Blair or Churchill: who told the truth?
Can Tony Blair really be compared to Winston Churchill? A recent talk by Mr Blair’s former communications chief Alastair Campbell noted that Winston Churchill actively and shamelessly engaged in deception …
Iraq
The delusion of national elections
The fallout from last week’s referendum defeat for the Alternative Vote continues to settle, with comments from prominent Yes campaigners such as Jessica Asato and Peter Facey, as well as …
Iraq was not invaded because of the oil
The Independent is running a story based on secret memos that show that oil companies were interested in getting their hands on Iraqi oil, and that this was a reason …
Too much information
One has to admire the elegance of Tony Blair’s argument in front of the Chilcot enquiry last Friday. He was recalled to the enquiry after his previous appearance a year …
The 2003 question about Iran
One of Tony Blair’s better lines in his evidence to the Chilcot inquiry on 29 January was that one should not ask the 2003 question about Iraq – how much …
A failure of strategy in Iraq
I have already reported in an earlier blog entry on the Chilcot inquiry about flaws that emerged in the strategy of using the threat of invasion to press Saddam Hussein …
Jack Straw at the Chilcot enquiry: a blunt instrument
Jack Straw’s evidence at the Chilcot enquiry into the Iraq war yesterday, and the discussion that it led to of deadlines and resolutions, tells an interesting and important story about …
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The language of priorities
Aneurin Bevan famously declared at a Labour party conference that “The language of priorities is the religion of socialism”. This will not be a blog post about socialism – I …
Justice and peace
The Archbishop of Canterbury was forced to give a sermon today at St Paul’s cathedral at a service to mark the end of military operations in Iraq. You can read …
What Barack Obama does next
The newspapers and airwaves, having speculated and then reported on the outcome of the US election, are now speculating about what it means. The biggest significance will be for American …