The Horsell's Mouth Politics, pedantry and personal interests

Sir John Chilcot

It’s not unusual for the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre to be full but perhaps rarely are events held there that cause a queue to overflow outside. This morning, the Chilcot Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the Iraq War began with Tony Blair expected to be among those giving evidence.

Now that he can no longer expect diplomatic immunity from prosecution after his EU presidential bid failed, this must be a nervous time for Mr Blair. Several newspapers have run stories suggesting that the facts of the matter are at significant variance to the official account of events, including that Blair denied military options were being considered when in fact they were.

What I hope will happen as a result of this inquiry is that we will know:

a) Whether or not Blair and others deliberately manipulated evidence, parliament and public opinion to go to war

b) Whether or not his central claim of “45 minutes from destruction” was true and how it originated

c) Why there was a woeful lack of planning for what happened after the Allies controlled Baghdad – the clock to insurgency then started ticking

d) How much US policy dictated British strategy in Iraq

We all suspect we know the answers, or at least many of them, to these questions. The picture emerging six years after invasion was that politicians exaggerated and spun their way to public approval for a war that the Americans wanted and that there was a price for not following them into.

But let’s not forget that the cost of war in Afghanistan and Iraq has stretched to billions and billions of pounds that have be scraped away from areas such a local authority highways, Revenue Support Grant, policing and even the Armed Forces themselves. The person who approved every penny for this shallow, shambolic military intervention is now sat in No 10 Downing Street, all of 500m from the conference centre.

We should not forget his role in this. Yes, Blair wanted war. But he also wanted welfare reform, Euro membership and to follow Tory spending plans. Gordon didn’t seem to have a problem blocking these things – so why wasn’t he more vocal in his opposition of the war? His role in signing the cheques seems to have been swept under the carpet.

It is interesting to note, of course, that Woking MP Humfrey Malins voted against the Iraq War and resigned from his position on the shadow front bench in protest. How right he has been proven to have been.