Election crisis over
By Mike Ashworth | April 14, 2010
I will admit to you now that I’ve been a life long Labour supporter, whether you like that or not, that’s just the way it is. However in recent times my support for this party has been in question, and over just one thing.
How could I ever vote for them again after taking us to war in Iraq, which some have said was morally questionable and perhaps even illegal.
As luck would have it I picked up a copy of the Guardian yesterday morning and whilst perusing discovered an interview with former Labour leader Neil Kinnock. The subject of the interview was how someone could vote for the party after the very concern I had.
Neil points out that Gordon Brown had to accept his part of a collective responsibility for a decision to go with George bush and he’s not the kind of guy that changes his mind or viewpoint every five minutes to court public opinion. In fact if he’d taken precipitate action to accelerate the withdrawl of troops (which is what most people and the media would seem to have been saying) he would have been crucified. Getting the time wrong would have endangered both troops and civilians further.
We can sit hear pondering if Gordon Brown would have made the same decisions as Tony Blair, if he had been Prime minister, however this is a pointless exercise. We’ve all got to take a stride forward. You can’t be chained to past events (look at what happens to us, as individuals if we do the same. We have inertia in our lives, paralysed by fear).
Also remember that the constitution has now been changed. We can no longer go to war on the basis of a decision by the Prime minister. It now requires the endorsement of a majority of the House of Commons. We can clearly mourn the fact that such a provision was arrived at via incalculable loss of life, but the fact is, it now exists.
Gordon has led, and is leading the efforts to change the global financial architecture. He’s been trying to do this since the south east Asian collapse in 1998. It’s only in the last 12 months that he now has the support of the one power he’s needed, the USA. It’s taken a change of President to help move this forward, however it started with Gordon.
He has also led the unprecedented debt cancellation for impoverished Countries. No government in the world has shown the same commitment to tackle the roots of desperate poverty and its effects, including war, violence and corruption. Even his enemies admit that he is the guy who initiated change and has pushed and pushed to see it through.
Towards the end of the article it mentions a guy who told Neil Kinnock that to vote for the same party is wrong as no government should stay in for too long. Neil told him that that may be the case if they all appear to offer the same thing. Neil then asked him “Tell me, when did you last see a newspaper photograph of a bucket catching rainwater in a school or a hospital corridor with a trolley on which people were lying unattended? That change hasn’t come about by accident”
He points out that if people want to be in politics to be right all the time, they’d be better off taking up fishing. Politics that is not applied in the real world and doesn’t address the real challenges and paradoxes and agonies is a hobby.
A very good point. He is right, nobody is perfect. If you’re waiting for perfect, you’ll have a long wait on your hands.
I am grateful that I read the article yesterday as it has helped me make my mind up on this important matter.
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One Response to “Election crisis over”
Comments
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12:23 pm on April 22nd, 2010
Good piece. And the Kinnock piece was good too.
There are lots of things I struggle with being a member of the Labour party. But Gordon Brown’s sincerity and essential decency is not one of them. He lacks the showbiz… but it wasn’t so long ago that we said we’d had enough of showbiz Blair style!
Labour needs to talk more about the very many good things it has done since 1997. It’s a lot but Iraq still looms large for many. I wonder where we’d be if we hadn’t gone.