Coalition Shifts U.K. Government Stance on Legality of Iraq War

Earlier, I asked the Foreign Office if Nick Clegg declaring the Iraq war to have been illegal should be interpreted as meaning that the government’s position has changed. He made the comments standing in for David Cameron at PMQs on Wednesday.

A spokesman for the FCO has come back with the following rather extraordinary statement:

“The Deputy Prime Minister was expressing his long-held view about the legality of the Iraq conflict. The Coalition government has not expressed a view on the legality or otherwise of the Iraq conflict, but that doesn’t mean individual members of the government shouldn’t express their own views about it.”

Note: The coalition government has “not expressed a view on the legality or otherwise of the Iraq conflict.” Legality or otherwise? Not expressed a view? And individual members of the government are now free to express their views on the subject.

It reads to me as though HMG is now neutral on the issue of whether or not the invasion of Iraq was legal. Or perhaps, at a stretch, the government thinks it was legal but doesn’t any longer want to express that view because it might offend some members of the coalition. Either way, that’s a subtle but significant shift.

If you had asked the FCO before the May 6 election what the government’s stance was on this, I’ll wager officials would have produced a straightforward defense of the U.K. action in 2003, declaring that government ministers were acting on detailed legal advice that suggested that the action in Iraq was within the boundaries of international law. But not now.

Clegg Declares Iraq War Illegal

James Forsyth makes an excellent point. At the end of Nick Clegg’s unsatisfactory exchanges with Jack Straw at PMQs the deputy prime minister attacked the former foreign secretary for his role in the “illegal war in Iraq.” Is this now the official position of the government? That the war in Iraq launched in 2003 was illegal?

Clegg used to say this sort of stuff all the time when he was in opposition. But he’s not in opposition anymore. He’s deputy prime minister in HMG. Within the constraints of cabinet collective responsibility, he is supposed to state the government’s position, especially when he is answering questions at the despatch box. His fellow cabinet ministers, William Hague, Liam Fox and Iain Duncan Smith, certainly don’t think the Iraq war was illegal. I would imagine that government lawyers are also still slightly jumpy about it. I wonder how delighted they will be to hear the deputy PM proclaim that the government did wage an illegal war.

I’ve called the Foreign Office press office to seek clarification. Has the government’s position on legality changed? I doubt it has. But they’re coming back to me. I’ll update when they do.

Update: A Foreign Office spokesman comes back with a rather extraordinary statement.

Clegg and Straw in Dire PMQs

Nick Clegg rather flattened an uninspired Jack Straw as the pair stood in at PMQs. But goodness, what a drab and lifeless occasion it was.

Straw deserved much of the blame, perhaps struggling to cope with the concept of being on the other side of the despatch box once again. He asked ponderous questions that went on too long.

Straw had chosen a good subject — Clegg’s questionable position when it comes to the coalition’s withdrawal of the loan offered by the last government to Sheffield Forgemasters. The deputy PM is the local MP and is accused of playing politics with the issue before the election and shifting position when in government.

But Clegg batted it away without really being put under any significant pressure, even though he may be vulnerable on this.

The rest of it was turgid stuff. Not that it was Clegg’s fault. Almost every time he or anyone else got going with a lively bit of partisan debate, Speaker Bercow intervened to dampen down the noise or curtail answers.

Bercow has decided that the British people hate shoutiness at PMQs and it being so unpopular with the voting public it must stop at once. But really? Do we want a boring PMQs? Just because voters say so doesn’t mean they are right or telling the truth. The public wants all sorts of things. It wants hanging brought back. If Parliament is now considered to be in the novel business of giving the public what it wants then there should be a free vote on the return of capital punishment this afternoon. (Don’t hold your breath, there won’t be one.) And no, I am not suggesting the return of hanging, merely pointing out that politicians invoke public opinion on a highly selective basis.

Anyway, the last PMQs of the session was a dud. Time for a holiday. Everyone needs a lie-down.

Cameron Wears Old Shoes for Historic Meeting With Obama

Call me overly focused on the question of men’s shoes, but I do think they matter. Small details in the shoe department can often unintentionally reveal a bigger truth about their wearer.

Take the pictures of David Cameron visiting Barack Obama in the oval office. This is a big moment for the new British prime minister. After his debut at the G-20 recently, here he is talking man to man with the leader of the free world.

But it has been noticeable how determined Cameron has been not to get too excited by his U.S. trip. He wants it to go well, and he has made very positive noises about the U.S. But he thinks British previous leaders have shown themselves as needy and a bit desperate to impress. He wants to play it slightly cool but not in an unfriendly way. This is broadly to his credit.

But as I looked at the pictures of the pair together, my eye was drawn to Cameron’s shoes …

Policy Not Personalities… or Was It the Other Way Round?

Various seasoned observers of the Blair-Brown wars (Andrew Rawnsley, Andrew Grice) have pointed out the delicious irony of these Labour memoirs including endless details of personality feuds.

Whenever anyone on a newspaper popped up with a story that suggested anything like the following: Gordon was not speaking to Tony because Peter had told Ed that he wasn’t at all happy with what he heard Gordon was saying about Tony and that Alastair had threatened to sort them all out but first would have to get Peter and Tony back talking to each other after they had harsh words at the weekend over Tony not standing up for Peter when Gordon refused to speak to him, well then the world was told by various spindoctors that this was not true. It was ill-informed gossip.

But according to those writing their memoirs, it seems that these many stories were true all along! Who would have thunk it?

When Rawnsley published an excellent book shortly before the election entitled The End of the Party (see what they’ve done there?) the Dark Lord was first up to accuse him of peddling “tittle-tattle.” All along Mandelson was planning his own book, packed to the gunnels with tales of infighting.

[More over the jump]

Cameron Trying to Avoid Blair’s Fate by Reforming at Breakneck Speed

The new government cannot be accused of at lacking ambition. Every week brings the announcement of another attempted major reform.

Michael Gove is rattling ahead with his free schools concept, and being accused of trying to railroad his expansion of the academy program through parliament before the recess (without proper consideration say his critics). The NHS is to undergo an unplanned transformation, with a huge gamble being taken on GPs being capable of commissioning more care and services. Ken Clarke is tearing up the prison works policy favored by the Labour government and the Tory administration before that. Police reform is accelerating. The Prime Minister is at it too. His Big Society plans (more of which later) were being unveiled on Monday. Radical changes to welfare are planned, although there’s trouble ahead for the coalition with the Treasury objecting to elements of Iain Duncan Smith’s schemes.

This is reform conducted at a dizzying pace. The aim? To capitalize on the early popularity of the coalition and use it to force through as much as possible before the cuts bite and the mood changes.

The Canned Cinema Ads and Tory Donor Disquiet

The Tory election team commissioned three expensive cinema ads that were never shown in the campaign and they’ve been the subject of gossip and speculation amongst Tory donors, Conservative frontbenchers and curious journalists ever since. Jonathan Oliver at the Sunday Times today has garnered the most detail to date, reporting this weekend that one of the films depicts young men grappling with each other in a shower.

“Another depicts a teenager being caught reading what at first appears to be a top shelf magazine. The third unshown ad makes light of teenage sex, portraying a girl confessing to her parents: ‘I am three months Conservative.’”

All were designed to show that the Conservatives had changed. The young men in the shower are discussing coming out as Conservatives, and the central characters in the other two ads are also struggling with the idea that they have become secret Tories.

The Sunday Times reports that fear of a public backlash meant the adverts were canned.

Labour Memoirs Make New Government Look Rather Grown-Up (*)

Don’t get me wrong: I love a good ministerial memoir as much as the next political junkie. But, after a long period spent reading the various accounts of New Labour’s war with itself, one does start to lose the will to live. And there are a load more books to come. (Can’t wait for Hilary Benn’s blockbuster for example, do hope he’s planning it for the autumn.)

But really, what a bunch of children. Peter has offended Tony by publishing his book before Tony. But Tony is pretending he isn’t annoyed and is sending texts to Peter that he can read out in interviews on daytime television with Phillip Schofield. Neil (Kinnock) is spitting blood over Peter’s book. Alistair C. has his own book out but thinks Peter has disgraced himself by selling the serialization rights. Hardly anyone is speaking to Gordon if they can help it. He’s writing his own book, but if his previous efforts are anything to go by it’ll entail much hard work for a tiny band of paying readers.

Inside the various books already out one playschool tantrum after another is detailed: Gordon shouted at Tony, Alistair C. made Tony sack Peter and Tony thought Gordon was “mad, bad, dangerous and beyond redemption” (note he didn’t think to share this view with the country when he made treacly speeches handing over to Gordon).

How did this lot have any spare time left in which to run Britain’s government?

Gordon Brown and His Secret Red Box Signing Room

Here’s another little historical detail that reveals quite a lot about the way in which Number 10 was run under Gordon Brown. Shortly after his boss David Cameron moved in, a key figure in the new government was astonished to discover from officials how Brown liked to deal with his ministerial papers of an evening.

Cameron, and Clegg, are pretty straightforwardly traditional when it comes to working their way through their red boxes every night. Each government minister is given a pile of papers to review, letters to read and sign and decisions to make. The papers are put inside one of the famous red boxes, which resemble large briefcases, and delivered to ministers’ homes so they can complete the day’s work as they watch one of their colleagues being beaten up on Newsnight. Cameron lives above the shop in Downing Street, but still opts to receive a red box.

Instead of a Red Box, I am told, Brown had a special signing room set aside in Number 10. If he was in London, officials would lay out on a large table the papers that various ministers, officials and departments wanted dealt with. Brown would scan this selection spread out one by one in front of him, review those that caught his attention and sign them with his black marker pen. But he would just leave the others. After he was done, an official would collect those papers that had been dealt with and find out what had been left behind on the “table of doom” because he didn’t like the look of it or couldn’t face making a decision.