TUC takes leave of the planet

The TUC today carried a motion on the Middle East, which included this paragraph:

Congress believes the attack against Libya has been misjudged and, while holding no brief for the Gadaffi regime, believes military action should be halted immediately and that international efforts should be focused on securing a peaceful political settlement to the conflict.

A brilliant illustration of Conquest’s Second Law, which states that every organisation appears to be run by agents of its opponents. That is quite a misjudged paragraph: out of date, misspelt* and wrong. And to vote for it at the very time that the intervention has been proved – whatever the difficulties – to have been well-judged.

Then the motion goes on to call for a boycott of Israel.

The only bit that is sensible is paradoxically the part that the Start the War Again Campaign is most excited about, namely where it “urges the rapid withdrawal of British forces from Afghanistan”. That is the editorial line of The Independent on Sunday, although not for the ridiculous self-styled-leftist reasons given in the TUC motion.

And trade unionists wonder why that great movement of theirs is sunk into irrelevance.

Photograph of Libyan celebrating liberation: REUTERS/Bob Strong

*Gaddafi. Gabriel Milland gave me a useful mnemonic: he was a Double Dealing F—er.

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• http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/PANMTJ57XEH7OY76UQABUYN2Z4 Neil

  Your intellectual insights never cease to amaze me. Would you define Alan Greenspan as some senile Trot and I assume you know what he wrote about the Iraq – oil connection? As for lithium, it powers your mobile, laptop and starts your cars. Demand is skyrocketing… When you come up with a better more credible theory for the cause of recent wars, I’ll be glad to know.

• tomkyle

  No, not a fan of arch liars, including Johann Hari. Stunning  that the Indy is so desperate that  they feel the need to cling on to him. I find his busy, hissy and hysterical writing annoying and formulaic in the way he always has the person beside him- in the thick of the fray- with the bon mot to fit his political points. Now, why would that be.. Why would a serious newspaper- even if it is just one that purports to abhor hacking and deceit and lack of transparency- have such a loose cannon in their arsenal? No pun intended. It is craven and will alienate far more than attract, I would think. Either way the calculation stinks, and surely it indicates much about Andreas Whittam Smith’s position as an honest broker or independent head of the inquiry. 

• tomkyle

  Would that be hung like a picture on the wall or hanged like Saddam Hussein or a border reiver? ;*)

• TarquinBroxted

  When John is speaking “ex cathedra” he is infallible. Sancto subbito.

• TarquinBroxted

  Yes we need a nation like the U.K (the smallest & poorest province of the American Imperium) to castigate Iran. After all we have no extrajudicial killing here, no database with 2 million folks DNA samples for no reason, no “rioting” and burning of police stations.

• aboukir

  Whether the UK should comment on the internal affairs of other countries is one thing  (and a thing Indie readers have been known to do on occasion), But the point I was making, of course, was the hypocrisy of calling for a boycott of Israel but not Iran.  And it it is that very hypocrisy that destroys the moral validity of boycotts …

• mightymark

  Sad Alan  that you can’t see th difference between the behavioural sins of Hari and what are Mr Rentoul’s no doubt genuinely held opinions which may be right or wrong but at least he outs them across with what seems to me sincerity.

• Mark Brentano

  *Gaddafi. It’s a transliteration from Arabic, you tool. There are about nine spellings for the late Qaddafi doing the rounds. What, on the other hand, is this sentence supposed to mean?

  ‘And to vote for it at the very time that the intervention has been
  proved – whatever the difficulties – to have been well-judged.’

  Journalism; not as difficult as it looks.