Brown's Chilcott Evidence

Neither Gordon Brown nor his predecessor have added greatly to the sum total of our knowledge of the Iraq War in their evidence to the Chilcott Inquiry. It is amazing how little a seasoned performer can actually say, no matter how many hours he sits before an eminent committee. We now know that Gordon Brown thinks the war was right (could he have ever really got away with saying he disagreed with it, as the second most powerful man in the government at the time?) and that he absolutely would never have kept funds from the army that they needed. He stuck with his story, although it does contradict the views of other people, including former chief of staff Lord Guthrie, that Brown did in fact do precisely that.

I don't envy the Inquiry members, charged with trying to find a straight route through all this material. The Iraq War has become such a controversial, byzantine cause that finding its origins will take years, at the very least. I'm inclined to agree with the SNP's Angus Robertson - "Sadly, for all of those who opposed the Iraq invasion and for the thousands who lost their lives to it, the truth of the Iraq invasion may have been forever lost to the New Labour spin machine."