Who cares how war criminals vote?

Kit Knightly

Alastair Campbell has been kicked out of the Labour Party.

Apparently, he voted for the Liberal Democrats in the recent European Parliamentary elections, and then announced he had done so on Sky News. Thus putting him in breach of paragraph 2 of Labour’s Membership Rules, which states:

A member of the Party who joins and/ or supports a political organisation other than an official Labour group or other unit of the Party, or supports any candidate who stands against an official Labour candidate, or publicly declares their intent to stand against a Labour candidate, shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a Party member, subject to the provisions of Chapter 6.I.2 below of the disciplinary rules.”

It’s a fairly open and shut case, to be honest.

And so ends the Labour career of Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s PR man, one of the key architects of the “dodgy dossier”, a man complicit in every death that resulted from the US/UK illegal invasion of Iraq.

The reaction of anyone, with even the most rudimentary grasp of ethics, should be “good riddance”.

Clearly therefore, the vast majority of the pundits, “journalists” and talking heads do not have a rudimentary grasp of ethics.

Yes, Campbell was actually defended. By journalists. And celebrities. And members of parliament.

Campbell is a “strong voice for Labour values” according to some, his expulsion is “Stalinist” according to others.

It’s time for a very serious reality check: Alastair Campbell should not be in the Labour Party.

He shouldn’t be tweeting his thoughts or giving interviews or writing columns. He shouldn’t have any power or influence or authority. He shouldn’t even be breathing free air.

He should be in the dock at the Hague, briefly. And then – hopefully – spending the rest of his time in eternity’s waiting room, carving tally marks on a cell wall.

Who cares who he voted for? He’s a fucking monster.

This is not “silly” or “old fashioned” or “predictable”. It’s just true.

As a society it’s important we try and recognise principles and morality. Virtue matters. Truth matters. There ARE absolutes. Most of the Labour MPs defending Campbell voted FOR that war. They all voted against investigations into it.

They are complicit in crimes against humanity. That is a statement of fact. And yet their opinions are treated as if they carry weight. They are assumed to have ideals, to be sincere, when their actions demonstrate this is simply not the case.

We don’t talk about Pinochet’s economic reforms.
We don’t isolate Pol Pot’s opinion on free healthcare.
We don’t defend Mussolini’s well organised internal transport infrastructure.

It is accepted that crimes of a certain scale put a mark on you that you can’t scrub off. That doesn’t change because these criminals are all well-spoken chaps with open shirt collars, it doesn’t change because they managed to slime their way out of punishment, it doesn’t change because our national ego lifts Britain above the law, and it doesn’t change because we’re all so English and confrontation makes us uncomfortable.

These people are monsters. Who they vote for does not matter. What they say does not matter. They have no values. They have no standing. They have no place in a decent world. If it were any other crime of the same magnitude that would not need to be explained.

“Progressives” will vilify Tulsi Gabbard for even daring to speak to Narendra Modi, or visit Assad’s Syria. Corbyn has been raked over the coals for talking with the IRA. Nigel Farage is considered a “Russian stooge” for deigning to even vaguely compliment Vladimir Putin.

All those people combined don’t add up to the butcher’s bill Campbell racked up in the Middle East. Not even in the most fevered, deceitful propaganda of the Western press.

But no one is talking about Iraq. When Momentum tweeted about it, they were accused of being “shallow” and “stuck in the past”.

Maybe people are just divorced from the reality. Maybe the scale warps in their minds. Maybe it’s just too big, too dreadful to actually picture.

One. Million. Dead.

The entire population of Birmingham dropping dead tomorrow.

More than double the British losses in World War 2.

9/11 happening every single day, for a whole year.

Alastair Campbell helped make that happen. He did it dishonestly. He did it deliberately. He did it for personal and political gain.

And he has not, to this day, faced any kind of punishment. In all likelihood, he never will.

If you EVER find yourself defending him, whether opportunistically to undermine Corbyn or earnestly because you see no problem with his actions, then you are through the looking glass. Your morality is tonaly inverted.

Alastair Campbell’s voting record is an irrelevance. I don’t know who he voted for, or if he voted at all. I don’t care. It probably was the Lib Dems. It’s the mootest of moot, and the media outcry about it is beyond absurd.

Every time any person who played a part in the crimes of the Iraq war is allowed to exist in our society, without reference to the immense crime they committed, we normalise the idea that murder is OK when WE do it to THEM. That our wars are mistakes, or misjudgments or “foreign policy blunders”. They don’t really count. We don’t really mean it. We’re nice.

Blair and Campbell are given column inches. Their enablers in parliament rail against “antisemitism” and for the “people’s vote”, or talk about the evil “dictators” in Venezuela or North Korea who don’t share our “values”. Their cheerleaders in the press talk up Vladimir Putin as a “pariah” because of the totally bloodless Crimean referendum, but happily chuckle through interviews with Campbell as if he isn’t soaked to the bone in the blood of innocents.

Criminals discussing Brexit and football and Love Island, like it’s all a big joke. Campbell talks “candidly” about his “battles with depression” and we’re all supposed to go “awwww!”

All the while the man who proved their criminality rots in jail, barely able to move.

The world of the media is upside down.

It is disgusting, but wholly expected. The Establishment is rallying to defend one its own, it always does.

But most people know the truth: The only thing wrong with Alastair Campbell being kicked out of the Labour party, is that it’s fifteen years too late.