Philip Ziegler

Some light shone in dark corners

issue 27 November 2004

When Lords Hutton and Butler were successively appointed to enquire into aspects of British participation in the invasion of Iraq, the more sensationalist elements of the media each time rejoiced. Incorruptible, fearless, Hutton and Butler would expose the rottenness at the heart of Whitehall and, if not actually bring down the government, at least give it a fearful pasting. When each enquiry in turn did nothing of the sort, the response was equally predictable. ‘We told you so,’ proclaimed the media. ‘Lickspittle, time-serving lackeys of the establishment! What could be expected but a whitewash?’ After such excesses it is a relief to be confronted by this thoughtful and dispassionate analysis of the issues most in question.

The contributors make up a powerful team. Editor of this volume is that paradigm of the great and the good, Lord Runciman. Runciman is now president of the British Academy; also participating are the president-elect of the Academy, Baroness O’Neill; the lawyers, William Twining and Michael Beloff; that Whitehall-watcher-in-extraordinary, Peter Hennessy; the former secretary to the cabinet, Richard Wilson, and the permanent under-secretary of state at the Ministry of Defence, Michael Quinlan; and the editor of the Financial Times magazine, John Lloyd.

‘The questions most interestingly posed by the disclosures in the two reports,’ writes Runciman, ‘are not who behaved well and who badly, so much as who, by their behaviour, made how much difference to what did and didn’t happen.’

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