As many may have seen today, Harman has denied the comments she made about Iraq on the Newsnight Debate. I think like many people, in that Harman made these comments for support in the contest. Is there an element of truth in that she had doubts about going to war? And, just out of curiosity, who were the cabinet members hostile to going to war at the time (other than Cook or Short)?

Is it hypocritical to support one military action and not the other? I'm actually not sure. I'm not old enough to remember UK going into Kosovo, but I think I would have been for military intervention in the Balkans. There are some who are always against these interventions, people like Tony Benn etc. There are also conservitives like Malcolm Rifkind who was against intervention in Kosovo and Iraq. There are others who shared the views of Robin Cook, for the first war, not the other. Another Hitchenesque school of thought is always confusing, defining missiling Sudan as a war crime, but, defending the intervention of Iraq. I was against intervention in Iraq from the start. Does it make me hypocritical? I think on the basis that Milosovic was threatning other countries and ethnic blocs. But I didn't believe Iraq was threatning other countries, the failiure to get a second UN resoloution, the faulty intelligance etc. were the reasons for my opposition. Hussein was obviously lots of things which I won't choose to say on a Sunday morning. If the 'Blairesque' school of thought is to be believed, then we would also have to intervene in Belarus, Burma, Zimbabwe, China, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and many other countries. And I'm sure, that many bloggers would like to see intervention in some of these countries, but not others.

I have just seen this video on youtube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heWJuAPO9zw

I have long pondered as to what the future of the left is in the labour party. When i have asked other people as to who in Labour is left-wing anymore, they point to Campaign Group members like Dennis Skinner. Although he is a great parlimentarian, I hate all his talk of a class war, he is a Trotskyite in disguise. The heart and soul of democratic socialism died on two seperate days, May 12th 1994 and August 6th 2005, the days of John Smith and Robin Cooks deaths. After many election losses Labour needed to modernise, but Tony Blair treated Smith's death like an election loss, moving one step too far to the right. the ignorance of the moderate left wingers astounds me. I heard on a seperate thread someone saying Roy Hattersley was part of the Ultra-Left like Benn and Foot; well it was people like Hattersley who saved the party, infact he had the future of Labour in his hands. Had Hattersley defected to the SDP, other soft-left members like Smith and Dewar would have defected, Benn would have become Deputy Leader,m more would have defected and the Alliance would have become the dominant party of the left. But there is no room for people like Hattersley anymore, for Labour is senn as divided into New Labour, a coalition of Blairites and Brownites and the hard-left of people in the Campaign group. Thus Hattersley is put into the latter category for there is no room for the moderate-left winger. And so I ask can we regain this party, to make it one of moderate or democratic socialism?