This message cannot have gone unheard in Washington or London.In fact, the US-led coalition is falling apart. Far from making us safer, their war has put us on the front-line. Bush and Blair collude in the oppression of the Palestinians, they use violence without the sanction of the UN, they are repeatedly caught lying and, as self-proclaimed Christians, are responsible for a state terrorism whose casualties far exceed those of individual terrorists.People are more savvy than they are given credit for They know this is a class war. It is waged by the most powerful ruling class in the world in the interests of US capital. The economies of the Middle East are to be re-formed, giving US corporations access to markets and resources. September 11th was a convenient excuse to implement a decision to invade Iraq which had already been taken.Unluckily for New Labour, it is not only opposition to the war that the demonstrators have in common. When Gordon Brown told Tony Blair he would spend whatever it would take to prosecute the war, our response was that we need a government that spends whatever it takes to rebuild a compassionate welfare state and works with others for worldwide peace and security, not one that joins the Bush administration in seeking to establish the global dominance of free market economics by force of arms.So where do we go from here? Many of us have decided that having voted with our feet we now need to provide the millions of people who were with us in either body or spirit a real choice at the ballot box.

We recognise what Spain has highlighted – that we must move from protest to politics. It is for this reason that we launched the Respect Unity Coalition. For those who oppose the war and the New Labour project, there is now an electoral alternative. About time, too.Ken Loach is a film director and Respect European candidate.

British Muslims are ditching New Labour en masse. According to a recent ICM/ Guardian poll, they are feeling increasingly isolated, and one in four now thinks they have had enough of integration. Worse, one in 10 would now support a terrorist attack on the US. So, is there anything Tony Blair can do to redeem himself in the eyes of the Muslim community?

British Muslims are ditching New Labour en masse. The Prime Minister thinks that the war against terrorism should be approached with all the mass mobilisation and cockney sparrow spirit of the Second World War. Indeed, he has even gone so far as to compare al-Qa’ida to the Nazis. This is patent nonsense.Al-Qa’ida is undoubtedly an immoral organisation, a malignant tumour.

But to liken it to the organised, industrialised, bureaucratised inhumanity of the state mobilisation of Nazism belittles the enormity of what Hitler brought forth. It is an insult to all who fell prey to the mass murder of his genocide, and cheapens the sacrifices of all who were caught up in opposition to the Nazi horror The battle for wartime Britain is exactly the wrong analogy. Terrorism cannot be resisted by trying to be Churchill and whipping up hysteria about the terrorist threat.Worse, the comparison and the relentless publicity given to the fiendish ingenuity, cosmic reach, allegedly limitless capability and total impact of al-Qa’ida is the most seductive recruiting poster they could have. Those enticed to the ranks of al-Qa’ida are educated and intelligent men with no political prospects of power, inclusion or relevance in their native lands. These deluded individuals, with a perverted sense of having a righteous cause on behalf of the marginalised, are now being given purpose and direction by the actions and intransigent scaremongering of Bush and Blair.