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The Daily Mail:

…Asking about Cherie, Miss Oruche said: ‘Are you close?’ To which Lauren replied: ‘We were. Then I made a political decision and spoke out against the war - and she’s protective.

‘Had I not been related to them it’s what I would have written and I pulled absolutely no punches and the rest is history. I’ve been a Labour supporter all my life and when Tony Blair took over the party that I love I campaigned to help the Labour Party believing he was going to be the messiah of the party.

‘Like any other member I got more and more disillusioned and then hurt and then shocked, not on a personal level, hurt on a totally political level and then angry and disgusted and then f**k off’.

Getting more like Jeremy Paxman with every breath, Miss Oruche persevered: ‘Do you feel you should have defended it (the decision to go to war in Iraq)?’

Lauren replied hinting there had been some pressure in the Blair family not to criticise Tony’s decision publicly.

She said: ‘No, it’s as if you shouldn’t say it. “How can you have embarrassed the Prime Minister?” And I would say “hey I haven’t killed 650,000 Iraqi’s” He’s embarrassed by me? I’m embarrassed.’…

And I am embarrassed to admit we actually saw this exchange as broadcast. That said, however, one immediately grasped the depth of Ms. Booth’s personal anguish, for not only must it be a daily hit to your self-esteem to know you are where you are in life mostly because of familial ties to those whose views you claim to despise, but she had here also to find a way to articulate her rationale for justifying Iraqis’ having had no choice but to have remained under the tender care of the Hussein clan into the foreseeable future. Indeed, the inner turmoil she faces in trying to reconcile that latter view with the fact that she almost certainly does not also possess the same sort of moral disgust about the part her beloved party played in having helped create similar widespread death and disorder in the name of democracy elsewhere must be considerable.

…Miss Booth, who is being paid £25,000 for her appearance by ITV producers, presumably only because of the kind of publicity her comments might generate…

In addition, as for ITV’s choosing to pay her that money, that too we can understand . . . knowing as we do of ITV’s warm concern about the fate of the Iraqi people.

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UPDATE: The point to this post is Ms Booth cavalierly displays above what has become the left’s conveniently illogical position on Iraq. In fact, one may more readily understand where paleo-conservatives are coming from in opposing democracy in Iraq if at one time they had similarly opposed majority rule in South Africa. For at least they are being consistent in possessing an ultimately pessimistic view of humanity in not believing either people capable of reasonable self-government.

But what is liberals’ excuse? After all, for decades they had raved about how nothing less than true democracy was urgently required in Zimbabwe (then known as Rhodesia) and South Africa. The cost was often cited as being irrelevant; freedom was, we were bravely told, all that mattered. (Yes, how quick we forget that there were voices in the Labour party in 1965 who called for British troops to invade Rhodesia and overthrow the Smith regime, and I seem to recall that there were also some Americans who snidely wondered aloud from time to time in the 1980s why the U.S. didn’t invade South Africa.)

But Afghanistan and Iraq today? Oh, no, for them the old rules of “democracy now at any cost” somehow have vanished or just don’t apply. According to today’s left, those peoples don’t seem to deserve what Zimbabweans and South Africans once most certainly did.

Sorry, but it just doesn’t work that way. If democracy — with all its failings and (possibly horrific at times) violence — is good enough for Zimbabwe and South Africa, well then it’s also good enough for Afghanistan and Iraq . . . even if the likes of Ms Booth are evidently determined not to want to see it quite that way.

The U.K. Press Association:

A senior member of a radical Islamic group that Tony Blair tried to ban works for the Home Office, it has been reported.

The Hizb-ut-Tahrir activist is said to be an official at the Immigration and Nationality Directorate in Croydon, south London - one of the department’s most sensitive branches…

Let’s see if we understand this: the new Iraqi government is supposed to aim to sweep itself clean of militia infiltrators, but the Home Office here can’t even keep someone like that out of a “sensitive branch”?

Agence France-Presse:

The White House rushed to deny claims of a diplomatic rift with its closest European ally Britain, after Prime Minister Tony Blair mooted a “partnership” with US foes Iran and Syria.

As the impact of a major foreign policy address by the British leader started to sink in, the White House bristled at suggestions Blair had struck out from Washington, issuing a fact sheet to debunk the claim…

I know it’s AFP; one must take everything they write with a grain of salt. For remember, when AFP writes “closest European ally Britain” they are doing so with relish: Washington and London’s closeness is always somehow evidence of an Anglo-Saxon conspiracy, yet France has since 1944 eschewed similarly close relations with Washington.

Still, the above is representative of the endless media drumbeat (including in Britain) on Blair and the Republican administration in Washington that we have been hearing since right after 9/11. But, interestingly, I don’t recall similar when Blair was working with its predecessor Democratic administration in ending the war in Kosovo . . . or when his Conservative predecessor came together with that same Democratic president to help end the war in Bosnia.  (The actions of France during the latter conflict also having been viewed by many as sometimes highly ”questionable“.)   

So, what the heck does our august media want? If Blair and [Republican] Washington speak with the same voice, he’s a “poodle”?  But if it can be interpreted that he might be saying something ever so slightly “different”, it’s a “diplomatic rift”?

To be honest, in its coverage of things British, Agence France-Presse really ought to stick to what it is perhaps “best” capable of doing (besides puffing for jihadists) . . .

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The Telegraph:

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has accused the BBC of bias against Christianity and says the broadcaster fears a terrorist backlash if it is critical of Islam…

…”They can do to us what they dare not do to the Muslims,” he said. “We are fair game because they can get away with it. We don’t go down there and say, ‘We are going to bomb your place.’ That is not in our nature.”…

Rarely before have so many actually obvious opinions been offered in such quick succession by a single high ranking Church of England archbishop.

Interestingly, though, despite all we have read of him elsewhere in recent days, there has apparently not been a major BBC story on the Archbishop since September.  And those were of a rather typical, tame sort of the type one would expect from the BBC on a Christian clergyman’s views.  The most recent four have been, in reverse order: “Archbishop’s worry over job cuts“, ”Archbishop calls for Mideast deal“, “Archbishop’s peace vigil in tent” and “Call for love to fight terrorism“.  The Telegraph also noted:

…A BBC spokesman declined to comment but referred to a newspaper article by Mark Thompson, the director general, which denied that the BBC was systematically biased against Christianity and in favour of Islam, saying that it did not square with the facts….

So keep a close eye out now for BBC pieces on the Archbishop’s views that are suddenly not nearly so “tame” as those.  Somehow, one suspects there isn’t likely to be much “love” displayed.

The Archbishop’s point is the BBC feels far freer to offer critiques and criticisms of Christianity than they do for Islam.  Fair comment on his part?  Well, in the article to which the BBC spokesman referred, Mr Thompson doesn’t think such criticisms of the Beeb are:

…When the controversy blew up over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, we decided that, without anything like full publication, we had to show enough of the cartoons for our audiences to be able to understand the story.

As a result we showed rather more than any British newspaper did. How did the Press react to this decision? It accused the BBC of ‘irresponsibility’…

Interesting he chose to use the “cartoon controversy” as an example, for if one blinked one missed the “rather more” of the cartoons the BBC had shown. Ah, but they displayed more than the press?  Interesting “wriggle”, but that doesn’t get ’round the fact that “the press” is a separate issue; it is not supported by a licence tax we all must pay.

However, what we do know is British papers avoided printing them apparently due to concerns primarily for staff safety, not out of some profound, reverential respect for Islam.  (Oh, please, since when has the British press ever really “respected” anything?)  Far more influential than any single newspaper — even the Guardian – what was the BBC’s reason for not showing them? Mr Thompson doesn’t say in that article, but his gliding over the issue in that manner appears to support the Archbishop’s very argument: that there is either an exaggerated (almost posturing) BBC corporate respect for Islam of a sort the BBC does NOT show for Christianity, or there was fear for their staff’s safety.

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Don’t think the Church of England is getting all “uppity” just over the BBC. The Daily Mail also tells us:

Prince Charles’ hopes of a multi-faith coronation suffered a blow when the Church of England asserted the historic importance of a solely Christian service when he becomes King…

The Prince of Wales probably doesn’t realize it, but if the Church continues to take this position it will probably have done him a favor in the longer run. A greatly controversial figure to begin with due to his “stormy” (first) marriage which ended in divorce, the Prince has chosen here to stir up still further controversy over the “single faith”, Church of England basis of the British monarchy. Yet do away suddenly with the 500 year basis for what will be his throne, and what else might then also be up for “review”? Perhaps many more might well begin to ask: “Why do we need a monarch at all?”

Just in case we needed any justification for 100 years of powered flight, rockets, jets, space travel, Moon landings, satellites that leave the solar system, space shuttles, an international space station, and billions of dollars of treasure expended . . .

. . . let it be understood: we may now see the Colonel’s image from space.