[Closed] Have we done Blair and Iraq today?

as long as it isn't his kids I guess... c0ck...

Its easy looking on and criticizing after all thats gone on since but that was one bloody big decision he had to make. Can you imagine the pressure of that job?

Lots of pressure form yanks, I think he thought he was doing the right thing. The Americans made the biggest mistake for not sorting it out properly in the first Gulf war.

How can he remain so smug and self righteous after having been shown up to be so utterly wrong and dishonest? 😡

Doesn't matter now anyway - what's done is done

Saddam was a threat to oil supplies anyway so best rid of

Carbon337, Prvious PMs, (such as Harold Wilson with Vietnam) managed to resist pressure from the Americans.
I'd agree that he thought he was doing the right thing, but that is true of how Saddam thought too when he was quelling opposition in his country etc. 'Doing the right thing' is always the excuse used by power mad leaders after the event.

He took us into a war that most of population did not want, based on a bunch of blatant lies. Strange he's now playing the religion card. He has blood on his hands & he has to live with that.

I still remember seeing Colin Powell & Jack Straw do their bits at the UN. I believed then & do still that it was totally fabricated. What has been coming out in the last few weeks proves that!

As for pressure from the yanks - makes me wonder what kind of agreements we have them behind closed doors that means we have to agree to whatever they wish. Are we still indebted to them for the WW2 bailout?

Are we still indebted to them for the WW2 bailout?

no, it was paid off a few years back

Its easy looking on and criticizing...........

Yep, I find it a piece of piss criticizing an unrepentant liar. He now openly admits that despite what he told the British people, it had nothing to do with WMD - he would have gone to war anyway.

And he didn't just lie to the British people, he also lied to the Hans Blix, the UN, and the rest of the world - contrary to what he claimed, war was very obviously inevitable. Since the war had nothing to do with UN resolutions on Iraq's chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and was in fact about 'regime change' it was indisputably illegal. Britain should now show the world that no one, not even the Prime Minister, is above the law - Blair should be arrested.

BTW, he still continues with his lying as he now maintains that Iraq was a threat to the region. After years of crippling sanctions Iraq was a threat to no one, they didn't even in effect, have an air force ffs. And never at any time did Iran, Iraq's sworn enemy, call for an attack on Iraq - which incidentally, they had already defeated many years earlier when Iraq had been much more powerful.

In fact Saddam and his government were not even a threat to northern Iraq, which was completely out of their control as a result of the implementation of the 'no fly zone' ....... so they couldn't even invade the north of
[u]their own country[/u] then.

Tony Blair is a liar. He always has been, and always will be .... end of.

odd that the only time Blair took moral stance and led the country [ I mean do something a forum session had not advised would be popular] he chose this and displayed such terrible judgement.
Bad on decision legally,vmorally, politically, logically.
He wont ever admit he was wrong that is for sure...wonder if he said something about it a confessions though 🙄
EDIT: Plus what ernie said

ernie_lynch - 10/10.

Its easy looking on and criticizing after all thats gone on since

Lots of us were critical of him at the time and said then that he was full of shit - and were smugly told we were being 'naive' by many people including Tony.

He really must be very confident he is never going to face a war crimes tribunal with what he is admitting to. Sadly he is almost certainly right to be confident.

Choosing to finally reveal his (not at all shocking) true intentions (y'know) to that Pit Bull of BBC current affairs, Fern Britten, was presumably a way to 'leak' his strategy to avoid having to defend the indefensible when he got to the enquiry.

I hope he's bricking it and that he gets a really good going over when he does eventually face the enquiry. Afterwards there will hopefully be a nice, secure taxi waiting outside to take him to The Hague where he can have a room next to the recently invisible George Bush.

Peace Envoy, my ****ing *rse.

Politician tells lies shocker.

Blair should be arrested.

Sadly, he'll stroll free and we know it.

Politician tells lies shocker.

It's not that a politician has told a lie, which is the real 'shocker' here porterclough - it's firstly, the sheer enormity of it (we're not simply talking about being 'economical with the truth')

Then there's the fact that the lie resulted in the government acting illegally, starting a war which caused a countless number of deaths (probably somewhere between 100,000 and 1000,000) and leaving it open to charges of international crimes - Nuremberg established that waging aggressive war is, quote : [i]"not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole"[/i]

And finally, Tony Blair is someone who described himself as, quote : [i]"I think I'm a pretty straight sort of guy".[/i]

The whole incident is unprecedented "shocking" in relation to British politics.

And still Tony Blair proves that he is completely unable to tell the truth. In the Fern Britton interview Blair says
quote : [i]"you know, in the end I had to take the decision."[/i] That is untrue and a complete lie. Whilst Blair under the Royal Prerogative [i]could have[/i] made the decision, he choose not to do so. Instead, he reluctantly agreed to allow Parliament to decide (which established a precedent that the late Robin Cook said was the one worthwhile thing to come out of the whole affair) Of course Parliament made the decision based on the lies told to them by Blair.

Blair imo has done lasting damage to the trust between the people and the government concerning international issues and the security of the country. He has probably also done damage in the relationship between Parliament and the government. Which I reckon, all in all, is pretty shocking stuff.

I'm bound to agree with Freddie Flintoff's estimation of the fellow's character:

"Tony Blair is a knob".

The most bizarre thing for me is that he seems to be convincing himself that everyone believed his lies, that he carried out the political subterfuge of the century and that we need to be told that he was bullshitting about the WMD's.

No tony, we'd all figured it out oooh, about ten seconds after the words first came out of your mouth.

The most bizarre thing for me is that he seems to be convincing himself that everyone believed his lies

Denial. Cognitive dissonance.

He looks a bit like a hamster on a wheel to me.

Even Ratzinger thinks he's a knob... Oh dear.

>I'm bound to agree with Freddie Flintoff's estimation of the fellow's >character:

>"Tony Blair is a knob".

Surely:
'Tony Blair is a ****'

Edit: yay, the swear filter works 😉

I'll hold my hand up, at the time I believed him. In fact I probably argued with Ernie under our pre-crash personas. Do I feel angry now? You bet. Not so much about the fact that we were all lied to, although that does chafe, more the way in which he is now admitting the lies. He is obviously safe in the knowledge that he is untouchable and will remain free to generate vast piles of cash for as long as he sees fit. At the very least he should be stripped of his "peace envoy" status.

[url] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0352857e-e644-11de-bcbe-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1 [/url]

I wonder what the war was really about 🙄

The whole reason for the war is so the west has control of an oil producing country, this means they cannot be held at ransom by Opec. They are hoping that they can rely on Iraq oil supplies long enough to cause rifts between the oil producing countries and eventually leading to the disbanding of Opec.

this means they cannot be held at ransom by Opec

OPEC increases oil production when demand is high/supplies low and it considers the global price of oil to be too high - it is not in their interest to have excessively high prices as in encourages a move away from oil dependency. As far as I am aware, by far the most influential OPEC member is Saudi Arabia, which has exceptionally close links with the Bush family, so the Bush administration already had considerable leverage on OPEC. In Britain's case oil prices probably have far less effect than we are led to believe as, iirrc, Britain is more or less self-sufficient in oil - we export about as much as we import. I doubt whether the Iraq war had much to do with oil prices, although it was undoubtedly linked with the desire of the US oil companies to get their hands on Iraqi oil.

It happened in 1973 when Opec (OAPEC) refused to ship oil to the west because they supported Isreal in it's 6 day war.

When you look at the huge tension in the Middle East now it would be very easy for a similar situation to occur again. It would be very hard for industry to move away from oil dependency and they certainly would not do it because of a short term price increase.

In the first iraq war the army was prevented from invading iraq by the lack of support at home, political and public opinion (us).

To start the second war this opinion had to be manipulated. The goal posts
were moved as we were softened up. At first we were told it was not about regime change.
We had to invade Afganistan first as an attack on terrorists was more just than invading iraq. we wouldnt have gone in to afganistan if we didnt want to invade iraq. we are still there.

so why was it so important, oil, world stability, I have never been convinced but live in the hope that politicans know what they are doing.

It would be very hard for industry to move away from oil dependency

But possibly not as hard as you might imagine. The reason why Britain is more or less self-sufficient in oil despite a huge drop in oil production, is precisely because Britain's dependency on oil has been reduced in recent years. As oil prices increase, people/countries find ways of reducing their oil dependency - if oil was dirt cheap, little or no attempt would be made to limit consumption. BTW, I'm not sure that the obscene drive to war with Iraq was driven by an event which had happened almost 40 years previously.

Just out of interest, if anyone knows, what was the relationship between the Saudis and Saddam ? Was he a threat to them in anyway? Given the links between the Saudis and the Bush clan was the war in part ways motivated by Saudi interests in the region ?

mr monkey, I googled and found

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/02/08/saudis/index.html

It thinks the threat to saudi was from iran and is now (article 2 years old) worse that iraq is destabilised.

The surprising thing is not that Blair lied about WMD (surely no-one really believed him did they?). The surprise is it that he now thinks it is ok to admit it was all cooked up to get the result he wanted.

What's next - will he admit to ordering the killing of David Kelly for example?

Did (some of ) the british public not re-elect him after the Iraq invasion?

I am glad a never voted for Blair, I always thought he was a charlatan, smiling assassin, Liar call him what you may,so to all you new Labour voters shame on you, bloody halfwits. As song went when Blair came into power Things Will Only Get Better. Utter tosh!

I am glad a never voted for Blair, I always thought he was a charlatan, smiling assassin, Liar call him what you may,so to all you new Labour voters shame on you, bloody halfwits.

I can only apologise for my naivity and hope that one day I can achieve access to the higher plane you obviously inhabit.

Cock.

To be fair, he fooled most of the population.
I didn't vote for him but he came across as charismatic and was the only option for those who didn't want the tories in power (the other parties are even more halfwitted).
But, I would have hoped that he would have been booted after the invasion.

Rather be a cock than a labour voter!

Rather be a cock than a labour voter

It's a shame that this thread has descended into partisan politics, when there appeared to be such a broad consensus that whatever our politics, most, it would appear, agreed that Blair is a lying lowlife (for that reason I specifically avoided criticising New Labour) Still, I guess some people can't help themselves and feel the irresistible need to score cheap political points at any given opportunity.

So whilst we're at it, it's worth remembering that Blair's success (landslide victory) wasn't down to an overwhelming popularity he enjoyed amongst traditional Labour supporters, but the enormous support he received from traditional Tory voters. People, like indeed his own father, who had [i]always[/i] voted Tory - including Thatcher, felt hugely comfortable voting for Blair.

In fact if traditional Tory voters [i]hadn't[/i] voted for him in such huge numbers he would have had a considerably smaller majority, and would therefore have struggled in getting his way on the more controversial issues - relying as he would have had to, more on traditional Labour base support. So I blame Tory voters - not traditional Labour voters.

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It thinks the threat to saudi was from iran

I have always believed that Afghanistan and Iraq were but mere stepping stones towards the much larger prize of Iran (with possibly Syria as the 3rd stepping stone) Unfortunate for the Yanks 'plan A' went tits up when Donald Rumsfeld's strategy of "invasion light" proved to be nothing more than the arrogant wishful thinking of those who deluded themselves with their own rhetoric, self-importance, sense of superiority, and belief in their own divine destiny. As is fitting in cases of a conceited sense of superiority and divine destiny, there was no 'plan B'. On the plus side for the Yanks, they succeeded in their goal of getting their hands on Iraqi oil - but then again, that was never exactly in doubt.

ernie_lynch So I blame Tory voters - not traditional Labour voters.

good point not that I want to bring it down to party politics, we only get to put one cross every four years for every issue

I do hope that was irony!
Even though he did get more votes from defectors, many many more labourites voted for him than tories did.

The Tories didn't quite vote against the war in the House - did they?
In fact - IIRC - they argued for a tougher stance

http://www.arabmediawatch.com/amw/MediaLobbying/IraqWarVote/tabid/142/Default.aspx

Now if Blair's lies were as obvious as claimed - why didn't they see through it & vote against?

Now if Blair's lies were as obvious as claimed - why didn't they see through it & vote against?

Because it suited them not to?

Now ask me another, that was too easy.

Because it suited them not to?

Care to elaborate?

Hang on, are you suggesting that it's the fault of another party that labours leader turned out to be a f***ing warmonger?
Get a grip of yourself man.

Hang on, are you suggesting that it's the fault of another party that labours leader turned out to be a f***ing warmonger?
Get a grip of yourself man

No - I'm suggesting that both the main parties were equally guilty

ernie_lynch Fair points you have there, but I do have an underlying hatred of Labour, who have stooped to a new low level of sleaze lies based on a legacy left by Blair. I have had many disagreements with my mother-in-law who votes Labour from some misguided family loyalty even though their policies have affected her family to their detriment. I pains me to see Brown with that ugly smile of his supposedly out in Afghanistan to support our troops. Ha what rot he just wanted to be the first PM since Churchill to sleep abroad in a warzone. 😈

I'm neither a liberal nor a tory, but it's plain for me to see that the blame for iraq lies squarely with the labour party and the people who voted them into power.
F*** all to do with the tories.
Their opinion of the decision was irrelevant as they weren't in power, they didn't push the button and so cannot be held accountable.
To say that they are is a bit pathetic. They shouldn't try to shift blame to others, just put their hand up and say "yup, we dropped a b0llock-sorry about that". At least they might salvage some kind of dignity.

I've certainly no love for Brown but perhaps some of the more vociferous anti-labour voices on here could explain how "call me" Dave and "gorgeous" George will make things better.*
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Excepting benefitting their chums of course.

Not shifting the blame at all - merely saying that the Tories were complicit - they probably could have turned the vote if they'd wanted to

Iain Duncan Smith [who's he?] on the eve of the vote to his MPs

[b][i]Saddam Hussein had "the means, mentality and motive" to threaten Britain's national security[/i][/b]

Both parties have dirty hands on this one

This doen't apply to me. I don't dislike labour or the tories. At this moment in time, I do not think that labour or Brown has anything to offer us and they should not be let off for Iraq. I simply cannot see how they could do much worse.

The tories, iirc, supported the call to war. They had to take what they were being told in good faith - otherwise it undermines the whole game. They can't, as we would have all done, said 'prove it'. There's more to this still: the opposition were complicit in this and I dare say we'll never know the truth. What we're being told is like an onion - as one lair of lies is removed, another one is exposed. <Tin-foil hat on>

Oh, & +1 on David Kelly being assassinated.

I found the whole kelly thing quite upsetting.
I doubt he got into science with the intention of being caught up in all of that sh1t.

many more labourites voted for him than tories did.

Well that's hardly surprising is it ? ......... unlike traditional Tory voters, traditional Labour voters didn't exactly have a lot of choice about who to vote for.

Which is [i]precisely[/i] what New Labour relied on. And what initially, made them so electorally successful, and why they had such huge majorities.

Had Sun/Daily Mail/Telegraph readers not gone out in their droves to vote for Blair and given him such a huge majority, then opposition within his own party would have been much more critical for him. As it was, he was able to comfortably ignore the dozen or so principled Labour MPs who opposed him - including his drive for war.

Keeping Daily Mail readers sweet, was Blair's first priority.

Of course it has all started going pear-shaped for New Labour in recent years as more and more traditional Labour voters decide that they would rather stay and at home than go out and vote for a bunch of lying lowlifes. And suddenly traditional Tory voters are coming home - hence in the June '09 EU elections, Labour received 15.7% of the vote in 34.7% turnout. Their worst result ever.

I've certainly no love for Brown but perhaps some of the more vociferous anti-Labour voices on here could explain how "call me" Dave and "gorgeous" George will make things better.*
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Excepting benefiting their chums of course.

Don't remember anyone saying they would, in fact all the party lack a pair of balls to make a decision on pulling our troops out and putting there energies into sorting our own borders and immigration problems and routing out any would be threats to our security on our turf. I don't see how invading Iraq made us any safer, I think it did the opposite same goes for Afghanistan. Its Iran & ****stan that are the biggest threat, with the amount of extremists whipping up there hatred for the US & UK as a result of our POlicies.

Ernie, I don't disagree with you. In fact you're probably right; the additional voters had to come from somewhere. However, that doesn't mean that the tories are as responsible for the whole mess as labour are.

ernie - whilst it's true that some of the emptiness of the New Labour project arguably stems from the need to have a broad appeal (but then, no government gets elected by only appealing to their core voters do they?), Blair's foreign policy of going to war constantly ([url= http://www.jkampfner.net/books_1.html ]Desert Fox, Sierra Leone, bombing Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq[/url]) seems to have something to do with his belief that things could be made better by interfering rather than not getting involved. I don't think that aspect of his policy had anything to do with appeasing Daily Mail readers.

porterclough, while I agree with your sentiments; please don't include sierra leone in that list.
Seeing kids knocking around with their arms lopped off will stay with me forever.

Anyone who thinks a Tory government [i]wouldn't[/i] have supported George Bush's war in Iraq, is clearly living with the fairies. But that's not the point ..... I, and millions of others, would have expected [i]better[/i] from a Labour government.

Having said that, I'm sure that a Tory Prime minister such as Thatcher would have stood up more to the Yanks and voiced her generals concerns - unlike the spineless Blair. And of course had we had a Tory government, then there is little doubt that more or less the entire Parliamentary Labour Party would have been opposed to the war. Coupled with the millions throughout Britain who were opposed to war from the start, a Tory government would have had far more difficulty in committing Britain to war than Blair ever had. We would have been better off with a Tory government 😐

Flippinheckler I couldn't agree with you more. I also agree that Bumblebore is making a right mess of things. However the dynamic duo from the [s]New Nazi[/s] Conservative party worry me far more.

Anyone who thinks a Tory government wouldn't have supported George Bush's war in Iraq, is clearly living with the fairies. But that's not the point ..... I, and millions of others, would have expected better from a Labour government.

no government gets elected by only appealing to their core voters do they?

The traditional way to win opposition voters over, is through the power of your argument - not by saying [i]"I'm a Tory/Socialist like you"[/i].

New Labour is discovering to their cost that, that sort of support is very soft, unreliable, and will quickly abandon you. Still they probably knew that but were far too hungry for power to worry about such things.

Ernie, that's conjecture isn't it?
It's a bit optimistic to try to assume what would have happened under another party. Maybe Haigh/Duncan Smith would have said "George you can f*** right off". Maybe labour would have wholeheartedly supported the war (quite likely; they suggested it in the first place and implemented it) Maybe not, but we'll never know.

it still pained me though, to see a "Labour" government so enthusiastic to go to war.

But the policy was one of liberal intervention - i.e., it came from a social democratic perspective, an idealistic belief in using military power to make the world better. A pity that Blair never seems to have read The Quiet American.

I think Ernie is right on this one.

had a Tory Govt been in power and been pushing hard for war the Labour line would have been instinctively to stand in opposition. Whether that would have been for peaceful and altruistic reasons or simply the chance to stuff the Tories in front of the Americans wouldn't really have mattered. That opposition alongside the many, many Britons who opposed the war would have scuppered the Tories.
Remember, Blair took power with a HUGE majority, the Tories would never have gathered that sort of broad support because the Labour traditionalists could never have been persuaded to change their vote & the Tories would never have swung left enough to appeal to them.
Blair sacrificed the trad Labour core for the middle-ground conservatives and it was this that gave him his majority.

In fact, if/when the Tories are returned with a huge majority it will be BECAUSE of Blair & Co's appropriation of the middle-ground conservatives and their eventual disgust with him.

Both parties have dirty hands in this affair but it was the Cabal of Blairites behind the Cabinet that hold the responsibility, without their lies Parliament would most likely have rejected Blairs warmongering.

it came from a social democratic perspective, an idealistic belief in using military power to make the world better.

I know of no social-democratic tradition of going to war in pursuit of an idealistic aim.

Indeed it runs totally contrary to the aims of social-democracy, which as I have always understood, can be summed up in the words : "[i]peace[/i] and social justice"

EDIT : BTW, there is no way that New Labour can be described as "social-democratic". One of the prerequisites for a social-democracy, is a "mixed economy". New labour has no such commitment. Unlike the post-war Tory governments which could fairly be described as "social-democratic".

had a Tory Govt been in power and been pushing hard for war the Labour line would have been instinctively to stand in opposition

Many here are under the impression that Bush pressurised Blair to go into Iraq. He actually told Blair a couple of weeks before it began that if it was giving him too many problems he could back out and the US would go it alone.

I agree with Ernie the Tories would probably have done the same.

Anyone who thought at the time that we went into Iraq because of WMDs was being incredibly naive. There seems to have been some sort of unspoken collusion amongst Labour and Tory MPs along the lines of "We know this WMD thing is a crock of shit Tony but we'll go along with you and get British companies some nice reconstruction and oil contracts and if there aren't any WMDs well we can just blame you or British Intelligence for misleading us. We can let the yanks do most of the work and anyway it'll be a quick in and out job" Didn't exactly work out like that.

Backhander - i can say it because opposition to Tory policies is at the heart of the Labour traditionalist - i am one!
Remember that 'old' Labour was inherently anti-war, if they were in opposition i would surmise that more of the trad Labour MP's would have been present rather than Blairs opportunistic followers although that is only my conjecture.
Labour members would have been in opposition to the war - many of the rank and file were after all - and that combined with the chance to embarrass a sitting Tory PM would have been too good a chance to pass up.

Both the Parliamentary Labour Party & the Parliamentary Conservative Party (along with the rest) were hoodwinked into lending their support to Blairs cabal through lies and coercion. Parliament would have been a lot harder to convince (whatever their political colour) had Blair not been able to pull the WMD stunt & that was only possible with American collaberation.

Why? They've [labour government] been a disaster every time they've been in power

How the **** does anyone know what would have happened?

Well it's not exactly rocket science to work out how Labour would have behaved in opposition.

For example, Labour in opposition opposed [u]every single[/u] Tory privatisation - [i]not one single privatisation[/i] did they support - they opposed all of them - and that includes Tony Blair btw. It is therefore perfectly reasonable to assume that had they not won the election in '97, then they would have continued to oppose Tory plans for further privatisation - despite the fact that in the last 10 year or so they have enthusiastically embraced privatisation themselves. It therefore is also perfectly reasonable to assume that Labour in opposition would have opposed a Tory government foreign policies - specially when there was such widespread public opposition.

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Let us not forget that labour and nobody else were the ones to send troops into Iraq. That is just a fact.

That is not true. "Parliament" send the troops into Iraq, and apart for a few exceptions, that includes the Tory Party. The LibDems and Plaid Cymru opposed it though.

Tony Blair was in an impossible position, he was facing a tyrant in Saddam who had more UN resolutions against him that anybody else ever, and I genuinely believe he did what he thought was right.

His only error was to go along with Bush, without insisting they formulated a proper endgame scenario.

So are we assuming also that "new" labour would have reverted to "old" if they hadn't have won a second(or third?) term. That's a lot of assumption.
If you're suggesting that had labour not got into power and remained traditional then yes, you're probably correct. I'm afraid that the old labour is loooong gone now.

FFS NO other party can be blamed for labours policy on war. It really is that simple. The tories might not have opposed it, but that's an entirely different thing from proposing and implementing it.

So are we assuming also that "new" labour would have reverted to "old" if they hadn't have won a second(or third?) term. That's a lot of assumption.

And yet you don't appear to be having much trouble in assuming that a Tory government would have opposed George Bush's war in Iraq 😕

NO other party can be blamed for labours policy on war.

But the Tory Party can be blamed for [i]their[/i] policy on war......why didn't they vote with the LibDems and oppose it ?

I have suggested a scenario, not implied that it was my belief. In the same way that you're guessing what the political masters would have done based in what ifs with the exception that I'm not pretending to be able to predict occurances in alternative universes. 😯

Not 'opposing' a policy is a tacit approval of that policy. If the Tories had been in opposition to the war as a matter of policy they would have been most vehemently vocal about it.

As for the old-Vs-new argument about Labour i would submit that yes, if the New labour experiment had failed to convince the electorate then the traditionalists in the Party would have once more been in the ascendant and would most probably have reverted to the old positions of being anti-war, anti-privatisation etc.

It's not exactly a great leap to see that if New Labour had fallen at the polls the old guard would have wrestled back control, after all that is EXACTLY what happened with the Tories when they lost - they reverted back to a position of the old right anti-European policies once more.

Just as the defeated Conservative Party leant further to the right because New Labour held the middle ground then a defeated Labour Party would have leant back to the left because the winning Tories would have held the centre.
It's simple politics.

tyrant in Saddam who had more UN resolutions against him that anybody else ever

In the same way that you're guessing what the political masters would have done based in what ifs with the exception that I'm not pretending to be able to predict occurances in alternative universes.

So no one is able to predict how this government will behave until the next general election then ? No one can predict how a Labour government will behave if they win another election ? And no one can predict how a Tory government will behave ?

I have to say, this "politics" malarkey is all very difficult ....... I don't know how anybody is able to decide who to vote for once they've been given their voting slip and they're standing in the polling booth 😕

So no one is able to predict how this government will behave until the next general election then ? No one can predict how a Labour government will behave if they win another election ? And no one can predict how a Tory government will behave ?

That's pretty much the size of it, what with us not having the ability to see into the future and everything. Who would have predicted that labour would have sent us into 2 major wars? If people has predicted this as you're suggesting that they should have then they wouldn't have been elected. So, no we cannot predict the outcome of anything, we can only [i]guess[/i]. We vote for the party who has the most policies that we agree with and hope that they don't **** things up too badly. Ooops.

So, no we cannot predict the outcome of anything, we can only guess.

What do you base your "guessing" on then ?