Told You So

Ten days ago it seemed so easy. "Gaddafi’s end seems to be nearing, at last" said the FT blog - and that was the general assumption, save only for one blogger (he said modestly).

"surely the decision in Libya's going to come down to 'who's got the tanks and aircraft?'. If Gaddafi's troops and mercenaries have a unified command and the hardware, won't they win even if 90% of the country's against them?"

I hope he loses. But the rest of the world didn't seem to realise that the success of the Tunisian and Egyption revolutions (such as it is - both have yet to play out) depended on the army's unwillingness to fire on civilians. That was always going to be a tricky one in a country ruled by an eccentric dictator who'd shown only a year or two back that he didn't do 'rule of law'.



UPDATE - while it's amusing to see the great and the good suddenly discovering, to their complete surprise, that Gaddafi is a bad man, what's really entertaining (especially after the leftish nagombi over the Tories and their European alliance partners) is that the Labour Party was allied, via the Socialist International, with the ruling parties of Egypt and Tunisia - until January 2011, when the SI suddenly discovered that the Constitutional Democratic Assembly (RCD) of Tunisia and the National Democratic Party of Egypt were unsuited to membership - a decision taken by the President (the current Greek Prime Minister, third generation of the Papandreou family to hold that office) and Secretary General in defiance of SI rules, which mandate a two-thirds vote of member parties for expulsion.

I wonder how the Labour Party feel about their fraternal comrades of the Ivorian Popular Front?

Youth supporters of Laurent Gbagbo, Cote d'Ivoire's embattled leader, rampaged through the business district of the capital Abidjan, pillaging shops owned by foreigners. Tuesday's violence followed a call on Friday by Ble Goude, the head of Gbagbo's youth wing, to resist what he called an insurgency seeking to depose Gbabgo and install rival Alassane Ouattara. Ouattara is widely regarded as the winner of a November 28 poll, according to UN-certified results and the international community.

Gbagbo's Young Patriots have long been accused of xenophobic violence, including attacks against the country's French community in 2004, on its large Burkinabe and Malian communities, as well as northern Ivorians with cultural ties to them. Anti-foreigner sentiment is at the core of the troubles that have troubled Cote d'Ivoire for years and has worsened as most nations recognise Ouattara's win. Ouattara himself was twice barred from running in previous polls because his father is from Burkina Faso.

How very different from the home life of our own dear Labour Party (apart from the vote-rigging). Imagine if Blair had barred the Blessed Michael Howard from running because of his foreign father, or Gordon's Young Patriots had blocked Ed'n'Dave (caveat - I've got a foreign father myself). Ed Miliband really should get on the phone and explain to Laurent Gbagbo that in a properly run country, it's the incomers who should be looting the shops.

UPDATE 2 - save for one other blogger - who went way beyond me and forecast two weeks ago that Gaddafi would survive. Let's hope he's wrong.