Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Tony Blair has just been accepted into the Catholic Church. Can you believe it? It makes Nick Clegg look like a saint. I very much appreciated it when the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, told that the new Lib Dem leader had said he didn't believe in God (but respected those who did), replied that what matters in our leaders is that "they are honest and reliable and that what beliefs they have they hold sincerely"
As for Blair, according to the BBC report, last year he had "told ITV1 chat show host Michael Parkinson he had prayed while deciding whether to send troops into Iraq". I missed that that one. Apparently he added,
"In the end, there is a judgement that, I think if you have faith about these things, you realise that judgement is made by other people... and if you believe in God, it's made by God as well."
Clegg would be well advised to get Lib-Dem MPs and candidates to chase down every Labour and Tory opponent, constituency by constituency, and demand they admit they were wrong and apologise if they supported the Iraq war. Plenty did not, such as Robin Cook and Ken Clark, and said why convincingly enough. The Catholic Church might take on unrepentant sinners into its broad ranks and continue to debate the infallibility of its Pope. This is no reason for the House of Commons to do the same. A small country with a sick political system cannot afford the luxury of a Foreign Secretary who says that the government "is not resiling" from the decision to invade Iraq.
The political class wants to shrug it off. It should not be allowed to. I was told recently by a leading politician - whom I respect - that the difference between us and other major countries in the EU is that we are "moral country" without the stain of fascism and occupation. Well... if its a matter of morality, take a look at Robin Cook's cool memoir The Point of Departure (pp 338-9).
He expresses his astonishment that, even in the debate on the Hutton report a year after the invasion, Blair tells the House of Commons that he didn't know that Saddam's chemical weapons, supposedly poised to attack Cyprus within 45 minutes, were battlefield munitions not missiles. Cook describes how before the invasion he asked for a private briefing from John Scarlett, then Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Scarlett confirmed that Saddam did not have "long range weapons of mass destruction" but "may" have battlefield ones. Asked in that case why British troops were not threatened by the latter, Scarlett told Cook that any such weapons would have been taken apart to be stored and could not be deployed "under attack".
Why, then, Cook asks, did nobody tell the Prime Minister?
"Why did Tony Blair himself never ask John Scarlett... ? Given that the Prime Minister was justifying war to the nation on the grounds that Saddam was a serious threat to British interests, he showed a surprising lack of curiosity about what that threat actually was..."
Now we know: Blair was too busy praying to be asking.
But this only begs another question, why didn't the all-knowing being let him Know? Or, at the very least, put the idea into his head that he should question his own chief of intelligence about the matter? It looks to me as if Clegg has yet more evidence on his side.
When it comes to matters of life and death we don't want politicians who mislead the House of Commons, make torturers their closest ally and then claim a higher sincerity and God-fearing belief in order to exculpate themselves. The Catholic Church has recruited a bad apple.
And in the spirit of Clegg I wish all readers of OurKingdom a Very Happy Christmas and assure you that you don't need to believe in Santa Claus!
