Lost

5000 troops hunkered down outside Basra airport are all that remains of New Labour's war in Iraq. The devastating pictures of the British Commander in Iraq signing the hand-over papers under cover for fear of mortar attacks, without ceremony, to the Iraquis, and the contrast with Iraqui troops parading through the city of Basra was intensely distressing. The BBC poll report that as a result of the removal of the British Army:

'Two-thirds felt security would improve in the short term, while 72% said it would improve in the long term. Only 5% said security would deteriorate following the withdrawal',

suggests everything has gone badly wrong, and the British assistance to the Iraqi authorities of southern Iraq in establishing democratic rule, the New Labour justification for our presence there, (let's forget the weapons of mass destruction lies), has been non- existent.

So perhaps the worst defeat of a west European army in a non-European theatre since Dien Bien Phu is played out. It isn't as bad as the helicopters taking off from the embassy roof in Saigon but then the commitment was, to say the least, much less whole-hearted.

Since the Labour election win in 1997 the Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, now the unelected prime minister of the United Kingdom, has actively and vehemently denied funding to the United Kingdom Armed Forces. He is reported to have refused even to attend meetings at the Ministry of Defence, the first holder of the office ever to do so. He has equally vehemently declared his dislike of the Armed Forces - in keeping with the attitudes of his Party, its supporters, and his and their, political creed.

Which makes the sending to war of British troops on at least three fronts, two of them concurrent, by his alter ego Blair, utterly disgraceful. Lying to Parliament is overshadowed by sending men and women to fight under-equipped and grossly under-funded ; they went without the support of years of the defence commitment needed to fight an effective war, and it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer Brown who denied the funding.

The pretence that Brown invariably sought Blair's discomfiture is convenient, but the truth is that both sought, together, the defeat of all and every part of the United Kingdom establishment that might undermine Labour's permanent hold on power. The Armed Forces must have been a primary target, then the Constitution (currently devastated and about to be re-presented in all his vulgarity of thought by Jack Straw), the office of Head of State, ( destroy the Upper House of the Parliament in its independent revising role and it is so much easier to pass that tendentious but essential authoritarian regulation and European Union acceptance and, inter alia, deprive the monarchy of any channel of influence), politicise the Civil Service and extend the nomenklatura of appointees rather than elected officials at local levels; but first, denigrate and weaken those who might impose another order, by their millitary humiliation fighting with both hands tied behind their backs.

Then send a man with a peculiar moustache to sign away foreign and every other kind of policy independence for the United Kingdom and there is a clear field of fire for managing the next post democratic election.