Steel trap

Riffing on the theme of Labour leadership candidates discovering their opposition to the Iraq war rather late in the day, so to speak, Mark Steel proposes holding protest marches against wars that have already taken place. It would make those protesting feel better after the march to learn that the war they opposed was in fact over. Steel's a funny man. He thinks, for example, that the only reason people thought Saddam had WMD was because the government to which David Miliband belonged said he did. But his suggestion may not be such a bad one in any case. It would enable the section of the left with which Steel is best acquainted to return, again and again, to the question why its members always - over the Falklands, the first Gulf War, Kosovo, Afghanistan post-9/11, Iraq - seem to favour that political option which will leave some rank dictatorship in place at home and/or in occupation of someone else's country, with murder or other mischief on its mind.