So, Gordon’s cunningly timed his announcement of troop withdrawals for the day of the shadow Foreign Secretary’s speech to the Conservative Party Conference – who’d have thought it?

But amidst all this playing politics over Iraq – a Blair legacy that neither Brown nor Cameron have any desire to inherit – attention has shifted from the more pressing concerns. British forces haven’t been in central Basra for a good month now, based instead at the airport on the outskirts, and now there’s going to be 1,000 less of them. What little impact they were still having, what little security they could still provide, is being further eroded.

Retreats are never pretty – but why are we leaving so many men and women behind? The Iraqi support workers who have been helping the British army, often not out of ideology but necessity, have once again been forgotten as attention has shifted to conference season and silly speculation about elections and referenda.

But they’re still there, and they and their families are still facing death and torture on a daily basis, with no help whatsoever from the British government.

So, remind your MP about the meeting at the Commons on Tuesday 9th October. Pester them. Get them to go and make a real difference to people’s lives, rather than wasting time on petty political point-scoring at the conferences.

The Iraq war was always going to be unpopular, it’s turned into a disaster – let’s salvage what little moral credibility we still can before its’ too late.