Principled Opposition from Eds Miliballs

There are few things more repellent than the sanctimony of politicians; but the nuanced regret of politicians is surely part of that august company. In the renowned moral spirit of those repentant Nazis who felt the Holocaust was wrong because it gave propaganda points to the Jews, two of the contenders for the Labour leadership have suddenly discovered the political inadvisability of the Iraq war. Brown's Balls, a former fan of the war, now refers to it as "a mistake" and notes that "we as a country paid a heavy price, and ... many people paid with their lives"; although it is not clear what, other than the regrettable disinclination of Daveybloke's Cuddlies to form a NuLabCon coalition, has caused this abrupt change of opinion.

The Lower Miliband observes that the war was prosecuted on a false basis, which caused "a big loss of trust" in the government; this of course is about the most regrettable outcome a war could possibly have. Then again, the Lower Miliband does not believe that Britain went to war for the wrong reasons just because Britain's reasons for going to war happened to be false. The Lower Miliband believes that "liberal interventionism" - in Oldspeak, robbing and killing brown people in the name of human rights - does have its place; and, like the Venerable Tony, he also believes that "history", rather than anyone Muslim or otherwise biased, "will judge the outcomes for Iraq", and that therefore "we do need to draw a line under it" so that history can get on with its job. The Lower Miliband is also in favour of "fantastic women ministers", and claims that he considered resigning over the metastasis of Heathrow Airport, though he decided in the end that "it was better to fight on the climate change issue from inside the cabinet", much as the Venerable Tony once decided that it was better to fight the Conservatives by becoming them.