Fancy that, a Labour Prime Minister coming under withering criticism from Lord Butler, the Lord High Chamberlain of government secrecy, for not being properly open in his (and let it be said, David Miliband's also) proposal to hold the long postponed inquiry into the Iraq war in private. It was Butler, then Cabinet Secretary, who fought tooth and nail to confine and obstruct Sir Richard Scott's inquiry into arms sales to Iraq and Iran. At one point, Scott had to threaten to send the police into Downing Street to take possession of documents that Butler was withholding.
In other words, Brown is capable of sinking even lower in the very stuff of open democracy after having boasted of his commitment to freedom of information. Brown has justified the decision on the grounds that a secret inquiry will encourage witnesses to be frank; it seems a fair assumption that he is actually worried that they will be too frank in public.
But enough of Brown and even Butler's particular arguments for more openness. We are at a point in our democratic life when government has to open up fully to the public. Scott did the whole country a great service by laying bare the "hidden wiring" and governing attitudes of Whitehall and Westminster. He scoured the Augean stable. The same process has to be done again over the Iraq war. Brown has now given Sir John Chilcot, who is to head the inquiry, leave to hold some sessions in public. Whether Chilton is another Scott, I doubt. He is the archetypal senior civil servant. But hey, Sir John, seize the moment. Forget the talk merely of "learning lessons" in central government. Give the British public a larger lesson in just how we are governed and how a very few people can defy public opinion and take the country into an illegal and disastrous war in which 179 British troops and countless Iraqi citizens lost their lives.
