Tim Blair

YEAR OF COMPLAINT

In advance of Tony Blair’s Labour conference speech, David Aaronovitch writes the speech Blair should deliver:

Last year I told you that we were at our best when we were boldest. I could have added that we are at our worst when whingeing. But whingeing is all most of you have done since then. It has been a year of complaint.

A lot of that has been about Iraq. OK, some of you are pacifists, like Mahatma Gandhi, and you don't like war on principle. Fair enough, I suppose, until they turn up to cart you off to the dusty field. But many of you others don't seem to care how many Iraqis old Saddam was killing, just so long as we didn't kill any.

It doesn't appear to bother you at all that - according to all polls - most Iraqis still think the invasion was a good thing. You know better than they do. You are so certain that it would have been preferable to have left Uday and Qusay in their palaces, and the political prisoners in their torture chambers, yet you call yourselves internationalists!

Read on for the killer conclusion. Oh, and if you think you can do better, the BBC invites you to try your hand as a Blair speechster.