A Word in One's Ear
The sources of advice we rely upon are crucial to the decisions we reach This is especially true of politics as Prime Minister Tony Blair discovered to his cost when this week for the first time under his leadership, Parliament voted against a piece of legislation he had brought before the House. The proposal that the police could hold suspected terrorists without trial for ninety days, rather than the current fourteen days, had all along been controversial, with many parliamentarians feeling that people’s civil liberties were at stake. Britain has a long history of tolerating dissent and its laws on protesting, policing, trial and imprisonment reflect that tolerance. In the vote on Wednesday night a significant number of Labour politicians crossed the floor to vote with the opposition, and the rest is history. Parliament agreed an amendment which allows the police to hold suspects without trial for twenty-eight days, but no more.
The Prime Minister has lost a great deal of credibility in the process, and the bottom line today seems to be whether his authority hasn’t been so eroded, that he is from this point on a lame-duck leader. For the first time we saw members of his party, back-benchers in Parliament mind you, not members of his Cabinet and inner circle, speaking of having suffered from his bullying tactics for too long. One used the word hubris to describe the ethos surrounding the man at the moment.
As usual on matters of security, Tony Blair predicated the proposed ninety-day legislation upon information which, of course, he was not permitted to divulge to the public. The police and security services had apparently had a word in his ear to the effect that in cases of suspected planning to commit terrorist acts, they needed at least ninety days to question the persons and assemble the evidence. Parliament was clearly not willing to accept this ‘evidence’ at face value and raised a series of questions about its reliability and the process through which the police had reached their ninety-day conclusion. I am sure I wasn’t alone when I predicted what Tony Blair’s tactic would be when the debate over detention laws heated up, but it was with a sense of disbelief that I saw it happen. As a last-ditch argument he informed parliament and the nation that only that day the police had had a further word in his ear and informed him that a two more terrorist plots had just been foiled. He urged members of the House to defend the brave men who had foiled the plots rather than heed a minority of disaffected parliamentarians concerned to protect the civil liberties of the few rather than the liberty of the nation.
For many in Parliament this distrust of the Prime Minister goes back to the manner in which he advanced the case for the war in Iraq on the basis of reliable intelligence and the conviction that Britain had a duty to rid the world of people like Saddam Hussein. Today we all know that the words of wisdom the security services whispered in Blair’s ear were at best baseless and at worst lies. An ever increasing body of Parliamentarians feel that they were misled during the run-up to the invasion and no longer trust the Prime Minister to speak unequivocally.
Tony Blair’s motivations and behaviour at that time came under further scrutiny this week when the former British Ambassador to the US, Sir Christopher Meyer published his memoirs and gave interviews to the press. Sir Christopher, let it be said, is an admirer of President Bush and remains in favour of the Iraq war, and is being criticised for breaking civil service protocol by letting us into secrets about the Bush/Blair relationship. He is the first ‘insider’ who participated in the planning of the War in Iraq who has given us insight into what went on for example, in the crucial meetings and conversations that Blair had with President Bush. Meyer paints an unflattering picture of Blair together with members of his cabinet who participated in Washington talks, suggesting that they were in such awe of Bush’s Washington establishment that they readily capitulated to the American agenda. That agenda was always driven Meyer alleges by the neo-conservative concept of regime change, rather than as Blair presented it, the removal of weapons of mass destruction which were forty minutes away from Britain and probably pointed in our direction. If Blair had any reservations about the neo-conservative agenda, it apparently took only the President’s word in his ear to lay them to rest.
The former ambassador also makes some startling admissions. As a supporter of the war, he accepts that Britain and America are now on the horns of a dilemma. This is in part due with the failure to examine a broad enough range of possible outcomes. He accepts that the task of rebuilding Iraq is now virtually impossible and that the continued presence of Coalition troops in the country is motivating the insurgency. Further than this, he dismisses Tony Blair’s claims that it was not the Iraq war which exposed then UK to terrorist attacks arguing that there is sufficient evidence around to show that home-grown terrorism has been to a degree fuelled and radicalised by what Muslims have seen happening in Iraq and fear may happen elsewhere. For Sir Christopher, terror on our doorsteps is the price we have to bear for our involvement in this necessary war.
Where does this problematic legacy leave Tony Blair? There is a groundswell of opinion at large, and I suspect with in the Labour Party as well, that the Prime Minister having signalled that he will be handing over to a new leader, probably Gordon Brown, prior to the next election, is now personally weakened. This in turn weakens his legislative programme, and indeed the Labour Party as a whole.
A word in your ear, Prime Minister. If you really want to see the Labour win a fourth term of office, go gracefully now, before the integrity of the Party becomes fatally compromised.
The Prime Minister has lost a great deal of credibility in the process, and the bottom line today seems to be whether his authority hasn’t been so eroded, that he is from this point on a lame-duck leader. For the first time we saw members of his party, back-benchers in Parliament mind you, not members of his Cabinet and inner circle, speaking of having suffered from his bullying tactics for too long. One used the word hubris to describe the ethos surrounding the man at the moment.
As usual on matters of security, Tony Blair predicated the proposed ninety-day legislation upon information which, of course, he was not permitted to divulge to the public. The police and security services had apparently had a word in his ear to the effect that in cases of suspected planning to commit terrorist acts, they needed at least ninety days to question the persons and assemble the evidence. Parliament was clearly not willing to accept this ‘evidence’ at face value and raised a series of questions about its reliability and the process through which the police had reached their ninety-day conclusion. I am sure I wasn’t alone when I predicted what Tony Blair’s tactic would be when the debate over detention laws heated up, but it was with a sense of disbelief that I saw it happen. As a last-ditch argument he informed parliament and the nation that only that day the police had had a further word in his ear and informed him that a two more terrorist plots had just been foiled. He urged members of the House to defend the brave men who had foiled the plots rather than heed a minority of disaffected parliamentarians concerned to protect the civil liberties of the few rather than the liberty of the nation.
For many in Parliament this distrust of the Prime Minister goes back to the manner in which he advanced the case for the war in Iraq on the basis of reliable intelligence and the conviction that Britain had a duty to rid the world of people like Saddam Hussein. Today we all know that the words of wisdom the security services whispered in Blair’s ear were at best baseless and at worst lies. An ever increasing body of Parliamentarians feel that they were misled during the run-up to the invasion and no longer trust the Prime Minister to speak unequivocally.
Tony Blair’s motivations and behaviour at that time came under further scrutiny this week when the former British Ambassador to the US, Sir Christopher Meyer published his memoirs and gave interviews to the press. Sir Christopher, let it be said, is an admirer of President Bush and remains in favour of the Iraq war, and is being criticised for breaking civil service protocol by letting us into secrets about the Bush/Blair relationship. He is the first ‘insider’ who participated in the planning of the War in Iraq who has given us insight into what went on for example, in the crucial meetings and conversations that Blair had with President Bush. Meyer paints an unflattering picture of Blair together with members of his cabinet who participated in Washington talks, suggesting that they were in such awe of Bush’s Washington establishment that they readily capitulated to the American agenda. That agenda was always driven Meyer alleges by the neo-conservative concept of regime change, rather than as Blair presented it, the removal of weapons of mass destruction which were forty minutes away from Britain and probably pointed in our direction. If Blair had any reservations about the neo-conservative agenda, it apparently took only the President’s word in his ear to lay them to rest.
The former ambassador also makes some startling admissions. As a supporter of the war, he accepts that Britain and America are now on the horns of a dilemma. This is in part due with the failure to examine a broad enough range of possible outcomes. He accepts that the task of rebuilding Iraq is now virtually impossible and that the continued presence of Coalition troops in the country is motivating the insurgency. Further than this, he dismisses Tony Blair’s claims that it was not the Iraq war which exposed then UK to terrorist attacks arguing that there is sufficient evidence around to show that home-grown terrorism has been to a degree fuelled and radicalised by what Muslims have seen happening in Iraq and fear may happen elsewhere. For Sir Christopher, terror on our doorsteps is the price we have to bear for our involvement in this necessary war.
Where does this problematic legacy leave Tony Blair? There is a groundswell of opinion at large, and I suspect with in the Labour Party as well, that the Prime Minister having signalled that he will be handing over to a new leader, probably Gordon Brown, prior to the next election, is now personally weakened. This in turn weakens his legislative programme, and indeed the Labour Party as a whole.
A word in your ear, Prime Minister. If you really want to see the Labour win a fourth term of office, go gracefully now, before the integrity of the Party becomes fatally compromised.
posted by MichaelElliott @ 9:47 AM
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