Bea Campbell Interview with Clare Short MP about Labour Foreign Policy, Iraq and the Hutton Enquiry.

We're at the beginning of a new millennium and we're in the midst of wars. After the 1997 Labour's new beginning promised joined up government and ‘an ethical dimension' to foreign policy. There are three departments – Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development, which even your enemies agree you transformed from nothing to something significant and successful – all with an interest in internal relations, globalisation, war and the litter of war – unexploded cluster bombs and landmines - scattered across devastated landscapes. Did these departments think together, join up their thinking with each other and with public opinion?

No – there was little coherent thinking across the three departments. MOD had its defence review adapting to the post cold war world under George Robertson, Dfid had its two white papers based on eliminating poverty and managing globalisation equitably. And the Foreign Office just carried on being the Foreign Office; White Papers are meant to bind the whole Government, but I kept getting feedback that the Foreign Office and Number 10 thought I was too obsessed with poverty and not flexible enough in how we spent our money. In the past, the aid programme has been contaminated with political and commercial self-interest. In Dfid, we stopped all that and focused the UK and increasingly international efforts single-mindedly on the systematic reduction of poverty. In the first term, we rubbed along with our different perspectives. In the second term, Blair made the classic second term PM move and became obsessed with foreign policy. In the second term power also became more ruthlessly centralised in No. 10. At first No 10 wasn't interested in the Department for International Development. At lot of people see it as the charity box – the big boys deal with policy and there's a bit of money and there's a lot of poor people so Dfid was meant to organise some kind projects. It is interesting how many women Development Ministers there have been and are internationally. But we in Dfid said if we want to reduce poverty and make the world more sustainable you've got to change trade rules, you've got to make the UN more effective at resolving conflict, you've got to help poor countries construct modern, capable states so that they can grow their economies and provide services for their people; and the World Bank and IMF have to change what they do. As Dfid became more effective and more influential internationally the Foreign Office became more and more uncomfortable with us. But we were having views about these big questions that they're in charge of.

The Foreign Office is an old fashioned, arrogant department, it's got very capable people in it, but the world is changing in a way that it can't quite understand. If you've got an arrogant stake in the old order it's hard to see the new order. So the FCO was always very touchy about DfID having views beyond its station.

The MoD is more interesting. The military got more and more interested inDfid's work I noticed for example that at the Birmingham Armistice Day celebration, the young officers have the UN medal Bosnia, UN medal Kosovo, and were interested in talking about the situation in Sierra Leone. And after military service a lot of them do MAs in peacekeeping and humanitarianism. DfID draws on a lot of people with different skills to respond to in emergencies – engineers, logisticians, and we had lots of military people on our books who want to come and help with crisis situations. Many in the military understand that getting order is part of getting people justice and security. The people suffering most are living where there is conflict, war, failed states, no security and in these circumstances people can't do anything to improve their lives. There was more and more interest in working with DfID among the military. But the top of the office, as I called it, again thought DfID was getting out of its box.

But it wasn't just a small difference – there was a clash of underlying analysis – they thought : how dare Clare and DfiD think they can answer these questions and have a perspective on British foreign policy, when they're just supposed to be being kind to poor people. It was an institutionalised clash.

Then there was a time when we were seen to be doing so well, and the Department's authority and influence grew. And then the clash came to a head over Iraq.

We are in an era-change: an integrating global economy, and the new technology that is driving global integration are also changing what the nation state can do. This doesn't make it powerless – after all, all global decision-making takes place through nation states coming together in the UN, the IMF and the World Bank, or World Trade Organisation. But a lot of sovereign power has to be pooled to be exercised. Global institutions have become more important, and we now have the possibility of sharing the technology and capital and knowledge equitably. This could mean an uplift for the poor of the world, or there is a real danger that the poor countries become completely marginalised and mired in poverty. That's the era we are in.

My view is that there's mind lag in the system. People at top of politics, the media and civil service – across the world - have their world-view framed by the order in which they arose. That means very old-fashioned views of foreign policy, diplomacy and war.I think it is now clear that inequality and poverty are the biggest threat to the future of the world. We could have an era of great advance, and if we don't we're going to have an era of bitterness, division, environmental degradation, disease and conflict – cruel conflict in failed states, criminalised states, lots of kids with Kalashnikovs who are drugged up and used as fighters. Big chunks of the world can end up in that condition. This is the challenge of our era: how to use the powers of the state differently to make a safer and more just global order.

In a way public opinion is already there - we had bigger demonstrations on debt relief and against the Iraq war than the world has ever seen before, people in different countries moving together. So, something big is moving people, and I think they're ahead of the politicians.

Those who can't shift their mindsets to think globally, to realise that equity and justice are about safety and security and self-interest as well as justice and morality are getting in the way. We need a different prism to organise their thinking.

The way they're talking about terrorism being the enemy now is not coherent or thought through. The way they're talking would make terrorists of the Americans who fought for independence, or the Free French who resisted the Nazis. What I'm trying to say is that there is enormous historical change taking place and the people have an intuition about it. But the political class across the world just can't think about an equitable world as a realisable political programme.

But you thought about it.

Well, the point is you can't do development without thinking about it. A former development minister from Denmark, Paol Neilson, said to me – and it sticks in my mind – that Development Ministers understand globalisation in a way no one else does because they are politicians in rich countries, but they look at globalisation through the eyes of the poor countries. I think he's right and the public have a sense of this.

Political meetings are crumbling and yet large numbers of people turn out to campaign for debt relief and to talk about development. DfiD had to turn people away from our regional policy consultations. So, I think the people have an intuition about this era, and an understanding that if the world goes on being this unequal it's dangerous.

How did the government departments did or didn't cohere an approach illuminates the Iraq war and its implications, doesn't it?

The DfiD perspective on development, equity and a sustainable planet is morally preferable, and more in tune with Labour's values and in the intelligent self-interest of the OECD countries – it clashes with the view of the world coming out of No 10 and the US. It's a clashing view.

This is not just about the way No 10 got us into war and failed to allow the UN to lead the reconstruction in a way that would be good for Iraq. It's also about a different view of the world and of Britain's place in the world.

I think there's a fantastically honourable place for Britain in the world now, by using its various seats on the world stage to help create international agreement that a safer world requires global equity. This contrasts with the present effort of trying to hang on to UK “greatness” as a kind of residual of empire trying – to focus on that revolting phrase - ‘punching above our weight'.

We're on the Security Council, we're a significant voice in the IMF and the World Bank, we're a significant voice in the Commonwealth, which brings together North and South - Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. And we have a significant seat in the EU, the largest single market in the world and largest single destination of developing countries' exports. We're the fourth biggest economy in G7. We can't make anyone do anything, but we can join with others to re-shape global institutions, to make them more equitable, to make the world more just, sustainable and safe. That's the role Britain should be playing – a larger country working for Scandinavian type values. This is a role of which British people could be proud.

This era could see a mighty uplift for the poor of the world if we used our knowledge and resources - we could see a faster reduction in poverty for a larger number of people than human history has ever seen. If we fail to achieve this there will be more bitter division, conflict and environmental degradation.

Q what are the spaces in the Labour Party or the Cabinet in which the conversations about those options has happened or could happen – after all the nation is alive, there's no group of people not talking about it the war and the aftermath – is there a Labour debate?

No. Robin Cook and Jack Straw argue that I am wrong to say there wasn't any proper discussion in the Cabinet about Iraq because there was a discussion every week'. Indeed there was, and I often initiated it, after the summer of 2002 – I tried to have discussions before the summer break and Tony didn't want it. But the discussion was only about what had happened in the last week. It was never about an analysis of the options, the consequences, risks, alternatives.

There was never even an examination of the Six Points which we are told in Peter Stothard's book, 30 Days encapsulated Blair's policy on Iraq.

There was no analytical Cabinet discussion. To be fair, the analysis should have been done in the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee of the Cabinet – which is chaired by the Prime Minister. But it never met. The decisions were all taken informally by Blair in his den. At the same time, there is little discussion and thinking amongst government Ministers, the parliamentary party or the party itself. The ruthlessness and control-freakery of the Blair system is at work throughout. Conference and the policy forums are also very controlled. So the spaces for thinking have narrowed and shallowed.

So, who got PM who appears to endorse the New Imperialism and the neo-conservative agenda: when did that happen when? And how does it happen when he's got a Secretary of State International Development who's been involved in several conflicts and catastrophes, doing and thinking something completely different?

I don't know exactly when it happened.

I think Tony committed us to go with America, come what may, from September 2002 and probably before. The neo-conservatives had been pressing Clinton to move on Iraq, and as we know from Bob Woodward's book on Bush at War, Donald Rumsfeld's response to Sept 11 was: let's go to war on Iraq - which is amazing, when every serious person knows Al Qaeda had nothing to do with Iraq.

At some point, in a process that has not been revealed to us, Tony Blair bought in to the neo-conservative agenda, completely bought it, secretly. When he says ‘there's a risk of WMD getting into the hands of terrorists', with passion, and he believes it with every fibre of his being', that's pure neo-con-speak.

Now who was the instrument of that? Sept 11 seems to be seminal. Somebody got to him to give him the neo-conservative interpretation - or misinterpretation - of September 11.

It's hard to know when it happened, because Tony doesn't believe in being straight with us, he doesn't trust any of us, his cabinet, his party, his country. He believes it's his duty to conclude what's right and then cajole us into doing it. We don't know when the neo-cons got to him. I don't know anyway.

But it's not over yet – both Iraq and Afghanistan are a mess – the neo-cons' approach does not work. We've got to find a way forward in Iraq, and the dangers of a bitterly divided, unequal world and the good instincts of the people of Britain will not go away.

The war may yet do him in, but that can only happen if, even though he may be discredited, there's an alternative approach and an alternative leadership. That would mean a challenge within the party – but where is the evidence that Labour is a thinking party? Gordon Brown has been relatively silent, and there is a sense that he would do virtually anything to secure his succession as leader. Is there an assumption that the party has another leader in waiting that it therefore doesn't need to enter the conversation, it doesn't need to sort out what it thinks about Iraq and assert its authority as a thinking party?

The commentators who always ask: ‘well, who's the alternative leader?' talk as though all power is with the leader. But leaders are shaped by the circumstances in which they come to power. If Blair were to go before the next election, which would give the Labour Party and the Government the chance to renew ourselves s and ask what's worked and what were errors, that would be important for the country, and for the party. The answer is to learn the lessons, not to look for the perfect leader – we should then choose from what is available, but the way the succession came about would shape the new leader. This is why discussion and analysis is essential and the effort to shut down debate in order to win a third term - disastrous.

Is the party confident enough to do its own thinking and to identify who it needs to help its thinking?

If this wasn't so sad this period would be politically fascinating, or rather it is politically fascinating and it is very sad.The Labour Party as a thinking institution is in very bad shape, the worst since I've known it since I joined. This is a test of the party. Can it find a way of learning the lessons, standing by its values and renewing itself without descending into bitter division?

Where, then, does the critique of the war find its popular articulation? A bigger demonstration than we've ever had in the history of Britain didn't stop Blair going to war. This is not to say that the people didn't have an effect – he was made to produce evidence, dossiers he didn't want to have to deliver; he was forced to concede a debate in the Commons, in effect to seek Parliament's permission – remember, he fielded Margaret Beckett and John Reid to say this was unprecedented, that the Prime Minister only really needed the Queen's consent - and now he's been forced to conduct inquiries. But where does that collective will find articulation if there isn't a political party?

That's right. This is historically very important for Britain, and my thesis is that the people's intuition is ahead of the political class, the parties are lagging behind public opinion. The Labour Party that would normally be the instrument of the more radical view is in government, not thinking and moving in a reactionary direction, the Lib Dem party acquitted itself quite well on Iraq. But it play different politics in different parts of the country, so it isn't a coherent instrument, and the Tory Party is more reactionary even than the government is, so how are the people of Britain to get their will respected? I don't know how it is going to play out in the political system, but something is going to give, there will be some outbreak, some challenge coming through. What's happened in Iraq and the neglect of Afghanistan will not go away. I don't know how it will find its articulation but I know it will. And we must urgently help Iraq to build a better future.

How?

Before the bomb at the UN compound and now the Red Cross, it was easy to say we've got to internationalise the situation and get the US to have the humility to give the UN its proper role in helping the people of Iraq establish their own government and make their own decisions on reform. And then peacekeepers would come to Iraq from many other countries including Arab countries, and Muslim countries. We could move forward quickly , run down coalition troops and the Iraqi interim government would make sure there's no misuse of oil and that reform of the economy brings benefit to the people of Iraq. That's still the right answer, but the disorder and attacks on the UN and Red Cross has set back that answer and the US is still unwilling to admit that it needs help and Britain is not doing what it could to shift US policy. We have had a further Security Council resolution, driven by US desperation for international support, which was even passed unanimously but the US will not hand to the UN the authority to help the Iraqis create their interim government and take charge of the reform agenda. And thus it continues to be a military occupation. I am afraid I feel pessimistic about Iraq and the Middle East.

What have you learned from the Hutton inquiry?

It's very important, this inquiry the real question is not Alistair Campbell versus the BBC but : was the power of the state abused to put pressure on Dr Kelly for political or presentational reasons that had nothing to do with the national interest? That's what Hutton is for. My impression so far is that they're doing it with dignity. All sorts of things are coming to light that are relevant but also go beyond the narrower question before the inquiry: the Jonathan Powell email saying there was no imminent threat from WMD, the fact that two Ministry of Defence intelligence officers had written to their boss saying they had reservations about the way the intelligence was used. That is remarkable: for two to write means there were more who were concerned. This is all relevant to the case of Dr Kelly, and to the decision to go to war, and the timetable that was imposed. But behind Dr Kelly are the Iraqi people, who are also precious human beings, whose lives have been destroyed, and when Hutton has reported we will still face the enormously important question of how we got to war and whether it was a just war and why there were no adequate preparations for Iraq after the war.

We could get fixated on the micro-questions: who's to blame Alistair Campbell or the Today programme, who inserted the 45 minutes, or exerted pressure to make the dossier harder. But the state of Iraq, the Middle East, how Britain behaved, whether the country was misled, could get sidelined. In the day to day drama of the Hutton Enquiry.

The dossier and the fact that it exaggerated the nature of the threat would not matter so much if Britain had kept the promise on the second UN resolution.

But was that a promise that could ever have been kept?

Yes. President Chirac made the position clear on 10 March. Dr Blix had to be given time to do his work. But if he came to the Security Council and said he could not secure disarmament, then the matter had to go back to the Security Council and in Chirac's view that would mean the UN authorising military action. The big question is why could we not wait for Blix to do his work? Why did we deliberately split the Security Council? We and I were completely misled about the French position on the second resolution.

The exaggerations in the dossier would not be good but would not have been so serious if Blair had done what many people had thought and hoped he was doing: saying to the Americans that we were willing to co-operate in dealing with Iraq provided we did it right - through the UN, keeping the international community together, minimising the suffering of the people of Iraq and indeed bring their suffering to an end. A lot of us though that's what our Prime Minister was doing. That's what I thought. I had repeated private conversations with him and conversations during Cabinet meetings. I often used the image of the people of Britain holding Blair's ankles and Blair holding Bush's ankles. That meant getting Hans Blix and the inspectors back in, giving Blix the time to do his work, thinking about whether there were the means of bringing down Saddam Hussein without bombarding the people of Iraq. Remember, we used military force to stop Milosevic ethnically cleansing Kosovo, but the war didn't go on to bombard Serbia. It stopped, Milosevic was indicted, and the people of Serbia were encouraged to bring him down and get him to the International court. So, they played their part in his overthrow and took charge of their own history.

We should have examined that kind of approach to support the people of Iraq in liberating themselves. We should have said to America that Iraq should be attended to, including dealing with Saddam Hussein as a war criminal, but the approach has to be respectful of the people of Iraq. Then the exaggerations in the dossier would merely be exaggerations. Sadly, they were a precursor of more deceit.

Did anything ever challenge or disturb your view that there was no weaponisation, that there was no evidence of WMD?The Hutton inquiry is touching on this. The very term Weapons of Mass Destruction makes people think of bombs and other weapons with chemical and biological agents in them. What actually was there was scientists with notebooks and tests tubes in hidden laboratories. So when people like Dr Kelly or intelligence officers said there was no doubt that Saddam was determined to have WMD that meant scientists with hidden notebooks and hidden labs. When say weapons could be used in 45 minutes, you give people the impression of immediately dangerous weaponised programmes, and I am afraid that was a deceit And I think that's what Dr Kelly was on about.

I'm not a pacifist, and I did not agree with the argument that containment was working. Saddam Hussein was defying the UN, but even more importantly sanctions, the instrument of the UN, were inflicting enormous suffering on the people of Iraq, So the situation in Iraq needed to be attended to. But there was absolutely no evidence of anything weaponised and immediately dangerous. Therefore, there was time to do things properly.

The dossier's half truths and deceptions were the first step on the way to trying to bully the Security Council into supporting a second resolution for the date already fixed for military action. . The bigger picture, therefore, is that there was an exaggeration of the imminence of the threat, a false commitment on the second resolution, and then we were deliberately deceived about the French position to blame them for the failure to get the second resolution. And I am afraid that because Bush and Blair had proceeded by deceit, they failed to prepare for the inevitable speedy military victory. They bring Iraq to the mess there is now. The whole story is enormously serious, more serious than simply exaggeration in a dossier.

Blair has always had a problem with this war. He's had to make a case for war – he didn't expect to have to. He's had to offer evidence of imminent threat. It wasn't there. He had to go to Parliament to seek a warrant for war. He didn't want to – he fielded John Reid and Margaret Becket to say this was unprecedented and unnecessary, and that all history required him to do was to go to the Queen. He's in difficulty because he's had to deal with a public that he's had to answer to. Something unprecedented has happened to Blair - he's never been called to account before in this way. It's a kind a Glasnost, isn't it?

Yes. Even with the cynicism people have about politics, when they cohere over something they see as significant they can prise the system open.. None of us know the outcome yet I think Blair decided that it was honourable for the UK to got to war with the US in Iraq. But he thought he could not quite persuade his party, his cabinet, his country. Therefore, he decided it was honourable to engage in some deception.

What does this tell us about how the Prime Minister thinks, goes about his business.

Power is being increasingly sucked into No 10, the Prime Minister and his entourage are making all the crucial decisions without consultation. In our system the legal and financial authority goes to Secretaries of State who are the route of accountability to Parliament through Parliamentary questions, debates, select committees. Secretaries of State are supposed to come together with the Prime Minister in Cabinet and hammer out agreed policy and then stand together with collective responsibility. That's how our system is supposed to work. But the power has been sucked to the centre. Secretaries of State become stooges who are allowed run their departments as long as No 10 isn't interested. As soon as No 10 intervenes then they have to bow the knee. That's the kind of politics we are getting at senior level. The accountability systems are breaking down, and the quality of decision-making is breaking down There is massive centralisation of power, lack of accountability, poor decisions.

What is the atmosphere among these Secretaries of State, then: they have power, but can't use it.

There's a feeling that Labour's failure for 18 years let down the country. And I agree with that. Change needed to be managed in a way that looked after people, but it was managed by brutalism in the Thatcher era. That led to the feeling that Labour must never again be divided. There's also a complete ruthlessness behind the smile in the way the Blair machine operates – spin is used to keep people in order, the machine spins to influence the media, it spins against anyone who doesn't toe the line. And journalists do their part in reporting what they are told who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down. If you don't bend your knee they brief against you. That is the price of being a Secretary of State. It runs right through the system. In addition, patronage is used ruthlessly to keep people in line.

What sponsors the buoyancy of opinion-forming within a party that's been made to feel its not good enough.Blair doesn't trust his own party, so he's got to decide what's right and then he's got to cajole and bully his party. So he doesn't believe in any collective, really. Then you have to ask: where do his ideas, values, come from? In such a centralised, controlled organisation, no-one is free to think and you end up with the emperor with no clothes.

Have any of the recent wars worked – have they achieved what the people in those conflict zones needed?

If we study the lessons of East Timor, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq, the lesson is clear that military power alone cannot make such countries secure. To create security you have to create proficient modern states and institutions that respect the people. Just relying on military might leaves a trail of disaster.

Building new institutions from scratch in poor countries and failed states takes sustained, long term engagement. War can be done in a few weeks. East Timor and Kosovo were successes – but Kosovo is stuck because its final status isn't settled. Afghanistan could have been a success, but there was just a failure to deal with the war lords hindered by drug dealing, to create a national army, and not permit the continuing use of militias. In Sierra Leone - all Britain did was stand over the horizon supporting the UN, we didn't actually go to war but that helped create the conditions to end the civil war and now they've had elections and there's one government covering the whole territory. But it's a desperately poor country, and we're still engaged in helping them build their state. It will take 15 years or more to build a functioning government system.

I think we should abolish the concept of war. There are times for the use of force – when force is being abused, to bring to an end to the misuse of violence and create institutions that can care for people, that are properly accountable, that deal with corruption. But our system and media get very excited when the bombs are falling. After that, nobody is interested, but the job is not complete. In fact, the greatest risk of conflict in the world arises in countries that have recently emerged from conflict.

What do people think war is? The history of Europe is of endless war, but it is war between states at parallel levels of development, organised war. But now war is happening in countries where state institutions are enormously weak, where the job won't be complete until a new political settlement and new institutions have been built. The military cannot do that., the Foreign Office cannot do that, it is development skills that are needed to help rebuild failed states.

Before the war in Afghanistan you warned that it must deal with the war lords, that Afghanistan could not be peaceful and secure if the warlords held sway. But it is hard to imagine how that could ever have happened – we know that the CIA went into Afghanistan to distribute millions of dollars – in cash, in suitcases – to enlist the war lords.

The Department for International Development was clear from the start that the warlords must be brought into a process of disarmament, demobilisation and resettlement and one national army needed to be built. The army must be properly disciplined, trained and accountable and all other fighters would have to be disarmed and resettled. We have been through similar exercises in other developing countries. But in Afghanistan the US was the leading player and did not give this priority. The were focused on continuing to hunt out Al Qaeda suspects. But Afghanistan cannot recover unless the war lords are disarmed. They make their money organising heroin production and smuggling , and Afghanistan's economy is based on illicit drugs and criminality. This creates a miserable life for the people . And now the disorder seems to be worsening and German troops and humanitarian workers have been targeted and killed.

I've been thinking about the way the media and the political system respond to all these wars. You can feel the adrenalin rush in the political system. We've had it in Kosovo, we've had it in Afghanistan, we've had it in Iraq. Yet these wars are all over in weeks. This is quite unlike any previous notion of war. But it's not really all over in weeks. To liberate a people and create security, justice and safety, takes years, and there's not the necessary commitment or the concentration on the post military phase.. Therefore we are leaving a trail of wreckage and bitterness. Somalia is still is a disaster and its people dispersed across the world as refugees. Even though I felt the run up to the conflict in Iraq was badly handled, Tony Blair, with a lot of effort, persuaded me to stay in the Government in order to help do the reconstruction right. I decided that given that the war was unstoppable – we should concentrate on helping the people of Iraq rebuild their country so that they could look forward to a better future. I was heavily criticised for staying, but I still think it was right to try. If the UN had been given the proper role to help rebuild Iraq, the people would probably now be able to look forward to a better future.

What did he actually say to you?

I thought I had a complete understanding with the PM that we would do it right, with a central role for the UN. That was just dishonoured completely.

The issue is the proper role of the UN. The coalition should have abided by its Geneva Convention obligations. There are limits on what occupying powers can do in international law: their obligation is to keep order, keep civil administration going and to deal with immediate humanitarian needs. Occupying powers have no right to engage in major re-organisation or reform and they do not have the power to bring into being a sovereign government. If the coalition had focused on order and creating the conditions for the UN to lead the immediate humanitarian effort, Iraq might well be in a better state that it is today. Then the Security Council resolution should have established a UN process to create an interim government –as we did in Afghanistan. Then you'd get the IMF and the World Bank coming in and working in co-operation with that Iraqi interim government, and then any economic reform would have been under an Iraqi government. This was the way to do it.

Were you able to have a conversation with him about that, to challenge him, get his attention, co-operation?

I had lots of conversations with him in the run up to war and talked to him two or three times a day when he was persuading me to stay with the Government and work on reconstruction. I went to see UN, IMF and World Bank and talked with fellow development Ministers from France, Germany, Scandanavia, Canada amongst others to try to get all united in helping rebuild Iraq. The war cabinet met daily. I fed in my proposals there and in letters to the PM copied across Whitehall and at other meetings. But they weren't interested in what I had to say. Blair wasn't listening. The charm offensive was over.

I think they were enormously relieved that they got toBaghdad. There was a sort of triumphalism, and a feeling of ‘oh what's Clare going on about? We've done it! And we got Bush to say ‘vital role for the UN'.

The tragedy on top of the other tragedies is following the horrendous attack, on the UN and Red Cross. There is a real danger Iraq goes on in chaos. This would be a disaster for everyone and that is just the kind of conditions that help Al Qaeda. The answer is still to internationalise the reconstruction of Iraq and then get troops in from a range of countries supporting reconstruction and a proper UN process. But those who would create chaos have now attacked the UN and the Red Cross. This is dreadful for everyone. The history of that country since it was created has been nothing but oppression and suffering.

You were challenging – what was your argument, your advice?

I was saying in the House of Commons what I was saying inside Government which was that ,as occupying powers we should comply with the Geneva Convention and focus on keeping order and civil administration in place. As soon as order was restored the UN humanitarian system was ready and able to lead on patching and mending the electricity and water supply. Then we should ask the Security Council to appoint a special representative to consult the Iraqi people and establish an interim government. Then we should ask the World Bank and the IMF to advise the interim government on transparent economic reform with contracts properly let and no bias to the occupying powers The Attorney General's legal advice was very clear that this was how it should be done. And on this basis the international community would have come together and helped Iraq rebuild . But the Americans weren't having it and Blair wasn't willing to stand up to them. So we got a total fudge with the Security Council resolution recognising the authority of the occupying powers and giving the UN a marginalised role. And this has led to where we are now with the US asking for peacekeepers from India, Pakistan and Europe and most countries saying we will only join in under a much stronger UN mandate. As the UN resolution was prepared, the normal structures of decision making completely broke down in Whitehall. The drafting was settled between Blair and the White House. Senior officials got to see a copy of the resolution from the BBC website! It was an outrageously bad way to make decisions. It breached the understanding I thought I had with the Prime Minister and it meant I had to leave the Government.

There are other issues behind this: The crumbling of Britain's constitutional system; and a big mistake about Britain's role in the world. The new policy seems to be we must do whatever America says to stop America behaving unilaterally. Its ludicrous, but this is what Tony seems to think he's doing. If you look at his crucial six points in the Stothard book, the crux is that America is determined to take military action in Iraq and it would be a disaster for the world if the went alone.

Doesn't this reveal a pessimism about power – you have to appease it and please it. But if you don't challenge it you don't change it.

I've toiled through my mind to work out why Blair got here. For some reason that I don't understand he decided that it would be a disaster for the world for the US to go it alone, and therefore Britain has to do what America wants. Geoff Hoon made a speech more recently trailing his forthcoming White Paper saying that whether America was multilateral or unilateral depended on the rest of us. It is a crazy interpretation of multilateralism - that you give up any volition of your own to stop America acting unilaterally.

Of course we've got to deal with Al Qaeda, but you got to deal with the cause as well as the symptom We cannot build a secure and safe future without committing to more justice in the world. Current US/UK policy is making the problem worse. We need – as the top priority – a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians and the US must change to achieve this. And we need a massive international effort to reduce poverty, end conflict and rebuild failed states. Blair said he was going to prioritise Africa, but I am afraid he got distracted. He became fixated on the US and WMD. Britain alone cannot change US policy, but it would have been very difficult for Bush to act in Iraq alone. Britain could have used its leverage much more effectively.

What are you learning from the Hutton inquiry?

For me it's embroidering the detail of a picture that I know of how No 10 operates. But I didn't know that two intelligence officers wrote to their boss expressing reservations, I didn't know that Jonathan Powell was so clear that Saddam Hussein was not an imminent threat.

There've been some surprises. But I am not surprised that that the PM took a personal interest in Dr Kelly. The central focus of the Blair regime is presentation. I think it shows how used the had got to spinning and bullying journalists that they thought they could take on the BBC and make it bow to their bidding.

What was at stake over Dr Kelly – was it that if the government needed to show that Iraq was weaponised, that the threat was serious and imminent, but it couldn't, then was it important to destroy or discredit people like Dr Kelly.

I don't think they wanted to destroy Dr Kelly. They wanted to use Kelly to get Gilligan. They were enraged at BBC reporting of the war. I presume it compared unfavourably with CNN and the other commercial media in the US. I find the attack on the BBC deeply insidious. Also, Tom Kelly is a civil servant. He talks about ‘playing chicken' with the BBC. That is improper talk for a civil servant. The defence of the BBC is massively important to British democracy. If people's access to information is narrowed there's a diminution of democracy. So, poor Dr Kelly was seen as a possible instrument to get the BBC. Normally, there are established procedures in Whitehall to deal with leaks, and there's no way a civil servant would normally be thrown into the public domain and put before Parliamentary committees. What was the chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee doing, being involved? Dr Kelly was used for a political and propaganda purpose. There was no national interest at stake, and that's a misuse of the instruments of the state. The British civil service is another very valuable national asset, it has got to be protected, its neutrality and its professionalism have got to be protected –they have been eroded too.

The concentration of power in No 10 leads to an expectation of power over everything. They're unused to more dispersed, pluralised power, which is what Cabinet collective responsibility is supposed to be about - everyone brings their view, argues it out, then everyone binds themselves to the outcome of a fair discussion. This doesn't fit with Blair's presidentialism.

So, when other institutions get in their way they're very angry. They are used to being obeyed.

A criticism of the anti-war axis was that it was bereft, that it posed no alternative – people did, of course, propose an alternative strategy based on inspections, lifting sanctions, imposing human rights standards through international institutions. But what were the alternatives harvested from other recent conflicts?

There are many lessons one of which is that the sanctions in Iraq made the people massively more dependent on the Saddam Hussein regime and less able to overthrow him. We really have to do some new thinking on how to displace cruel dictators. This is relevant to Mugabe and the regime in Burma. It is quite wrong that it can be legal to declare war but not to seek to displace a dictator guilty of crimes against humanity.

What we learned from Serbia and Milosevic was that we could create new instruments to deal with dictators guilty of crimes against humanity: indict them and encourage their people to get them to an international court. But the world doesn't have a mechanism to support oppressed people to displace monstrous dictators. I thought we had the beginnings of it with Milosevic. That's been a one-off, but it could have been a precedent. All of this requires thorough discussion, but surely this is the kind of world we want to live in the twenty-first century.

At a time when the world is changing massively, we need a deep discussion on how to manage this era and on the role of Britain in Europe and in the world. What we've got is a tiny number of people in Downing Street on the phone and constantly interacting with a tiny number of people in the White House, misleading the rest of us, and getting the world into an increasingly dangerous condition. This is no way to run the world. And his is underpinned by ruthlessness in No 10, the lack of respect for truth and for open discussion and proper accountability. This poses very important questions for the role of the Labour Party in power. Social Democracy's duty to this era is to find a way of managing globalisation with equity. The Labour Party has to find a way of correcting the mistakes that have been made over Iraq or it is in danger of betraying its values and historical role.

Ethical Foreign Policy

I am afraid Robin's ethical foreign policy became a stick to beat him with – every questionable arms sale or support for a contentious British business project was hammered as a breach of the commitment. Thus it was quietly dropped. Robin did negotiate a new EU defence sales agreement that raised standards across Europe, but the Foreign Office and No 10 are complete mercantilists who seem to believe it is good for the British economy to support dubious deals. This is bad economics as well as bad foreign policy, but they are highly wedded to that view.

The social democrat aspect of foreign policy was developed through DfID. Progressive foreign policy needs to commit to globalisation with equity. This implies commitment for fair rules for international business and no political favours for British deals.

Sexing Up

My suspicion is that Alistair objected strongly to the Gilligan story because “sexing up” is such a graphic tabloid phrase that it got everywhere and stuck in everyone's minds. I am not sure from the Hutton hearings whose phrase it was – Dr Kelly's or Gilligan's – but clearly No 10 want it dropped.

Scarlett

I think Scarlett was so bound in with No 10 and Alistair Campbell they have to back each other. But it remains the case that Dr Kelly – with all his eminence and knowledge – did make the criticism that Gilligan reported. This is clear from Susan Watts' evidence. I therefore conclude that it was the BBC's duty to report Dr Kelly's view.