Tom Richmond: It's not just Tony Blair with blood on his hands. So, too, does Parliament

IF Tony Blair's reputation is bloodied beyond repair by the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq invasion, and the 'I will be with you whatever' note sent to George W Bush eight months before military hostilities began, Parliament's standing is just as tarnished as the UK comes to terms with the report's devastating conclusions.
Protesters outside the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London, where the publication of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War took place.Protesters outside the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London, where the publication of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War took place.
Protesters outside the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London, where the publication of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War took place.

Its Ministers, MPs, peers and senior civil servants should – I believe – be just as culpable as Mr Blair, public enemy number one, for sending 179 UK service personnel to their deaths in a conflict which has made the world less safe after Saddam Hussein’s overthrow. They should not escape censure as pressure grows for Labour’s ex-leader to answer for war crimes.

As far as this correspondent is concerned, Parliament is collectively guilty on three counts of betraying the national interest: namely its failure to scrutinise the Blair government’s modus operandi and its strategic failure to devise a long-term peace settlement for Iraq; breaching a duty of care by sending troops to war with inadequate equipment and then setting up such a convoluted inquiry that Sir John Chilcot’s conclusions came six years after their scheduled publication date.

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Like it or not, this truly devastating critique of Mr Blair’s style of leadership – the Chilcot report concluded that the “threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were presented with a certainty that was not justified” – represents a criminal failure of Parliament, and its members, to do undertake basic due diligence and scrutiny.

My reasons are this. It is staggering that well-documented concerns about the extent to which the Blair government sought to bypass the Cabinet, and Parliament, did not merit a greater outcry – even though the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Western world did change the whole dynamics of foreign policy. In the words of Jack Straw, the then Foreign Secretary, Mr Blair was operating as the “vice president of the world” and too many MPs from all sides were in awe of him as they approved military intervention.

On re-reading the diaries of Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair’s communications chief, the extent to which Downing Street was distracted by serial feuding between the then PM and his nemesis Gordon Brown was just as staggering as the Attorney General’s legal opinion being withheld from the Cabinet, a type of approach favoured by dictators.

Arrogance and war-mongering beyond belief, presumbaly because Mr Blair believed he was above the law, it is little wonder that not enough attention was given to basic fundamentals like making sure that Britain’s combat troops had the right equipment for desert warfare. Did no one’s conscious prompt this to be even considered?

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The haunting words of Sergeant Steve Roberts – the first British soldier to be killed in Iraq – remain damning of Parliament’s betrayal of the military. Killed by friendly fire, the Shipley serviceman’s life might have been saved in March 2003 if he had been wearing enhanced body armour.

Yet, in a tape recorded message that he sent to his wife Samantha shortly before his death, he revealed: “Still haven’t seen my combats yet. Kit we’re being told we are going to get, we’re not. It’s disheartening because we know we’re going to have to go to war without the correct equipment.”

It was the same with Ben Hyde, the Yorkshire Red Cap was one of six soldiers to be killed by an Iraqi mob near Basra in June 2013. The Northallerton soldier’s father John said this week: “When Ben deployed, he had one plate of armour instead of three. He had no desert boots. The Army just wasn’t ready.”

These five words – “The Army just wasn’t ready” – are probably more profound, and more important, than any of the 4.6 million written by the Chilcot team. Never again should members of the Armed Forces be expected by politicians to go into battle without basic equipment, like armour to protect them from roadside bombs.

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And this brings me to Sir John Chilcot himself. Set up in 2009, this inquiry was only supposed to take a year to complete. It has taken seven and many of its central findings have been superseded by subsequent events as Britain prepares for its third Prime Minister since Mr Blair left office in 2007.

Typically there will now have to be an inquiry into the inquiry when the simple fact of the matter is that 10 Downing Street assumed so much foreign policy power following the Falklands conflict of 1982 that it simply did not have the level of expertise needed to counter 21st century jihadism.

Having decided to go to war based on “flawed intelligence”, Downing Street was more paranoid about hostile media coverage – the aforementioned Campbell noted how his boss went on an ITV programme in which “the usual so called representative audience was packed with the usual activists” – rather than planning for the post-conflict Iraq. On the latter, I don’t recall a single debate in Parliament on how the peace would be maintained.

If only the public’s scepticism was heeded – or the principled opposition of Robin Cook who did resign as Leader of the Commons in principled opposition to Iraq and told Campbell as he left Downing Street for the final time: “I really hope it doesn’t all end horribly for you all.”

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Prophetic words, their poignancy is even more palpable on this darkest of days. And, given the extent to which Westminster will have more decision-making responsibility following Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, it is even more important that Parliament gets its own house in order following three unforgivable derelictions of duty that were blindingly obvious at the time Sergeant Steve Roberts fell to his death 13 years and three months agom.