Like a fish, Labour is rotting from the head down
Arriving in Downing Street on 2nd May 1997, Tony Blair set out the standard by which he wanted his government to be judged. "It will be a government" he declared, "which restores people's trust in politics in this country". What the events of 7th to 17th March, the period of intense debate about the legality of war in Iraq, tell us is that , in the most serious abuse of power by a British Prime Minister in recent memory, Blair was unwilling to trust his own cabinet with the full facts. Had he done so, it is possible he might have lost the argument, and with it the debate which finally sealed Britain's participation in the invasion- an undertaking he had unilaterally promised President Bush many months before.
A memorable image from this otherwise distinctly unmemorable election campaign was the appearance of the Prime Minister at his 'Weakest Link' manifesto launch, where he was flanked by his Cabinet colleagues, each standing at a podium similar to those used in the TV quiz show. It is ironic that many of those taking part in this display of Cabinet unity were not themselves shown the Attorney General's original advice when he addressed the Cabinet on 17th March. This is no mere matter of courtesy: the Ministerial Code of Conduct requires that where legal advice to the government is summarised, the complete text of the advice should be attached. The cabinet were not shown the original advice, with all its reservations. They were only given the Attorney General's revised (i.e. Blair-friendly) summary on 2 pieces of A4. (And those had to be handed back at the end). Even Lord Butler had trouble prising the full original advice of 7th March from No.10's grasp. It was only when he threatened to make public the government's refusal to hand it over that they complied.
We now know, as we suspected before, that Goldsmith's advice changed from setting out his serious concerns about the legal case for war on March 7th, to overcoming them so heroically on March 17th. Blair and Straw would probably claim this shows Goldsmith's brilliance , as normally, if you want two different opinions, you have to ask two lawyers. Not with Lord Goldsmith. He'll give you the legal advice he feels is correct on Friday and the one you want a week on Monday.
His opinion supposedly changed for two reasons: firstly, because Tony Blair assured him that Saddam was still not co-operating with the UN (even though that wasn't Blair's call but Hans Blix's, and Blix said on March 7th that Saddam's co-operation was accelerating); and secondly, because we couldn't get the second UN resolution Goldsmith said we needed . At which point, hey presto, it was decided we didn't need it after all. Yet Blair continues to maintain that the legal advice was clear, and Jack Straw continues to say it was thoroughly discussed in Cabinet. Enough is enough, and we should no longer be expected to swallow this guff.
On the evidence it is not surprising that Michael Howard and others have accused Blair of lying. The problem is, this doesn't really get us very far, because Blair has demonstrated time and again that he is technically incapable of telling a lie, for the simple reason that he absolutely believes in the truth of whatever he happens to be saying at any particular time. What is more serious is the abuse of power.
The inescapable logic of this whole episode is that Tony Blair personally committed Britain's armed forces to war in an undertaking given many months before to George Bush. As far back as 18 March 2002 Blair's Foreign Policy Adviser David Manning confirmed to Blair that he had assured Condoleeza Rice that "you [Blair] would not budge in your support for regime change"- this despite the fact that, as Lord Goldsmith later confirmed to his assistant Michael Foster, regime change would not be lawful per se. From the moment Blair gave his commitment to Bush, the die was cast, and everything else had to be made to fit. From 2002 Britain was governed by a Prime Minister for whom the facts had to be assembled to fit the policy, not the other way round.
In her resignation speech, Clare Short attacked 'the centralisation of power in the hands of a Prime Minister and an increasingly small number of advisers who make decisions in private without proper discussion" Lord Butler himself directly criticised Blair for limiting discussion and reducing the cabinet's ability to prepare properly by not circulating key papers to them. (Paragraphs 608, 609, 610, 611) it is to the shame of the British press that the Government has been repeatedly allowed to spin the Butler report as 'clearing' them. It's clear if you actually read both the Hutton Report- detailing the frantic internal e-mails during the cobbling together of the dossier- and Lord Butler's criticisms, coated in polite language , that they do NOT absolve the Government from all criticism.
Let's be clear. The government- or rather Blair and his close circle of associates- played fast and loose with the intelligence in compiling their dossiers (see Butler 's Summary, Para 33) and then played fast and loose with the legal advice in the week before war. It is simply not good enough for the Prime Minister to throw up his hands and say "what was I to do, with troops on the border and a decision to be made". He had made the decision long before and nothing- not the intelligence, not the security council, not Hans Blix, and certainly not the Cabinet, was going to stand in his way.
The two key questions are now: does this matter? And what can we do about it? Blair says what matters is that Saddam has gone. Pause for universal approval. But the way he went about it means that for this Prime Minister, international law doesn't matter, the UN doesn't matter, the cabinet doesn't matter, David Kelly doesn't matter, and Parliament doesn't matter. All that matters is what the Prime Minister has promised the American President in secret . (An impeachable offence, incidentally). If these things really don't matter to us, we have no right to live in a democracy.
The fact that Labour is apparently ahead in all the polls doesn't mean people aren't bothered about all this. It means they don't really like the opposition parties either. There is clearly no great appetite for a Conservative government, and the Lib Dems are not yet felt to be a strong enough challenge. But there is another challenge to Tony Blair. His name is Reg Keys. His son Tom paid the ultimate price for the war in Iraq- he was killed in action. Keys is now standing against Blair in Sedgefield.
And here's the thing. If people still feel comfortable enough to vote Labour, but do not want Tony Blair, the voters of Sedgefield hold the key. If all Conservative voters in Sedgefield, and Lib Dem voters, and disillusioned Labour voters, vote for Keys, it could be enough to overturn his 17,000 majority. It's possible.
The same strategy could, incidentally, apply to voters in Blackburn, who could rid themselves of the egregious Jack Straw by voting for Craig Murray, the former diplomat who exposed the government of Uzbekistan for boiling dissidents alive. Like a fish, New Labour's rotting from the top down. The decapitation strategy could be the best way to deal with a leadership that has more in common with the conglomerates and corporations that are fleecing our public services with their lucrative PFI contracts than with the hard-working teachers, doctors, and nurses who provide photogenic human shields for ministers at election time.
Just imagine. If Keys wins, we could end up with a Labour Government (as polls suggest we will) , but no Blair. Since Labour have fought the election overwhelmingly on the economy, and Blair has been fulsome in his praise for the Chancellor as the architect of Britain's relative success, it's only fair that the man responsible for that economic record should run the government. Opinion polls suggest that is what the voters want. It's not what Blair wants: he wants a third term so he can redeem his own political reputation. But that's not what the office of Prime Minister should be about. And after all, didn't he assure Gordon Brown that he would step down before this election anyway? Or was that just another throwaway line that he absolutely, sincerely meant at the time, but has since forgotten?
So do it, Sedgefield. Do it for Tom Keys. Do it for David Kelly. Do it, as the man said, for a government that will restore trust in politics in this country.
- ©Reg Keys, 2005 -
