Max Hastings, Mind-Reader

Max Hastings is one of the foremost military historians in the English-speaking world. His multi-volume history of the Second World War is magnificent. Until recently, however, I had not known that he counted soothsaying among his many accomplishments.

How else, however, to explain his article in today’s Daily Mail in which the old boy outs himself as a first-class mind-reader. Hastings is responding to a presentation Alastair Campbell gave to an audience of PR types in Australia in which Mr Blair’s communications wizard, perhaps rather too glibly, noted that Winston Churchill frequently and deliberately peddled untruths during the Second World War. And yet his reputation remains higher than that of poor old Tony! Astonishing, I know, and Mr Hastings is right to suggest the comparison between the two Prime Ministers is fanciful to the point of being fatuous.

So far so fine. But Hastings is not content to leave it there. You see:

[N]o sensible person would ever compare operational deception of the enemy in a world war with the political deception of the British people to justify a military adventure — the mission Campbell executed for Tony Blair before the 2003 Iraq War.