From Gaza to Iraq: the British establishment are allergic to accountability.

Imagine a world in which we didn’t have to see Iraq war criminal Alistair Campbell’s face or hear his voice. A world in which the almost-always incorrect views generated on his smug, shit, Centrist Dad podcast never landed in your algorithm.

I’d say the same for arch-Tory Rory Stewart who, bizarrely, governed an Iraqi province during the US occupation.

There are honourable exceptions, sure. Gary Stevenson was on there there recently and he seems likes a decent lad. But on the whole, why are these deeply unserious figures treated like their track record isn’t appalling.

Now imagine a world in which Tony Blair simply never got a platform to advance his grandiose, yet inevitably ridiculous takes?

And imagine a world where the core values of Blairism – embodied today in the Magic Bank Manager Keir Starmer – had been consigned to the dustbin of history.

Sounds alright, doesn’t it?

Well one of the reasons that world doesn’t exist is that nobody was every remotely held to account over the Iraq War.

The legacy media is a part of this. We shouldn’t be surprised that an industry dominated by Russell Group-educated Professional Managerial Class (PMC) losers would help recondition figures who represent their own values and ambitions.

But there are other reasons too.

The Inquiry Racket – from Iraq to…

One mechanism to achieve a reckoning would have been a serious public inquiry, the findings of which would have been actionable before the law. But that is simply not what Britain does.

Chilcot’s inquiry into Iraq delivered a vast report late and over-budget. The process was crippled by the report’s own parameters. It effectively left questions about the legality of the war unanswered. It had no legal power to hold anyone culpable.

The drippiness of major British inquiries is well established. You can look at everything from Hillsborough to Bloody Sunday all the way through to Iraq. But it’s not simply that heads didn’t roll.

At worst, there was some surface level reputational damage to a few powerful figures. Certainly not enough to keep them off our airwaves.

Is that what we’re going to get with Gaza? The signal crime of our lifetimes? A horror much worse than Iraq?

… a Gaza inquiry?

Jeremy Corbyn – who else would it be? – is fighting for an inquiry into Israel’s genocidal assault already.

A Bill to make provision for; to require the inquiry to consider any UK military, economic or political cooperation with Israel since October 2023, including the sale, supply or use of weapons, surveillance aircraft and Royal Air Force bases; to provide the inquiry with the power to question Ministers and officials about decisions taken in relation to UK involvement; and for connected purposes.

On principle, you’d have to support him in that effort. But the truth is official inquiries are partial, messy and limited affairs. Inquiries often deliver a sense of closure the establishment doesn’t deserve. They take years. They drain those chasing justice of energy.

Even Oliver Cromwell knew the best way to kill off a pressing issue was to refer it to a committee. To bog it down in bureaucracy, in haggles over language and scope, to slow it down – maybe forever.

Having covered so many of these big inquiries over the years, I can’t help but feel that is what they are meant to do.

Accountability never?

And these the questions of Iraq and Gaza are not separate. Blair’s ideological inheritor is PM of this country. Would there be a Gaza if anybody had been held accountable for Iraq?

It’s impossible to say.

Britain founded Israel. It helped guarantee the great displacement of Palestinians long before these began. Israel remains a key node in a network of political and economic control over the Middle East. The British commitment to maintaining the fascistic little outpost it carved out of Palestine has never been clearer.

But if nothing else, I think some permanently ruined senior political and media careers would have been a small ask. And it might have made it harder to back Israel to the degree we’ve seen. A serious inquiry with legal power might have forced the Labour Party – and the British establishment – into a reckoning with itself.

And I can’t help but ask, how much of the political alienation people feel in this country comes back to this question. To the sense that no matter how awful its behaviour, the British establishment will always be able to set the scale and scope of its own accountability to zero.

Featured image via the Canary