PULL THE OTHER ONE:

Crucial warnings Blair kept from MPs (FRASER NELSON AND GERRI PEEV, 4/28/05, The Scotsman)

TONY Blair suffered a devastating blow last night as it emerged that the legal advice he had been given before the Iraq war bore little resemblance to the summary he presented to parliament.

Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, warned Mr Blair he could not bypass the United Nations simply because France threatened to veto a move to war. A court "might well conclude" that war was illegal.

Yet there was no hint of this in the summary of the advice shown to the Cabinet and published - exposing Mr Blair to the charge that he misled both parliament and the public.

The revelation could alter the course of the election campaign - marshalling an anti-Blair vote and bolstering his opponents’ case that he lied on the eve of war.

Tories are prime suspects over bombshell revelation (JAMES KIRKUP , 4/28/05, The Scotsman)

THERE was mounting speculation in political and media circles last night that yesterday’s leak had somehow been engineered by the Conservative Party.

At first glance, such an explanation seems unlikely. The attacks on Tony Blair and his government over the legality of the Iraqi invasion have been principally driven by critics on the left of politics, many within the Labour Party itself.

And the Conservatives did, after all, support the war. Even yesterday morning, Michael Howard, the Tory leader, told journalists in Edinburgh that he still backed the conflict. "It was the right thing to do," he said.

And unlike Charles Kennedy of the Liberal Democrats, Mr Howard has taken pains not to suggest in public that he doubts the legality of the decision to go to war.

Yet for all that, Iraq has undoubtedly been central to the Conservatives’ strategy for the closing stages of the general election campaign. Simply, it acted as a sort of universal adaptor for political issues: every issue, every policy area, could be linked back to Mr Blair’s credibility over the decision to invade.

This week’s election posters linking Mr Blair’s "lies" over Iraq to his entire approach to the campaign are the final evolution of that strategy. They had been prepared weeks ago for deployment at this stage, referred to by the senior party workers who knew about them as "the nuclear option".

So what is the evidence linking the Conservatives to the leak? Perhaps the most convincing is the fact that events surrounding those 13 fateful pages show all the signs of being carefully orchestrated by someone with an acute understanding of Britain’s media and political culture, and the deliberate intention to inflict maximum harm on Mr Blair and his bid for re-election.

Boy, Labour has to be desparate over this leak if they're so far over the edge they're accusing the Tories of competence. Not that anyone could believe such a thing...

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 28, 2005 8:32 AM