One Photo Speaking Volumes

A single black and white picture is taking the UK by storm today. Have a look.

The Daily Mail writes:

The extraordinary picture ...lays bare just how much Tony Blair's Cabinet was kept in the dark as Britain went to war in Iraq.

Rather than being told by the Prime Minister that the country was at war, they had been roused from their beds by policemen or phoned by journalists with news of the first American strikes. But at this moment, 7.55am on March 20, 2003, they know no more about the final decision to launch the attack than the rest of the British public tuned in to the early-morning news.

Standing around an ante-chamber in Downing Street, drinking tea and coffee from china cups, they wait while in a locked room behind them the real War Cabinet meeting is already in progress.

Mr Blair is being briefed by military and intelligence chiefs about the attack, launched surprisingly soon by President Bush, a few hours earlier. But outside of this inner circle, the rest of the Prime Minister's War Cabinet wait for news, the strain and lack of sleep appears etched on their faces.

The picture includes three men who, instead of being kept out in the cold, should have been an intimate part of Britian's democratic process in action as Tony Blair followed George Bush into the Iraqi quagmire in pursuit of a policy around which the intelligence had been fixed.

The former editor of the London Times, who was present when the photo was taken, explains:

"In retrospect, there are only three men in this picture who could have kept Britain out of the conflict. The face of the first, Lord Goldsmith, does not suggest a man exhilarated by his long and agonised judgment that the war is legal, a view shared by uncomfortably few of his learned friends.

"The lowered eyes of the second, Gordon Brown, look thunderously at the camera. Five days before I had listened to the Chancellor while he put it to the Prime Minister, "What people ask me is why is there not just a little more delay". He had received only crackle and snap for an answer - and was now on War Cabinet call to discuss "resource allocation".

"Jack Straw is the Minister who has been most entwined in the negotiations about how long a delay there could have been. As the Minister responsible for MI6 he has responsibility, too, for the promise from its boss, Richard Dearlove, that weapons of mass destruction were assuredly there, in Iraq, and would assuredly be found.

That only one of those men, Jack Straw, had the courage to resign after being sidelined by Tony Blair, a neoconservative despot in socialist clothing, speaks volumes for the moral integrity of those Blair has surrounded himself with. They valued their own power more highly than the principles to which the claimed to hold allegiance.

One thing. On the strength of this one photograph, Gordon Brown, Blair's heir apparent and someone I've written favorably about in the past, should never, ever become Prime Minister. Brown is the MP for my hometown too. From this moment, he is dead to me. If he doesn't have the guts in such a situation to uphold what he should hold dear and resign, then he doesn't have what it takes to command my loyalty.

Update, In comments a reader points out that Jack Straw did not resign, but was re-assigned in a cabinet reshuffle last year. Many speculated it was because of his diverging views with Washington and the quote that Britain going to war with Iran was "inconceivable". The reader with the wonderfully wry handle "Caligula would have blushed" is correct. My mistake and I apologise for the misinformation.