Nigel Nelson
Jeremy Corbyn’s rise to power began at exactly 8.34am on
March 20, 2003. But even he would have been shocked and awed if anyone
had told him at the time.
That was the moment US president George Bush launched his “shock and awe” bombardment of Baghdad, which would lead Corbyn to the Labour crown.
The Iraq War turned the Labour Party and the country against Tony Blair and everything he stood for.
The legacy of Labour’s most successful PM in the party’s history was blown to smithereens by the Tomahawk Cruise missiles which rained down on the Iraqi capital that morning.
And even achievements such as rescuing Kosovo from Serb genocide and bringing peace to Northern Ireland would count for nothing.
Also forgotten are Blair’s reforms of public services and schools, or that he was the man who brought devolution to Scotland and Wales – the PM who left Britain a happier place than he found it.
Until Iraq, Blair was destined to go down as one of the 20th century’s great PMs along with Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher.
Instead he is at the bottom of the heap. Blair is the warmonger, shouldering the blame for his part in 600,000 deaths, 179 of them British servicemen and women.
But the vilification of Blair did not go off like a rocket. It was a slow-burning fuse.
After all, he claimed Labour’s third General Election victory on the trot in 2005, two years after invading Iraq.
But by the time it came to choosing a new Labour leader this year, Blair and New Labour were dead and buried with stakes through their hearts.
The Blairite candidate Liz Kendall had no chance and Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper precious little.
Jeremy Corbyn shambled on to the scene as Labour’s unlikely new messiah backed by six in ten party members, his anti-war, anti-Blair and anti-austerity credentials sweeping him to victory.
Blair can comfort himself with the £60million fortune he has amassed since leaving Downing Street.
And some of the questionable clients he has acquired along the way, including corrupt regimes like Kazakhstan, and countries such as Sierra Leone and Rwanda, which got British taxpayer money when he was PM.
Yet the truth of what went wrong in Iraq has been a long time coming. And it promises to be longer yet.
Sir John Chilcot began taking evidence for his inquiry in 2009 and the families who lost loved ones have been waiting for his verdict ever since.
Former Labour law officer Lord Morris said: “Justice delayed is justice denied.” Chilcot has at last promised to publish his two-million word report – but not until next June at the earliest.
Blair launched a pre-emptive strike last weekend by apologising. Well, sort of. He said he was sorry for the mistakes of the war but not for the war itself.
The BBC said this was nothing more than “apologising for the things he’s already said sorry for”. But Blair did admit that getting rid of Saddam Hussein paved the way for the rise of Islamic State.
And Britain’s streets are now less safe because of that.
On Wednesday, MI5 boss Andrew Parker revealed that threat is at a level he has not seen in his 32-year career.
Six major plots against Britain were thwarted last year but Parker warns we haven’t even reached “the high-water mark” yet.
Last August, MI5 raised the threat level to “severe”, which means another 7/7-type incident is “highly likely”.
And social media spreads the jihadi message in a language which appeals to young Muslim recruits. At the heart of it is an apocalyptic prophecy in which Muslims and their enemies will meet for one final conflict.
This goes far beyond politics. They are goading the West into an end-of-the-world confrontation.
Unforgivably, Blair and Bush had no plan for rebuilding Iraq after conquering it. Iraqis were so fed up with what Blair did to their country 250,000 of them now live in ours.
The domination of IS cannot all be blamed on the power vacuum we left in Iraq, though it is hard to see how Saddam would have allowed them a foothold.
The virtual defeat of al-Qaeda, British intervention in Libya and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, hostilities between Israel and Palestine all play their part in strengthening IS resolve to be the British public’s enemy number one.
Blair cannot dodge the fact that he took Britain to war on a lie.
He claimed Saddam had 20 chemical missiles on standby which could be readied in 45 minutes to hit British bases in Cyprus. That was not based on evidence and no such weapons were ever found.
The most charitable explanation for the grotesque error that was this nasty little war is that Blair was doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.
At a meeting with Bush a year before war began, Blair not only wore a pair of embarrassingly tight jeans but made an embarrassing pledge.
That he would stand with America in the invasion of Iraq – no matter what.
A top-secret memo from then US Secretary of State Colin Powell says: “On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary.”
Having given his word, Blair would not break it. It was a matter of honour. But his greatest mistake was to make the promise in the first place.
And it is on that history will judge him.
That was the moment US president George Bush launched his “shock and awe” bombardment of Baghdad, which would lead Corbyn to the Labour crown.
The Iraq War turned the Labour Party and the country against Tony Blair and everything he stood for.
The legacy of Labour’s most successful PM in the party’s history was blown to smithereens by the Tomahawk Cruise missiles which rained down on the Iraqi capital that morning.
And even achievements such as rescuing Kosovo from Serb genocide and bringing peace to Northern Ireland would count for nothing.
Also forgotten are Blair’s reforms of public services and schools, or that he was the man who brought devolution to Scotland and Wales – the PM who left Britain a happier place than he found it.
Until Iraq, Blair was destined to go down as one of the 20th century’s great PMs along with Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher.
Instead he is at the bottom of the heap. Blair is the warmonger, shouldering the blame for his part in 600,000 deaths, 179 of them British servicemen and women.
But the vilification of Blair did not go off like a rocket. It was a slow-burning fuse.
After all, he claimed Labour’s third General Election victory on the trot in 2005, two years after invading Iraq.
But by the time it came to choosing a new Labour leader this year, Blair and New Labour were dead and buried with stakes through their hearts.
The Blairite candidate Liz Kendall had no chance and Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper precious little.
Jeremy Corbyn shambled on to the scene as Labour’s unlikely new messiah backed by six in ten party members, his anti-war, anti-Blair and anti-austerity credentials sweeping him to victory.
Blair can comfort himself with the £60million fortune he has amassed since leaving Downing Street.
And some of the questionable clients he has acquired along the way, including corrupt regimes like Kazakhstan, and countries such as Sierra Leone and Rwanda, which got British taxpayer money when he was PM.
Yet the truth of what went wrong in Iraq has been a long time coming. And it promises to be longer yet.
Sir John Chilcot began taking evidence for his inquiry in 2009 and the families who lost loved ones have been waiting for his verdict ever since.
Former Labour law officer Lord Morris said: “Justice delayed is justice denied.” Chilcot has at last promised to publish his two-million word report – but not until next June at the earliest.
Blair launched a pre-emptive strike last weekend by apologising. Well, sort of. He said he was sorry for the mistakes of the war but not for the war itself.
The BBC said this was nothing more than “apologising for the things he’s already said sorry for”. But Blair did admit that getting rid of Saddam Hussein paved the way for the rise of Islamic State.
And Britain’s streets are now less safe because of that.
On Wednesday, MI5 boss Andrew Parker revealed that threat is at a level he has not seen in his 32-year career.
Six major plots against Britain were thwarted last year but Parker warns we haven’t even reached “the high-water mark” yet.
Last August, MI5 raised the threat level to “severe”, which means another 7/7-type incident is “highly likely”.
And social media spreads the jihadi message in a language which appeals to young Muslim recruits. At the heart of it is an apocalyptic prophecy in which Muslims and their enemies will meet for one final conflict.
This goes far beyond politics. They are goading the West into an end-of-the-world confrontation.
Unforgivably, Blair and Bush had no plan for rebuilding Iraq after conquering it. Iraqis were so fed up with what Blair did to their country 250,000 of them now live in ours.
The domination of IS cannot all be blamed on the power vacuum we left in Iraq, though it is hard to see how Saddam would have allowed them a foothold.
The virtual defeat of al-Qaeda, British intervention in Libya and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, hostilities between Israel and Palestine all play their part in strengthening IS resolve to be the British public’s enemy number one.
Blair cannot dodge the fact that he took Britain to war on a lie.
He claimed Saddam had 20 chemical missiles on standby which could be readied in 45 minutes to hit British bases in Cyprus. That was not based on evidence and no such weapons were ever found.
The most charitable explanation for the grotesque error that was this nasty little war is that Blair was doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.
At a meeting with Bush a year before war began, Blair not only wore a pair of embarrassingly tight jeans but made an embarrassing pledge.
That he would stand with America in the invasion of Iraq – no matter what.
A top-secret memo from then US Secretary of State Colin Powell says: “On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary.”
Having given his word, Blair would not break it. It was a matter of honour. But his greatest mistake was to make the promise in the first place.
And it is on that history will judge him.
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