Back to HOMEPAGE Jack Straw fails to reveal all at Iraq inquiry
Ann Treneman
Parliamentary Sketch: The Times
Filed 23Jan10
©Ann Treneman
This article was originally published in The Times on 22nd January 2010.
It is reproduced here with the kind permission of its author and of the newspaper.
The thing about Jack Straw that fascinated me and everyone else in the public gallery yesterday was whether the man before us was for or against the Iraq war.
It was quite hard to figure out: until the end that is, Agatha Christie could not have plotted it better. But what we could all see from the beginning was that Jack Straw was very pro all things Jack Straw.
Mr Straw is neat, pin-striped, eager to be noticed. He is not so much pompous as nerdily self-important. Thus he had submitted a memo on Iraq to the Chilcot committee, limiting himself to a mere 8,000 words (25 pages, 78 paragraphs). He then quoted himself often, via numbered paragraph reference.
His almost obsessive use of references is coupled with a true love of reflection. Thus yesterday we got his thoughts on bees, Suez, the Falklands, John Maynard Keynes, the American Civil War, Bill Clinton and, yes, Monica Lewinsky, whose name was transcribed as Liewn ski, which seemed right. Intriguingly, interlaced with all of this other stuff — a technical term but accurate — were his thoughts on the war and the man who was Foreign Secretary did, actually, seem to be against it.
“I certainly did not want war,” he told us maybe 20 times over 3½ hours. Regime change, as favoured by the Americans, was “improper” and “self-evidently unlawful”.
Sir Roderic Lyne, the sharpest in the rather dozy panel, asked if Tony Blair agreed. Mr Straw told him to ask Mr Blair. “We are two different people,” he said, rather chillingly.
“But one Government,” noted Sir Roderic drily.
It did not sound quite like that yesterday. Mr Straw told us in great detail how he had tried to avoid war: his fears, his work for a second UN resolution, his secret last-minute plan.
After three hours, no one had asked the killer question.
Finally, and I really did feel like shouting hallelujah, he was asked if he had considered resigning in March 2003.
He shook his head: “We all have our bottom lines.”
So what was his? But the panel never asked. Afterwards, I asked the man sitting next to me what he thought. “I think that Mr Straw was against the war in his heart,” he said, “but he put his career first.” Bottom line, that sounds about right.
©Ann Treneman
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