LET'S GET TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ

Today's Independent reports that Gordon Brown is planning a joint initiative with Barack Obama to get the troops out of Iraq in the next 16 months. Let's hope so. I would like to see it sooner - but at least if there is a timetable there is some hope of light at the end of this very dark tunnel.
One of the candidates yesterday spoke of her "heartbreak" at what the Iraq issue had done to the Labour Party. Like many others in the room, I was with her on that march with two million others in February 2003. The one which the Government tragically ignored.
Five years on, I think we would all now agree this illegal and unnecessary war has riven the Party asunder and cost us thousands of members. But let's reserve our sorrow for those whose lives continue to be blown apart on a daily basis by the needless death and suffering. And let's get the troops home ASAP.