The Truth That Sticks: New Labour's Breach of Trust

Martin Bell, the BBC reporter and Independent MP from 1997 to 2001, has written a scorching book on the Labour Party's record in government. Its 1997 election manifesto promised, "We will clean up politics. ... Our mission in politics is to rebuild this bond of trust between government and the people." But, as Bell writes, "on the issue on which it was elected, public trust in public life, its record was wholly, completely and unforgivably negative." Bell calls the House of Commons the `House of Ill Repute', describing the cash-for-peerages scandal, and the insult of state funding for parties. A government inquiry proposed an extra £23 million a year, on top of the current £5.6 million. He notes that the Prime Minister appoints members of the national assembly, and then preaches democracy abroad. He points out that the transitions between Thatcher and Major, and then between Blair and Brown, were not democratic. Bell concludes that Parliament is a rubber stamp for an all-powerful executive, and that the only worse system is the party list system used for elections to the European Parliament. Bell calls the illegal invasion of Iraq `the worst miscalculation by any British government in memory'. General Sir Michael Rose said, "Blair should be impeached." The war gave rise to the unprecedented Military Families Against the War. General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, said, "We should get ourselves out sometime soon, because our presence exacerbates the security problems." A British officer in Iraq said, "I'll tell you what this feels like. It feels like being a German in the Wehrmacht in France in the Second World War. We too are an occupation force." Bell has three chapters on the Iraq war, and chapters also on Labour's other unwinnable war in Afghanistan, on the EU's disgraceful role in the break-up of Yugoslavia, on the Labour government's long campaign to keep cluster bombs, and on its mean-spirited treatment of wounded and shell-shocked veterans. Even now, it is still defending the indefensible, the five-year war on Iraq. He notes that in May last year, Labour lost the Scottish election, which was a vote for honest politics, not a vote for the break-up of Britain. Two-thirds voted for the parties that oppose a break-up. Bell's book focuses on what he calls the driving issues of public trust in public life - the Iraq war and the sale of peerages. (I would add the broken promises of a referendum on the EU Constitution.)