With the aim of assisting the Chilcot Inquiry with its preparations for questioning Tony Blair about how he led us into war with Iraq, I have put some key texts on my website — at
http://www.barder.com/tony-blair-and-iraq-some-texts
– in the hope that the questions arising from them won’t be overlooked.
I have also sent them to the Inquiry [...]
The EU’s appointments of the Belgian prime minister Herman van Rompuy (what comical names these foreigners do have![1]) as permanent Chairman (“President”) of the European Council, and (subject to the approval of the European parliament) of the EU’s (British) Commissioner for Trade, Baroness (Cathy) Ashton, as High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and [...]
In an eloquent article on Our Kingdom, David Marquand, the academic, former Labour MP and later chief adviser (1977-78) to Roy Jenkins as President of the European Commission, laments that the Britain he’s proud of, the Britain that “stood alone against Nazi Germany for twelve long months”, that welcomed foreign exiles and was a beacon [...]
Last month I submitted a letter to the Guardian pointing out that the same day’s issue had wrongly described Tony Blair’s job in the middle east as that of ‘peace envoy’. What happened next is described in a further email which I subsequently sent to the Guardian’s letters editor and ‘readers’ editor’, and on which [...]
It’s worth trying to identify some of the confusions that have arisen in the controversy over the action of the normally mild-mannered Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, in dismissing Professor David Nutt from his post as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) after the Professor repeated his criticism of the government’s [...]
