Almost three weeks into this general election campaign, and for the first time something has been said that has really got me angry. Up till now it has mostly been the usual posturing and sniping from all the main parties, but it seems that on Wednesday Tony Blair actually said something of real importance. The Independent reported today that, in a BBC interview, the Prime Minister finally admitted that the government did disclose Dr Kelly’s name:
“[His death] was a terrible, terrible thing to have happened. I don’t believe we had any option but to disclose his name, because I think had we failed to do so, that would have been seen as attempting to conceal something from the committee that was looking into this at the time.”
This seems to me to be either the most mind-bogglingly stupid, or astoundingly arrogant, thing to have said just a fortnight before a general election. Either Tony Blair has forgotten that he (and the rest of the government) spent most of 2003 repeatedly insisting that they did not disclose Dr Kelly’s name until the press already had it, or he thinks the majority of the British public have forgotten about it , grown tired of anything related to the Iraq war, and no longer care what lies may have been perpetrated on them two years ago.
Given the minimal amount of reporting there has been on what should have a major campaign blunder, it seems the second line reasoning is actually correct. How very depressing.
Nevertheless it has further motivated me to vote for whoever is mostly likely to unseat Labour in my constituency - even though it means voting for a Conservative party whose policies range from the border-line racist to the blatantly impossible - and help to reduce the size of the next Labour majority.
