Blair-me-DON'T

Blair-me-DON'T

I cannot vote for Labour on Thursday. It's a question of trust.

1. Blair went to war on the basis of these WMDs that Iraq absolutely, positively possessed, cunningly hidden in crates marked "Tractor Parts: For export only" in a car park in Baghdad.

2. This war might have been legal. Or not. In the end, and after a series of Campbell-administered wedgies Goldsmith eventually got himself on message. WAR! It's legal! Honest!

3. There is no trace of those darned WMDs after the tractor parts turned out to be ...err... tractor parts. The legal advice (hurredly written on the back of a House of Commons bar beermat) is found to be a bit shaky after the original draft is found stuffed down the back of a radiator.

4. "Ah," said Tony with not a trace of smugness on his voice, "But the world's a safer place now we've forced regime change on Iraq. Aren't I brilliant?"

5. Goldsmith's advice: "A war based on regime change would be illegal. I wouldn't mention this in public if I were you."

6. Media: "Oh, yes, you've got a point there..."

So, if you've followed this through, the Iraq war has achieved something illegal (though undeniably desirable) through actions which, too, may have been illegal, replacing one homocidal maniac with a whole country of gun-wielding lunatics. And he wants me to vote for him.

No thanks, Tony. Two wrongs, as they say, don't make a right, and I'm sure that the 24,000 dead civilians who have lost their lives in the name of this "liberation" will agree. War is not a game, and I cannot trust a man whose self confessed lack of judgement on the WMD issue has left thousands dead.

You, Tony Blair, can draw a line under it and move on. I, like many others, cannot. I did, however, enjoy you sweating like Richard Nixon on Question Time last week.

No vote for Labour. No vote for the Tories too. I may have to swallow my pride and go for the ginger drunk.