Highlight of the Blair Era

I've been tagged by Peter Sanderson for my highlight of the Blair era. Highlight is too positive a word for what I have to say, but here it is.

The moment when:

1. It became clear there were no WMDs in Iraq.

2. David Kelly was dead in suspicious circumstances and the Labour machine was spinning against him.

3. It was clear that Tony Blair was personally responsible for taking the country to war on a lie. (And saying something is certain when it isn't is a lie.)

4. In spite of what was, if we can be excessively charitable, a gross failure of judgement, leading to many thousands of deaths, Blair didn't resign. If this is not a resigning issue, what on earth is?

5. Noting that if Blair had taken responsibility and resigned, this may well have tipped the balance in the US election 2004 into a defeat for George W Bush - because it would have been harder to bareface out the war as not a mistake.

6. The Labour Party, knowing all this, failed to sack him. This is a gross dereliction of duty. It is the job of a parliamentary party to depose Prime Ministers who have lost the plot. The Tories did it with Thatcher when it had to be done, when she was still quite popular in much of the country. But no, the Labour Party clearly did not think he had done anything particularly wrong, and so I consider them as guilty as he is. People who thought that Labour was good at heart, only doing what it had to do to win power, to protect public sevices and tackle social exclusion, were disabused this day.

I'm sorry if this is all too obvious, but it is hard to compete with a betrayal of the British people of this magnitude. Even if you like the New Labour programme, you think that up until the Iraq war the government was doing great, and you thought at the run up to the war, that maybe invasion was the best way to deal with the known threats, according to the intelligence.

Even with that perspective you have to look back, and realise that the intelligence was distorted for political ends, and that the rush to war was driven by a timetable intended to pre-empt the completion of Hans Blick's inspection. A shabby, dishonest, criminal, murderous act.

I tag: Joe Taylor, Anders Hanson, Forceful and Moderate, Tom Papworth and Millennium Dome

Cicero has it succinctly.

Is Blair losing it?

There is a truism that the more out of touch a dictator gets, the more extravagant his wife's hairstyle becomes.

In other news, there are people "out to topple" the Prime Minister.

Of course in a parliamentary democracy, it is quite legitimate for MPs to seek to topple the Prime Minister, particular one who sees fault in everyone but himself. One who can sack a foreign secretary, apparently, for saying that the idea of nuking Iran is nuts - without clearing it with Rove or Rumsfeld first.

Promises to go in the future can be very difficult to keep. Some excuse will always arise as to why one has to carry on. Doubtless, if Brown were to show any public desire for the top job, he would be deemed a traitor, and therefore no longer suitable for it.

The night of the fast-spinning knives has surrounded Blair with his closest supporters - the people who will be least willing to tell him when it is, honestly, time for him to go. This is not the road to an orderly transition, but a very messy one. The saviour of the Labour Party could yet be its downfall.