LONDON: Tony Blair’s domestic problems over his foreign policy will intensify this month when a new political party launched by the families of British soldiers killed in Iraq lays out its plans to contest every by-election and field up to 70 candidates at the next general election.
Reg Keys, who stood against Mr Blair in last year, unveiled details of the launch of his party, Spectre, in the Guardian on Saturday. His son, Thomas, was killed with five other Royal Military policemen in Iraq in 2003. “We all feel we’ve been lied to, ignored and, frankly, insulted. But now it’s different. Now we’re going to make ministers pay with their seats,” Mr Keys said. He said the bereaved relatives behind the new party would meet to establish its strategy over the next two weeks.
The move came as Mr Blair unexpectedly postponed his holiday on Saturday to thrash out terms of a UN resolution on the Israel-Lebanon war, which he believes is in sight. But the political problems he faces over alliance with the US, encompassing the war against Iraq and his refusal to criticise Israeli bombing as “disproportionate”, continued to mount.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service
