Will Tony Blair (have to) resign?

By Mike Peacock

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Tony Blair has been cleared of tricking Britain into invading Iraq but has drawn heat in a report for relying on deeply flawed pre-war intelligence.

"We found no evidence to question the prime minister's good faith," Lord Butler said after releasing his report on Wednesday, which damned Britain's justification for waging war against Baghdad.

While Blair placed undue weight on thin intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weaponry, Butler told reporters there was "no deliberate attempt on the part of the government to mislead".

Blair, whose ratings have tumbled over Iraq but who is still tipped to win re-election next year, reacted with relief. "No one lied, no one made up the intelligence," he told parliament.

But he added: "I accept full personal responsibility ... for any errors that were made."

Political analysts said the Butler report was largely a win for Blair as it cleared him of cooking up intelligence to justify a U.S.-led war that most Britons opposed.

But as with the Iraq-related "Hutton report" earlier this year, the Butler inquiry may be judged as the establishment protecting its own. "Whitewash (Part Two)" was the front-page verdict in London's Evening Standard daily newspaper.

Blair conceded intelligence about Saddam's banned arms -- the key rationale for last year's war -- looked weaker now than when he defied widespread opposition to join U.S. President George W. Bush's invasion.

"It seems increasingly clear that at the time of invasion Saddam did not have stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons ready to deploy," he added, a stark contrast to his confident pre-war assertions about the threat Saddam posed.

ONDON (Reuters) - The Labour Party has lost its Leicester South seat to the Liberal Democrats but narrowly held Birmingham Hodge Hill in the wake of a damning report on Iraq.

The Liberal Democrats won Leicester South by more than 1,600 votes from the ruling party, which held it with a 13,000-plus majority at the 2001 general election.

In Birmingham, Labour just won the Hodge Hill seat by 460 seats from the Liberal Democrats, its 2001 majority of 11,000 all but wiped out.

The results may stir further speculation about the Prime Minister Tony Blair's grip on power with a general election expected in less than a year.

"The justification which Tony Blair gave for backing George Bush was wrong," the Liberal Democrats' Parmjit Singh Gill said in his victory speech in Leicester.

"The people of Leicester South have spoken for the people of Britain. Their message is the prime minister has abused and lost their trust. He should apologise and he should apologise now."

Both constituencies had large Muslim populations, making them prime candidates for an anti-war backlash. The LibDems campaigned hard on Iraq and have consistently opposed the war.

Blair's public trust ratings have plunged since he took Britain to war in Iraq last year. Wednesday's report into intelligence failings on Iraq gave his anti-war critics fresh ammunition.

Former cabinet secretary Lord Butler absolved Blair of distorting the intelligence but said Baghdad had no significant stores of chemical or biological weapons ready for use, flatly contradicting Blair's pre-war claim that it did.

The losses make barely a dent in Blair's 161-seat House of Commons majority but will deal a severe blow to the morale of Labour, still reeling from internal turmoil created by the Iraq war, which many supporters and members opposed.

Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said Iraq was a major factor in his party's success. He said the Lib Dems would have won both seats were it not for Respect.

"This is a fantastic night of success for the Liberal Democrats. The story of the night is of two party politics in the cities - the Liberal Democrats versus Labour.

"Yet again we have shown that we can take on Labour and win. We have proved that the Liberal Democrats' win in Brent East was no flash in the pan and this will have big implications for the next General Election.

"The Conservatives are going nowhere except further down and out. This demonstrates that in large areas of the country a Conservative vote is now a wasted vote. The Liberal Democrats remain positively on course for a further major stride forward at the next General Election."

More than half of voters would not trust Prime Minister Tony Blair to take the country to war again, but he will win a general election likely within a year, a leading pollster says.

The opinion poll findings followed a grim week for Blair. An official inquiry damned as flawed intelligence he used to justify the Iraq war and his Labour Party suffered a humiliating parliamentary by-election defeat and nearly lost another seat.

The YouGov poll for the Sunday Times showed 57 percent of voters would not trust Blair to lead Britain into war again.

The poll put the Labour Party and the Conservatives on 33 percent each, with the Liberal Democrats on 22 percent.

But YouGov pollster Peter Kellner said he still believed the prime minister once dubbed "Teflon Tony" would win a third term.

"The shine has gone off him. But on current form, Labour will still win the next election comfortably," Kellner told Reuters.

"Voters are disillusioned with Labour, they distrust Blair, they are angry and disappointed and will do everything in their power to punish the government -- except to vote Conservative."

The two by-elections produced even worse results for the Conservatives, revitalised under new leader Michael Howard but still unable to make progress in convincing voters they are a government-in-waiting.

In the inquiry led by Lord Butler, Blair was cleared of tricking Britain into invading Iraq but he drew heat for relying on what was branded deeply flawed pre-war intelligence.

Howard, who in March last year backed the government in an eve-of-war vote, said he would not have done so if he had known the intelligence was flawed.

"If I knew then what I know now, that would have caused a difficulty. I couldn't have voted for that (parliamentary) resolution," Howard told the Sunday Times.

Sun 18 Jul 2004

'How can Blair live with Iraq deaths?'

Howard changes mind on WMD vote

Michael Howard says he would not have voted for war in Iraq on the basis of its WMD threat had he known of flaws in the intelligence ministers were using.
The Tory leader's comments to the Sunday Times follow the Butler Report's criticisms of the weapons intelligence.

Mr Howard said he could not have backed the Commons pre-war motion on WMD, but he would have still supported going to war by backing a different motion.

Labour accused Mr Howard of "plumbing new depths of opportunism".

Debate

Speaking of the Commons vote last March, he said: "If I knew then what I know now, that would have caused a difficulty.""I couldn't have voted for that resolution," Mr Howard told the newspaper.

He said the specific motion referred to Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction and long range missiles" posing "a threat to international security".

"If you look at the terms of the actual motion put to the House of Commons on March 18 (2003), it placed very heavy emphasis on the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

"So I think it is difficult for someone, knowing everything we know now, to have voted for that particular resolution."


The government only managed to carry the vote with the support of the Tories, after a large rebellion by 139 Labour MPs.


Mr Howard will go head-to-head with prime minister Tony Blair in a Commons debate on Iraq and the Butler inquiry next week.


'Hypocrisy'

Both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats had called for a full debate on the issue, after Lord Butler criticised the way the intelligence was presented.

Mr Howard supported the war in Iraq both before and after it happened.

In the Sunday Times interview Mr Howard did say he would have voted for a motion authorising military action if it had been worded differently.

A spokesman for the Labour party said Mr Howard's remarks plumbed new depths of opportunism and hypocrisy.

Another senior Tory, former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, has said Mr Blair should resign because he took the UK to war based on false intelligence.

Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy has called for a further inquiry into the political decisions that led to war.

Apology call

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Menzies Campbell called on the government to apologise for the errors highlighted in the Butler report.

He told BBC One's Breakfast With Frost: "I don't understand why the government doesn't face up to this. Why on earth doesn't someone apologise?

"Why doesn't someone come to the despatch box and say 'look, we got it wrong. We are sorry we got it wrong'?"

He suggested Tony Blair would face pressure to resign if he did not put up a convincing performance in Tuesday's Commons debate.

"The prime minister's position will depend on the extent to which he is able to defend himself credibly in front of the House of Commons."

Lib Dems gain as ethnic minorities abandon Labour

Martin Bright and Gaby Hinsliff
Sunday July 18, 2004
The Observer

The traditional black and Asian block vote for Labour has collapsed, as increasing numbers of people from Britain's ethnic minorities turn against the Government. The Liberal Democrats are the main beneficiary of the meltdown, pushing the Tories into third place among black and Asian voters.

A new YouGov poll for the Commission for Racial Equality shows that the traditional dominance of the Labour Party among non-white voters is over, with just 25 per cent saying that the party reflected their views, almost exactly the same proportion as the white Britons questioned in the poll. The Liberal Democrats attracted 18 per cent of the black and Asian vote with the Tories at 17 per cent.

The poll, conducted two weeks after the European election in June, will send a chill through the Labour Party, which has traditionally been able to rely on the loyalty of black and Asian voters.

CRE chairman Trevor Phillips said the poll was a wake-up call to the two main parties, who now enjoy the loyalty of less than half the white and non-white electorate. 'The lesson here is that no party should now think it can take the black and Asian vote for granted, but at the same time no one should think it is off-limits,' he said.

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Prime Minister Tony Blair will defend his decision to go to war with Iraq at a parliamentary debate today, answering opponents who accuse him of misleading Britain over Saddam Hussein's banned weapons.

Blair has taken a lashing from critics, some of whom say the prime minister knowingly deceived the government and the public about Iraq's weapons.

A report by former civil servant Lord Butler published last week absolved Blair of distorting intelligence but it contradicted claims that Iraq's banned weapons were ready for use -- the main reason given for the U.S.-led attack -- and showed vital caveats were dropped from spies' assessments.

Blair had hoped the findings would allow him to draw a line under Iraq and focus on domestic issues, but the row over the war continues to rage.

A day after the report was made public, the Labour Party suffered a stinging defeat in a parliamentary by-election, raising the threat of a voter backlash in a general election likely to be held within a year.

Blair remains on track to win a third term but Iraq has crushed his public trust ratings.

A YouGov poll for the Sunday Times showed that 57 percent of voters would not trust Blair to take Britain to war again.

But it also showed the Conservatives are far from taking power, with pollsters saying the Tories would need a lead of 10 percentage points in polls to stand a chance of overthrowing Labour.

On Tuesday, Blair will face off against Conservative leader Michael Howard, who last year voted with the government to go to war in Iraq.

Blair faces new inquiry as critics prepare for key debate

[...]

A poll released yesterday indicates a majority of Britons believes Mr Blair lied over Iraq. Fifty-five per cent of respondents to the ICM poll for The Guardian said Mr Blair had lied, while 37 per cent said he told the truth. Just 38 per cent of those polled said the war was justified, while 56 per cent felt it was not.

TEN QUESTIONS THE PRIME MINISTER HAS TO ANSWER

When did Mr Blair learn that some intelligence underpinning the dossier had been withdrawn? Did he learn of any doubts about that intelligence before the war?
What changes did Downing Street ask Lord Butler to make to his inquiry report? Did Mr Blair's office try to tone down criticism of the Prime Minister?
Why did Government witnesses not tell Lord Hutton that crucial intelligence on Saddam's chemical weapons production had been withdrawn?
Why was the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee not told the intelligence had been withdrawn?
Did Mr Blair challenge the fact that important caveats in intelligence reports were removed from the Government's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?
Did Mr Blair ask intelligence officers what sort of weapons the "45-minutes" claim related to?
When Lord Goldsmith said he needed "hard facts" to make the legal case for war, on what basis did Mr Blair reassure the Attorney General that the intelligence on Iraq warranted military action? Why will Mr Blair not publish the Attorney General's full advice?
Why was the Cabinet denied detailed papers on Iraq and given only oral briefings in the run-up to war?
Does Mr Blair accept that his statement to MPs on 24 September 2002 reinforced the impression that there was fuller intelligence behind the Government's dossier than actually existed? Will he now apologise?
Would Mr Blair have voted for the motion which authorised war in March last year if he knew then what he knows now?

The dossier was not the reason for the war, it was for the U.N

I ask the americans for more time

There was no plan after Saddam overthrowing

Prime Minister Tony Blair has announced reforms to government and spy agencies to try to quell a furore over a damning report into flawed intelligence on Iraqi weapons.

But Blair, whose public trust ratings have plunged in the war's aftermath, was again forced to defend himself against the charge he duped parliament and the country over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -- the primary reason he gave for war.

"The intelligence really left little doubt about Saddam (Hussein) and weapons of mass destruction," Blair said on Tuesday in a final debate on Iraq before parliament breaks for summer on Thursday.

"I don't accept it was a mistake to go to war. I think it was the right thing to do. I still believe it was the right thing to do," he added.

Blair had hoped to draw a line under the Iraq debacle with the report on intelligence, published last week by former civil servant Lord Butler.

Instead, Butler's findings have revived the row over the U.S.-led conflict and given Blair's critics fresh ammunition to question his credibility -- an issue they hope will feature prominently in next year's expected general election.

The Labour Party has suffered a string of embarrassing electoral losses in past months, partly due to an Iraq backlash. Opinion polls put him on track to lead Labour to a third general election victory but his trust ratings continue to suffer.

SPIES VERSUS POLITICIANS

Butler cleared Blair of distorting spies' assessments on Iraq but exposed faulty intelligence. He criticised Blair's informal style of government and its closeness to secret agents.

In response, Blair said in any future document, like a now notorious September 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons, intelligence would be presented separately from the political case and with all necessary caveats.

He also signalled a change to the informal meetings he held with senior ministers, intelligence chiefs and officials in the runup to war -- excluding his whole cabinet of senior ministers.

"In any future situation, such a group ... would operate formally as an ad hoc committee of cabinet," he said.