Hi Lawry, At 11:57 09/03/03 -0500, you wrote: >Hi, Keith, >"This weekend" meaning today or in a week? > >Cheers >L
I meant *this* week-end. However, I think I have have underestimated Blair's resolve, even though he may, in fact, decimate the Labour Party membership in the country. One of Blair's strongest critics, an ex-Minister and very experienced MP (whose name I've forgotten for the moment -- or is it senility?), was on TV this lunch-time saying,"now that Blair has marched his troops to the top of the hill [that is, sent them to Kuwait] he's not going to march them down again [bring them home] like the "Grand Old Duke of York" in the child's nursery rhyme. If a UN resolution is not passed (as seems likely) and Blair decides to support Bush in invading Iraq, then he can rely on a majority in the House of Commons (he has already promised a debate and a vote some days ago) by depending on the Tories and, maybe, half of his own Labour MPs. (The total number of Labour MPs who will vote against Blair is likely to be of the order of 200 -- about half the total.) I've just wondering, in fact, whether he's going to do a Ramsey MacDonald. The latter was the Labour Prime Minister early last century who turned away from the Labour Party and formed a National Government. Perhaps Blair is thinking the same. Certainly the Tory Party would welcome him as a leader instead of their insipid and incompetent Ian Duncan-Smith whom they voted as leader in a fit of absentmindedness a couple of years ago. This would be taking speculation to its limits but one attraction to Blair is that he also has some bitter fights against several public sector unions ahead of him in the coming months (firefighter, doctors and nurses, teachers, etc) which, never mind Iraq, might have also caused a split in the Labour Party. If he forms a National Government with the help of the Tories then he can outface the unions. We'll see. Sorry to be so domestic when, in fact, the matter of Gulf War II has far more important implications for world stability than the relatively petty squabblings within the Labour Party. Keith ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
