The real lesson of Chilcot? No one in our ruling class will pay the price for their lies

LAST week, Sir John Chilcot appeared in Parliament for the first time since his report into the iraq War was published last summer. He’d been invited to address the Liaison Committee, which comprises chairmen of the various Commons select committees and which is normally convened to question the prime minister.

rightly, MPs congratulated Sir John on his work. in contrast to the report published by Lord Hutton in the immediate aftermath of the invasion (which was sloppily researched and its findings both complacent and questionable), Sir John has shown great integrity and fortitude.

However, there remains one serious failing concerning his report, which is mainly the fault of politicians and not Sir John. This is a lack of any serious government response to his devastating findings.

No changes have been made to government policy, even though the report was specifically set up so that we should learn lessons from the iraq fiasco.

Of course, many years have passed since then and key figures have moved on, but no heads have rolled, even though Chilcot exposed incompetence and duplicity at the highest level of government.

Equally distressing, none of those brave souls who warned that the war could have terrible consequences have been given their just recognition.

No, overall, it’s as though Sir John had been deliberately ignored.

Although there remains anger and bitterness that none of the senior bankers responsible for the 2008 financial crash were sent to jail, at least Fred Goodwin (the disgraced head of the royal Bank of Scotland) was stripped of his knighthood, sacked from his job and obliged to sacrifice part of his pension.

By contrast, Sir John Scarlett, the spy chief whose dossier on Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction was later exposed as a travesty, retains his honours and emoluments.

Among other posts, he is a senior adviser at financial services giant Morgan Stanley and chairman of the Bletchley Park Trust.

Sir richard Dearlove, head of the Secret intelligence Service, which did such a calamitous job under his leadership in the run-up to the iraq war, has escaped scot-free.

He’s Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, has several financial appointments and is a well-paid speaker on global security.

As for politicians excoriated by Chilcot, apart from Blair — who has made millions hawking his advice around the world in the guise of a global statesman — Jack Straw, his Foreign Secretary during the iraq invasion, who later misled MPs about British involvement in torture of prisoners, is still a Privy Councillor.

Lord Goldsmith, Blair’s Attorney General, whose flawed legal advice was the basis for the Labour government taking us to war, remains a well-heeled QC.

Most egregiously, Alastair Campbell, Blair’s propaganda chief and composer of the ‘dodgy dossier’, is a wealthy man whose views are often sought by the BBC.

All these men have escaped official censure despite the damning Chilcot report, which highlighted how our governmental system was ruthlessly abused by Blair & Co in the lead-up to the war.

This failure had terrible consequences in the Arab world, with the loss of countless lives and the constant threat of terrorism with which we all have to live today. That the individuals concerned have paid no price for this is morally wrong.

On the other hand, the heroes of the iraq war are being punished. Several hundred British soldiers are shamefully subject to criminal investigation — at taxpayers’ expense no less — following allegations of abuse by iraqi civilians.

Of course, i accept it is right that anyone who might have committed war crimes should be investigated, but a very troubling double standard is at work here.

While soldiers who risked their lives on the front line face possible prosecution, the politicians, generals and mandarins who dispatched them to war continue to lead charmed lives. i think i know the reason for this — and it sheds a revealing light on the attitudes of our ruling class.

Politicians from all main parties have joined together to orchestrate a cover-up. They have done this cynically to protect their own.

i am afraid Sir John Chilcot must bear some of the blame for this. Though his report was very thorough, he held back from making damning personal judgments.

For example, he set out the evidence proving that Blair and his associates lied to the British people in order to make a false case for war — but then stopped well short of accusing Blair of being a liar.

Even in Parliament this week, Sir John did no more than state that Blair went ‘beyond the facts’ in making the case for war.

Other very senior civil servants — for instance, Sir robin Butler (who led an earlier review of intelligence failings in the run-up to the 2003 invasion) — have used similar, euphemistic phrases.

Allies of Blair have exploited this official cowardice to claim he acted in good faith by taking us to war.

As a result, several of Blair’s most disgraceful lies, for instance about the existence of iraqi weapons of mass destruction, remain on the official parliamentary record — in defiance of the ministerial code that states ministers must correct errors at the first opportunity.

Of more urgent and practical significance, there is no evidence that the lessons of the iraq war have been applied to government.

To give one example, Philip Hammond (now Chancellor, but Foreign Secretary at the time the Chilcot report was published) said similar mistakes to those made in the run-up to the iraq invasion would never be made again because then PM, David Cameron, had created a National Security Council.

This meets weekly and is meant to ensure ministers consider national security ‘in a strategic way’.

THiS was nonsense. i believe this body is deeply flawed and, in any case, did nothing to prevent the British intervention in Libya in 2011 turning into a disaster. The publication of Sir John Chilcot’s report should have been the trigger for a national debate on all the huge issues raised by the iraq, Afghan and Libyan disasters.

For example, is Britain too keen to kow-tow to the U.S.? What has gone wrong with Mi6? Should Blair be prosecuted for leading Britain into an illegal war?

However, like ostriches with their heads in the sand, members of the British establishment refuse to apportion blame — or, more importantly, to learn the lessons of iraq.

Perhaps that is no surprise. As Opposition MPs, David Cameron and Theresa May voted for war while Sir Jeremy Heywood, who is still Cabinet Secretary, was one of those on Blair’s sofa when he launched the illegal war against iraq.

Tragically, this is the real lesson of the Chilcot inquiry: no British politician or public official will ever have to pay the price of failure for their part in this debacle, which, most worryingly, leaves them free to fail over and over again.