Labour urgently needs to turn its fire on the Tories, not foment civil war

Politics isn’t a joke, a theatrical show of ego and image. Or at least it shouldn’t be. It’s about the livelihoods, hopes and futures of millions of people: and, as Syria demonstrates, about whether human beings live or die. Tawdry, depressing and wholly unsurprising, then, that the Tories have delighted in using Syria’s agony to exploit Labour’s entrenched divisions. But the Tories have a knack of deriving partisan advantage from crisis, and there’s little point complaining about it. Labour – and I mean all sides of Labour – needs to get its act together, expose the disastrous consequences of Tory policies, and offer a coherent alternative that can actually inspire the majority of people.