Ringverse looks at the speech given by Jack Straw last week at the Labour Party conference…

The Man of Straw’s performance was breathtaking, even by his own standards.

He opened by crowing about getting Robin Cook to Blackburn to reassure the elders that it was Ok to deliver the muslim vote, and reassured everybody that Robin’s Ethical foreign policy was at the root of our adventures abroad today.

Then the stock in trade conference cliche, it’s all the Tories fault. If only we had a labour government, then all those Rwandans and Bosnians would have been saved, and Srebrenica would never have happened.

But fear not, because the New Labour came along in 1997, with a manifesto to put Britain at the heart of international affairs. Tony lead us to victory, and the opressed to freedom in Kosovo and Sierra Leone, those beacons of peace and prosperity. We even set up the ICC, which can try any war criminal, unless they are American.

Then, out of the fluffy blue clouds of the international idyll we created, came 911. World War II? It was as nothing as compared to 911. WWII was for girls. And because we didn’t have a war to show we were fighting back, we started a couple. And god, hasn’t history proved us right!

I mean, we did argue tirelessly for an alternative at the UN. Tony and Dubya did everything to avoid war, but when the rest of the UN wanted to avoid war too, we couldn’t let evil flourish while we stood by and did nothing, like those goddam cheese eating surrender monkeys.

– Pause to kick the shit out of an old man who isn’t quite with the programme –

Ok, there might be a few problems in Iraq, and and you’d better be prepared for more, because things are going so well that the levels of violence and chaos can only increase as the Iraqis and Afghans embrace their new found freedom in their democratic utopia, but they have ink on their thumbs, so all is well.

You can’t make a democratic omlette without breaking a few collateral eggs you see, and well, it’s like WWII all over again.

Just like 911 was as significant as 6 years of all out global slaughter, post war Iraq is just like postwar Germany. Bet you didn’t know about the bloody insurgency that bought terror to germany after the war. And nobody told you about the 3 feuding Germanic tribes post WWII either? It might not have been in your school books, but in the New Labour history of the world, it’s really prominent in chapter 13…

And never mind that it too after 6 years of war it took the Germans 4 years to elect a government. In Iraq it only took us 3 months to do so much damage that it still took them 2 years to get to that point. And we created a bloody insurgancy that stuffs Iraq for the forseeable. So that proves, Tony is better at war than Winston was!

But these world events, you can stand aside and watch, or you can shape them, take advantage of them. Just think, if it wasn’t for 911, and the heaven sent 7/7 bombings, we wouldn’t stand a chance of passing all this terror legislation. Detention without trial, deportations to be tortured, glorification. If New Labour hadn’t stood up,when it counted to take blatant advantage, then where would we be?

People used to say that the labour movement stood for civil liberties and human rights, indeed concern for these values underpins our every deportation and rendition.

But the rules of the game have changed.

Only Tony has got the vision, the clarity and the leadership to take on the UN, and tutor them in the ways of righteousness. In our new world, Human Rights lite is the 3rd way. And just as soon as the world gets behind our vision of responsibility to protect [better check out what Dubya thinks of that one], then genocide and dictstorship will become a thing of the past, except for where we think we have a vested interest… We have to respect our friends in Uzbekistan.

And so on and so on…

I only made it into 10 minutes into the clip, there was much more, notably on Turkey whose Human Rights record appears to cause Jack no concern. But a man can only take so much…

I’ll admit, I might have stretched a few points in my previous take on Jack’s words. But his drivel and doublespeak surpasses even the Blair’s and Charles Clarke’s nonsense over the last few days.

The only conference question left, is if John Reid can surpass his collegues when he closes on Thursday…?

The full majestic travesty can be seen and heard here (Real Player)