Trust in British politics hit by Iraq war
According to the Archbishop of Canterbury, trust in the UK’s political system has been hurt by the aftermath of the war in Iraq.
Dr Rowan Williams warned that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction has hit the nation’s “political health”.
The Archbishop said in a sermon that a possible solution would be to admit the error.
Speaking in Cambridge, he warned that Christians should not look for an “impossible” level of selflessness from government.
He added that some of the “continuing damage” to the country’s political health was uncertainty regarding the real motives underlying international events.
The government has said Dr Williams’ opinions concerning the war are well-known and that it has nothing further to add.
The Archbishop said: “There were things government believed it knew and claimed to know on a privileged basis which, it emerged, were anything but certain – there were things which regional experts and others knew which seemed not to have received attention.”
Meg Munn, a member of the Christian Socialist Movement and a Labour MP, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the government was aware of “issues of trust.”
“But I do not agree at all with the view the government has repressed criticism,” she added.
“The situation over Iraq – and indeed over many, many issues – is there has been considerably more debate than has been the case in the past.”
