The Spectator’s Notes | 30 January 2010

Part of the purpose of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war is what has become known, post the end of apartheid, as ‘truth and reconciliation’.

Part of the purpose of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war is what has become known, post the end of apartheid, as ‘truth and reconciliation’. That is why it does not matter much that material already studied closely in the Hutton and Butler reports is being gone over again: this time, the hearings are public. The trouble is that truth and reconciliation are rarely compatible with general elections. In a classic example of the lack of courage for which he is known, Gordon Brown neither refused to have the inquiry at all, nor agreed to have it as soon as he became Prime Minister. Instead, he temporised, and eventually gave in. He also decreed that the inquiry should hear evidence in private, but then faced outcry, and passed the buck to Sir John Chilcot, who chose to go public.