Can Gordon Brown End The Iraq Impasse?
SIMON Jenkins writes in the Sunday Times that while Tony Blair acted:
Instead Brown sat on his hands, as did all those ministers now leaking their “private opposition” to the war. Robin Cook and Clare Short honourably resigned. Brown supported the war, perhaps hoping it might hasten his rival’s departure. Now his cabinet is almost entirely composed of non-resigners who showed no inch of spine during the past four years and whose policy has caused the deaths of 156 British soldiers for fear of upsetting Washington.
The price of this cowardice was evident on Thursday. Brown was welcomed to No 10 with three British soldiers dead in a Basra gutter. Whether two unexploded car bombs in London the day after were a product of the same policy remains moot.
For all his mantras about change, Brown appears manacled to the policy of his predecessor. The spin doctors have talked of a “distancing” from Washington, of a new “tone of voice”, of a “change of nuance”. This means nothing without a change of policy. Without one, Brown, David Miliband, his foreign secretary, and Lord Malloch Brown, the Foreign Office No 2, must repeat the lies of their predecessors.
Gordon Brown might now have to say what he thinks out loud…
Posted: 1st, July 2007 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
