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Mr Blair ... the crew are leaving your sinking ship From an article by Stephen Glover, Daily Mail, January 18, 2007 We should hardly be astonished that the rats are deserting Tony Blair's sinking ship. Such is politics. What is more surprising, as well as galling, is that some of the rats were once among the Prime Minister's firmest supporters, and were even prepared to bend the rules in his favour. Take Sir John Scarlett, the head of MI6. For possibly the first time in his life, this week he has been standing up to the Government. He refuses to accept the word of Tony Blair and the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, that a recent inquiry into alleged corruption by Saudi Arabian officials in the BAE fighter deal had to be halted on the grounds that it threatened this country's national security. How brave of Sir John! How creditable! Who could guess that this is the very same John Scarlett who signed off the dossier which claimed that Iraq had WMDs usable within 45 minutes. He had obligingly incorporated at least 15 drafting suggestions made by his friend, Alastair Campbell, which had the effect of making the dossier more scary, and formed the basis of the Government's decision to take this country to war. Heaven may rejoice over a sinner who repenteth, but would it not have been preferable if Sir John had shown the same independence of spirit in September 2002, when the dossier was being cooked up, as he is displaying now? But Mr Blair was then at the apogee of his power, and not easily to be resisted. He was not the sad, shunned figure he has become. Another apostate to Blairism is Lord Wilson, who as Sir Richard Wilson, was head of the civil service from 1998 to 2002. In a thumping newspaper article on Tuesday, Lord Wilson argued that the next Prime Minister should rebuild civil servants' trust in government. He also conceded that New Labour had politicised the civil service' apparatus that deals with the Press. These changes were pushed through by our old friend Alastair Campbell. Many of them happened on Lord Wilson's watch. Perhaps he grumbled in private at the time, but he fired no warning shots in public about this polticisation of the civil service. Now he criticises what in the heyday of New Labour he might have stopped. Alas, in office he dangled a toe in political waters which previous heads of the civil service had avoided. In July 1998, he joined Keith Vaz, then a rising backbench Labour MP for a lunch with the controversial Hinduja brothers, Indian tycoons and benefactors of the Millennium Dome, who were facing bribery charges in India that were later dropped. Mr third ex-sinner who is saying things he did not dare say when he was in office is General Charles Guthrie, Chief of the Defence Staff from 2997 until 2001. Unlike the present occupant of the office, Sir Richard Dannatt, Lord Guthrie never said boo to New Labour's goose. He did not even insinuate in public that the Government was starving our Armed Forces of necessary resources. Now such complaints have become commonplace, and recently Lord Guthrie belatedly joined the throng, saying that Britain could find itself in an 'extremely embarrassing' situation if its over-stretched and under-funded forces were asked to undertake any more missions at short notice. Why did he not say so before? Because, though brave in arms, he was not brave enough in politics. One understands, of course, that senior civil servants and servicemen cannot forever be crossing swords in public with the government of the day. But if an administration goes badly off course, if indeed - as was the case with the September 2002 dossier - it flirts with illegality, then surely on such occasions senior officials are morally obliged to make clear their true feelings, even if by doing so they risk losing their jobs. All that has changed about Tony Blair is that he has lost power and authority. Before Iraq and WMDs, he was the same fantasist who liked to cut corners and had a fluctuating relationship with the truth. Remember how in 1996 he announced on ITV's Des O'Connor Show that as a 14-year-old he tried to smuggle himself onto a flight from Newcastle to the Bahamas. His father, Leo, disavowed the story, and it later emerged that there were no such flights from that airport. We should have counted the silver spoons at that moment. Actually, some of us did. Now practically the whole world disowns Mr Blair, and some criticise policies they were happy to support, and even promote, at the time. Let us not imagine, however, that only former and existing senior government servants are at fault. The media have been equally to blame.
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