Je ne regrette rien

Following the Chilcot report's release and Tony Blair saying how, in the same situation but with hindsight, he would still have invaded Iraq in 2003, here's a slightly re-worked version of my Oliver's Army take on his reign.


Don’t start that talking,

I could talk all night.

The Orangemen go sleepwalking,

While I’m putting the world to rights.

For careers’ information,

Have you got yourself an occupation?

Tony’s Army is here to stay;

Tony’s Army are on their way;

And I would rather be anywhere else

But here today.


There was a Gordon Brown;

He didn’t crack a smile;

But it’s no laughing party,

When you’ve been on the murder mile.

All it takes one itchy trigger,

Blackwater shooting up anyone, go figure.

Tony’s Army is here to stay;

Tony’s Army are on their way;

And I would rather be anywhere else

But here today.

Afghanistan is up for grabs.

London has many rich Arabs.

We could be in Palestine,

Over by that Iraqi line,

With the boys from the Mersey

And the Thames and the Tyne.

But there’s no danger.

It’s a professional career.

It all could be arranged

With just a word in Mr Churchill’s ear.

If you’re out of luck or out of work,

We could send you to Johannesburg.

Tony’s Army is here to stay;

Tony’s Army are on their way.

And I would rather be anywhere else

But here today.

And I would rather be anywhere else

But here today.

And I would rather be anywhere else

But here today.

Oh-oh-oh-oh oh-oh-oh-oh.

Coronation please!

What the UK needs now above all is stability.  Like democracy, Theresa May is the worst of all apart from all the rest.  Much as I have a searing antipathy for the zealous liar Michael Gove and Ken Clarke's claim that Gove would start a war with three countries at once, I may actually slightly prefer him to be on the two candidate shortlist to be sent out to the Tory membership.  This is because a poll of the crazies in the shires, so fuelled with EU hostility, are preferring Andrea Leadsom (despite claims she joined Leave, like Boris Johnson, for tactical reasons of advancing her political career) over May, even though the latter has done nothing to disabuse anyone of the tag RINO (Remainer in name only).
Ironically, the Tory MPs are actually the ones showing sense, with over half the parliamentary party uniting behind May.  But in this mood of anti-politician, anti-establishment resentment around the country, this could backfire.  The big difference between previous selections of Conservative party leader under the current system and this one, is that then, the choice was picking the Leader of the Opposition, where doctrinal purity may harm the electoral chances of the party itself but wouldn't do any great harm to the country, apart from letting the government of the day get away with murder, as the Corbyn experiment is proving.  Leadsom really only has being an extreme right-winger going for her but it seems that's enough for her membership.  In a straight contest between May and Gove, May wins hands down, for not being a political assassin who brought down the former king across the water (well, the London mayor's office is across the Thames from Westminster).  Against Leadsom, May's female advantage as a latter-day avatar of Margaret Thatcher is nullified and victory is far less certain.  When Cameron won the party leadership, he had to make some ultimately damaging concessions to outflank rival David Davis.  Leadsom or a hobbled May is bad for Britain in a post-Brexit climate.

Chilcot delivers

With over two million words, the Chilcot Report will be condensed by others far better than by me.  Some people might say Blair was one of the worst prime ministers but he does have the Northern Irish peace process in the positive ledger and though the invasion of Iraq was a catastrophe, ultimately it did not imperil the national destiny of the UK.  But Chilcot, although not ruling that the was illegal, effectively says just that in his civil service lanaguage: that the war was not one of the 'last resort' nor was it based on self-defence.
I was one of those opposed to the Iraq War long before it happened.  Saddam Hussein was a brute but the worst of his crimes were done with the tacit acceptance of the West, including inadvertently green-lighting the invasion of Kuwait and then permitting the massacre of those groups that rose up to oppose Saddam post-Kuwait liberation ('in the name of stability').  Saddam was merely one of the many unsavoury dictators around the world - you kick down the door of one, you have to kick down the doors of all, otherwise there is no coherence and the world system spikes into frenzied chaos, as has subsequently occurred.  That is why international law exists protecting sovereignty against Trotskyite permanent revolution (many neo-liberals were formerly on the hard-left) but the Bush administration saw international law as an impediment and if the Iraq War fatally weakened it, that would be an ancillary benefit to the Oval Office.
Only if Saddam was committing genocide in the years leading up to the war was humanitarian intervention justified but he wasn't.  The US Senate has concluded that there was a power vacuum in Iraq before the invasion - what Saddam wanted did not necessarily get done. Instead, the war has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (possibly up to a million, by the group commissioned by the British government to investigate genocide in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda) - that is a level of slaughter not seen since Rwanda.
The lies of Blair and Bush were fairly transparent - it had been a manifesto promise of Bush in his election in 2000.  As Ken Clarke said in the Commons at the time of the vote to invade, "It is an insult to the intellect that Iraq poses a threat to us."  But one needs an intellect in the first place for it to be insulted.

Failure at the top

There are some who might be tempted to feel sympathy for David Cameron for fighting to keep Britain in the EU but overwhelmed by anti-establishment nihilism and anti-immigrant fears.  No sympathy should be extended his way.  He was often described as the prep school boy who skimped on coursework but crammed for exams and came out smelling of roses.  Well, the EU referendum was one exam where he didn't have the answers and that has rebounded on the country for the worse.  Moreover, it was a completely unnecessary gamble caused by his inability to face down the EU-phobes in his party - in his weakness, he sought from the public the legitimacy he couldn't obtain through force of personality and patronage; rather the EU-phobes saw the opportunity to pull the UK out of the EU with a popular mandate to do so.  The official Remain campaign was hopelessly hamstrung Cameron and George Osborne prioritising Tory party unity ahead of winning while their opponents had no such qualms.  Winning the 2015 General Election through gobbling up the south-western seats of the erstwhile coalition partner, the Liberal Democrats, forcing Cameron to honour his referendum promise, looks ever more like a pyrrhic victory.
So, having 'lost Europe', probably losing Scotland and damaging the Northern Ireland peace process as a result and polarising the country (and let us not forget the mess in Libya), where does Cameron rank in the list of failed prime ministers.  Before the vote, people were saying if he lost he would be regarded as the worst prime minister since Anthony Eden, he of the illegal Suez debacle.  Now, with passions higher, some are speculating that history will rank him as the worst British prime minister since Lord North who ‘lost America’.
North made mistakes but the American Revolutionaries won through French and Spanish assistance and the reason Paris and Madrid could intervene was because London had previously alienated all former continental allies (hmm) who could have distracted the Bourbon monarchies by acting as Britain's sword – this was done in ministries before North and was an external factor beyond his control. By contrast, Cameron called forth his doom of his own volition, not unlike Eden, who was mentally blinkered by the 'lesson of Munich'.  Maybe Cameron could have done with that lesson on the failure of appeasing the unappeasable.
And so to the progenitors of 'Munich' - Neville Chamberlain and possibly Stanley Baldwin, both of whom may rank worse than Cameron for imperilling national security in their dealings with Nazi Germany.  Chamberlain was more culpable for British rearmament proceeded more slowly than in Germany in 'the time gained' and he also permitted the Anschluss, which undermined Czechoslovakia's defences and gave Berlin access to much needed hard currency (the Nazi economy was perpetually overheating and relied on plunder to keep going).  Baldwin has been exonerated by historians who say rearmament was not possible in the context of the contemporary public mood.  But he did sign the Anglo-German Naval Treaty, which though ultimately advantageous to the Royal Navy, unilaterally abrogated the Treaty of Versailles, enraging key liberal democracy ally France.  He also failed to forcefully intervene to prevent the remilitarisation of the Rhineland (Hitler had ordered his commanders to retreat with their tails between their legs should they encounter opposition), which set in train the following tragedies.
With North, the ‘loss of America’ was far from terminal and British trade swiftly increased after 1783. Anthony Eden and Suez, which although foolish and illegal, merely hastened the inevitable retreat from Empire. They will not be rated as bad as Cameron. Interestingly, they are Tories all.
Prime ministers, like US presidents, care about history and it will haunt Cameron to his dying day.  Unlike Chamberlain, Baldwin and Eden, he is young and will have to endure it far longer.

Top five worst prime ministers:
1. Neville Chamberlain
2. Stanley Baldwin
3. David Cameron
4. Lord North
5. Anthony Eden