Amid all the breathless excitement over the resignation of Eric Joyce, who was, after all, only a parliamentary private secretary (the lowest rank of power in government), the media seem to have forgotten who this person is.
This is the Eric Joyce who was a fanatical hawk over the misguided invasion of Iraq in 2003. This is the Eric Joyce on whom my colleague Mehdi and I, when we worked at LWT’s Dimbleby interview programme, used to fall back as a supporter of that military folly when we could not get a senior minister to come out and play.
Now, he says: “I do not think the public will accept for much longer that our losses can be justified by simply referring to the risk of greater terrorism on our streets.”
Westminster is in a stir because this is a further “blow to Gordon Brown”. And seen out of context, of course, the former soldier’s analysis is correct. (Then again, wasn’t that the justification for Iraq, too — a war that actually brought Islamist terror to Britain’s streets for the first time?) But I can’t help suspecting that there is some sort of personailty clash or other personal issue at work here: otherwise surely Joyce would have quit this war-supporting government some years ago.
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