And then, late last night, a really stupid remark by the Leader of the House of Commons, John Reed (only recently appointed by Blair) has probably meant the death penalty for Blair's political life.
For the last six years, the Labour Government's spin doctors have learned many tricks and one of them is to turn things backwards in a bare-faced way as Blair did yesterday when at Evian. He said: "Our accusers should supply the evidence [of wrong-doing on my part]". This is a clever trick because it is precisely the lack of evidence for declaring war that accusers are complaining about.
One of the ways that Blair has been answering charges of lying to Parliament is to say that his decision to go to war was based on a confidential report of the Intelligence Services. The Intelligence Services have no way of publicly saying that Blair had doctored their report, so there have been rumours only -- but rumours that appear to have come from extremely high sources in the Intelligence Service. Hitherto, Blair's trick would have sufficed. The high IS person(s) would have remained dumb. But no longer.
But now, John Reed has gone too far. He said last night that the Intelligence Report given to Blair was distorted by "rogue elements" within the IS! This despite the obvious fact that such a report could only have been finalised by the very highest levels of the IS. In effect, the Labour Party in government have now declared war on the IS!
The most troublesome fact of the IS Report to Blair was a mention that an Iraqi dissident had said that Saddam had WMDs which he could unleash on other countries within 45 minutes. But (according to rumour) the IS Report specifically said that this was a single piece of evidence from one person, it was not to be trusted too much because the source was a bitter opponent of Saddam and there was no corroboration of this from other sources. Specifically, there was no evidence from satellite photographs. It was this 'evidence' that we were all within 45 minutes of disaster that Blair made a great deal of in his speech to Parliament in justification of his decision to go to war.
While I am writing this, John Reed is now saying on the radio that there are four "rogue elements" within the IS who have been briefing BBC journalists, MPs and so on that the IS Report did not say that there was sufficient evidence to go to war. The British Government and Labour Party are now suffering from an advanced case of Conspiracitis! We have now reached the stage of so much lack of credibility in the truthfulness of the Government that, as the BBC journalist is now saying at this very moment of writing, he has been briefed by someone in the "highest levels" of the IS that the Government, and Blair in particular, had grossly exaggerated the original IS Report.
I understand that there are now two US Congressional enquiries into the evidence for the decision for invading Iraq. If these have the same head of steam behind them as is now exists here, then I don't give Bush much chance of coming through the examination unscathed. Over here, Blair is now probably finished as the Prime Minister because he will no longer be trusted on anything he says or any policy that he espouses. A recent world-wide opinion poll said that Blair was considered to be the strongest and most competent leader in the world. Over here, he is falling apart.
Keith Hudson Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England
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