Iraq war advice published
The Government has published the full text of the letter sent by the Attorney General to Tony Blair, after exerts of the letter were leaked to the press.
The leaking letter sent by Lord Goldsmith to Mr Blair on March 7 2003 revealed that the Attorney General was “not confident” a court would rule the war was legal, although he maintained that a “reasonable” case could be made.
This advice was never shown to the cabinet or the House of Commons.
However, Mr Blair has roundly rejected any discrepancy, quoting Lord Goldsmith’s response to the leak last night, which said the document backed up the Government’s position.
“Let us just be quite clear about this. The key thing was the Attorney General advising it was lawful to proceed,” the Labour leader said this morning.
“This so-called smoking gun has turned out to be a damp squib, because he did advise it was lawful to proceed.”
Earlier, Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy accused Tony Blair of “misleading” the public over the legal advice he received on the war in Iraq.
He called on the Labour leader to explain the apparent discrepancies between the advice given by the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, and his account of that advice in subsequent weeks.
Speaking in Edinburgh this morning, Mr Kennedy said what the publication of the letter does “without a shadow of a doubt, is further undermine the Prime Minister’s reputation in all of this”.
The letter “does not square” with Mr Blair’s subsequent claims that there was no shift between the advice first given by the attorney general on March 7 and his published opinion in the House of Lords on March 17, he claimed.
“What is abundantly clear is that the Prime Minister made the wrong political judgment [and] went about justifying that judgment in a misleading fashion,” Mr Kennedy said.
He added: “We need now urgently a full statement from the Prime Minister of the missing ten days. What minutes were received, what meetings and discussions were held and who was involved.
“If the Prime Minister wasn’t prepared to trust his cabinet with the full facts, if he wasn’t prepared to trust the Commons with the full facts, then why now should the public trust him on May 5?”
Last night Tory leader Michael Howard said it was “obvious” that Lord Goldsmith had changed his mind and asked: “What, or who, changed the Attorney General’s mind?”
Continuing his attack this morning, Mr Howard said: “The issue of Iraq boils down to one very simple question: if you cannot trust Mr Blair on the decision to take the country to war, the most important decision that any prime minister can take, how can you trust Mr Blair on anything else, ever again?”
However, Mr Kennedy accused the Conservatives of “muddying the water”, saying that because they had “prejudged” and “misjudged” the war, they “quite frankly haven’t got a leg to stand on “when it came to criticising the Prime Minister”.
