I have covered the whip thing numerous times, as has the Corbyn camp. Burgon’s comments are a clear signal that the wider party is going to be involved. Though not a suggestion of the Corbyn camp, I loved the premise of the article I linked suggesting that this is an opportunity to remove whip politics.
If you’re correct, and MPs decide to go against the whip, we’ve basically got the same situation as removing the whip, haven’t we? Except with a load more infighting, and of course, the MPs run the risk of alienating their local constituents if say, Corbyn proposes something popular which they then defeat.
In either of those no-whip situations, the MPs will be genuinely responsible to their constituents and their CLP. I can’t imagine any of those politicians getting reselected if they try to justify their decisions in they way they usually do.
If Corbyn wins, New Labour is dead, killed in a mass uprising of Labour’s own members. There may be some zombies shambling about groaning about electability. Bring them on, I say. Every time Mandelson, Blair, Clark or any of the old guard tell the public they shouldn’t go for Corbyn, the public goes for Corbyn. Hitchens had the right of it in his interview with Owen Jones. People are sick of being told what to do, and internally, I think Labour is fucking sick of the infighting. How many human years of good policy were lost to the fucking ego clash between Brown and Blair.
I think you’re misrepresenting him on the military level as well. I don’t think he’d stand idly by and allow this country to be attacked, but neither do I believe that his policy is to drone strike every terrorist to death.
I’m not condoning Assad’s actions, but I personally do not think a conflict to remove him will serve the region or the Syrian people right now. Dubai_Phil is completely correct in that we need to work with the regime right now, unpalatable as that may be, a fact that even Phillip Hammond seems to recognise with the olive branch of six month’s grace.
I am glad Tatchell was balanced in his foreign policy analysis and spoke of the hypocrisy of the West in allowing our friends to commit human rights abuses unchecked, while condemning the people we don’t like and saying they have to go. Why stop with Assad? Why not go after Saudi? Bahrain? Kuwait? Qatar?
Any military action we take now is going to be dealing with the consequences of what we did before, and what we did before was neither necessary, beneficial to those living there. Iraq wasn’t even legal. Given the bang-up job we’ve done on post-conflict planning in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, do you really think another Western-led war is the answer?
