Clare Short believes she was right not to resign sooner over Iraq: 'If I'd wanted to be popular, I just would have gone'. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe
For once, the timing couldn't have been better. It wasn't just, as Clare Short points out, that the Chilcot inquiry gave her a full three hours, "so I could say the whole thing"; it was also that she's standing down at the next election, and "it felt really good to go out and sit there and say my piece, put it on the record," before she leaves.
And say it she did, with demotic directness: Tony Blair had conned her. The attorney general misled the cabinet – which, in any case, consisted of informal cups of coffee, rubber-stamping, and backbiting. The idea that she might be sending people into an illegal situation had "thrown her into a tizz". Britain should be ashamed of its behaviour, and the special relationship urgently needed to be rethought. It was a potent brew of inside information, scornful conviction, and plain speaking, and at the end, for only the second time in the last nine weeks, the audience clapped.
Read in conjunction with Martin Bell's article in the Times this article starts to show ways in to analyzing the nature of the corruption in our political system.
The Bell article is HERE - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7015718.ece
Click on link to read the Clare Short article.
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