Labour's Brown should take his lead on Iraq from the US Democrats

[T_i_B]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2046115,00.html

Signs of collapse in public support for the war are everywhere. On a foray to the south, one of the most conservative regions and the site of numerous military bases, I found the anti-war mood surprisingly strong. In Alabama I heard a spruce young officer, still serving in the navy, tell a meeting organised by "Veterans for Peace" that he had stood that morning outside Maxwell airforce base in the state's capital, Montgomery, holding an anti-war poster. Scores of people driving in gave the thumbs up or honked their horns, he said with pride. At Auburn university, a quarter of the students in a class I visited had close relatives in Iraq. Home on leave, they all say they hate it and think the war is pointless. At a campus meeting that I attended, some 200 faculty members and their friends gave a standing ovation to a lecturer who described Iraq as a defeat for America and called for the troops to come home.

In short, the US debate on Iraq has leapfrogged beyond Britain's in a way that Labour seems not yet to have taken on board. Blair destroyed himself with his disastrous decision to join what Senator Jim Webb, one of the best US Democrats, calls Bush's "careless aggression". But when will Labour as a party change course?

The US system is different, and Congress can oppose the executive in a way that a British parliamentary party rarely does when its leader is prime minister. But the leader himself can adjust. The Brownites say their man is wondering how to differentiate his Iraq line from Blair's. The best way would be to name a clear date for Britain's troops to come home, as the Democrats have just done. Follow the US lead, this time for peace, not war.

More than that, every Democratic presidential contender who supported the war - apart from Clinton - has apologised now. Where are Labour's regrets? Why are Labour ministers, and the chancellor in particular, not held to account in the same way? Let it admit its forces should never have been in or near Basra in the first place. And let's hear a clear apology to the British people for the entire war.