What's the Use-ton?

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The Euston Manifesto has certainly set the cat amongst the pigeons back in the mother-land. I was even tempted to write about what I objected to in the manifesto; but someone called Mike Marqusee has said almost everything I wanted to, so I'll restrict myself to two points.

1. I’d have thought that the current mess in Iraq would have provided the pro-invasion left* with sufficient self-doubt by this stage to curtail anything so grand as a manifesto. I would have been wrong of course.

2. Does any of this really matter? Well here's my prediction: if, within the next few months, you hear about this anywhere else in the NZ blogosphere the manifesto might actually have some impact. If not: oh well at least they had fun.**

* While not all of the manifestos signatories are pro war (or indeed even left) its drafters all appear to come from this camp.
** While there's quite a lot that bugs me about the manifesto it's bang on in a number of areas and, even if it fades away (pretty likely), the tensions that produced it will be with the left for a long time I think.