Re: British politics

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 2003-06-02 13:01 -0700, Jim Devine wrote:

> I'm no expert on the politics on Airstrip One, but it sure seems like
> Toady Blair's in trouble. The Tories seem to be turning against bipartisan
> attitudes on foreign affairs, while the Labour back-benchers are up in
> arms, since they feel that Blair lied to them about Iraq. The GUARDIAN
> reports a transcript of a conversation betweeh the UK's Foreign Secretary
> Jack Straw and the US Secretary of Superstate, Colin Powell, in which the
> former expresses deep doubt about the reliability of the latter's evidence
> about those famous WsMD right before Powell was going to speak to the UN.
> (Straw denies that any such conversation occurred.)
>
> While in the build-up to the Crusade Against Saddam, Blair helped Bush
> attain some (limited) legitimacy, now he seems a weak link in Bush's
> chain-mail.

Yes. This is very serious for Blair, and all the more so because no one is
mentioning the word resignation.

Thanks for the prompt. I see that Dan Plesch and the Guardian have stuck to
their guns.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,968603,00.html

I quoted Dan Plesch several times I think during the war and the lead up to
the war. He appears entirely establishment and 'sound' in his judgements.
You may not always agree with the Guardian's politics but it has a
reputation second to none for exposure, and it will not be intimidated .

It therefore looks as if Jack Straw's denial of the meeting with Rumsfeld
was a technical denial. There is some detail wrong like they did not meet
face to face, or it was not precisely that day, but it was sometime between
the Brits publication of their further document and Powell's speech at the UN.

And it is being widely circulated privately in diplomatic channels.

What is happening is that the cream of the imperial intelligentsia in both
Britain and the US, in both the intelligence and the diplomatic services,
are breaking ranks with their governments, declaring their professional and
class loyalty and making it clear they will not carry the can for the
repeated misrepresentations.

The Conservative party, the Daily Mail and the Telegraph are making clear
that despite their support for the war they consider an enquiry into the
reliability of British intelligence reports is necessary. Labour Party
members who supported the war are crucial in wanting this cleared up. There
is probably a majority in the House of Commons for an enquiry.

The British intelligence services who drink with the Conservative Party are
determined that their reports shall not be vulnerable to spinning by
Alistair Campbell, like those of other departments of government. They
mutter that this would affect the constitutional position of the
intelligence services in Britain for a century (let us after get our
democratic priorities right!)

In the US William Kristol has had to rush out an early issue of the Weekly
Standard on the internet to defend Wolfowitz vigorously.The complaint is
similar on your side of the Atlantic, that politicians were spinning the
intelligence.

No government minister was available for Newsnight last night to defend the
British government position. My guess is that the government will have to
declare an enquiry playing for the time that they would not give Saddam
Hussein or the Security Council. They would hope that meanwhile more graves
will be dug up in Iraq, to get people to accept that on humanitarian terms
it was right not to trust such a man, although ironically on the facts of
the charge he was innocent at the time of the invasion.

In Parliamentary terms this could lead to a motion that the Prime Minister
"misled" the House. This is a euphemism for lying and on those grounds
Blair might just get off. However the broad picture is agreed by sources as
wide apart as Peter Mandelson and Clare Short:  back in August Blair
gambled massively that he had to promise to support Bush in an attack on
Iraq provided that Bush would go through the process of the UN route.
(Wolfowitz's reference to the bureaucratic reasons why they settled on WMD
out of a number of issues, probably refers not just to Powell but also to
the Brits.)

There then occurred a process in which old data and the reports of the UN
inspectors was bounced back and forward across the Atlantic with a little
more spin on it each time. eg the US was the source for the information
from a Chalabi nominee that WMD could be deployed within 45 minutes, and
was also responsible for feeding the Brits the fake information about
uranium cake from the Niger. Blair hyped himself up, and clearly convinced
the majority of the cabinet and I guess convinced himself.  This is the
crucial point about whether he lied to the House. But in order to
demonstrate his sincerity he may have to be more transparent about why he
believed not only that Hussein was a brutal dicatator and therefore
untrustworthy if there was any risk of him recreating WMD, but that the USA
could not be restrained expect by giving it its head, the Palestinians had
to be crushed out of suicide bombing, and the US had to withdraw from Saudi
Arabia prior to forcing regime change on it, Syria, and in due course, Iran.

Blair may be so weakened he has to consider how to hand power smoothly over
to Brown and when, as Clare Short indicated he should. He may have to
sacrifice Alistair Campbell sooner rather than later.

The pressure on Blair is a bye product of the challenges of the
unilateralist agenda of the New American Century. In geopolitical terms the
UK has had to be the toady of the US for the last 60 years, although
privately it will try to manipulate around this. Blair who is a
multilateralist may still try to use these pressures on him to get the Bush
administration to adjust. Thus the weaker Blair is, the more Bush might
really have to consider carrying out his words - to put as much energy into
Israeli-Palestinian peace as Blair did into peace in Northern Ireland.

The more progressive people in the US can develop links with progressive
people in the UK the more you can get leverage on the US government and the
rather timid Democratic party.

exciting times.

Chris Burford

London