Big Sticks and Small Carrots

Try as I might, I can’t resist highlighting this extraordinary CiF entry by the former director of communications and press secretary at the Foreign Office, John Williams. It’s a bizarre combination of revisionism, an admission of culpability and, well, idiocy.

There’s a bit of controversy over at CiF over the Guardian’s stealthy rewriting of the sub-heading; they changed “I don’t remember anyone questioning the intelligence” to “I don’t recall my colleagues questioning the intelligence”.  The second version is the more accurate representation of what he was trying to say but it doesn’t really help his cause.

He wrote:

It’s very frustrating, as a minor participant, to have learned afterwards that that the head of MI6 felt the intelligence was being made to fit around the policy. I took the intelligence seriously. Nobody ever cast doubt on it in my presence at the time. And those last three words are crucial - at the time. Hindsight is a luxury government doesn’t have.

Nobody? At the time? Hindsight?

The Westminster bubble is clearly a much better insulator than we’d previously thought.

The admission which Williams sweetens with a little light revisionism is that the government as a whole wilfully refused to listen to the many doubts which were being expressed at the time. More than that, those of us with semi-functioning memories can recall that Blair dismissed these doubts by implying that if only we knew what he knew, if only he could give us the full picture, we’d see how ridiculous these doubts were. And didn’t we just…

Williams worked for Robin Cook, for crying out loud. You know, the Foreign Secretary who who, on the eve of war, resigned saying that “Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term”. But John doesn’t recall his “colleague” saying that. Maybe Cook never told the Foreign Office’s director of communications why he was resigning as Foreign Secretary. Maybe Williams somehow managed to avoid every single instance of the widespread media coverage of the reasons for his boss’s resignation. Or maybe… No, I’ll stop now before this goes all sweary.

Hindsight? How about using those fleshy things you’ve got on the sides of your head instead?

And what lesson can we learn from this fictional version of events as the government attempts to deal with Iran?

The dossier was a mistake. I say that not with hindsight, but having argued unsuccessfully at the time that Britain should not take on the burden of proving that a country to which we had no access was in possession of illegal weapons. It should have been for Saddam Hussein to prove that he didn’t have them.

Now, it must remain Iran’s duty to show that it is not trying to master the technology necessary to produce a nuclear weapon, not President Bush’s to assert that it is.

I’m thinking of starting a campaign to pressure Mr Williams into acknowledging the existence of the Celestial Teapot. He has, after all, failed to prove that it does not exist.

The Sunday Telegraph asks a senior British Army officer in Iraq to describe victory in Basra.

We would go down there, dressed as Robocop, shooting at people if they shot at us, and innocent people were getting hurt,” he said. “We don’t speak Arabic to explain and our translators were too scared to work for us any more. What benefit were we bringing to these people?

Break out the bunting.

There are, of course, very good reasons why Iraqi translators are too scared to work with British forces. Whatever your views on the war, the campaign to save Iraqi ex-employees of HMG is surely worthy of support.

The Telegraph goes on to report that:

Rather than fight on, they [UK Forces] have struck a deal – or accommodation, as they describe it – with the Shia militias that dominate the city, promising to stay out in return for assurances that they will not be attacked. Since withdrawing, the British have not set foot in the city and even have to ask for permission if they want to skirt the edges to get to the Iranian border on the other side…

With no presence in the city, British forces are hard pushed to keep abreast of what is going on. They say they get their information from local newspapers and from the Iraqi army, although one battalion of that force is isolated inside the city and the other battalion is in training outside. The British have already encountered much the same problem in the neighbouring Maysan province to the north east, which they handed over in April.

And that explains why the government still thinks there’s a possibility that they can spin their way out of this bloody shambles. If an Iraqi ex-employee of HMG is shot in the back of the head and there are no British troops around to hear the gunshot, does it make a sound? The government thinks not.

The working soldiers of the British army are not responsible for this mess; they were asked to perform an essentially impossible task.

John Ware’s documentary “No Plan, No Peace” did raise the question as to why senior military figures didn’t make greater efforts to stop their men being sent into such a situation. It is clear that many were well aware of the US and British governments’ failure to address post-war planning and knew that it’d be by far the hardest aspect of the invasion.

You’d like to think that resignations would have been the order of the day but it didn’t happen. Asked to prioritise the value of their soldiers versus their career, I don’t remember a single senior military figure opting for the squadies. Now, about five years after it might have made a difference, general Sir Mike Jackson has courageously decided to speak out by writing a book. What class…

Ware’s documentary also included interviews with some of the academics who were belatedly brought in to advise Blair on Iraq in the run up to war. The picture which emerged was entirely consistent with similar interviews for a Peter Oborne documentary for Channel 4. The academics briefed Blair on the enormous complexity and numerous dangers which would exist in post-Saddam Iraq. Blair listened politely but was more interested in asking the academics whether they agreed that Saddam was evil.

At this point (January 2003 or there about), it seems that any critical faculties Blair might once have had had become overwhelmed by his own spin. The academics were not supportive of the war because they could see that the US and UK government’s were totally unprepared for what would come after. Blair apparently took this to mean that they were apologists for Saddam.  Instead of giving value to their accurate and informed advice, he demanded that they participate in a Will-You-Condemn-A-Thon. At such a level was policy made and expert advice dismissed.

One of the academics, Dr Tony Dodge I think, rightly pointed out that Blair’s attitude was criminally negligent. Today, the Iraqi people are paying the price for that negligence with their own blood.

Blair, however, has never been held to account for his disastrous inability and/or refusal to understand the consequences of what he was proposing. That simply is not acceptable in a supposedly democratic country.

As a footnote, the documentary also highlighted the reason why those MPs from other parties who voted for the war cannot be allowed to avoid accepting their own responsibility. I’m looking at you Dave.

On the day of the vote, evidence which made it obvious that the invasion was going to lead to disaster was available to me, an average International Relations graduate with a TV, a radio and an internet connection. Are we really being asked to believe that this evidence wasn’t available to members of Her Majesty’s official opposition?

The Blair government was, of course, infamous for the way they timed the release of news they’d rather we didn’t see.

While I’m all for giving Brown a chance to show that he really does intend to respect parliament and do things differently, the fact that over 100 ministerial statements have been released just before MPs break up for the summer is not exactly inspiring.

Still, it does give us a chance to see just how many minor celebrities Blair schmoozed last year. Richard Madeley, Fiona Phillips and June Sarpong, all notable for their *ahem* tough questioning of the PM when given exclusive access, were on the list. That must have been what Blair meant when he talked about politics being all about “the pursuit of noble causes”.

I’ve just been watching this week’s PMQs and the thing now seems to have descended completely into farce. What ever happened to shiny PR man’s vow to avoid Punch and Judy politics? He’s going through the same stages as Blair only more quickly.

Actually, there was a point in Blair’s career where many people genuinely and optimistically did believe that he could lead us all to the promised land. Cameron seems to have missed out that stage altogether. All things considered, this is probably not a bad thing.

And what’s with the speaker allowing Blair to go on and on about Conservative policy? OK, credit where it’s due for managing to find anything to say about Tory policies given their scarcity but that isn’t what PMQs is supposed to be about.

But then, what would be the point in asking quacker Blair about policy? You might as well ask a man standing on a gallows with a noose round his neck what he wants for breakfast tomorrow.

And when Sir Menzies did actually ask a serious question about the unsustainable role of the Attorney General, an area in which public confidence is eroding by the day, Blair simply gave him the brush off:

The position of the Attorney General, and the role that he carries out, has been there for hundreds of years, in our constitution, and I believe it to be the right role.

This from Blair, the archetype of the pathological moderniser. This may very well be the first and only time in Blair’s career that he’s decided he doesn’t know better than hundreds of years of history and tradition. How unsurprising that it’s in an area which really does need reform but where the maintenance of the status quo is of benefit to the ruling party.

By all accounts, we’re going to have to put up with a few more weeks of this before Blair finally goes. Most pundits now seem to agree that Blair will announce his departure after the local elections in May. In one sense, this unprecedented long goodbye is sort of fascinating. Like a car crash is fascinating.

And remember that memo?

He needs to go with the crowd wanting more,
He should be the star who won’t even play that last encore.

And he’s planning to leave after the local election results have come in.

You’ve got to wonder whether he even realises that his departure will be marked by a chorus of boos as he and his entourage struggle to avoid the hail of rotting vegetables.

Update

Here we go. Do your own booing.

I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words… When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint.
- Hesoid, circa 700BC (possibly)

Not much has changed over the last 2,700 years.

Obviously, the previous sentence is complete crap. Lots of things have changed. But nostalgia for a non-existent utopian past is definitely still with us.

Philip Cowley, reader in parliamentary government at the University of Nottingham, has written a couple of articles on Comment is Free about how this nostalgia affects our view of the House of Commons. His latest is well worth taking the time to read.

Much as I loathe Blair, I have to say that I think he’s got a point. There seems to be an awful lot of harking back to “the good old days” going on at the moment but those good old days never did exist. Blair has undoubtedly attempted to sideline parliament and his instincts are clearly undemocratic but the notion that parliament was the very model of representative democracy B.B. (before Blair) just doesn’t stand up.

In fairness, the dissatisfaction many people feel towards today’s MPs is about more than just nostalgia. For me, and I’m sure for many others too, parliament’s failure to hold Blair to account for Iraq was an unforgivable abdication of responsibility. On a matter of the utmost importance, too many Labour MPs put their loyalty to Blair and the party above their responsibility to the nation and too many Conservative MPs were more concerned with political positioning than with doing the right thing.

More widely, in the information age with the Commons televised, 24 hour news channels, TheyWorkForYou and the rest, the public has the opportunity to be much better informed about the workings of parliament than was possible in the past. This means that the weaknesses and failings of the House of Commons are more visible than ever before. This, of course, adds unwarranted credibility to feelings of nostalgia but it really wasn’t a whole lot better back then.

On the positive side, this new information age presents a genuine opportunity for real change too. As Cowley says, there is much that is wrong with the current system and much that can and should be improved. Stage one in the process should be to make sure we’re not looking back at the golden years through rose tinted spectacles.

Remember that Beckett interview with John Humphries on Today a while back? Here’s a reminder:

Beckett: Mr Ross’ basic thesis is that in some way, there was an assertion that Saddam Hussain was a threat directly to the U.K. You and I are both speaking from memory now but I don’t recall that argument being one that was used. It…

Humphries: Sorry, Tony Blair didn’t tell us Saddam Hussain was a threat to the United Kingdom?

Beckett: Wait a minute, wait a minute. What was said throughout was that Saddam Hussain was a threat to his region and that he had the intention and the desire to be a threat much more widely…

Humphries: 45 minutes?

Beckett: John, you and I both know that was a statement that was made once and it was thought to be of such little relevance and perhaps people began to quickly think ‘I’m not sure about that’. It was never used once in all the debates or questions in the House…

Humphries: It didn’t need to be. It was on the public record.

Beckett: Oh come on. No-one thought it was relevant. Nobody thought it was actually a big sweeping statement.

It’s still extraordinary.

Anyway, I was just poking around TheyWorkForYou looking for something else when I found this written Q&A from 19th March 2003:

Paul Flynn: To ask the Prime Minister what plans he has to publish amendments to his assessment in the document ‘Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction‘ presented to the House in September 2002 arising from the evidence of UNMOVIC inspectors on Iraqi (a) bases, (b) presidential palaces and (c) uranium imports.

Tony Blair: I have no plans to publish an amended version of the dossier presented in September 2002, the contents of which still accurately reflect our assessment of the position with regard to Iraq’s proscribed weapons programmes.

Let’s play spot the liar.

If Beckett was telling the truth about the 45 minute claim, if, as she put it, “people began to quickly think ‘I’m not sure about that’”, the statement by Blair six months later and one day after the war started is totally indefensible.

Perhaps Gilligan was wrong to say that the government “probably knew that the 45 minutes claim was wrong or questionable” when the dossier was released. Perhaps. Beckett certainly appears to have confirmed that the government knew it was questionable before the war started.

And when Nick Robinson* stripped down Blair’s waffle today, it laid bare the ridiculous nature of his position. Again.

Iraq is what should have brought Blair down. Here are some clues as to the reasons why it won’t.

And here are the dots being joined up beautifully.

The people who attended the largest demonstration in this country’s history weren’t fooled by Blair’s “evidence”. To hear various Conservatives, the very people whose job it is to scrutinise the activities of the government, complaining that they’d been being tricked is derisory. They could have listened to Robin Cook but they were too busy cheering Blair on.

And all this in the name of defending democracy.

If the ancient Greek playwright’s were still with us today, I don’t think they’d be struggling for inspiration.

* I’d like to say a few more things about Nick’s post and might do later if time allows.

As Bush’s Iraq surge struggles to do more than add even more chaos to an already highly unstable situation, Blair is about to make an announcement on British troop withdrawals.

The timing is all about the situation on the ground in Iraq; it has absolutely nothing to do with Blair’s date of departure. After four years of occupation, it is a coincidence that these two events just happened to, well, coincide. In fact, Basra, Maysan, Muthanna and Dhi Qar, the provinces administered by the British in the south of Iraq, are all jolly peaceful places. Any cynical journalist who doubts this can go see for themselves…

Well, no, they can’t. Not easily anyway. One of the ways to understand a little of what the situation is really like in Iraq is to look up the Foreign Office’s travel advice. It’s one of the few places where the government simply cannot spin.

We strongly advise against all travel to Baghdad and the surrounding area, the provinces of Basra, Maysan, Al Anbar, Salah Ad Din, Diyala, Wasit, Babil, Ninawa and At- Tamim (At -Tamim is often referred to as “Kirkuk Province”).

We advise against all but essential travel to the provinces of Al Qadisiyah, Muthanna, Najaf, Karbala, and Dhi Qar. [my emphasis]

So if you want to go and see whether the benefits of the war now outweigh the enormous costs, particularly in human lives, the government advises against it. Even the supposedly peaceful provinces are too dangerous. And as British troops withdraw from these provinces, Western journalists are going to find it increasingly difficult to gain access to these areas. The fog of war, already heavy, will become almost impenetrable.

Perhaps that’s why Blair still feels he can spin this as a success.

As General Dannatt famously noted, British troops have been serving no useful purpose down in the south for some considerable time. Any moves to bring them home are long overdue. But as Baghdad continues to unravel and with the government increasingly divided along sectarian lines and fragile in the extreme, any pretence that the operation in Iraq has been a success is clearly risible. Blair’s almost certainly about to give it a go all the same.

One further point. That we now know of the existence of a detailed U.S. plan of attack against Iran is not of itself particularly informative; the U.S. military has all sorts of plans for all sorts of everything. That “diplomatic sources” in the U.S. have passed information from that plan to BBC journalists, however, is significant; they don’t do that with all of their plans.

There is still the possibility that this is all part of a well constructed bluff, that Bush does understand that attacking Iran is not a credible option. While this would mean that the protests of those opposed to any military action are giving credibility to the bluff and effectively becoming useful idiots for Bush, it’s still a comforting possibility. Perhaps he’s just bluffing.

Considering everything we know about the man and his still influential vice-Dick, this comforting possibility doesn’t appear to be built on anything.

And if Bush makes a move on Iran while there are still a few thousand British troops in the south of Iraq, that could turn really ugly. It’ll be bad news for everyone but it could be really bad news for them.

Yesterday’s High Court ruling stating that the government’s consultation on energy policy had been “seriously flawed” was both extraordinary and totally unsurprising. As with consultation on the possible replacement of the U.K.’s WMD delivery system, it was always clear that the decision had preceded the “consultation”. In fact, these consultations were actually government attempts to sell decisions which had already been taken.

As Blair continues to drag out his departure to the detriment of his party and the country, what was most extraordinary about yesterday’s ruling was his response to it. The judge agreed with Greenpeace’s contention that the consultation had not adequately addressed the issue of radioactive waste and the costs of dealing with it.

It’s a major area of concern with regard to nuclear power and one which has been consistently marginalised over the years. There is a very real possibility that the costs of dealing with nuclear waste (and of decommissioning of obsolete plants) will have to be paid for with large public subsidies at some future point. The judge ordered the government to conduct another consultation so that these issues could be properly considered.

And Blair said:

This won’t affect the policy at all.

So there you are.

At least he’s decided to drop any pretence that the government ever intended to conduct a meaningful consultation with the public before making a decision.

By the way, underneath all this, there’s an interesting discussion to be had on the strengths and weaknesses of representative democracy as compared to direct democracy. Roy Hattersley, a representative democracy sort of chap, raised this on Question Time last night. What I would say is that representative democracy in what is essentially a two party system, particularly one in which the party whips play such a powerful role, isn’t working. Public confidence in the current system is at an all time low and Blair’s pretend consultations have made that worse, not better.

Anyway, with modern technologies now creating new possibilities for expanding the role of direct democracy, this whole area needs to be looked at very carefully. And the first question is, should decisions on this issue be taken by our elected representatives or by the people a whole?

While you think abut that, I’m off to chase my own tail.

Brian Haw has won this year’s Channel 4 award for Most Inspiring Political Figure.

Mr Haw received 54 per cent of the votes cast by the public in the channel’s political awards for 2007.

Gen Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the British Army, who embarrassed the Government by saying troops should be withdrawn from Iraq, came second with 18 per cent.

Tony Blair was backed by eight per cent and David Cameron by six per cent.

Excellent.

Like one tiny water molecule in a very large wave, my own small effort to encourage people to vote for Brian was entirely surplus to requirements.

The boy wonder’s six percent really is quite astonishing. He polled even fewer votes than the stupendously unpopular Mr Blair.

When Cameron told Blair that “he was the future once” he was right. Now, of course, he’s finished (although he appears not to have realised it). It’s hard to even be interested in pointing out the absurdities of what he says any more. Proper enquiries into his behaviour during his time at Number 10, particularly with regard to Iraq, are what I’m waiting for now.

And yet, the boy wonder, as leader of the opposition to a government which is widely reviled, still doesn’t seem to be the future.

(And the Lib Dems are not going any better either. They really need to up their game.)

We can safely assume that the result of the Channel 4 vote demonstrates the unprecedented levels of public dissatisfaction with politicians of all stripes which currently exists in this country. Rather than fighting over the scraps using the same methods (sometimes wrapped up in shiny new packaging), politicians should be attempting to rebuild confidence and genuinely re-engage with the badly disillusioned public.

The opportunity is there. People still care about politics; they just don’t care for scheming politicians.

PS - “Guido” is a tool.

The captain is merrily steering the ship directly towards an enormous iceberg, every alarm on board is flashing in that way that really alarming alarms do, and the crew are still busy discussing the finer points of a smooth and orderly transition.

Those of a sensitive disposition may want to look away now.