Iraq: A structural flaw or a supine Cabinet?

Henry79 Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 06:25:18 AM GMT Print-friendly version Facebook

Peter Hennessy gave a really good interview of 18 Doughty Street last week in which he described in a relaxed way what he thought about many topics- ranging from the Falklands War to nuclear armament under Attlee. Its well worth listening to and is here.

Amongst the things he said though was his argument that during the Iraq war the Labour Cabinet behaved irresponsibly. None of the members of the cabinet asked for the legal advice to be given to them, it was the Permanent Secretary at the MOD and commander of the army who asked for it and none of them asked for written argument about the war even though the Cabinet Office had actually prepared such a statement for them to read.




Does this reflect badly upon the present cabinet? Obviously it does. But why did they behave like that. In many ways, I sense they behaved so supinely because of the lack of any alternative figures to the Blair and Brown duopoly. The problem lying at the heart of the administration is the problem that lies at the heart of British politics- because of the focus of television the leaders are given so much power to make their arguments and their followers so little.

Furthermore a cabinet revolt would have been stigmatised as a split within teh government. Maybe they should have investigated more in a war but investigation and interrogation is a matter of habit- it isn't a thing you can suddenly begin doing once you enter the room on a particular day with a particular issue. The Cabinet don't seem to discuss, they don't seem to want to discuss and they don't feel confident disagreeing.

Part of this is because the formative experiences of most of the members of the cabinet lie in two periods- firstly the long winter of Labour politics in the 1980s when nothing a Labour figure said could be trusted and secondly the sudden and quite amazing burst into the limelight in the nineties when John Major's government burst apart. The lesson they may well have drawn is a simple one, disunity and therefore discussion leads to defeat, unity and the absense of discussion leads to victory. As the media will always portray discussion as disunity, a policy difference as a personal one, then best to keep discussion to a minimum.

I wonder therefore whether the structural flaw that contributed to the Iraq war disaster was really something we can attribute to this cabinet or to the leader centric, media driven world of politics today. If its the first, then we are fine- the cabinet will change and things will get better. If its the second then we should be worried because it shows that we are turning ever so slowly into an elective dictatorship and that isn't good because as Iraq shows even the best elected dictators with the best of intentions occasionally make mistakes, occasionally they make huge mistakes.

http://gracchii.blogspot.com


tags: , , , , (all tags)

Display: Sort:
Iraq: A structural flaw or a supine Cabinet? | 1 comment (1 topical)

Re: Iraq: A structural flaw or a supine Cabinet? (#1)

by TrueLabour on Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 12:26:34 PM GMT

It is well worth a viewing and was the sort of quality interview one used to get on BBC.

Hennessy does have slight leanings to a conservative view with liberal social attitudes.   He is open about this and the Conservative PPC interviewer, Iain Dale, asks him to clarify that.

That said Hennessy does describe the present cabinet as the most supine of all the ones he has studied and says that under Brown he expects that to continue.   Although he says Brown's skills at attention to detail should improve the planning behind the decisions.   As to why the cabinet is so "supine" he quotes Attlee's observation about Churchill that "nothing grows under a heavy roller" and that this cabinet has 2 rollers, Tony and Gordon.


Iraq: A structural flaw or a supine Cabinet? | 1 comment (1 topical)