There is much that is good in David Hare's essay Betrayed in today's Guardian. I particularly like his opening paragraphs, an argument against the cynical view of all politicians being crooks; it is something I have tried and failed for a long time to articulate. Then he turns to his present far deeper and more well-founded "turn" against the politicians of Britain, the Labour party, basically Tony Blair. "Any plain citizen - anyone, in fact, ruled rather than ruling - would have to be blind with conceit not to notice that the Blair-Brown project has motored forwards on a powerful fuel made up of two-parts admiration for the opposition mixed with three-parts contempt for their own supporters. " And finally to the Iraq war, including the lead-up and the present "post-war" spinning. (I can't type "post-war" without the quotes; people are still fighting there, people are still dying, it is not a matter of "losing the peace" but of not being able to face that this war is going on, and this is not peace, either lost or won.) " Hare says that the Labour voters have been "Betrayed", because it is now really irrelevant whether you believe in the politicians or not and because "far more troubling, at least to those of us who imagine that some sort of national conversation still goes on, is the knowledge that it is now impossible to imagine any American foreign policy, however irrational, however dangerous, however illegal, with which our present prime minister would not declare himself publicly delighted and thrilled."

Turning to the current state of play, he says "As the Americans lie back on their Roman pillows and toy insincerely with a laughable road map for the Middle East which is touted, among other things, as Blair's reward for his loyalty, and which, in a world now pathologically distrustful of American intentions, has no conceivable chance of success, the temptation is to throw our hands up and declare that there is no alternative but for the rest of us to join our short-sleeved cousins lolling in the bleachers. "

All of which I agree with. And yet, and yet, Iraq is better off now than under Saddam. I have to believe that. They are not well off, by any measure, they are not at peace, they are not "free." But if the relative measure of suffering has any meaning at all, they are better off. And also it is (mainly) America that is paying a heavy price, even though, God help them, most Americans are too stupefied by their appalling media to know it. The heavy price will come over here to Europe eventually, and things could get worse in Iraq yet. And I fear he is right about the prospects for any positive outcome in the Israeli-Paliestinian conflict. For now, I think David Hare's analysis is true as far as it goes, but it is a selective picture.