Labour Party Scandals Under Blair/Brown

[RowlingStone]

I was only a teenager in the early naughties and yet I remember so many Labour scandals so I often feel surprised that they never get mentioned here in the political threads.

The ones I remember are David Kelly, weapons of mass destruction/Iraq war generally, A-level results falsely marked down to prevent grade inflation (Estelle Morris took the fall for that), PFI, extensive hospital waiting lists, cash for honours, something to do with Peter Mandelson, Carole Caplin and some dodgy flats, Labour offspring getting into fee paying or selective schools, Two Jags Prescott and lots of sex scandals (Blunkett, Prescott, maybe more).

I suppose it’s always given me this sense that regardless of the colour of their rosettes all politicians are ultimately the same (self-serving hypocrites).

I was curious whether everyone else just had very short term memories or those scandals weren’t as big a deal at the time as some of the current ones.

We have too many acts of destruction happening daily under this Tory shower of corrupt, incompetent liars to be dwelling on what Labour did 15-20 years ago and were voted out for.

Of course deary, if you say so, how dare anyone point out the iniquities of Labour over the last 50+ years, the sacred moo of MN!

If Blair had said, I believe we should attack Saddam because of his appalling human rights and put it to the vote, then that would be above board. It would be honest and MPs would know what they were voting for and the public would know. That's all on the MPs then and not on Blair.

But that's not what happened. Hans Blix was sent in by the UN to investigate the claims about WMD and he was clear that they had searched everywhere and there were none. The UK then faked evidence to say there were. We did not go to war in 2003 because of the genocide of the March Arabs.

@Scianel - I was very opposed to the Iraq War. But I always feel the need to point out that the Tories voted for it. Any UK government would have followed the US in the same way at that time.

So you don't remember Iraq but you know lots about David Kelly?

But this is ALL hindsight, SH had a proven record for using chemical weapons and Iraq is a big place, we aren't talking about sophisticated Nuclear weapons/storage and guidance systems, chemical weapons could have been stored pretty much anywhere and Blix only went where SH said he go.

Don't misunderstand me either, i don't think Blair acted properly over Iraq at all, he was intoxicated with power and was the "big i am" on the world stage, Bush played him like a fool.

However, i'm glad Saddam is gone, he was an evil murderous dictator but my point is the war and everything that followed would have happened anyway & had he remained in power, we'd have not only have Iran to deal with but Iraq seeking nuclear too, ruled by one of his equally murderous sons.

But this is ALL hindsight, SH had a proven record for using chemical weapons and Iraq is a big place, we aren't talking about sophisticated Nuclear weapons/storage and guidance systems, chemical weapons could have been stored pretty much anywhere and Blix only went where SH said he go.

No, this is categorically not true. Blix was ultimately allowed to go wherever he wanted. He could find nothing. So the secret services from the different countries started to give him information as to where their intelligence said he should look. He looked in all those places. There was nothing. There wasn't even anything in place that looked like it could become something. Blix was adamant that Saddam had no capabilities that he'd been bragging about. And Blix was right.

Again, it's not about whether the war was right or wrong. People will have differing views. But surely going to war, where we know servicemen and women will die, be maimed and quite possibly affected mentally forever, is the most serious thing a country can do. That's why safeguards were put in place that a PM, on the whole, could no longer unilaterally do that. So to get his war, Blair put together information from a variety of sources that wasn't true and that he knew wasn't true in order to win the vote. That's what's wrong.

I personally don't like what Russia is doing in Ukraine, I can understand why people think the West should intervene but I'd be appalled if Johnson or Sunak had or did falsify intelligence that we were going to be attacked in order to take us into that war.

@MarshaMelrose Then we agree (sort off), as i said, Blair acted wrongly over Iraq, i supported the first Iraq war, the second one i was against, we had a no fly zone which kept Iraq in check

• but i was also concerned that Iraq may have chemical weapons stashed away, far from the prying eyes of the UN, all he would need is 100 155mm shells loaded with Sarin or one scud missile landing in Tel Aviv or Cairo.

Remember as well, a lot of the intel the UK had, was first obtained by the Americans, as Blix confirmed.

Going to war with a Nuclear power is on a different order of magnitude.

As to safeguards now in place? what ones? we had a referendum based on lies, that has helped cause a great deal of economic turmoil on the UK and, can be argued, enabled Putin.

@walkinginsunshinekat I remembering watching Hans Blix's statement to the UN and he was very decisive that there were no weapons. And yet the UK govt subsequently said they had evidence there was. And although I'd been impressed by Blix, I believed what Blair was saying. I never thought any uk PM would lie over starting a war. Naive, I know, but I didn't. So I understood why MPs voted how they did.

When the newspapers began to uncover the extent of the false evidence, I was shocked. In fact bits I rejected initially as too fanciful to be true. I remember Andrew Gilligan's report on the morning news and the repercussions of it that led to them wanting to expose the mole. I remember David Kelly's death. (I don't believe he was murdered - it was suicide.)

I can't think there are many people that care that Saddam has gone. But the US and UK didn't even have contingency plans in place to run Iraq if their assumptions of what would happen didn't pan out. It was a shocking mess and both countries were responsible for that.

Of course wars with a non-nuclear and nuclear powers are different. But the cost to service personnel is devastating in both. I expect that politicians will do their damnedest not to put the armed forces at risk. I'm not speaking politically about Blair, because I feel the same about Cameron and Johnson. If Blair had presented his argument to Parliament with no real evidence but his persuasiveness and the HoC had voted for war, then that's up to individual MPs to answer but it's democratically correct. But Blair didn't want to risk not going to war so he falsified evidence. For me that's a really serious issue.

But Jeremy Corbyn.
Keir had a beer.

Does Sunak know what a woman is?

Oh come off it, saying it was the end of Blair is some serious revisionism.
Iraq was invaded in 2003, Blair was pm until 2007

It didn't end him, that's just not true, but he was never the same again. He and the administration had basically been on honeymoon for the first six years, with only occasional wobbles.

Labour really did get lucky in 05, in popular vote share they only beat the Tories by a couple of percent. That majority was very much a creation of FPTP. Well they all are, but more so than most. And Iraq was a very big part of that: the increase in the Lib Dem vote was primarily antiwar left wingers who were pissed off with Labour.

It didn't end him, that's just not true, but he was never the same again. He and the administration had basically been on honeymoon for the first six years, with only occasional wobbles.

Did you see the interview documentary on the Blair and Brown years? It was so interesting. What his staff said was that his tenure of PM progressed, he became more disinterested in domestic issues and he was much more focused on international affairs. He liked being on the world stage and he'd lost the,appetite for UK politics.
And then he had Brown snapping at his heels to go, briefing against him, and a vociferous proportion of the population kept harking back to the war and him being a war criminal. It must have been an exhausting contrast to being so popular to earlier in his premiership.
I think he probably had to go but I do believe if he'd stood in 2010 instead of Brown, he still would have won.

I haven't seen it but would agree with what his staff were saying.

He has - they have published a whole list of proposed policies. I'm sure you could look it up if you were really interested.

It was 4 or 5 episodes, QuagaarWarrior. I was pretty ambivalent about Blair but watching this so long after it all happened and feelings have lessened, it was really interesting. On some things I liked him more. On other things less. The surprise to me was the dour and petulant Brown seemed even more door and petulant, and yet I liked him more. I think he could gave made a decent PM, actually.

Just about everyone Blair worked with is on there and they were pretty honest. It's on the BBC iplayer. If you get the chance to watch it, do.

Ta for the tip.

I find Brown seems a bit more likeable in retrospect, maybe he grew into himself a bit! Though he too is culpable for Iraq, of course.

I don't think Govts protect service personnel, when have they ever done that?
We sent soldiers to both the Falklands (a war imho Thatcher could have avoided) Iraq and Afghanistan, poorly equipped, that then led to deaths.

My own view is that generally speaking, they don't care about anyone but themselves, their wealth, power & legacy & in this country, we have absolutely no means to hold them to account when they do what Blair did or more recently, Johnson (Brexit and Russian/Putin money) and Truss - her actions in a company/business would have led to a criminal investigation.

Hmm, I think you might find he distances himself slightly from Iraq. 😂 But from memory, I think by that time Blair and Brown were not functioning as a unit and I'm not sure just how much Brown knew what exactly was going on. Or, maybe, he let it seem that way to give him plausible deniability. 😄 Mind you it's been a while since I saw the series, so I might be doing them both a disservice there!

Well he certainly failed to distance himself from it at the time.

This is such a shit thread. I’m naturally a Liberal, or Labour voter, and remember being appalled at the Iraq War and David Kelly allegations.

However, as I said upthread WHY is any of this relevant today? Shall we talk about Thatcher and The Falklands? Eden and Israel was it? Shall we go back to Irish Famine - is that far enough back for you OP? Doesn’t help the future does it.

Or are you saying none of us should vote, because every party has blood on their hands and therefore none are electable based on that premise.

Isn’t one definition of intelligence the ability to hold (or imagine) opposing views at the same time. Well quite a lot of the electorate are in fact really smart such that they are able to make choices, of which neither are ideal, but some are a lot less shit than others.

Suggest you start working that second brain cell OP.

However, as I said upthread WHY is any of this relevant today?

The op asked about Labour scandal and someone said that nothing Labour did ever came anywhere near what the Tories have done.
I remember a few Labour scandals but it was years ago and I don't really care about them. But I take exception to someone saying that deliberately faking evidence to persuade Parliament to go to war isn't a serious issue. It's just about one of the most serious things I can think of, really. The war has come and gone but people still remember the "dodgy dossier".

@MarshaMelrose

And I take exception to anyone suggesting I’m minimising a ‘serious issue’ (your words) on the Iraq war. My language was “appalled” so show me where I minimising in any of my two posts.

I will repeat. ALL parties have blood in their hands and on that basis are all unelectable - yet we all still have a choice to make.

@DodgyLeftLeg
I never said you said it. I said...

and someone said that nothing Labour did ever came anywhere near what the Tories have done

If I was saying you'd said it, I'd have said 'you said' and not 'someone said'.

I was explaining that I wasn't that bothered by the labour scandal so didn't comment until someone said that labour scandals weren't as serious as those today. And that's why I personally commented.

There were scandals under the Blair/Brown governments, some under Thatcher, more under Major, and a few under the Cameron led coalition. However the number under Boris Johnson especially were a multiple of several times all of them put together.