Do not be deceived by the predictably mild tone. Lord Butler’s report is no whitewash. It may not contain a killer sentence, but it comes surprisingly close to delivering one. After highlighting the discrepancies between the original intelligence and the way it was presented, Butler concludes: “More weight was placed on the intelligence than it could bear”.
Think about that seemingly modest sentence. The intelligence was the basis for Tony Blair’s decision to go to war. He presented it with a passionate and alarming conviction. Consider also Blair’s response in the Commons. For the first time he accepted that the intelligence was “less certain and less well grounded than was stated at the time.” Presumably he means that the intelligence was more speculative and tentative than he stated at the time. This is a devastating confirmation from an inquiry, and by implication from the prime minister, that the qualifications and caveats that came with the intelligence were omitted from the public presentation. Such a confirmation would be fairly damaging if the issues were relatively trivial.
Instead, Lord Butler was investigating the origins of a war. What is more, he was functioning within a limited remit in which he was obliged to focus on the intelligence rather than the culpability of political leaders. It was Blair who set the remit, no doubt aware that Lord Butler was not the type to stray beyond a brief. Lord Butler evidently tried not to do so. Even so, the gathering of the intelligence and the political context became so intertwined that Lord Butler could not avoid making implicit judgments on the prime minister. He concludes that Blair may have given the impression that the intelligence was “firmer” than it was. He decides that the intelligence was “seriously flawed” and, more significantly as far as Blair is concerned, “open to doubt”.
Blair expressed no doubts, at least in public. The report confirms that recent intelligence was “limited”. The report also criticizes the “informal” arrangements in Downing Street in the build up to the September dossier on Saddam’s WMD. The familiarity of these charges, and Lord Butler’s reluctance to criticize individuals, should not detract from their significance. They point to a single conclusion: Britain went to war on a premise that turned out to be false. In the Commons Blair clung to Lord Butler’s judgment that he had acted in good faith. Lord Butler explained at his press conference that Blair must have believed in all his alarming assertions because he must have known that truth would be discovered after the war. There is some logic in this hypothesis although Lord Butler underestimates the political pressure Blair was under when he paraded the intelligence without any caveats or qualifications.
The prime minister had told President George Bush long before that Britain would take part in the war. As the conflict approached he found that most of the voters did not support him. Blair faced the prospect of letting down the most powerful leader in the world or persuading voters and some of his own MPs to change their minds. In choosing the latter course he needed all the ammunition he could get. The limits of Lord Butler’s remit mean that we have to read between the lines, but it does not take a genius to do so. Blair is a political leader who never knowingly understates a case. He decides on a message, refines it, sharpens it and then hypes it up. His cautious, incremental 1997 election manifesto became a program to create a New Britain, a country that would be young again. His vague ideas for social security became a “welfare revolution”. He predicted that Ken Livingstone would be a “disaster” for London. He declared that he possessed “no reverse gear”. In such a political leader it is easy to see how “sporadic and patchy” intelligence became proof that Saddam possessed WMD.
As Ken Clarke argued in the Commons on Wednesday, Blair would not have won the pivotal vote in advance of the war if MPs had been presented with the qualifications that accompanied the intelligence. Other familiar characteristics in Blair’s political personality also came into play. He often makes premature commitments that he subsequently cannot meet. The late Lord Jenkins was promised a referendum on electoral reform. Pro-Europeans in this country and abroad were told that a referendum on the single currency would be held in this term. For good reasons Blair decided that he could not deliver. There is some evidence that he told President Bush at their Crawford summit, a year before the war, that he would support the invasion. He could not get out of this pledge and had to find a way of meeting it. He had made a commitment to a president as if he were a president too.
There is also a hugely underestimated factor in analyzing the Blair premiership: He has never held any other post in government apart from that of prime minister. His “informal” style, the lack of Cabinet consultation, is based on how he functioned as the most successful leader of opposition in post-war British politics. He has no other model on which to run a government. His lack of ministerial experience also partly explains why he chose to believe the intelligence with such unquestioning passion. He has never been a home secretary or foreign secretary, handling intelligence and observing a prime minister assessing intelligence with skepticism.
As Lord Butler asserts, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that Blair believed this patchy and limited intelligence. Michael Howard gave his most effective performance in the Commons Wednesday afternoon, short and forensic. Wisely he raised only two key points, the discrepancy between the original intelligence and the way it was presented and the broader question: Would Blair be trusted again in a similar situation? But Howard has only a tiny amount of political space in which to mount an attack. In response, Blair resorted to the old argument that the Conservative leader had supported the war and therefore was being opportunistic. This was one of Blair’s calculations from the beginning: He would get away with this because he would have the support of most Conservative MPs.
The Conservative leadership walked into a trap by giving unqualified support in advance of the war. But Howard’s unanswered question remains at the heart of the current political situation and has a wider application. Will Blair be trusted again? When he makes sweeping claims in a referendum on Europe, will voters believe him or will they recall how he chose to present the intelligence in advance of war? When he asserts with good cause that public services are improving, will voters wonder whether he is going over the top again, that more weight is being placed on the evidence than the evidence can bear? In the Commons Wednesday afternoon Blair stated that he accepted responsibility for the mistakes that were made.
Even in apparent contrition he was being evasive. What did he mean by taking responsibility for the mistakes? There is not a killer blow in this report, but Lord Butler has wounded without naming his victims.
