So how did Jack Straw go from lefty student to foreign secretary during a war? The Iraq Inquiry Blogger takes a deeper look.
Jack Straw’s odyssey from leftwing NUS president to war-time Foreign Secretary is a strange and much-profiled one that can still surprise even now.
Just last Sunday it was revealed that he wrote Blair a ‘secret and personal’ letter 10 days before the crucial April 2002 summit warning that “The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few. The risks are high, both for you and the Government.”
There was no sign that the majority of Labour MPs wanted war with Iraq, he counselled; no credible links between Saddam and al-Qaeda detected; it was hard to see why Iraq was any more dangerous post 9/11 than Iran or North Korea. The obvious Inquiry team question that poses itself eight years on then is – what changed?
Watching the trail of leaks that have emerged as Chilcot progresses it’s tempting to ask in what spirit some of these ministerial bons mots were penned; with the (stated) intention of advising the Prime Minister of the day, or with half an mind on the inquiries and history books of the future?
Interesting too that so many notes are becoming known about despite – or perhaps because – of the oft-criticised, sometimes minuteless ‘sofa-style’ of much of Blair’s government.
Another late Straw family surprise on Tuesday when his son Will (not a stranger to the headlines himself it will be remembered) lashed out at “duplicitous” Blair for taking us to war with Iraq and treating his loyal dad in an “unbelievably shoddy way.”
(You can read and comment on some of Will’s other thoughts via his political blog Tweeting at twitter.com/leftfootfwd. A wide range of other political views, blogs and Tweets are also available…)
Two snippets from newspaper profiles for trivia fans. The Justice Secretary was born John Straw but claims to have renamed himself Jack in honour of a Peasants’ Revolt leader, and he’s deaf in his right ear, apparently due to an IRA bomb at the Old Bailey in the 1970s.
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