Oona Lashes Out - At Tony

So Oona King wants her seat back. A bit early to start campaigning I'd have thought. I didn't see Clare Short's name in that list of possible candidates for DPM. I wonder why.

I think Gordon has worked out that Bethnal and Bow is going to be held by Galloway as long as Oona's the Labour candidate.

But the article is really addressed to Gordon. Funny about Claire, but I wonder what Ruth Kelly made of the article...

I'm still laughing at the decision to send a member of Opus Dei to discuss Muslim issues in the wake of the recent alleged plot. I guess Ruth Kelly must be realising that her rapid promotion and her equally rapid demotion reflects opinion on her 'talent'. Someone has egg on their face.

Ah the Buckett woman again. Is there no limit to her incompetence?

Can't see it. From what I hear the Labour party are already grooming a young asian activist or three to stand in 2009. Oona's best hope is the Portillo media luvvy route. Her parlimentary political career is dead.

Excuse me, but isn't Hazel Blears nothing but a shrill voiced, arse-licking, self absorbed moron?

... so perfect for the job then...

Excuse me, but isn't Hazel Blears nothing but a shrill voiced, arse-licking, self absorbed moron?

You forgot talentless, patronising and brain-dead in there, old son.

Is Oona joining the let's-impress-Gordon-by-pissing-on-Tony bandwagon? The nice thing about New Labour types is that their loyalty is of a life expectency a mayfly would find a bit brief.

It is quite staggering the lack of political talent in both of the main parties, but especially Labour.

Of course, when one has a psychotic autocrat like Blair in charge it makes him look good (or rather, better) to be surrounded by political non-entities such as Blears.

BTW, anyone heard Cameron today? - he always seems like he missed the bus half-an-hour ago.

He used the thinly veiled rascist term favoured at the BBC, "alleged British-born Islamist terrorists". So what is being 'allleged' one may ask. That they are British-born, Islamists, or terrorists?

He's such a no-hoper, opportunist, touchy-feely bullshit imbued fake with zero chance of being elected PM. God help British politics.

Cameron is a joke, just check out some of the quotes from today:

"There is never, ever a justification for strapping explosives to yourself" You have to laugh really, donchya.

"I do not believe that our government is doing enough to fight Islamist extremists at home or to protect our security." He eems to miss the point that 'our government' has created the climate that enables extremism.

"Why have so few, if any, preachers of hate been prosecuted or expelled, with those that have gone having done so voluntarily?" Err, I'm no lawyer but my guess would be that they haven't broken the law.

"All of Britain's communities are potential victims of the plans of terrorists" So shouldn't David be sharing those plans with us?

Here's the best though;

"In particular, we need follow-through when the headlines have moved on." Yeah right on brother, I hear ya. Let's not be dictated to by headlines eh?

What a fucking joke. What a fucking arsehole.

Out of interest, why's it so much more risible to send a member of Opus Dei 'to discuss Muslim issues' than it would be to send an atheist?

Lord Levy, well known Jew, big house in Tel Aviv, personal friends with Ehud Olmert and Her Majesty's Govenment's official Middle East envoy.

Apparently he is also running the UK's Middle East affairs single handed. My coo-ca-choo, you just can't make this stuff up. Anyone for tennis?

Quarsan notes correctly, many names are absent. Names that at one time might have been put forward. And not necessarily by Oona.

Not so long ago, 'loony lefties' like Glenda Jackson were prepared to be a stalking horse. Claire was still making noises. And as recently as 2003, a 'spineful' Labour backbench produced the biggest Government backbench rebellion in history against the war. What happened? Why not now?

Prior to his untimely death, Robin Cook wrote in The Guardian that it was only a matter of time before the current Labour regime would be indicted on War Crimes charges. Or at the very least, the British taxpayer would be held accountable for compensation. The 'matter of time' may be some decades even - as in the case of the Nazis. But memories are long and justice is, like history, in the final analysis, inescapable. And every Labour member is now horribly complicit and will be so adjdged.

I imagine that only the truly naive - like Ruth 'Muslims must admit their extremism' Kelly - and the truly warped - like Peter 'I won't denounce Guantanamo Bay' Hain - want to stand anywhere remotely close to Blair. The complicity in sleaze, racism and immorality is no longer attractive to Labour MPs at large, let alone pretenders to cabinet posts. They can't even go to the local pub without a hat down in their face.

I live in a Tory constituency (not my fault) and at the last Elections, national and council, not a single Labour candidate dared to come to the doorstep. I checked miles across the ward too. So now the Labour party is 27 million in debt - dunno what happened to the cash for peerages money - and all these guys will be not only out of a job but damned by history too. A cabinet position or promotion can, at best, elevate them to war criminal status.

Robin Cook wasn't stupid and neither is Gordon Brown. About the only two intelligent people left in the Labour Party. One is truly dead and the other is playing dead. Because that's the only future of the Labour party.

Steve,
What I found amusing was the thought of a religious extremist being sent off to talk to a community about combating religious extremism.

Not sure, Davide; you could argue that Ruth Kelly was a good choice since she's someone with strong religious convictions (and thus better able to understand why her interlocutors take some things far more seriously than do the rest of us) who manages to restrain herself both from imposing them on the rest of us, whether by direct action (bombing abortion clinics) or more constitutional means (trying to make abortion illegal).

I still can't see the conversation would have necessarily have gone any better had HMG sent a militant atheist. Maybe an agnostic or perhaps someone who's 'C of E, I suppose'?

'Pick me, I'm a girl!' is not a programme for office. Why not go all the way and make the case for a female leadership candidate? Why not make a case on its merits rather than on the basis of not being a bloke? To put it another way, what so feminist about Hazel Blears?

Steve G

What if they had just sent a rationalist - a plain old atheist? I don't think there are many what you call 'militant atheists'. Incidentally, most atheists are technically agnostic.

Why should someone who is C of E not be a religious extremist or, indeed, be fit to negotiate by virtue of the religious organisation to which they belong? Can anyone who believes in invisible superbeings and all the rest of the nonsense not be a religious extremist?

Since the rationalist (or technical agnositic) and the Muslim leaders would have no more sympathy with each other's religious views than did, I assume, Ruth Kelly and the people she met, I don't see it would make a great deal of difference, which is why I raised the point. If they spent the meeting arguing about religion rather than following the agenda, then that would be different, I agree, but I don't see that someone's religious views or lack of them should automatically affect their suitability for public office.

For myself, I'm considerably more worried about Ruth Kelly's support for Tony Blair than about her views on anything else.

I'm not especially worried about Ruth Kelly's religious nuttery, but since she's a New Labour minister she'll be genetically wired not to listen to people. I'd rather have a Satanist who can actually listen and empathise with someone's opinion than the most devout Christian who has no idea about the world outside Whitehall.

Anyway, at least she isn't a Calvinist.

Atheists do not have religious views although they might well have views on religion. I don't see that religion is relevent - the germane issue is the treatment of a minority group. In view of the way the muslim community is portrayed by the media and government, they do have an issue, and the government should listen. Their religion does not give them any special preference compared with the remainder of the public opinion when considering foreign policy.

The other point is the muslim 'representatives' are often self-appointed - by what mechanism are they truely representative?

Ruth Kelly's no. 1 loyalty is to opus dei and the pope. I would hope a Ministers first loyalty is to the UK and government. Her views are extremely conservative and contrary to enlightenment values - I don't see how such a person is at all suited to executive power in a liberal democracy. Seneca said something like "Religion is believed by the common people to be true, by the wise to be false, and by the rulers to be useful." This is the problem: the rulers have begun to believe their own bullshit.

Ruth Kelly's no. 1 loyalty is to opus dei and the pope

That's encouraging. Means that the current Pope's well-known opposition to the Iraq war will be getting a fair hearing in the Government. As if.

More seriously, all that means is that there would come circumstances when she'd be obliged to resign (or be sacked) because she couldn't, in conscience, support the government's polices. Bit like the late Robin Cook did, when you come to think of it. More generally, the idea that someone should be debarred from executive office because of their religion (or lack of it) is profoundly scary. Judge people on what they actually do, not what you think -- quite possibly mistakenly -- their religion or lack of it may cause them to do, say I.

I agree, though, about 'Muslim representatives' or 'community leaders'. The concept was nicely skewered, with a memorable example, by Stumbling and Mumbling recently:

We are a diverse group of individuals. Foreigners are all the same. So we think there's a single "Muslim community" - an image fostered by rent-seeking "community leaders."
This leads to absurdities like Blair's call to "mobilise the Islamic community" to defeat terrorism. To see the cretinism of this, ask: why doesn't Polly Toynbee to use her influence to curb the rhetorical excesses of the Devil's Kitchen? After all, they're both members of the secular liberal community, of which she's a prominent leader.

Cook was, I believe, of strong atheist views, so it's not surprising he ended up an outcast. The religious nature of Blair's cabinet is quite well documented, and since religion permits, even implores you to believe things without evidence, this is naturally quite dangerous if unchecked by an injection of realism (and Blair wouldn't dream of checking it).

Muslim community - of course there are no leaders, it's a decentralised religion, which does lead to any self-important tit becoming a 'spokesman' (see Shahid Malik). The trick is to be careful to pick out the genuine (see Sadiq Khan) from the publicity-hungry, but since Government policy is to ignore all of them this isn't going to happen, and the lumping together that S&M wrote about is reflected all the way to the top.

Muslims are fairly clearly under-represented in Parliament, but then so are people who don't want a New Labour government, who should have about 500 MPs. British 'democracy' as currently expressed is not so much anti-Muslim as anti-everybody.

You can't bar people because of their religion, as it's (haha) against their human rights (Article 9), which is, after all, an expression of Enlightenment and anti-fascist values. It also falls foul of the 'would the Nazis approve of this?' test - if the answer's yes, it's a bad idea. Try applying it to ACPO's recent comments on summary justice and crushing people's cars, while you're at it.

My point about Cook was to give an example of what Ruth Kelly would be required to do if she found herself called upon to do something her conscience wouldn't allow; rather than decide that 'a Ministers first loyalty is to the UK and government,' she'd have to resign.

Actually, whatever you think of the Catholic Church's claims about the supernatural, it's actually pretty good at demanding evidence and the injection of a bit of realism about some unlikely claims; I very much doubt, for example, that claims about WMD would have withstood the scrutiny of the advocatus diaboli, the canon lawyer whose job it is to present the case against miracles when people claim to have witnessed them.

For the record, here's Cardinal Ratzinger, in his old job of prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on the invasion of Iraq:

'According to the prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- who acknowledged that political questions are not within his competence -- "the United Nations is the [institution] that should make the final decision."

'"It is necessary that the community of nations makes the decision, not a particular power," the cardinal said, after receiving the 2002 Trieste Liberal Award. His statements were published Saturday in the Italian newspaper Avvenire.

'"The fact that the United Nations is seeking the way to avoid war, seems to me to demonstrate with enough evidence that the damage would be greater than the values one hopes to save," the cardinal said.

'He said that "the U.N. can be criticized" from several points of view, but "it is the instrument created after the war for the coordination -- including moral -- of politics."

'The "concept of a 'preventive war' does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church," Cardinal Ratzinger noted.

'"One cannot simply say that the catechism does not legitimize the war," he continued. "But it is true that the catechism has developed a doctrine that, on one hand, does not exclude the fact that there are values and peoples that must be defended in some circumstances; on the other hand, it offers a very precise doctrine on the limits of these possibilities." '

The reason he was going on about the Catechism is that, while political questions weren't part of his remit, as he acknowledged, interpreting the Catchism certainly was very much one of jobs.

Shame more people in the Cabinet didn't listen to him, to my mind.

"...to the prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- who acknowledged that political questions are not within his competence --"

Curious, that. One day he's not competent to offer an opinion (though he does) and the next day, with a job change, he's an expert. Bit like a government minister, I suppose.

The point is that if he offered his political opinion, that would just be the personal view of Cardinal Ratzinger. However, when he gave his opinion, as prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that 'the concept of a "preventive war" does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,' he was saying that the official view of the Roman Catholic Church (and not just Cardinal Ratzinger) that anyone wanting to wage a 'preventative war' is on very dodgy moral ground.