Blair is criticised over his silence on Saddam execution

Nothing says more about the morally vacuous position Tony Blair now find himself in - regarding the execution of Saddam Hussein - than his total silence on the subject.

The British Prime Minister, who leads a nation that opposes the death penalty, has found himself boxed in pretty good - not only by the decision to hang Saddam - but much more by the grisly way in which it was done, with the dictator being taunted by his foes before the trapdoor opened.

Blair's rather cowardly response to this dichotomy has been to rely on silence and a bizarre statement from Margaret Beckett that appeared to want to point in two different directions at the same time:

I welcome the fact that Saddam Hussein has been tried by an Iraqi court for at least some of the appalling crimes he committed against the Iraqi people.

He has now been held to account. The British government does not support the use of the death penalty, in Iraq or anywhere else. We advocate an end to the death penalty worldwide, regardless of the individual or the crime.

We have made our position very clear to the Iraqi authorities, but we respect their decision as that of a sovereign nation.

So Beckett welcomes the fact that Saddam "has been held to account" whilst stressing that we, as a nation, oppose the death penalty. This is officially the position of the British government. We are told that John Prescott's much more blunt assessment was a "personal one", and not one that reflected the position of the UK government.

Unfortunately for Blair, his many comments on other people's deaths - including a call for the release of a fictional TV character - are now being used against him by opponents who are demanding that he makes some kind of comment.

Alan Simpson, Labour MP for Nottingham South said, "He can comment on the death of celebrities and even about fictional TV characters but not on the execution of an enemy."

He said he feared that Mr Blair's "collusion" in the hanging of Saddam would give ground to al-Qa'ida and lead to "tit for tat" public executions. "He clearly has one set of moral rules for his friends but the absence of all morality beyond that," Mr Simpson said. "Diplomatically, Britain will pay a heavy cost in the loss of our own standing that is reflected in the Prime Minister's silence."

Mr Simpson said Mr Blair and George Bush could and should have halted Saddam's execution but had made a huge misjudgement, helping to turn him "from a tyrant into a martyr".

Sensing Blair's awkwardness, the leader of the Opposition has been swift to make his position clear:

David Cameron, the Tory leader, attacked the manner of Saddam's execution and said the footage of the hanging was "pretty grisly". He told BBC Radio 4: "I think the way it was handled, clearly with people shouting and gesticulating, was quite wrong and I'm glad that the Iraqi authorities are going to have an investigation and a review into it."

This is the inevitable and drearily predictable outcome of a Labour leader tying himself to a Republican President. In the end you can't even bring yourself to defend the policies that you have become tied to.

The truth is that Blair is opposed to the death penalty and, I am sure, was as appalled as most of us were by the scenes that preceded Saddam's death.

However, he's not going to say so for fear of offending George. Nor is he going to defend an execution that he does not want to stain his already deeply pockmarked reputation.

So he's going to say nothing. This is where standing "side by side" with Bush leads you. Eventually, even one the world's great orators like Blair is reduced to finding it impossible to defend the indefensible.

Bush has managed the impossible. He has reduced Tony Blair to embarrassed silence. Now that took some doing.

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tag: Bush, Blair, Iraq, Iraq war, Saddam Hussein, execution, hanging, death penalty