Stephen Glover writes:
How many people in this country have ever
heard of the retired diplomat Sir David Manning? One in a hundred? No, it must
be fewer than that. One in a thousand would be closer to the mark.
And yet this unknown person was Tony Blair’s key foreign policy adviser in the run-up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
He stands accused of helping Blair to make a secret pact with George W. Bush in June 2002 to wage war against Saddam Hussein.
When Sir David Manning left Downing Street to become British Ambassador to Washington in the autumn of 2003, Blair said in a farewell speech that he was ‘desperately, terribly grateful’.
It had been a ‘master-pupil relationship’ — and Sir David had been the master.
It would be going too far to suggest that without Sir David at his side, Blair would have never committed Britain to invading Iraq, but he was a crucial figure.
If Blair took us to war relying on ‘sofa government’ — a cosy and largely unaccountable cabal of close advisers — Sir David was always sitting firmly on that sofa.
Without anyone apart from this newspaper expressing concern, this shadowy man has been made a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in the New Year Honours, to add to his previous gongs.
It may not sound a big deal, but let me assure you that to Establishment mandarins such as Sir David it most certainly is.
Along with his former master — or perhaps we should say his former pupil — he could be criticised when the Chilcot Report into the Iraq war is eventually published, having been set up, believe it or not, as long ago as 2009.
He could conceivably be required to hang his head in shame.
Moreover, publication of the report has been further delayed because those whom it has criticised — including, for all we know, Sir David — are being given the opportunity to tone down or even delete passages to which they take exception in the draft report.
Isn’t it incredible that an honour should be bestowed on a man who was at the nerve centre of a government that took us into a controversial, and very possibly illegal, war — before the long awaited report into the origins of that war has even seen the light of day?
Well, perhaps it’s not as incredible as all that in modern Britain. It is as though the powers-that-be don’t care whether the Chilcot Report will censure Sir David — unless they have been given a sneak preview so as to be sure that their man is in the clear.
I should say that the Royal Victorian Order is given by the Queen (which means her advisers) to people who have served the monarchy in a personal way.
In Sir David’s case, he has worked unpaid for five years (rest assured he is not short of a bob or two) for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as well as Prince Harry.
Let me detail the still unanswered charges against this man, whose influence on Tony Blair was so great. In 1997 the incoming Prime Minister knew very little about foreign policy.
That didn’t stop him declaring war on Serbia in 1998 over the disputed enclave of Kosovo, a conflict Sir David cheered on as number two in the Foreign Office.
By the beginning of September 2001, when Sir David went to No 10 as special foreign policy adviser, the increasingly messianic Prime Minister was warming to his role as the man who could put the world to rights.
A week later the World Trade Centre was destroyed, and President George W. Bush launched his war on terror. Britain was soon involved in Afghanistan; America drew up plans to invade Iraq.
According to Sir David Manning’s testimony to Chilcot, as early as April 2002 Blair told Bush that he was willing to use force to remove Saddam Hussein if attempts by the United Nations to disarm Iraq failed.
In June 2002 Sir David took a letter from Blair, which he had helped to write, and delivered it directly to the President.
This missive has conveniently gone missing from the official presidential library. It is said to have begun with the words: ‘You know, George, whatever you decide to do, I’m with you.’
Needless to say, no one in the Cabinet or the House of Commons had been apprised of this commitment which an unelected civil servant thought fit to deliver, and discuss with the President of the United States.
He was at it again in January 2003, writing a secret memo about a meeting between Blair and Bush, at which he was present, that showed the American invasion of Iraq would go ahead with or without UN support.
Ways of provoking Saddam Hussein into a confrontation in order to justify war were discussed.
Blair, of course, has more questions to answer than Sir David Manning because he was Prime Minister, and made the final decision to go to war having largely kept the Cabinet in the dark.
But it is highly disquieting that Sir David should have been involved so closely in the formation of a policy that turned out to be disastrous for this country, Iraq and the Middle East without having to answer for his actions, at any rate so far, because he was a diplomat.
In 2011 he stepped into the limelight when it emerged that he was chairman of a study centre at the London School of Economics, which controversially accepted a donation of £1.5 million from Saif Gaddafi (son of the Libyan tyrant) a year after awarding him a questionable PhD.
Also on this advisory board were a clutch of former Blair groupies including Jonathan Powell, former chief of staff at No 10, and Sir Mark Allen, a former MI6 spy who played a key role in bringing Blair and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi together in 2004.
As a piece of diplomacy, this turned out to be a terrible miscalculation.
Within a very few years, British aircraft were deployed to help remove the very man whom Blair had embraced.
Like Blair, Sir David has prospered in retirement, and kept his transatlantic contacts book alive.
He is a non-executive director of the multinational oil and gas company BG, and of Lockheed Martin, the enormous American weapons manufacturer.
No doubt he did the Royal Family some useful service, but it is an act of amazing presumptuousness to give him so high an honour when many unaddressed questions still hang over him, and the Chilcot Report remains unpublished.
It seems like another instance of the British Establishment looking after its own.
Many of us will need some persuading that Sir David Manning, like his boss Tony Blair, was not involved in some pretty underhand and undemocratic decisions that took this country into a calamitous war.
And yet this unknown person was Tony Blair’s key foreign policy adviser in the run-up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
He stands accused of helping Blair to make a secret pact with George W. Bush in June 2002 to wage war against Saddam Hussein.
When Sir David Manning left Downing Street to become British Ambassador to Washington in the autumn of 2003, Blair said in a farewell speech that he was ‘desperately, terribly grateful’.
It had been a ‘master-pupil relationship’ — and Sir David had been the master.
It would be going too far to suggest that without Sir David at his side, Blair would have never committed Britain to invading Iraq, but he was a crucial figure.
If Blair took us to war relying on ‘sofa government’ — a cosy and largely unaccountable cabal of close advisers — Sir David was always sitting firmly on that sofa.
Without anyone apart from this newspaper expressing concern, this shadowy man has been made a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in the New Year Honours, to add to his previous gongs.
It may not sound a big deal, but let me assure you that to Establishment mandarins such as Sir David it most certainly is.
Along with his former master — or perhaps we should say his former pupil — he could be criticised when the Chilcot Report into the Iraq war is eventually published, having been set up, believe it or not, as long ago as 2009.
He could conceivably be required to hang his head in shame.
Moreover, publication of the report has been further delayed because those whom it has criticised — including, for all we know, Sir David — are being given the opportunity to tone down or even delete passages to which they take exception in the draft report.
Isn’t it incredible that an honour should be bestowed on a man who was at the nerve centre of a government that took us into a controversial, and very possibly illegal, war — before the long awaited report into the origins of that war has even seen the light of day?
Well, perhaps it’s not as incredible as all that in modern Britain. It is as though the powers-that-be don’t care whether the Chilcot Report will censure Sir David — unless they have been given a sneak preview so as to be sure that their man is in the clear.
I should say that the Royal Victorian Order is given by the Queen (which means her advisers) to people who have served the monarchy in a personal way.
In Sir David’s case, he has worked unpaid for five years (rest assured he is not short of a bob or two) for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as well as Prince Harry.
Let me detail the still unanswered charges against this man, whose influence on Tony Blair was so great. In 1997 the incoming Prime Minister knew very little about foreign policy.
That didn’t stop him declaring war on Serbia in 1998 over the disputed enclave of Kosovo, a conflict Sir David cheered on as number two in the Foreign Office.
By the beginning of September 2001, when Sir David went to No 10 as special foreign policy adviser, the increasingly messianic Prime Minister was warming to his role as the man who could put the world to rights.
A week later the World Trade Centre was destroyed, and President George W. Bush launched his war on terror. Britain was soon involved in Afghanistan; America drew up plans to invade Iraq.
According to Sir David Manning’s testimony to Chilcot, as early as April 2002 Blair told Bush that he was willing to use force to remove Saddam Hussein if attempts by the United Nations to disarm Iraq failed.
In June 2002 Sir David took a letter from Blair, which he had helped to write, and delivered it directly to the President.
This missive has conveniently gone missing from the official presidential library. It is said to have begun with the words: ‘You know, George, whatever you decide to do, I’m with you.’
Needless to say, no one in the Cabinet or the House of Commons had been apprised of this commitment which an unelected civil servant thought fit to deliver, and discuss with the President of the United States.
He was at it again in January 2003, writing a secret memo about a meeting between Blair and Bush, at which he was present, that showed the American invasion of Iraq would go ahead with or without UN support.
Ways of provoking Saddam Hussein into a confrontation in order to justify war were discussed.
Blair, of course, has more questions to answer than Sir David Manning because he was Prime Minister, and made the final decision to go to war having largely kept the Cabinet in the dark.
But it is highly disquieting that Sir David should have been involved so closely in the formation of a policy that turned out to be disastrous for this country, Iraq and the Middle East without having to answer for his actions, at any rate so far, because he was a diplomat.
In 2011 he stepped into the limelight when it emerged that he was chairman of a study centre at the London School of Economics, which controversially accepted a donation of £1.5 million from Saif Gaddafi (son of the Libyan tyrant) a year after awarding him a questionable PhD.
Also on this advisory board were a clutch of former Blair groupies including Jonathan Powell, former chief of staff at No 10, and Sir Mark Allen, a former MI6 spy who played a key role in bringing Blair and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi together in 2004.
As a piece of diplomacy, this turned out to be a terrible miscalculation.
Within a very few years, British aircraft were deployed to help remove the very man whom Blair had embraced.
Like Blair, Sir David has prospered in retirement, and kept his transatlantic contacts book alive.
He is a non-executive director of the multinational oil and gas company BG, and of Lockheed Martin, the enormous American weapons manufacturer.
No doubt he did the Royal Family some useful service, but it is an act of amazing presumptuousness to give him so high an honour when many unaddressed questions still hang over him, and the Chilcot Report remains unpublished.
It seems like another instance of the British Establishment looking after its own.
Many of us will need some persuading that Sir David Manning, like his boss Tony Blair, was not involved in some pretty underhand and undemocratic decisions that took this country into a calamitous war.
Until Sir John Chilcot sticks his
head above the parapet, no one can take a view.
Modern Britain is a country in
which the mysterious Sir David Manning can play an unaccountable role
embroiling us in a catastrophic conflict that has destabilised the whole Middle
East — and then receive a further gong!
And after five years, no one, including
David Cameron, can say when the report into the whole shameful affair will be
published.
No comments:
Post a Comment