Tories press for Iraq inquiry as deaths rise
At last the Tories have threatened to split with Blair over the Iraq war, which could never have involved British forces without the Tory votes in the first place.
Blair is certain to resist such a call, but Cameron is threatening to call for a vote in the House of Commons and, if Labour MP's opposed to the war and the Tory backbenchers join ranks, then Blair could be defeated.
The last time the Commons was given a chance to vote on this - on the insistence of a Scottish and Welsh nationalist motion - despite the vote for the war creating the largest backbench revolt in Labour history, a mere 12 Labour MP's broke ranks with the government.
However, an enquiry has been called for by Labour MP's seeking the position of Deputy Leader of the party and there is a chance that this would give anti-war MP's a final chance to give Blair a bloody nose as heads for the door.
Blair will no doubt once again attempt to fend this off by claiming that it is not the right time to have an enquiry as we still have soldiers fighting in the field. And he may, once again, win the day with that argument.The Government is expected to try to quell a Labour uprising by putting down an amendment saying the time is not right for an inquiry, without ruling one out.
Yesterday the Liberal Democrats called on Tony Blair to attend the debate and make himself "accountable" to Parliament for his "disastrous" decision to invade Iraq. Its foreign affairs spokesman, Michael Moore, said: "It is disgraceful that four years on from the catastrophic decision to illegally invade Iraq, the situation is getting worse, not better, and the US and the UK have no effective strategy to deal with this."
However, this tactic is becoming more widely recognised as the stalling action that it is. The last time this was debated William Hague made the point:
For the last four years Blair has insisted that now is not the time to question his motives or his actions, always managing to push that final judgement towards the horizon. It is simply scandalous that this man will be allowed to slither out of office without any full enquiry ever having taken place into what is Britain's worst ever foreign policy intervention: worse even than Suez."The British army is both tougher and more thoughtful than that and its operations should not be used as an excuse to avoid examining any of our political processes and judgments."
He said that an inquiry was not needed immediately but one should begin in the next 12 months to consider an operation "so vast, so expensive, so chequered with success and failures".
I could understand at the last debate why so many Labour MP's who opposed the war, decided that they would not vote for what they saw as an "opportunistic, cynical motion" and an attempt to attack the government.
However, as contenders for the Labour Deputy Leadership have now called for a full enquiry, and as hints fly around that Brown intends to have a full enquiry when he becomes Prime Minister, a call for a full enquiry - even a call for a full enquiry proposed by the Tories - might just garner enough support.
I won't be holding my breath though for Labour MP's to do the right thing. However, with the British death toll now at 150, one has to wonder how long Blair will be allowed to insist that it is inappropriate that his decisions four years ago should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny.
Adam Price, who tabled the first motion on this last year, said at the time, "The government's policy has been characterised by a cocktail of wishful thinking, self-delusion and evasion. The inquiry we are calling for ... is imperative in understanding where we go from here."
One can only hope that this argument, with the British death toll rising, has more traction a second time around.
It is also interesting to note that, once again, Blair will not even grace the debate with his presence. As always, when asked to face the Commons when it seeks to debate the political decisions that led to this war, Blair will hide.
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