Right Turn or About Face

Latham has done his sums and come up with an answer that will further wind up the left wing baggage of the ALP. To have any chance of Government Labour needs to debate and where relevant support the Government in it’s Security issues. To disallow every Coalition submission because it doesn’t sit well with the left wing is going nowhere fast.

During a wide-ranging interview with The Australian, Mr McClelland – who, like Mr Latham, hails from the NSW Right – suggested many Labor grassroots members, such as teachers, lawyers, university students and social workers – were out of touch with the security concerns expressed by ordinary voters. “Some of the relatively narrow membership base that we have in the party is refusing to acknowledge the legitimate security concerns and anxiety that working Australians have,” told The Australian

It’s not so much the grassroots members but the left wing portion that drag the party down. Rational thought lost in a hate haze of Bush/Howard et al, they refuse to see any good that can come of the current world power grouping. Both Latham and McClelland are heading in the right direction in this article in todays Australian but I don’t think much of their chances of dragging the left wing into any arena of rational thought. Carmen Lawrence, given any power, will only want to lead the ALP into a 40 years sojourn in the wilderness. It’s a pleasant thought but we do need a viable opposition. McClelland isolates the left wing further by cannonising Satan and calling the UK labour to task over Iraq.

In further controversial remarks, Mr McClelland conceded that Tony Blair’s Labour Government in Britain had been “dishonest” in its arguments for joining the war in Iraq. “America was far more honest in their reasons for going into Iraq,” he said. “It was essentially the doctrine of pre-emption.”

Anyone not handicapped by the hate haze could see the Iraq war was pre-emptive and that the establishment of a democracy in the centre of the Middle East is a good idea but McClelland is being a bit disengenious by claiming the US were far more honest that the two junior partners. The US set the agenda and both the UK and Australia went along with it. The WMD only mattered until Saddam lost his ability to deploy them.