Wrong inference, evidently – she’s back at it today.
She’s nostalgically remembering the day millions marched in a collective, if (by many of them) still strangely unacknowledged, effort to save the regime of Saddam Hussein (‘My baby’s pram still has the badges – “Peace begins with me”‘), and she’s angry because, a year on, Tony Blair is still there. She lets her readers know.
How dare they sell us a war that was unprovoked and unnecessary?
(‘Unnecessary for whom?’ is not a question that gets a look-in here.) However, now the problem is: how to balance this righteous anger against the danger of letting in the Tories if we, the good progressives, allow it to influence our vote? But then again:
Surely the lives of thousands of dead Iraqis count for more than the modest successes of a centre-left government?
Note, here, the Jonathan Freedland (or Linda Colley and all those writers) system of accounting. Thousands of dead Iraqis – whatever you do, don’t mention the regime or its victims, don’t say Saddam Hussein.
Still, if that is the way one is going to reckon things, surely the government and the party that supported it, should be given their marching orders at the next election. I mean, if we’re talking thousands of unnecessary dead, period. It should be ‘Bye bye Tony and and the gullible, complaisant Labour party’, no? Well, no:
What would settle the dilemma is a surgical strike. Lance the boil and let Blair pay the price for Iraq. Prime Minister Gordon Brown would then reposition the line on Iraq – not outright repudiation, with troops still in Iraq – but the “we’ve learned some lessons” line. It would liberate the next election from the endless questions about trust that have dogged Blair’s political career. It would give a fresh impetus to New Labour’s political project, which would give it a fighting chance of two more terms.
Just a neat bit of repositioning, not outright repudiation or anything like that, and the trick is done. Verily, the moral accounting of the playpen.