Blair announces he's to quit...

... but in the grand scheme of things, what changes? There are three very interesting articles written about Blair's Premiership (see here). The first makes some very good points, but the second is an absolute disgrace, claiming Blair's response to 9/11 and his unswerving support of the US elevates him to the "premier league" of Prime Ministers. Shame on you, Andrew Roberts.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The war in Iraq has nothing positive to say about it. Anyone trying the moral argument should ask why atrocities elsewhere in the world - particularly Zimbabwe - are glossed over with outrage, but no discernible action. The terrorism argument doesn't work either - Iraq's links with Al Quaedia were non-existent until the fall of Saddam, but now our "stick in a hornet's nest" approach to the Middle East has made us less secure than ever. Iraq has all the hallmarks of big business wanting to grab a slice of oil resources while satiating an American President's personal desire for revenge.

If the only victims of this mad war had been the politicians and their countries' reputations then nothing would really matter, but the hundreds of soldiers and thousands upon thousands of civilians who have paid their lives for this folly in blood is something the likes of Blair, Bush and company should never be allowed to forget. And neither should we, so the next time some crackpot world leader decides to wade in under flimsy pretexts he or she is forced to seriously rethink their actions and consider the wider consequences first.

Sadly, none of the three reports spend any significant time examining Labour's woeful environmental record. At a time when the world is beginning to feel the sharp point of climate change decades before it thought it would, real leaders are those who will take the tough - but entirely necessary - steps to tackle this threat. Roberts' assessment that Blair taking his country into a useless war somehow makes him a great leader would be laughable if it wasn't so contemptible...