So its finally come to this: the Conservatives taking campaign lessons from Respect. In the war of the posters, the Tories' If he's prepared to lie to take us to war... comes in about a year after Respect's Bliar. There is something to be said for this tactic: it recognises that the symbolic power of the Prime Minister is considerable, and that our perceptions of the government often pass through a vague sense of trust, embodied in how we view him. But it takes us little further in the debate on the Iraq war - which I suspect is just fine for the Tories, who supported it, but should give Respect pause for thought. Would Gordon Brown as leader, or Michael Howard, have acted any differently? Without developing a significantly different conception of 'Britain's interests', and turning their back on the 'special relationship' - which displaces post-colonial anxiety onto a continued myth of our influence on Washington - surely the answer would be no. OR
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