Ken MacDonald, the former director of public prosecutions, has penned a devastating article in the Times in response to Tony Blair's admission, in a calculated interview with Fern Britton ahead of his appearance at the Chilcot inquiry, that he would have attacked Iraq even if he'd have known there were no WMD.
MacDonald describes the role Blair's character played in driving the criminal adventure against the will of the British people, noting his "sycophancy" and his thirst for glamour and power. He urges Chilcot not to succumb to the British establishment disease of hiding the truth to protect the powerful.
It's one of the strongest attacks on the PM I've read coming from a member of the British establishment and delivers a powerful warning to members of the Chilcot inquiry, who so far have been less than penetrating in their questioning.
The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer. This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions and playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage. It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner George Bush and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn’t want, and on a basis that it’s increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible. Who is any longer naive enough to accept that the then Prime Minister’s mind remained innocently open after his visit to Crawford, Texas?
Hindsight is a great temptress. But we needn’t trouble her on the way to a confident conclusion that Mr Blair’s fundamental flaw was his sycophancy towards power. Perhaps this seems odd in a man who drank so much of that mind-altering brew at home. But Washington turned his head and he couldn’t resist the stage or the glamour that it gave him. In this sense he was weak and, as we can see, he remains so. Since those sorry days we have frequently heard him repeating the self-regarding mantra that “hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right”. But this is a narcissist’s defence and self-belief is no answer to misjudgment: it is certainly no answer to death. “Yo, Blair”, perhaps, was his truest measure.
You can read the full article here. And, in case you missed it on Friday, here's news of developments regarding at least one "justification" for Iraq you won't hear from Tony Blair.
