4 Comments

1. malcolm.pryce on 07/08/2016 at 5:02 am

   Hey Guys, I think you are being just a bit unfair on the Chilcot report. At least from my UK perspective. Yes, it didn’t tell us anything we didn’t know thirteen years ago, but that is precisely the point. Thirteen years ago, many of said all this and were scoffed at and dismissed by large swathes of the Establishment. But, if you read the front pages of the press the day after the report, it’s almost total vindication of the what we all said thirteen years ago. Imagine if a report into Building 7 concluded after thirteen years it was brought down by a controlled demolition, would you yawn and say, Yeah we all knew that in 2001? The degree of unanimity on this is pretty seismic, almost every aspect of the UK’s involvement in the war has been excoriated. Of course no one is going to be endited, that was never the remit, but the complete trashing of Tony Blair and his mountain of lies is complete. You can say it changes nothing but I suspect at the very least it will make British interventions like this in the future either much more difficult or even impossible. You could tell this from watching David Cameron giving his response in the Commons, he was clearly very aware that his own record on, for example, Libya was now under scrutiny. Any future Prime Minister facing such a decision will be very well aware of the lessons of the Chilcot Report. Of course it could have gone further, but for all of us who took for granted that it would be a whitewash, it was quite a pleasant shock. I actually found it strangely moving, after thirteen years in the Wilderness to have official confirmation that no, I wasn’t nuts. I love your show, just begging to differ slightly on this.

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   • Corbett on 07/08/2016 at 8:53 pm

     Criticism accepted. Sometimes we have to check our cynicism at the door and point out the positive elements of minor breakthroughs rather than dwelling on their shortcomings. On that note, if you have any links to any articles/videos/podcasts about the Chilcot report that you think addressed it in a more appropriate/nuanced manner, I’m sure we’d all be interested to see them.

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     • danielspink on 07/12/2016 at 10:06 am

       I also kind of felt a level of vindication from the Chilcott report, until I started listening to Blair’s/ Campbell’s response to the report which made me feel pretty angry. I think the mainstream narrative (now) is that the war was a bad thing, but you are right to point out that very little will happen. There is a contempt of parliament motion which “could” be brought up.

       The timing of the whole Chilcott affair has been linked in with the attack on the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn is currently embroiled in a leadership coup orchestrated by mainly Blairite MPs and planned before the Brexit fallout, and the publishing of the Chilcott report. The positive side of the Chilcott report is that it has certainly given more momentum to Corbyn who was staunchly anti-war unlike most of the Labour MPs attacking him now. In my mind he is our best possible chance of a decent leader in decades (if you don’t follow the mainstream press too closely). At the moment he needs all the help he can get, although none of the plotters seem to be up to taking him on in a leadership election, so they are trying to make it impossible to stand in the election for the new leader.

       Corbyn has also had a long standing distrust of the EU, and even after campaigning to stay he refused to say which way he voted. It’s a real shame as I feel that he was persuaded by the party to campaign for stay, when if he had campaigned for leave there would have been a much stronger argument for people who are struggling to see the leave campaign as anything more than a protest vote against the Government and fears of immigration.

       Blair’s possible contempt of Parliament.
       http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/10/tony-blair-contempt-motion-iraq-war-mps

       Pre planned coup against Corbyn
       http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/13/labour-rebels-hope-to-topple-jeremy-corbyn-in-24-hour-blitz-afte/

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2. NES on 07/09/2016 at 12:47 am

   Vote? Giant meteor.

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