Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all readers.

Those of you still in festive mood may enjoy the “Which Tory Said This in 2009?” quiz on the Labour Party website: http://www.labour.org.uk/

Others of you might enjoy the sight of Cameron's cronies squabbling over who gets which desk in No10 before a single vote has been cast:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1240181/Setback-Cameron-senior-Tories-revolt-shaven-headed-image-supremo-Steve-Hilton.html or there's the Mirror's round up of the worst of the Tories: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/01/02/the-nasty-party-in-their-own-words-115875-21936181/

For a more positive bit of reading, Will Hutton explained in the Observer on Sunday how Labour's economic policies have saved half a million jobs: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/03/uk-economic-recovery. He concludes: "Britain is emerging comparatively lightly from what could have been a second Great Depression. For anyone who believes in government economic activism – and in the dangers posed by Big Finance – it has been a massive vindication."

And then there was the final opinion poll of the year from YouGov, which came out on 1st January: Con 40% (unchanged), Lab 30% (+2), LD 17% (-1), Others 13% (-1) - more proof that we are in for a very competitive General Election, not a Tory walkover.

My top prize for New Year sanctimony goes to John Major for his pious little lecture about Iraq. Presumably he is proud that on his watch as PM he didn't take the chance to topple Saddam at the end of the Gulf War, and instead allowed the Kurds and Marsh Arabs who had risen up in the expectation of liberation by US and British forces to be slaughtered, and in the case of the Marsh Arabs subjected to the destruction of the very environment they lived in. He must also be very proud of Britain's "Unfinest Hour", our refusal to act in Bosnia when the Serbs ethnically cleansed the Bosnian Muslims. To quote Nick Cohen on this "'Pessimism' doesn't quite capture the malice of British policy. American attempts to lift the arms embargo on the Bosnian government were opposed by vehement mandarins. No-fly zones, relief for Bosnian enclaves, war-crimes tribunals and armed protection for humanitarian convoys were fought to the last ditches of the European Union and United Nations. 'Any time there was a likelihood of effective action,' said Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the Polish Prime Minister, '[Douglas Hurd, Major's Foreign Secretary] intervened to prevent it.'" And equally proud of doing nothing to stop the deaths of over 1 million innocents in the Rwandan genocide. I know which one out of former PMs John Major and Tony Blair should be able to sleep at night and it isn't the one who has been giving interviews about how carefully he followed legal advice.