Family letter to Abroad

The editor gives news of the Blighty Life to absent family members

While Jane holds up the property market in London and I hold my end up here in Devon, it’s good to see the rest of the family has escaped. Unfortunately, the goons discovered our tunnel: we’re now building a glider out of matchsticks in the attic in the hope of joining you all in due course – if and when Harriet’s Thought Police get distracted by a hate crime. I’d like to think that if we do make it out alive, however, there’ll be more to see than ‘todally focused’ Scots getting beaten in straight sets by the Swiss.

It’s still cold here. I know this is of little interest to those waking up each morning to cloudless California or chucking shrimps on a Bondi barbie, but this sort of global weather reporting is de rigueur ever since the birth of CNN. And as CNN isn’t going to bother with the weather in Olde Englande, I thought you could have the exclusive on just how bollock-solidifyingly cold it is here in the poor folks’ space.

The other bad news I have to give you is that the Mother Country has gone into a Home. We had to do it for the poor old girl: she was getting along just fine, but there were a few embarrassing incidents: Old Britannia arrested a motorist last week for blowing his nose in a traffic queue. The charge was driving without due care and attention. In London the day before, four Special Branch cops cautioned two TV presenters for possession of hairdriers with intent to confuse four dumb cops hoping they were guns. The presenters were filming at the time (there was a crew of eight including clapper boy, sound-man and camera-jock) but this was unable to deter our plucky Boys in Blue from their Mission Statement, ‘To shoot innocent Brazilians 38 times in the head from close range and be cleared of any wrongdoing’.

So anyway, she’s gone into the IMF Golden Days Retirement Complex. There she’ll be given 24/7 care of her chronic emotional incontinence syndrome, and allowed to pretend that the ceiling is a pot of jam without doing harm to herself or innocent ceilings. In time, we’re hoping that they’ll find room for Cool Britannia too. As you may have heard, he was perjuring sorry giving evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry last Friday. He told the panel (most of whom are dead) that he had no regrets about Iraq, and given the chance he’d do it all again. Even Bush has never said that. Next week, Tony makes his forty-fifth attempt at crossing the Alps on a lawnmower. He has more chance of making it than Murray does of beating Federer: somebody needs to tell our Andy that he hasn’t got a convincing grunt. Grunts are a top-dollar commodity right now, but he should take the plunge and buy some. It’s the key to triumph at Wimbledon.

That’s it for the time being. It’s getting dark and so I better climb back in the coffin….whose insulation, by the way, is powered by a wind-farm propeller I stumbled across while sawing one down near our house the other day. It occurs to me that this might also be another escape ruse; so Fred, if you have any advice of an aeronautic nature, do let me know.

Stay happy and ensure your chocks are away before taking off

John x

SHORT SHARP SHOCK: NEW SENSATION AS CLARE OPENS THE BROWN/BLAIR PANDORA’S BOX

The Slog’s long-heralded Dark Lady Clare Short took the lid off the Brown/Blair succession revelations last night, when she told the Sunday Times of Gordon Brown’s personal career fears during 2003.

She told The Sunday Times: “Gordon said that the Blairites were hoping for a quick and victorious war, after which they would be much strengthened. He would be offered a job which he couldn’t accept and he would be joining me on the back benches.”

The Slog exclusively revealed the timing of Clare Short’s Chilcot slot last week. There were hot denials from Labour MPs last night that Short was also the colleague to whom Robin Cook allegedly revealed during 2006 that he had radioactive information on Blair’s secret roles and agreements surrounding the Iraq war. (Another Slog exclusive in the last week)

Short was close to Brown in 2003. She claims Brown ‘listened sympathetically’ to her grave doubts about the War. It’s therefore not surprising that she has chosen to dump on Blair not Brown: she has always -like Sir Roderic Lyne – felt betrayed by Blair’s perfidy on the issue of the Government’s WMD dossier.

However, Ms Short knows perfectly well that – assuming she enlarges on this claim at Chilcot next Tuesday – she has done exactly what Nick Clegg’s cabal want: to get the Brown/Blair relationship firmly on the Chilcot agenda. For this could pave the way for Brown (along with several re-interviewees) to be questioned about what Iraq ‘sleaze’ may have been used by Brownites to oust Tony Blair as Prime Minister. I understand that high on the list of at least two Chilcot panellists for further questioning is Geoff Hoon.

Senior Libdem sources last night refused to comment on Short’s role in their growing conviction that both Brown and Blair have much to hide about the preliminaries and aftermath of the Iraq conflict. But an FCO informant continues to insist that, if pushed, anti-Brown plotter Hoon would happily be ‘forced’ to reveal Gordon Brown’s central role in starving British troops of vital equipment.

Meanwhile, The Mail on Sunday reveals today that four out of five electors did not believe Blair’s Chilcot evidence. Clare Short gives her evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on Tuesday morning, 2nd February.

New Labour underestimates cost of aged care. No, there must be some mistake….

“Heard the one about….”

Most of the UK media noted today that New Labour had underestimated the cost of helping old people in their own homes.

Two years ago, the nby bit of what is now The Slog ran a piece about the sad case of Alan Johnson’s dementia – or cynicism, depending on your viewpoint.

The article is lengthy, but bears some re-examination. Now as the Election approaches, the loud gestures and budgetary fantasies of the folks who were going to make things even better are coming back to bite them.

What old people got out of all this was a press conference and a few platitudes from Ben Bradshaw. What the private sector of aged care got was a fall-off in demand, thousands of caring offspring having been silly enough to believe that Postie Al either knew what he was talking about, or meant it.

Dame Joan Bakewell is a Labour-luvvie – and the old people’s Tsarina. Where is her criticism of this utterly disgraceful scam?

In the theatre of schemes, A Merchant of Death disappoints

A newly-discovered work by the Bard could scarcely have generated more expectation than that surrounding Tony Blair’s Chilcot appearance last Friday.
Outside the Elizabethan venue, interviewers interviewed, police policed, and demonstrators demonstrated. In offices and sitting rooms up and down Britain, at 9.31 am pc users and TV viewers gave a collective intake of breath as the lead character in this slow-moving tragi-comedy entered stage left.

“Blair sits down’ tweeted the lucky few quick enough on the buttons before Twitter crashed for the day.

But long-term Blair-watchers knew within seconds that the script would lack dramatic tension. For Tony was focused. When focused, the former PM looks much the same as ever, but the ears and nose are the giveaway: his hooter pulls itself back slightly, thus allowing the Blair tympanic membrane to shift into Receive gear. This causes his ears to incline forwards ever so slightly. It was as clear a case of Forward Not Back as you’ll ever see.

Once focused, the core skill required by any successful actor is the denial of one obvious untruth after another: ‘Here I am in this echoey theatre, dressed up in silly mediaeval Venetian clothes, and talking in arcane meter. We all know that I’m Baghdad Tony from the telly-soap Westminsters, but follow me now as Blairanio the romantic lead takes over my body’. Sadly, one great performance does not a play make – especially when you’re the Merchant of Death, and the other players have been recruited from the Dead Sheep’s Society.

From the kick-off last November, the Chilcot Inquiry has been a Perry Mason short of a twist. This is partly because none of the panel members are QCs, mainly because they were hired to ask easy questions, and a little bit because at least one of them is asleep as well as dead. I refer of course to Sir Martin Gilbert. I’d be willing to bet that his chief reason for agreeing to take part was the hope of some juicy material for another historical tome; but clearly he wasn’t expecting the frenetic pace established by the others, and thus finds himself in need of a semi-permanent nap.

I do not wish Sir Martin ill (I enjoyed his Churchill biographies voluminously over several decades) but if he’s getting taxpayer readies for this gig, then I for one want my money back. As for Sir John Chilcot, he mostly restricts himself to explaining the rules. The obvious nominee of a Prime Minister hoping to bore the country to tears, he is both unexpectedly and unintentionally amusing. As the MC of a game show called Boobies’ Question Time, he’d be perfect. But as the Chairman of a post-war inquiry into the reason for having such a war in the first place, he is perpetually bamboozled.

This is especially relevant given that, while Mr Blair presented much in the way of vicarious legitimacy, facts were not much in evidence. To be frank, his testimony had more holes in it than a Cotton Exchange with a Biblical moth infestation.

He suggested that the perception of danger from Saddam had intensified after 9/11. But Straw’s memo of the time recorded that the reality of danger had not changed one iota. He talked of ‘not knowing’ Saddam’s connection to Al Qeida. But Sir Roderic Lyne reminded him that there wasn’t a shred of evidence connecting the Iraqi regime to Bin Laden. (There still isn’t). On the subject of regime change, Blair skilfully introduced the idea that the regime’s attitudes were inseparable from WMD. So we were left asking why a nasty regime with no WMD might be dangerous. The Fern Brittan interview came up, and Blair smiled as he told the panel the interview took place long before Chilcot. In this instance, I pondered long and hard as to what his point might have to do with the price of cod. His explanation was all the more risible in the light of the Freudian slip, “other arguments would have to have been assembled” without WMD.

Some of the former PM’s observations were downright brazen: the views of legion experts on International Law were ignored – as was the belief in the MoD that invasion was ‘the nightmare scenario’. His written messages of assurance to Bush were glossed over. His Richmond promises were reduced to “the President knew we would stand shoulder to shoulder”. A question about his dossier assertion ‘without doubt’ was answered by “Hey – look – I believed it”.

During this last week, UN Resolution 1441 has – in my mind at least – become a brand of Euro-lager everyone talks about, but nobody drinks. Thus (Blair told everyone) 1441 could “easily be used to make Peter Goldsmith’s case”. Well actually no, it can’t. Try a case or two of 1441, Tony: however much it dulls your brain, it’s impossible to get away from the feeling that 1441 says no-fly-zones good, shock and awe invasions bad. Why else would Lord Goldsmith insist for two years that invasion was illegal under 1441? Even more to the point, why did it take a tense meeting at Number Ten – followed by arm-twisting in the States – to persuade the Attorney General that his previously held opinion (in concert with every other legal brain in Britain) should suddenly be changed from no to yes?

There remains a strong air of Josef Goebbels about Tony Blair – the belief that ‘if you’re gonna tell a lie, tell a big ’un’. In terms of his reputation, my genuine belief is that many will feel reassured by his performance today: patriots themselves, they will embrace him as a fellow patriot. Right at the end of his evidence, the Great Pretender insisted “I believe we must make the same decisions of solidarity against the Iranian regime”. But like the boy who cried wolf, this hopelessly confused egomaniac has in fact made it near-impossible for Britain (or any other EU nation) to support US action in the future. He has, in short, given moral conviction a bad name.

Simplistic as it may sound, I think history will write that on 9/11, Al Q’eida goaded the two closest Anglo-Saxon Christian powers into an intemperate response…..and those two nations fell head-first into Bin Laden’s crude elephant-trap. Seven years on, the Russians, French and Iranians are still laughing about it. This, surely, is why Blair should be vilified.

He who asks last laughs loudest

The public interest is the wrong way round: what Blair gets asked is almost more important than what he offers as answers.

In just over an hour, the opportunist who blew the greatest opportunity politics had faced since Clem Attlee faces the famous five of the Chilcot panel. This morning’s papers and websites seem chiefly preoccupied with Blair’s likely responses to the obvious questions; only Michael Mansfield in The Times lays out what this man should be asked. That he does so brilliantly has more than a little to do with his status as a leading QC. (Perhaps one question to ask the current Prime Minister when he pitches up is why there are no QCs on the panel).

My sources suggest that hopes are largely pinned on Sir Roderic Lyne to ‘have a go’ at Anthony Blair QC. Whether Lyne has the skills to wait for Blair to drop his guard and get over-confident (as he usually does sooner or later) remains to be seen. As a diplomat steeped in dealing with the Russians, Lyne probably is our best chance of finding out something substantive today.
The two other things to remember about the Grinning One are that he gets bored very easily, and gives up when it all seems too much of a fag to continue. This plus the man’s innate hubris could give anyone a chance to provoke a revelation.
But I’m not holding my breath.
The Slogger won’t be giving you minute by minute of the exchanges – other more sad people can do that.
But if any external evidence breaks during the Chilcot Inquiry’s gently stroll through the motives of a hollow man, you’ll read about it here first.

The importance of disability

This is Edward. He is ugly, fat and unpleasant of manner. But Edward has an excuse for this, something we must all take into account.
For Edward has a stammer.
Just like poor John with his bulimicness, and Gordon with his tragic cyclops syndromeness, Edward knows that nobody will like him unless he quietly lets out in an exclusive national Sunday newspaper interview that he has an impediment: yes, poor Edward is orally disabled.
That’s why you can see him, down Lidl of a Saturday morning, beating an old lady to a pulp in order to assert his right to the last disabled parking place.
But Edward – let’s call him Ed, it’s easier to say – has triumphed over this disadvantage, to the point where nobody has ever heard him stammer. They’ve seen him dribble and point and shout and behave like a twat. But the stammer has been conquered.
All of which would make one wonder, really, why he bothered to mention it at all…if one had only a quarter of a brain. The rest of us worked out pretty quickly that Ed wants to be Labour leader.
And that, of course, is why he mentioned it.

Chilcot ‘increasingly isolated’ as Opposition gets restive

Sir John Chilcot’s benign interviewing style is less and less to the taste of the Iraq Inquiry panel members, The Slog has learned, while senior Liberal Democrats are highly critical of the ‘easy ride’ for witnesses to date.

Pressure is building on Sir John Chilcot to schedule more re-interviews and accept that several witnesses to date have not been taking the Inquiry entirely seriously. I understand that Sir John and Martin Gilbert remain more conservative about the examining style, while Sir Roderic Lyne and Sir Lawrence Freedman want more witnesses to return,in particular Geoff Hoon and Alistair Campbell. Baroness Prashar retains a wait-and-see open mind on the subject.

Meanwhile, sources close to Libdem leader Nick Clegg continued to insist today that ‘obvious inconsistencies’ in the evidence are being allowed to pass by unchallenged – although later questions to Lord Goldsmith this afternoon suggested a stronger tone than previously.

A growing number of those on the Tory and Libdem benches point out that Jack Straw’s version of events (and his own feelings about it) do not sit easily with Goldsmith’s change of mind on 1441. But a foreign service source told The Slog tonight, “Sir Roderic thinks he can unnerve Blair on Friday”.

Postscript: Clare Short has contacted The Slog to insist that “I have already outlined most of what I know in my book, ‘An Honourable Deception’”. Whether the ‘most of’ is intended to depress or excite expectations remains to be seen.

A debt of thanks

There are very few straight politicians in the world, but Clare Short is one of them. So too are Denis Skinner, David Davies, Vince Cable and Ollie Letwin – a motley crew I’ll grant you, but perhaps yet more evidence that the fundamental problem with British democracy (apart from the voting system) is the controlling Party system.

Anyway, I’m indebted to Ms Short for giving me some straight answers, and pointing out that her February 2nd Chilcot slot is in fact a Tuesday – and not a Monday as I claimed two days ago.

Sir Roderic adds some grit to Goldsmith’s massage

Sir Roderic Lyne has never forgiven the Blair regime for making a prat of him in 2003. Then the ambassador in Moscow, Rodders quite innocently gave a broadcast live on Russian telly explaining why Saddam Hussein could incinerate every Muscovite within ten minutes. Now he is exacting a cold revenge.

As Lord Goldsmith squirmed before the Chilcot panel today, he seemed oddly surprised to be ambushed by Sir Roderic Lyne. Referring to Goldsmith’s sudden Damascus conversion to the legality of unprovoked aggression, Lyne asked his witness:
“How do you respond to the (Guardian) report of the time that inside Number Ten on 17th March you were pinned to the wall in a pincer movement by those keen on a change of mind?”
“Absolute and utter nonsense” said the former Attorney General.
“Right” said Sir Roderic, in perhaps the best rendition of ‘don’t make me laugh’ I’ve heard in a long time.
Lyne’s low-grade nastiness virus is clearly infectious. Lawry Freedman (until today the nice cop of Chilcot) wasn’t having any of Goldman’s bizarre explanation about the mid-March change of mind on invasion legality. As a historian, he is I think adept at spotting when the plot is being spoiled by false motives.
“Well,” he asked, “What had changed during the month to make you change your mind?”
“Well,” Goldsmith echoed,”Er, that is….I decided that I’d been too cautious beforehand. And that, well, the MoD and the military wanted a straight answer.”
“And that made you change your mind?” Freedman wondered, his poker face unchanged.
This was great stuff.

There is of course no moral explanation whatsoever in the Attorney saying he was asked for a straight answer: he could very easily (and with no loss of life) have said “OK, it’d be illegal”. Funny then that his opinion turned out to be the one that everyone inside Number Ten wanted.

But having tried to lump the blame onto gung-ho Brigadiers and Sir Humphreys, Goldsmith seemed to ask for the Inquiry’s understanding about “my meetings with various Americans” during the period under the microscope. I must confess to feeling by this point that his Lordship was not so much in a moral maze as an amoral swamp.

Unfortunately (and this was quite clearly his mission) Lord Goldilocks has left the way clear for Blair to deny all this coming Friday. I have the feeling that those who balloted for tickets may yet find it a damp squib.

Exclusive: Chilcot panel split as Straw is recalled

Straw…ageing under the pressure?

As exclusively predicted here yesterday, the Chilcot Inquiry has decided to recall one of the key ‘war legality’ witnesses. Jack Straw will now reappear before the panel on February 8th.

The Inquiry has allotted three hours for his second session. But sources close to the inquiry told The Slogger this morning that the panel is ‘split down the middle’ about further witness recalls. I understand that at least one panel member found Elizabeth Wlimshurst’s evidence ‘damning’, and is pushing for Geoff Hoon to reappear. Although Hoon was not an ever-present member of the Inner War Circle, it is thought he may have more to add in relation to military opinion about invasion viability.
Meanwhile, pressure remains on the Inquiry to recall Alistair Campbell. And as former Attorney General Goldsmith prepares to give evidence, the Guardian today reveals that he has funded his defence with taxpayer money.

The difference between going into and coming out of recession

Very few observers are surprised by the way in which the rules pertinent to going into recession do not apply when emerging from it.

If we cast our minds back to 2008, we will remember (with Google’s ever-present help) that Britain was probably going to avoid recession. Later that year, we were assured on a daily basis that the recession would be short and shallow.
As evidence of a total slump piled up, Clerical Ally made a big deal about how it took two consecutive quarters of disaster to make an official recession.
Then – once in this recession that wasn’t going to happen – it was emphatically not a depression. We’d be out of it by late 2009, the Treasury vowed.

Here and now in the first quarter of 2010, we’ve had one quarter of growth at the level of 0.1%. Some three quarters of this ‘growth’ was achieved in (a) the public sector and (b) as a result of our tax monies being hurled at selling cars and reducing the rate of VAT. Everything else went backwards.
But the media insist ‘the recession is over’.
Thank goodness the average Brit knows better. If, after the next quarter, growth is still there – and most of it is in the private sector – then I will be happy to declare the ‘recovery’ real…albeit fragile.
But this isn’t going to happen: most observers were expecting a growth rate of at least 0.3%. The City has now wised up to the fact that we are the last and slowest to emerge from the aftermath of boom…and the bust has been bigger because (i) over nine million people are dependent on the State, rather than being productive; and (ii) our manufacturing infrastructure is pathetically weak.

One final note: these figures based on one quarter have been qualified by the NSO as ‘preliminary and subject to revision’. Nobody is expecting them to get better. April is going to be one helluva month. Brown will be in front of Chilcot,and the second-quarter economic figures will come out.
So then – no pressure.

Elizabeth drops concrete blocks gently into the snake pit

Elizabeth Wilmshurst gave a great deal of evidence at the Chilcot Inquiry this afternoon, but none at all that she could ever, ever be a pushover. Never in the field of legal conflict have so many words been slotted with such clinical precision between the lines.
Only once did Ms Wilmshurst’s testimony betray the hidden fury, when a panellist put it to her that Jack Straw is ‘himself an accomplished lawyer’.

“Yes, but not an international lawyer” she almost spat back. The audience giggled nervously.’And a completely amoral snake’ said her eyes.

Unlike Sir Michael Wood, who in the morning session offered polite reservations here and there about his advice being serially ignored, Wilmshurst provided a proper context for the Blair Government’s behaviour.
All the FCO lawyers were of one view, she began: the war was illegal. Yes,it was highly unusual for a Foreign Secretary to counter such unanimous advice. Yes, international law (as Jack Straw weakly contended) was more vague – but the lack of Courts made caution all the more vital. No, just because the Saddam Hussein’s weren’t obeying the UN, two wrongs didn’t make a right. Yes, Iran experts in the FCO all regarded invasion as the ‘nightmare scenario’. No, she insisted, there was no difference between legality and legitimacy in international law. Yes, the Government’s actions undermined the UN and damaged our reputation as upholders of the Rule of Law. Yes, the Attorney General was a spineless jellyfish who had caved in, changed his advice – and then tried to argue from an untenable position. Yes, troops have a right to expect that they are killing people legally.
Finally (she concluded) the process used to arrive at a policy on Iraq was ‘lamentable and secretive’. The Attorney General’s ultimate advice was sought, literally, within hours of the invasion beginning. ‘What a bunch of cowboys’ was the phrase wandering through every mind in the place.

As I expected, Elizabeth Wilmshurst has put the Chilcot panel on the spot: later in the week, they must interview this very same Attorney General. He clearly failed in his duty as the Chief Law Officer – why? He changed his mind – why? He arrived at an untenable, flawed piece of advice – why?
Next Friday, the Inquiry interviews the slippery Teflon man who has all the answers to these questions. If he is seen to evade their questions, then it too will be in dereliction of its duty.
Perhaps more pertinently, there is now (and was always going to be)a powerful case for re-interviewing at least one witness. As I suggested yesterday, at least one member of the panel is already minded so to do. And I hear further rumours to the effect that at least one of those witnesses is looking forward to it.

Related articles: Was Robin Cook about to expose Blair plot?
Clegg’s pressure pays off