Labour spin doctors sick over health

In a widely predicted but still politically humiliating vote, the Labour party leadership was defeated on the cornerstone issue of Foundation hospitals.

“These proposals are just one step away from full-blown privatisation,” the GMB union delegate Sharon Holder told the conference to ringing applause, and the issue proved a lightning conductor for a host of other grievances with the leadership.

Health secretary Dr John Reid held his head in his hands – watched on by a pained Blair – as a delegate wielding a walking stick heckled during part of the debate.

Then, as if things could not get any worse they did…RMT union delegate, Mick Hogg, articulated the feelings of many when he complained that the war in Iraq was adding the equivalent of an extra 2p to every Briton’s income tax. The money, he said, could have been better spent.

“We’re on a path that could lead to never-ending war,” Hogg warned, “lets get off it now.”

But he was not given the chance to express his feelings in a ballot.

Cynical ploy

While the Labour leadership claimed to have gone to war for democracy in Baghdad, there were to be no votes in Bournemouth.

“We’re on a path that could lead to never-ending war” Mick Hogg, RMT delegate

“I think it’s ludicrous,” the MP Jeremy Corbyn told Al Jazeera.net. “There is a democratic deficit in Iraq – and in the Labour party too. I can only imagine that the leadership were so frightened of the party’s view that they had to prevent them having a vote.”

“It may have seemed like a good fix to the party organisers,” he continued, “but people outside of Bournemouth, will just see it as a cynical ploy.”

On the conference floor, Corbyn’s sentiments were widely shared. The MP Alice Mahon said the decision to prevent a vote was “a disgrace”. The party’s leadership, she said, “are living in a bubble. Iraq comes up on every doorstep whenever we campaign.”

In a warning shot to the prime minister, she cried, “The people are ahead of you!”

Afghanistan

But Tony Blair will not have heard. For the day after promising delegates he would listen more to their concerns, he had left the podium with the Afghan president Hamid Karzai, before the debate even began.

Some delegates criticised the choice of Mr Karzai to warm up delegates for the Iraq debate.

Karzai is no Nelson Mandela, observed Jeremy Corbyn, MP

“Hamid Karzai is not a Nelson Mandela figure,” Jeremy Corbyn said, “and there’s a great deal of exaggeration about the ‘success’ of the war in Afghanistan.”

“Eight thousand civilians were killed in that conflict, the country is riddled with depleted uranium, there’s a civil war in the south of the country, the north is run by warlords and Karzai’s writ does not run much beyond Kabul.”

Nonetheless, conference delegates gave the Afghan leader a warm welcome with standing ovations before and after his speech.

“We supported the war in Iraq because we wanted them to have the same freedom we now enjoy,” he told the delegates.

“We are liberated and have political freedom and freedom of the press,” he said. “But wherever terrorists are defeated, they still lurk about, challenging our lives and even burning down schools for little girls. Imagine!”

“I got to shake Tony Blair’s hand there and I just felt stunned afterwards, as though I now had blood on my own hands” Fringe meeting attendee