Why did the Attorney General change his advice?

Andrew Gilligan can confirm, for the first time, that five months before the invasion of Iraq the Attorney General’s advice to the government was that regime change was illegal

Hasn’t it been an exciting few months to be a lawyer? Once they just sat quietly in offices with stripey wallpaper and dado rails, sending out the bills. Now almost every couple of weeks, it seems, they hold the fate of the government in their hands. Lord Hutton may have missed his big chance, but the newspapers have transferred their hopes to the almost equally improbable figure of the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, and his advice on the lawfulness of the war with Iraq. The tabloids are printing snatched pictures, not of white-trash pop starlets, but of the middle-aged former deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office. The nation’s best-known legal luvvies are once again to be found in all major TV studios: Lord Lester of Herne Hill! Rabinder Singh QC! Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws! Everybody except Lord Goodman (at this point a colleague has reminded me that Lord Goodman is dead. That would explain it.)

The purpose of all the excitement is, of course, to discover what Lord Goldsmith’s legal advice was, and whether it changed in the run-up to the war. Was the Attorney General, shall we say, ‘subconsciously influenced’ to alter his judgment? The government is not telling. But today, for the first time, one of the people who worked closely with Lord Goldsmith before the invasion confirms on the record that his legal advice did indeed change, and did indeed become more favourable to war.

Michael Foster, the Labour MP for Hastings and Rye, was Lord Goldsmith’s parliamentary private secretary until the eve of the conflict, when he became one of several ministerial aides to resign in protest.