Egg on the commissioner's face

Last week I exposed as baseless another government claim on Iraq - that former attorney general Lord Goldsmith decided that the war would be legal before meeting two of Tony's cronies. In a new piece today for Index on Censorship, I suggest that information commissioner Richard Thomas also has egg on his face over for letting the government mix spin with fact.

It was Thomas who negotiated a shabby compromise with the Cabinet Office over a freedom of information request seeking to establish why Goldsmith had gone from doubting the war's legality on 7 March 2003 to unequivocally asserting that it was legal ten days later.

Instead of requiring the Cabinet Office to disclose actual documents, Thomas allowed them to construct a narrative account which would include claims that were not backed by documentary evidence. At the time, former minister Peter Kilfoyle called this a "sanitised timeline".

Faced with admitting that Goldsmith had met Sally Morgan and Lord Falconer on the same day (13 March) that he concluded that existing UN resolutions legitimised the war, the Cabinet Office merely asserted that he made up his mind mind before the meeting.

As I point out, Thomas failed not only to require the government to distinguish between fact and fantasy at the time, but to be open about the basis for the assertion when I asked him last November.

It seems the commissioner is still trying to get his head around the idea of openness.

More spin over Iraq

I've got a new story on Iraq in the online Guardian this morning:

Fresh questions over the legality of the Iraq war were raised today after the government admitted it could not substantiate its claim that Lord Goldsmith had changed his mind over the legal basis for the invasion before a highly controversial meeting with two of Tony Blair's closest allies.

Along the way

I've been out and about for most of the week and haven't kept up with this blog.

I was at the Environment Agency piece on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday, I did this piece for newstatesman.com, pointing out that ministers are still not quite singing from the same hymn sheet on Heathrow and air quality. The most interesting thing was that when Hilary Benn apparently went off-message, the potentially offending words were struck from the record.

On Wednesday and Thursday, I was at the information tribunal to hear the government's appeal against the information commissioner's order to release cabinet minutes around the attorney general's Iraq war advice. It emerged that the minutes may "prove the absence of sufficient discussion".

Calling it vigilantism is too kind

My take on Lord Bingham's comments can be found on this piece on Comment is Free.

I argue that Bingham has damned Blair, Straw and Goldsmith even while assuming that they acted in good faith. But it's quite clear that they set out a year before the war to create a legal justification - but failed to do so.

On the issue of the promised Iraq Inquiry, the government will still not say whether the withdrawal of most British troops by the middle of next year will allow it to take place.

Another Blairite jumps

So "Lord" Goldsmith is the latest Blairite to state that he will leave the government with Blair, as if we didn't know that already. Goldsmith represents more than anyone the corruption of the Labour government. He could have stopped British involvement in Iraq by sticking to his guns and re-stating his view that its legality was questionable but he buckled under political pressure. As if that wasn't bad enough, he was at the heart of the decision to stop the BAE/Saudi corruption investigation.

Goldsmith is getting a pretty bad press, with the papers reminding everyone of his misdeeds. Some, including the Guardian and the Telegraph, carry Blair's response. Blair told Goldsmith that he had carried out his role

at all times with integrity and professionalism ... You have shown an unwavering commitment to the importance of the rule of law and human rights.

Of course, this means the opposite of what it says, as most of Blair's words do. What Blair means is, "when I asked you to compromise your integrity in the name of political expediency, war-mongering and corruption, you obliged and I couldn't have done it without you".