Lord Butler, former cabinet secretary and head of the inquiry into the use of intelligence in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, delivered a damning critique of the way Tony Blair has run the country.
Papers on critical issues, including, he implied, intelligence reports on Iraq, were not given to cabinet ministers; and the notionally important cabinet committee on overseas and defence policy never met, Lord Butler told an audience of several hundred at the Hay Festival on Monday night.
Instead, the cabinet was merely given oral reports. "It was not a satisfactory way of proceeding," he said. Asked about the impact of an invasion of Iran, he replied: "All these questions should have been asked."
"The system of decision-making was faulty," Lord Butler continued. He spoke also of "flim-flam initiatives" and "too much legislation", adding pointedly, "White Papers are not the place for sound bites".
In an entertaining discussion with Philippe Sands QC that went right to the heart of the way we have been governed, Butler said that, in the eight months he was cabinet secretary following Blair's landslide election victory in 1997, the cabinet took just one decision - about the Millennium Dome. Blair had left the cabinet room to attend a memorial service; John Prescott was left to chair the meeting. The cabinet agreed - to leave it to Blair. "That was the one decision," said Butler.
Blair agreed to set up the Butler Inquiry only after President Bush had set up a similar commission of inquiry after pressure from Congress. What surprised him most, Butler told the Hay audience was the failure of the Joint Intelligence Committee to assess properly intelligence claims made about Iraq and to continue to monitor the situation as Hans Blix and his team of UN inspectors went into Iraq.
Butler and his inquiry team explicitly said that Sir John Scarlett, chairman of the JIC when the discredited weapons dossier was drawn up but then appointed head of MI6 by Blair, should not resign. Butler confessed to Sands that he was nervous at the prospect of being asked at his inquiry press conference in July 2004 when his report was published whether he believed Blair should resign. He was worried he might "cause a sensation". He said here, on Monday night, that that was "not a matter for us". Had he said even that back in July 2004, it would have fed the press's appetite for a head to roll, Butler suggested. "We were neutral about that." It was, he said, "a matter for political debate".
It was thus for Parliament - elected politicians - not unelected officials or former officials to decide, even though MPs were kept in the dark and officials knew far more than MPs. That was the message.
Would cabinet government be better under Gordon Brown? It would help, for a start, if relevant papers were circulated to senior ministers, Butler suggested. He said that if a new inquiry was set up into Iraq, then it should concentrate on the failure to plan the aftermath of the invasion. Why didn't the Blair government ensure that? "The Americans were calling the shots," noted Butler.
He said later that he had booked to see Called to Account at the Tricycle Theatre in London, where he will hear evidence his own inquiry heard, but leaving that audience with different conclusions, perhaps, from those we were left with in Hay.
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