Fueds over Iraq war rocked British Cabinet

The British Chancellor, Gordon Brown, was so infuriated by the lack of information being given to the war cabinet ahead of the conflict in Iraq, that he at one point threatened to stop attending the briefings as he claimed he could learn more from the media than he could by sitting in on Blair's official meetings.

This is just one of the many revelations that comes out in David Blunkett's newly released memoirs.

It is also revealed that the British Cabinet felt that Donald Rumsfeld had no plan for the day after victory, and that many in the Cabinet felt Rumsfeld held far too much power over the Bush administration.

Mr Blunkett, who was a member of the war cabinet, relates how ministers asked Mr Blair searching questions about the conflict and the lack of preparations for the post-war reconstruction. Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, is singled out for particular criticism by Mr Blunkett, who claims he enjoyed too much power in George Bush's notoriously divided first-term administration.

The Blunkett Tapes, whose week-long serialisation starts in today's Guardian, describe how ministers became frustrated with the briefings provided by Britain's military leaders to the war cabinet. At one point Mr Brown, who finally confirmed his support for the Iraq war only at the 11th hour, appeared to question the point of attending the war cabinet, telling Mr Blunkett he learned more from the media.

Mr Blunkett accepts that ministers misjudged the public mood in the run up to the war and tells how the consequences shook Mr Blair when a row over legal advice to the government broke out during last year's general election campaign.

The diaries make clear that Mr Blair was under severe pressure throughout the war and afterwards. Mr Blunkett relates how a tetchy prime minister snapped at him during one war cabinet meeting after Mr Blunkett warned that Britain and the US were fighting a hi-tech war without the modern strategy to back it up.

In order to publicise his autobiography, Mr Blunkett has done a series of interviews, some of which further aid in highlighting the mindset of Blair.

In a recent email debate conducted in the Observer, the writer Henry Porter accused the prime minister of presiding over a wholesale assault on traditional civil liberties with a raft of legislation which he claims has significantly weakened the rights of the citizen in favour of the state, ranging from anti-terrorism through ID cards and the right to demonstrate outside parliament to Asbos, jury trials and the criminal justice system.

For his part Mr Blair said that large parts of the legal and political establishment who complain about the erosion of civil liberties are out of touch with the people. And he promised more measures of the same kind in the war against terrorism, organised crime and anti social behaviour.

In a recent lecture a retired law lord, Lord Steyn, said that our government has been prone to authoritarianism, which he described as a creeping phenomenon encouraged by absolute power. Referring to Mr Blair's description of Guantanamo Bay as an understandable anomaly, he said that the feebleness of his response to what Lord Steyn described as the USA's flagrant breach of the rule of law, reminiscent of the worst actions of totalitarian states, is shaming for our country and makes the world perplexed about our approach to the rule of law.

What Blunkett's biography is making clear is that there was nowhere near the Cabinet unanimity on Iraq as we have previously been led to believe.

It would appear that the solidity of the Cabinet behind Blair's decision to back Bush's war plans is simply another lie to add to the long growing list of untruths that preceded that ill advised conflict.

The annoying thing is that we find all this out long after the event. What happened to the days when cabinet ministers resigned on points of principle? Clare Short and the late Robin Cook appear to be the only two people who acted on their consciences.

The rest appear to have voiced their discontent and then gone along with the illegal war on the grounds of maintaining Cabinet unity. I honestly am left baffled as to why some people entered politics; if an illegal war that has caused thousand of deaths isn't a resigning matter, what is?

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