Gavin, 3 May 05
As the election campaign draws to a close, an outbreak of honesty threatens to add interest to the political process.
The Blair camp tries to give an impression of having learnt some lessons over Iraq. Blair has suggested that if he had to do everything again he would have let the raw intelligence and raw legal advice over Iraq be published in full rather than relying on dossiers delivered from Downing Street spin departments.
Similarly Michael Howard admitted on Question Time that he would have supported the war – even knowing there were no WMD. Given this, the stage is set for a future government of whatever hue to be able to enter into a period of gunboat diplomacy without having to whip up hysteria about imminent threats or needing justification in international law.
Perhaps the most telling comment about the Iraq invasion comes from the man most likely to succeed Blair as PM, Gordon Brown:
We believed we were making the right decision in the British national economic interest
It is no longer deemed necessary to make any pretence that the invasion was about anything other than the economic benefits of siding with US ambitions for strategic control of resources in the Middle East.
