Quote Originally Posted by Burney View Post
Of course not. He was the figurehead and the leader, so he takes the thrashing. The rest can say they were following orders.
He wasn't leader of the 139 Tory MPs. Or the leader of the 557 MPs who voted to smash up Libya in another disastrous intervention years later.

I'm not disputing that some people did move away from Labour, I'm pointing out that many more didn't and wondering how they can reconcile that fact (of putting Blair back in office) with their moral conscience. Of course people vote on a package of policies, but it seems reasonable to me to expect that someone who feels as strongly about this issue as many of those now lining up to kick Blair profess to would then refuse to vote him back in. Now I have no issue with people voting for their interests, the economy or any number of other issues, but I do take the view that once you do so in favour of someone like Blair, you are essentially placing those things over and above your moral objections to the war he started and do ever so slightly lose the moral high ground when it comes to criticising him later.
Well, personally I resolved never to vote for him after he did a similar thing in '99. I would gladly have voted for the anti-NATO SNP given the chance, but that's just me. I do think your critique would be better applied to the political and media classes who have for the most part, gone along with the doctrine of humanitarian intervention for two decades now, and are now taking turns to stick the knife in, on, it seems, the basis of technical failures than principled ones.