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But the story that deserves ""Phew — What A Scorcher" headlines is taking place in a cool London legal chambers where Lord Hutton, a former Lord Chief Justice in Northern Ireland, is beginning a judicial enquiry into the suicide of Professor David Kelly. Prime Minister Tony Blair will give evidence to the enquiry later in the month. And there is heated speculation among journalists and politicians that it may seriously damage Blair's reputation and could conceivably bring him down. That is almost certainly overheated speculation. "The Kelly Affair," like all political scandals, tends to produce wild rumors that dissolve on examination. But it is already the case that Tony Blair has gone in a few short months from successful war premier who dominated the political landscape to harried unpopular politician whose Barbados vacation looks almost like a con man "doing a runner." And since that is the political equivalent of water running uphill, no outcome can be entirely ruled out. What happened to make water run uphill, of course, was that David Kelly (who was the source for the BBC report that Downing Street had "sexed up," or exaggerated, an intelligence finding that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were an imminent threat) had committed suicide after the ministry of defense made his identity public. Kelly did so — in a touch straight from the public television Mystery series — at the very moment that Blair was receiving an enthusiastic reception from a joint session of Congress. Blair's enemies — in his own Labor party and in the Left-leaning media, especially the semi-official BBC, even more than on the opposition Tory benches — immediately sought to pin moral responsibility for Kelly's death on Number Ten Downing Street and thus by implication on Blair himself as its boss. But there is a whole host of potential candidates for such responsibility — Blair of course, since Downing Street may have connived at leaking Kelly's identity to the press; the ministry of defense for doing the actual leaking; Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon for perhaps approving the leak; the BBC for perhaps "sexing up" what Kelly had told them; a parliamentary committee for subjecting Kelly to a tough inquisition; and maybe Kelly himself for leaking the story and then seeming to deny the fact in some very evasive evidence before the parliamentary committee. A tangled tale indeed — but not one in which Mr. Blair seems to have personally instructed anyone to reveal Kelly's name or to do anything sinister. It is possible that he did, to be sure, but very unlikely since people generally carry out nefarious tasks for presidents and prime ministers without telling them. Top politicians are prudently excluded on a "need to know" basis for the purposes of "plausible deniability." That may not protect Blair politically, however, because the usually adroit Downing Street machine is handling this affair extremely clumsily. Though David Kelly now enjoys almost saintly status, a Downing Street spokesman (also named Kelly) was foolish enough to describe him off the record as "a fantasist." That may be the case — and Dr. Kelly certainly misled either the BBC reporter or the committee — but it aroused a storm of public and media indignation. That indignation was compounded when neither Blair nor Hoon broke their vacations to attend Kelly's funeral. It was left to the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, a man hitherto despised by New Labor as an old-fashioned socialist hopeless at p.r., to save the government from further embarrassment, first by instructing the Downing Street Kelly to apologize to Dr. Kelly's widow, and then by attending the funeral himself. Mr. Prescott is thus far the only person in the government to emerge with credit from the Kelly affair — and by the simple expedient of acting like a decent human being. Blair in Barbados is suffering by inevitable comparison. Finally Lord Hutton's enquiry is actually producing revelations. Andrew Gilligan, the BBC reporter whose report started the whole imbroglio, claimed that Kelly had named Alastair Campbell, Blair's closest crony and the master of the Downing Street "spin" machine, as the person responsible for "sexing up" the intelligence finding. His central allegation was confirmed by a BBC science reporter, Susan Watts, who interviewed Kelly on a tape that is due to be played today. And both made persuasive witnesses. Admittedly, the BBC and Gilligan suffered some embarrassment when an internal memo was produced conceding Gilligan was guilty of "flawed reporting" on lesser points. So far, however, in the battle between Downing Street and the BBC, the latter is winning clearly on points. Consider that these revelations come after two days of investigation — with another month or so of the hearings to run. But even if later sessions reveal nothing sensational on the main point of Dr. Kelly's death, they are likely to uncover all sorts of embarrassing material about how the Downing Street "spin machine" works in practice. And that could be crucial for both Blair and Alastair Campbell. For it would bolster the view — false but widely accepted in London — that Blair got Britain into the Iraq war on a pretext he knew to be either untrue or grossly exaggerated. And, more significantly, it would foster the growing belief that Blair is a slippery customer in general. Blair's reputation as a good and moral man, even perhaps a bit of a prig, has protected him to date against the weakness of his government's domestic record. Elected on a platform of improving public services without raising taxes, he has instead raised taxes without improving services. But because the prime minister himself was regarded as trustworthy and upright, the opposition's charges of lies and broken pledges never stuck. Now the reality of "spin" threatens to undermine that strength. And it does so at a time when the other props of Blair's power — Britain's successful economy and the weakness of the Tory opposition — also look shaky. Sure, Britain's economy is still successful compared to Euroland, but the latest figures suggest that revenue will fall below official forecasts, forcing the government either to cut spending or raise taxes. Either step would suggest that Old Labor was back in the saddle with its support for high spending and high taxes. And that would undermine Blair's appeal to Middle England as the only man standing between them and a Labor government. Nor do the voters any longer despise the Tories as they did at the end of John Major's premiership. The Tory party is slowly recovering both in the polls — they are now four points ahead of Labor — and in the subtler indicators of respect in the media, Westminster, and the civil service. Labor is still favorite to win the next election, but a Tory victory is no longer unthinkable. If Blair's support collapses entirely, he might hand victory to a surprised Tory leader. When Tony Blair returns from Barbados to face in public the cross-examination of Lord Hutton, he will surely dazzle as the trained barrister he is. But will he persuade a suddenly doubtful nation? — A version of this piece originally ran in the Chicago Sun-Times and is reprinted with permission. O'Sullivan can be reached at www.benadorassociates.com. |
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hew
— What A Scorcher!" used to be the headline that Fleet Street
newspapers kept optimistically in permanent type for those rare and wonderful
days when the sun shone brightly on Britain. It is doing so at the moment.
Temperature records are being broken; pictures of girls in bikinis and
little boys jumping off bridges into the River Thames decorate the front
pages; and doctors are issuing warnings about heatstroke and skin cancer.
