Brown’s promise of open government

You have to admire Gordon Brown’s brazen ability to ‘utter untruths’ between his teeth ! One day he promises open and transparent government, then not a week later declares that the delayed Iraq enquiry will be in private. A day before he reduces significantly the permisable scope of Freedom of Information requests, outlawing ‘public interest’ criteria as a justification for some types of FoI request. It leaves you breathless. If a piece of information cannot be released even if it is the public interest to do so, then exactly in whose interest is substituted ? Here we have statist old socialism at its best – the state having its own ‘interests’ separate from the interests of the public. I think I prefer the Mr Bean Gordon Brown to the Stalin Gordon Brown. Ultimetely the latter always seems to trump the former.

The spin machine has been in overdrive over the Iraq enquiry. The justification for a secret enquiry is that army officers and intelligence officers can speak freely. Hilarious. What is the point in speaking freely if no-one is allowed to hear what you say ! The other justification is timing. This is also hilarious. The demand by the families of those British soldiers who have lost their lives for an enquiry in public (ie not secret), is then twisted by Gordon Brown into a demand for a full judicial Public Enquiry over many years. So we have a choice do we – either a secret enquiry or a multi-million pound judicial Public Enquiry over several years. The government is doing its spinning best but this type of chicanery won’t wash this time. All deference to the government has evaporated. Pressure for an open enquiry may well win out. I for one want to express my views about the lessons in public (I appointed the first post-war regional government in Iraq in 2003, in Basra).

The government press release says that the enquiry will allow people to be candid. If one looks in the dictionary candid means ‘frank, open, ingenuous’, not ‘secret, concealed, disingenuous’. !

The other Brownian justification is national security ?  But it was the abuse of national security cover that got us into the war in the first place. The infamous ’15 minute’ claim, the ‘Niger yellow cake uranium’ fabrications, involving White House smears on intelligence officers, the WMD accusations, the decision to go to war when the Americans had already ‘turned’ several senior military officers prepared to form a new government withoutb a war – all these things passed through the hands of those supposedly responsible for UK national security.

The misuse of secrecy and ‘national security’ imperatives is part of the set of lessons to be learnt. A secret enquiry will hand control to those who were to blame for all this – since they will adjudicate over what is secret and what is not ! By making it secret, the unreformed out-of-control UK security establishment will escape criticism.

It is quite likely that US officials, fearing embarrassment and precedent rather than national security breaches, have leaned on a weak and flailing Downing Street and obtained a cast iron agreement to control the release of info at the enquiry.  Somewhere there is a memo from DC to Downing Street. Now that has a familiar ring about it………

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