Oona King was, you may recall, the pro-war Labour MP defeated by Respect's George Galloway in an east London seat in the 2005 general election (hence the suitably Galloway-esque title for this post).
King is now the right-wing candidate against Ken Livingstone - who, whatever, his faults, has been consistently opposed to the Iraq war and occupation - for the privilege of being Labour's candidate in the 2012 Mayor of London election.
The ill-tempered tweet - by Kevin McKeever, a key member of King's campaign team - has echoes of David Miliband's exasperated request, during the general election campaign, for people to stop complaining about Iraq. The Blairites (including Blair himself) certainly aren't showing any signs of remorse.
McKeever's appallingly contemptuous outburst has drawn a suitable riposte from Michael Rosen in the Soc Unity comments thread. It deserves to be shared. Rosen writes:
'He seems to think that there’s something wrong with a) toddlers b) scabs and c) toddlers picking scabs. As it happens, I can’t think there’s anything wrong with any of those. So fuck off, sunshine. As it also happens there are hundreds of thousands of bereaved people wondering how and why it all happened. So fuck off again.'
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I re-tweeted McKeever's contemptible comment and this was his reply to me:
ReplyDelete"quotation taken entirely out of context in a conversation about the Iraq conflict. Let's debate, but let's not misrepresent."
What was there to misrepresent? It's bleeding obvious he thinks the left should shut-up about Iraq.