Blair deceived Parliament over grounds for Iraq invasion, claims former Cabinet Minister Short

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair deceived Parliament about the grounds for invading Iraq because he believed it was right to go to war, the inquiry heard yesterday.

Former Cabinet Minister Clare Short accused the ex-PM of "leaning on" attorney general Lord Goldsmith to make him mislead the Government

about the legality of the March 2003 invasion.

Ms Short, who resigned as international development secretary over the conflict, also told the inquiry Gordon Brown was "marginalised" in the weeks before the invasion and feared he would be pushed out of the Cabinet.

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She said Mr Brown, who was then chancellor, told her: "Tony Blair is obsessed with his legacy and he thinks he can have a quick war and then a reshuffle."

Over three hours of evidence, Ms Short told the inquiry Mr Blair

ignored the Cabinet's views and made the decision to invade Iraq secretly with his "mates". "I'm not saying he was insincere," she said. "I think he was willing to be deceitful about it because he thought it was right."

The former Minister said the Cabinet would have had second thoughts if it had seen Lord Goldsmith's detailed advice from March 7, in which he said a "reasonable case" could be made for attacking Iraq without further Security Council support, and heard the Foreign Office's two senior legal advisers believed there was no legal authority for the war. "I noticed Tony Blair in his evidence to you kept saying, 'I had to decide, I had to decide'. And indeed that's how he behaved," she said.

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"But that is not meant to be our system of Government. When you add secrecy and deceit the system becomes positively dangerous."

She was damning about Mr Blair's failure to ask Washington to delay the invasion so military commanders and humanitarian agencies could be better prepared and to allow weapons inspectors more time to search Iraq for WMD.

"I think he was so frantic to be with America that all that was thrown away. If he had done that, his place in history and the UK's role in the world would have been so much more honourable.

Ms Short stood down from the Cabinet on May 12, 2003. She now sits as an independent MP.

The inquiry continues.