When a new administration takes office they have insider access to much of what the previous administration has been doing. A major reason why the current administration is resisting all and any change must be because of what is to be found out about their last 12 years in power.
If we do manage to drag Brown and his Party to the polls the incoming government is going to be faced with more than the evidence of a political divide between them and Brown/Blair Labour. There will be a display of such levels of appalling behaviour that civil service rules on disclosure of previous administration information will not be able to hold back the tide of evidence.
William Hague has said plainly that there is to be a public inquiry into the attack upon Iraq. Within the Treasury there will be ample evidence of the recycling of taxpayers' money into Labour party funding and the establishment of taxpayer-funded Third Sector kick-backs to the Party in the consolidation of the client state. There will be laid out the dereliction of all duty to regulate financial markets. In every department there will be embodied the failure to discriminate between government and state, most particularly the Home Office will display gross disfunction, and Constitutional Affairs will have its intentions to damage the state laid bare. Departments concerned with social welfare, overseas funding, defence procurement (apart from the Treasury's long term intrusions into all these matters) will have their dirty secrets on display.
We need a Commission that can call for evidence and papers to work its way steadily through what has passed for government since 1997, and we need a court before which to bring those who have so transgressed our ways of governing, to trial. Those crimes of which evidence is found should not be rare or specially delineated crimes. Impeachment or acts against the state (whatever they are called) are not useful categories of accusation. Fraud, embezzlement, acting outside of powers, and, in the case of Iraq, war crimes, will be best. With those there are clear procedures and rules on how trials must be conducted. But a special court concerned in all this will be needed because there has always been some leeway, some grace afforded in political conduct when in power for meeting political exigencies. Such a court would be empowered to act with that in mind, rather than the strictly criminal courts that might well be overwhelmed with such an extra burden the special Commission might otherwise place on them.
However we organise it, it is not enough that New Labour should just lose office. They have gone too far.
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6 comments:
What I "love" about posts like this is how people like yourselves think you KNOW so much. You state the "there will be's" as though they are proven facts. they are no more than hearsay or opinion - something our press revel in.
You need to top swallowing whole the Daily Mail/Independent or other holier-than-thou garbage which passes for informed journalism these days.
These papers have agendas and it ain't to provide you with a parliament full of angels, Angel.
Augean Stables doesn't cover it. And I personally doubt whether the Cameroons have the time or stomach for the necessary cleansing.
It won't happen, partly because the next government will be too glad to have got power to want to alienate the rump opposition; partly because they don't want to tie their own hands when it comes to bending the rules, and partly because they were up to their necks in a lot of it too.
By the way, don't forget Blair's dry run in Kosovo when talking about war crimes
The whole lot of them need hanging for treason!
Yes, Sue. But we need to set out a reasonable route to getting at least some of them charged with at least something that can be tried in the 21st century. Though I do feel your rage.
Polly, I don't mean to forget anything. And it's hard to think that if we do manage to get a democratically elected government they will have even a rump to kick. It's not enough to dismiss them. They must face what they have done.
We aren't going to be assuaged with their departure Chris. There is the anger against injustice, corruption, selfishness and disappointed hopes for making the country open, fair, wealthy. We should work out precise ways of hauling them up before us all to answer for what they have done.
Angels are rather out of your reach Blairsupport, a Parliament of Angels would frighten you out of your complacency, not to mention your mind.
Nice idea, but Blue Labour is likely to be too busy getting their own feet under the table to bother much about pursuing the crimes of New Labour. After the hot potatoes have been juggled long enough to cool down, the legal authorities will declare that they can't see enough evidence to prosecute anyone senior. Blair may yet make it to the House of Lords!
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