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COVER STORY
The hand of history is pointing to the
door The government brought the
Hutton inquiry into being by its own shoddy actions. The lying and
dissembling of No. 10 has so eroded public trust that, says Rod
Liddle, the man responsible — Tony Blair — must go
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| It seems as if we have another thing for which to
thank the beleaguered BBC journalist, Mr Andrew Gilligan. According
to Britain in Europe, that tautologically entitled pro-euro pressure
group, there is no longer even the slenderest chance that the Prime
Minister will attempt to drag us all into the single European
currency before the next election. Ian Taylor, a Conservative MP and
a board member of BiE, told the Daily Telegraph, ‘Earlier in the
summer they [the government] were holding to the line that we could
have a referendum in this parliament. Then they ran into Hutton. Any
chance there may have been has gone until the next parliament.’
Well, maybe — up to a point. But we ought to remember that
the government did not ‘run into’ Hutton, as if Hutton were an
iceberg encountered through the wildest stroke of misfortune on a
transatlantic voyage. I don’t think that the government could claim
for Hutton on its insurance forms; Hutton was not an act of God. The
government brought Lord Hutton’s inquiry into being directly,
through its own actions.
And so, as a result, the one thing
— perhaps the only thing — we know for sure that the Prime Minister
believes in, and cares passionately about, will not now be put
before the nation. It’s gone. And a good job too, you might well be
muttering to yourself, therefore missing the essential point: that
this is a government in total paralysis. Despite being buttressed by
a whopping parliamentary majority, it still cannot muster the
strength to face the public on any issue of importance. The trust
has gone and its support is swiftly ebbing away, as poll after poll
demonstrates. The fact that the opposition appears torpid and
ineffectual only underlines the gravity of the diagnosis.
Tony Blair should relinquish his premiership. It is not
simply that he has lost the trust of the voters, his own party
activists and increasingly large sections of the parliamentary
Labour party, and is regarded with luminous contempt by such
dispossessed ministers as Robin Cook, Clare Short, Peter Kilfoyle
and Glenda Jackson. It is that he can no longer do his job properly,
and that the protective cabal around him has shrunk with such
rapidity that he has nowhere to turn for succour and support.
And the things which have brought about this situation —
culminating the Hutton inquiry — were not rare examples of a lapse
in judgment, which we might be inclined to forgive, if not forget,
but are instead emblematic of the long-term traits of this regime:
lying, dissembling, and the orchestrated smearing and vilifying of
people who have objected to the lying and dissembling.
Andrew Gilligan and David Kelly were not the first members
of the public to suffer systematic hounding and character
assassination after having crossed swords with No. 10 Downing
Street. Rose Addis, the pensioner who wished only for an operation,
got it with both barrels, if you recall. It was put about that she
was a ‘racist’, to the incandescent fury of her family. The people
who ran the support group for victims of the Paddington train crash
were also defamed (to an even worse degree than Ms Addis — they were
labelled ‘Tories’). The former drugs tsar, Keith Hellawell, and the
former parliamentary ombudsman, Elizabeth Filkin, found themselves
attacked and, in the end, forced out of office. Even outgoing
ministers haven’t been spared — ask Mo Mowlam and David Clark, for
example. And, indeed, existing ministers, or at least existing
ministers who pose a possible political threat to the Prime
Minister, such as the Chancellor. Gordon Brown, you will remember,
is psychologically disturbed, according to Alastair Campbell.
The Prime Minister’s spinmaster provides us with the
constitutional reason why Tony Blair should go. Because, as we have
increasingly discovered these last few weeks, were we not aware of
it before, the Campbell and Blair are effectively — and
constitutionally — synonymous. A prime minister may rid himself of
unfortunate or ill-equipped Cabinet ministers who are also close
political associates and even friends — Mandelson, for example, or,
pretty soon, Geoff Hoon — but these people have a political
existence and raison d’être which is entirely separate from the
Prime Minister. But not Campbell. Between Alastair Campbell and Tony
Blair there are no degrees of separation, however much distance Mr
Blair attempts to put between the two of them at the end of this
sorry affair, when Campbell leaves.
Campbell is unelected
and unaccountable, except to the Prime Minister. Every act carried
out by Alastair Campbell carries with it the implicit sanction — if
not imprimatur — of his boss; it is, in effect, Mr Blair carrying
out those acts. Press officers who do something stupid or errant or
wicked are usually carpeted or sacked or both, much as the hapless
Jo Moore was. Mr Blair has had ample opportunity to sack Mr Campbell
for his misdemeanours — before the Gilligan affair and, indeed,
during it. But he chose not to, nor at any time has he issued any
disclaimer saying, ‘Look, my office got this wrong, I’m sorry,
forgive me. Forgive both of us.’ So presumably he supports
everything Mr Campbell has done. And if he supports everything Mr
Campbell has done — and, as we now know for a fact, Mr Campbell has
seriously transgressed by misleading Parliament — then clearly the
Prime Minister has no option but to leave office.
The
relationship between the two men has always captivated the
Westminster village, but even the political editors and
correspondents scouring the Hutton transcripts, their lips flecked
with saliva, must have been particularly tantalised a week or so ago
by a detail not yet fully explored. It looks as though, in June, the
Prime Minister asked Mr Campbell to scale down or cease entirely his
calamitous war with the BBC. But Mr Campbell did not do so. Instead,
he stepped it up with that blustering and arrogant performance in
front of the foreign affairs select committee and then, moments
later, his bizarre and unscheduled appearance on Channel 4 News, in
front of a clearly bemused Jon Snow. Campbell upped the ante.
Did the Prime Minister ask his chief of communications to do
something only to find that his chief of communications had gone
ahead and done exactly the reverse? And remained in office? With the
full support of his boss? Is that the sort of relationship you would
expect to exist between the Prime Minister and someone who is, in
effect, his press officer? Aren’t they meant to do as they’re told,
press officers? The phrase ‘wag the dog’ is beginning to take on a
degree of resonance here, I think. Except that in Downing Street it
is no longer possible to discern who is the dog and who the tail.
The Prime Minister’s inability or unwillingness to restrain
Campbell has landed him in trouble before — but at least now we know
a little more detail about the balance of power between the two men.
Balance, though, doesn’t seem to come into it, really, does it?
So, in a sense, all of this renders unimportant who, of the
two men, was directly responsible for the various bits of political
chicanery which have littered this whole affair. A press release
announcing that an official had admitted meeting Gilligan, and which
led ineluctably to Dr Kelly being named, was written in Downing
Street. It does not matter by whom.
It was the Prime
Minister himself who ordered Dr Kelly to be rigorously interviewed a
second time — although, as I say, it wouldn’t matter much if it had
been Campbell. The two are indivisible.
Both Blair and
Campbell have maintained, throughout the last ten weeks, that there
was no disquiet from within the security services — though how they
managed to keep a straight face while doing so beats me. We now know
there was deep disquiet pretty much everywhere you looked, except
between the ears of Sir John Scarlett. After Gilligan’s first
broadcast on 29 May spooks fell over themselves to announce as much
to any Fleet Street security service correspondent prepared to
listen. Even Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, the former chairwoman of
the joint intelligence committee, among other things, admitted that
there was grumbling in the ranks.
And are we expected to
believe that the Prime Minister did not approve of Alastair
Campbell’s close involvement with the September dossier? That he
didn’t know that Campbell had made almost a score of changes to the
benighted document which ‘hardened it up’ or, to put it another way,
altered the meaning and tone entirely?
A senior defence
official has admitted that the dossier was indeed hardened up. Who
are we supposed to believe was responsible for that, if not the
Prime Minister? Or are we to believe he didn’t know?
And
that ludicrous 45-minute claim: it was plucked from the main body of
the dossier (where it shouldn’t have been, anyway) and included in
Tony Blair’s frontispiece. Its position there must have been a
deliberate attempt to mislead.
The decision to defame Dr
Kelly after his death came from No. 10. Do you believe for a second
that the duty press spokesman, Tom Kelly, made up, himself, the
suggestion that Dr Kelly was a Walter Mitty figure? Portraying the
scientist thus was part of a quite deliberate strategy to place in
the public mind the idea that Dr Kelly was a borderline nutter who
had misled Gilligan and everybody else. Where do you suppose that
came from? And do you think for a moment that the Prime Minister —
who, as the Hutton inquiry has learnt, took an intense, consuming
interest in the row — didn’t know that such a strategy had been
adopted?
None of us can be sure what verdict will be
delivered by Lord Hutton. Inquiries of this kind have a habit of
flinging the blame all over the place and sometimes, you have to
say, failing to see the wood for the trees. But simply on those
charges I’ve recited above, I for one am convinced that the Prime
Minister is palpably guilty.
I mentioned a few weeks ago
that Labour wouldn’t win the next election with Alastair Campbell
still prowling the halls of power. That, I’m sure, is true, and,
what’s more, Campbell knows it. But as these events unfold it
becomes clearer every day that Tony Blair is equally culpable and
that there is no longer a meaningful difference between the offices
of Prime Minister and Director of Communications.
Mr Blair
memorably announced, on the eve of the Good Friday Agreement, that
he could feel the hand of history upon his shoulder. Yeah, well, the
hand’s come back again, Tone. And this time it’s pointing out of the
door.
Rod Liddle is associate editor of The
Spectator.
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