Lib-Dem Iraq whataboutery is the pinnacle of hypocrisy

A lot of people seem to have incredibly short political memories so it's important to remind anyone about the Lib-Dems disgusting and deeply illiberal track record in government between 2010 and 2015 and all of the vile policies they supported.

Policies like austerity fanaticism, tripled tuition fees, turning Libya into a lawless terrorism breeding ground, Theresa May's racist "Hostile Environment", inflicting the worst period of collapsing wages since records began, disability persecution, devastating public service cuts, Secret Courts, police cuts, the gagging law, the Royal Mail privatisation scam, increased snooping powers, welfare vandalism, infrastructure-underinvestment, the sanctions regime, the 2012 NHS-privatisation-by-stealth act, workfare, prison and probation privatisation, unlawful Tribunal Fees, overseeing the lowest peace time house building rate since the 1920s, Bedroom Tax, and all the time lavishing massive tax cuts and handouts on corporations and the mega-rich.

It's also worth reminding people that it was this vile combination of hard-right Liberal Democrat-endorsed policies that trashed our living standards and caused the furious public backlash that manifested in the 2016 Brexit vote.

It's absolutely stomach-turning to see smug unapologetic Lib-Dems now appealing to the politically gullible by posing as noble white knights to save us from Brexit without even apologising for the crucial role they played in creating Brexit in the first place.

But whenever you point stuff like this out, the Lib-Dem tribalists have one stock response, and it's every bit as cynical and dishonest as positioning themselves as the "stop Brexit party" after they wilfully helped the Tories lay the groundwork for Brexit to happen in the first place.
 

An example of Lib-Dem "Iraq whataboutry" from a thread
about the 130,000 people pushed into early graves
by Tory/Lib-Dem austerity fanaticism.

  This stock response is to go "but what about Iraq?"

They know that this is unbelievable disingenuous because Labour members have showed contrition over Iraq by electing one of the few Labour MPs who vehemently opposed the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Alongside the fact that Jeremy Corbyn was the only anti-austerity candidate in the 2015 leadership election, the fact he was a principled opponent of possibly the biggest error of judgement in Labour's entire history was a major factor in him becoming party leader.Huge numbers of people would never have been drawn back towards the Labour Party without contrition over the Iraq catastrophe, and Corbyn's move away from pathetically imitating economically illiterate Tory austerity fanaticism to actually oppose it.

The Lib-Dems on the other hand have shown absolutely no contrition whatever over their role in trashing our living standards.

In fact they're so lacking in remorse that they sent a massive "fuck you, we're not even remotely sorry" to the entire nation by picking Vince Cable as their leader.

Vince Cable willingly served as one of George Osborne's austerity hatchet men at the Treasury for the full five years, and he also personally orchestrated a massive fraud against the British people by flogging off the Royal Mail portfolio to city speculators at a tiny fraction of its true value, at a cost of literally hundreds of millions of pounds.

And then just look at their new leadership contenders Jo Swinson and Ed Davey.

Their despicable voting records between 2010 and 2015 show that they were actually more loyal to the pro-austerity, pro-privatisation, anti-worker, welfare-vandalising Tory whip than the Tory leadership contenders Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove!

These weren't just "junior partners" in the austerity coalition. They were such enthusiastic participants that they voted through even more Tory malice than two of the highest profile Tory ministers in the austerity government!

They're still not even remotely sorry, and they're still saying "fuck you" to the British public by fielding these despicable austerity-enablers.

Yet with their other face they're harking back to the disastrous Blairite invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2013 despite knowing that the Bairites lost control of the Labour Party years ago, and it's now led by a guy who stood alongside their former leader Charles Kennedy when he took his brave and principled stance against war-mongering in Iraq.

But bringing up something that Labour have shown remorse over as blatant whataboutery to distract from something that demonstrably causes no pangs of conscience whatever to the Lib-Dems isn't even the worst of it.

The worst of it is that in 2011 the Lib-Dems, (including their current leader Vince Cable, and their two new leadership contenders Swinson and Davey) voted in favour of doing exactly the same thing to Libya as Blair did in Iraq.

The Lib-Dems know that they shat all over Charles Kennedy's legacy by voting to turn Libya into a vast lawless terrorism breeding ground just like the Blairites voted to do to Iraq eight years previously.

They know exactly what they did, and that the blowback included the appalling Manchester Arena bombing carried out by a terrorist from the Libyan chaos they created, but they're absolutely 100% unrepentant because they insist on picking the very people that did this as their current leader, and as his successor too.So these despicable hypocrites will use the catastrophe in Iraq to crudely deflect attention away from their complicity in the ruinous austerity coalition that laid the groundwork for Brexit, but to do this they have to completely ignore the fact that they voted in favour of their own chaos-causing, terrorism-fuelling, refugee-creating disaster in Libya.

They're actually using their historic opposition to the Iraq catastrophe under Charles Kennedy's leadership to deliberately distract attention away from the fact that they bulldozed his centre-left anti-war legacy into a pit and burnt it to ashes by propping up a disgustingly illiberal hard-right Tory government, and voting in favour of their war-mongering exploits in Libya.

Yes, the ongoing chaos and suffering in Iraq is an indelible stain on the history of the Labour Party, but you couldn't think of more hypocritical and unprincipled people to point this out than those who outright refused to learn the lessons from that imperialist war-mongering catastrophe, shat all over their principled former leaders' legacy, and voted to do exactly the same thing again to Libya in 2011.

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