A fight for Labour's future will have to begin on May 6

[Anarcho-Socialist]

Who should you vote for if you're against privatisation and the Iraq war?

Seumas Milne
Thursday April 7, 2005
The Guardian

Voters opposed to the occupation of Iraq, the galloping privatisation of public services and the shameful inequality of Britain in 2005 - a majority of the British people, according to opinion polls - face a problem at next month's general election. In most constituencies, they will have no one to vote for. That is because none of the three main parties will be offering a meaningful alternative on what are, by any reckoning, central issues in political and social life. But of course it's not only the voters who have a problem. So does the government - because the majority of those who are most angry about the war, privatisation, inequality and attacks on civil liberties have in the past been committed Labour voters. And polling evidence suggests that millions of them could stay at home or switch to the Liberal Democrats or a protest party as a result.

New Labour has only itself to blame. The political boil of the war - and the attendant collapse of trust in the government - could have been lanced if Tony Blair had been induced to step down last summer, when the scale of the disaster unleashed in Iraq and the deception used to sell it had become fully apparent. That would have been better for the country, but also for Labour. Gordon Brown, Blair's natural successor, was obviously tainted by the decision to go to war and responsible for some of the most damaging privatisations. But the ousting of Blair would have at least demonstrated that the government had been held to account and allowed a shift of policy, both domestically and over Iraq.

What's more, polls have repeatedly shown that Labour would attract significantly more support with Brown as leader, whose popularity now far outstrips the prime minister's dismal ratings - something Blair implicitly acknowledged yesterday, when he signalled that he did not after all plan to move Brown from the Treasury after the election. If a Labour victory remains the likeliest outcome, given rising living standards and the lack of enthusiasm for the Tories, that is now in spite of Blair. But if Labour were to be defeated or lose its majority next month, the party would be paying the price of Tony Blair's ego.

Government supporters who insist that the dominating political controversy of the last four years can be safely ignored for the purposes of the election are dreaming. Of course the war does not affect British people's daily lives. But awareness of the crime that has been carried out, the scale of the slaughter, the falsehoods peddled to justify it and the contempt for public opinion it involved runs deep in Britain. So does revulsion for the craven relationship with the US that underpinned it - frankly highlighted by Alan Milburn last month when he told the Guardian that the war had been in Britain's interests "because you've got one superpower in the world nowadays". But, as John Reid's ham-fisted performance on BBC radio demonstrated yesterday, New Labour has little clue as to how to defuse visceral public hostility over the debacle.

More at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1453784,00.html