Issue: 11 December 2004	PAGE 2 of 3 next >>

I now ask Lord Butler to stand back from the case, weak or otherwise, and say what he thinks of the war. Did he support the attack on Saddam? ‘I had a view on that before the war, and I had a view on it, you know, afterwards. And my view on it was not really much affected by what happened. I am not actually going to say what my view was because I haven’t said it publicly, and I’m not going to put it on the record now. But in my view the best argument for it was not what was believed to be there, but the argument that was made on 18 March 2003 [when Blair made a case for regime change, on humanitarian grounds].’

And since the humanitarian case for war has been pretty comprehensively demolished, I have a hunch that this answer hides a Douglas Hurdish dislike of the war. If so, it must be all the more painful, for him, to be accused in some quarters of a whitewash.

‘The thing I found that concerned me most after the report was published was that I got letters from people saying, we lost a son and you say there were faults in the government’s presentation of the evidence, and nobody in the government is paying any price. Those are the most emotionally difficult things. I knew beforehand that was likely to be said.’

But don’t these critics have a point, I wonder. Isn’t it mysterious that he should make these criticisms of the dossier, and yet that no heads should roll?

At this point in the interview I try for ages to get Butler to blame someone, and I have to admit that I fail. He accepts that it was right for the BBC to report the concerns of the intelligence services. He accepts that John Scarlett, the chairman of the JIC, made changes to the dossier at the behest of Alastair Campbell, but says they were ‘justified’. He says that John Scarlett would have been ‘toast’, had not his committee specifically recommended that his job be spared.

Yet he continually insists that it was not his function to point the finger, only to serve as midwife to the truth. ‘I feel strongly that this is something that is part of a much bigger issue on which people are entitled to reach their own conclusions, and I think we have given them the material to reach that conclusion. We have told them all they need to know, and that’s what I get satisfaction from.’

I try all sorts of tacks. Wasn’t it a fearful gamble for Blair to go to war on the basis of what he really knew about WMD, and the risk that they might not be there? ‘As you know, when you are in government, you’ve got to decide, and all decisions are a gamble.’

But isn’t he bound to be gentle on his chums in Whitehall, given that he was for so long their shepherd, and they his sheep?

‘Had I found that one of my chums had really done something rather disreputable I wouldn’t have hesitated to say so ... if I may sort of blow the trumpet of my own profession who are now again being asked to do inquiries.’

And then I try and try to get him to accept that some sort of culpability must be ascribed to Campbell, or Blair, or someone, for the way the intelligence data was hardened up — not least the claim that Saddam could be ready to fire WMD against British interests in 45 minutes — and though I get some tantalising answers, I do not really succeed.

Because I realise, as the evening starts to rub its back against the window panes of Doughty Street, that Robin doesn’t want to talk about the detail of his report, not any more. He wants to make some general and far more important points — but with implications for the WMD fiasco — about the way Labour governs the country.

It’s not that he objects per se to the proliferation of political appointees in Whitehall; it’s just that this can lead to sensible procedures being ignored. ‘It isn’t wise to listen only to special advisers, and not to listen to fuddy-duddy civil servants who may produce boringly inconvenient arguments.’ You mean, I say, boring and inconvenient arguments like, ‘The evidence is inconclusive, minister?’

‘Good government in my view means bringing to bear all the knowledge and all the arguments you can from inside and outside, debating and arguing them as frankly as you can, and to try to reach a conclusion ... I mean, it’s clear that politically appointed people carry great weight in the government, and there is nothing necessarily wrong with that, but if it’s done to the exclusion of advice from civil servants, you tend to get into error, you make mistakes.