The obsessive control exercised over policy by Tony Blair and his inner circle was a key reason why bad decisions on Iraq went unchallenged. Without reform, they will be repeated
The Chilcot report has landed; all 2.6 million words of it. I hope many people have the staying power and motivation to read it as there are important lessons to be learnt and acted on if the failings exposed are not to be repeated. Alas, I fear that Whitehall will brush it under the carpet and continue with business as usual.
I should explain here that I have been reading it as an interested party; I was General Officer Commanding Multi-National Division (South East) Iraq – and for those of us caught in the unsustainable posture of Basra in 2007, the task of “withdrawing in contact” (the hardest phase of war, according to theoreticians) back to the Basra air station was a serious challenge. That we did it without a shot being fired or life lost on either side was, and still is, a source of huge satisfaction. This withdrawal is cited in Chilcot as humiliating but also as the best option available, which I prefer.
The report is heavily referenced and documented, running the risk of measuring the measurable at the expense of the valuable. I have yet to find any comment on the atmospherics of power that Tony Blair and his team created; and yet without having a feel for this, the decisions and actions taken by subordinates cannot be understood.
The Tablet contributor Peter Hennessy famously quotes Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, as predicting in 1997 that, if Blair were elected, we would see a more Napoleonic style of government. I was a repeat attender at Cabinet Office Briefing Room crisis briefings during 1999-2001, including the fuel protests, the foot and mouth crisis and 9/11, and I saw at first hand the intimidating power of Blair and his inner circle. Beneath the bonhomie of “Call me Tony” the control exercised by Powell, Blair’s director of communications, Alastair Campbell, and his director of government relations, Anji Hunter – and the correspondingly subordinate role of Ministers – was all too apparent.
