Sunday 1 May
Sunday papers full of the war - leaked memo providing new evidence that regime change was the aim from July 2002, Foreign Office legal advice from March 2002 and admiral Sir Michael Boyce, former Chief of Defence Staff, saying that if he and his soldiers went down they would take some big names down with them.
Two different groups of lawyers have presented the AG's advice to the International Criminal Court, and the families of the British dead are seeking a public inquiry.
To cap it all, Blair went on air on LBC's UK Leaders Live without having briefed himself on the actual numbers of British dead. How could this have happened? Even if he does not have the number burned into his brain, someone should at least have made sure he knew it.
Speaking to someone who was part of the panel of the great and good which had just questioned Howard live in person and Kennedy live over the wires, I learn that when it's his turn, Blair's people throw them out and say our man will only take questions through the presenter. What's all that about then?
One of the questions was the killer one about the numbers of dead. The other was 'why have you not met the families?' to which he gave a reply which implied that he had. He has only met the families at the reception after the memorial service at St Paul's, when he looked extremely ill at ease apparently. The next day he suffered his heart incident.
Has a sitting PM ever come under such attack during a general election period? It's like the sinking of the Belgrano, only much, much more so. Iraq was sailing away from the exclusion zone; many more thousands have died, yet Thatcher, the most unpopular PM ever at the time, was re-elected soon afterwards.
The difference, apart from the scale of deaths and the scale of lies, is that this time the majority of the population is roused against the war, and becoming more so as each day, each death and each revelation comes.
The fight-back from the establishment too has begun in earnest.
I have spent the day at home with my now delightfully normal family, extended version. Needless to say, not one of us planted the potatoes.
- ©Reg Keys, 2005 -
