doAlvin Bailey keeps his Iraq medal, awarded to members of the British armed forces who served as part of Operation Telic, in a drawer in his home. It features a brooch, given to personnel who were part of the first wave of flights that left British bases to invade Iraq in March 2003.
So when the Leyton and Wanstead Labor MP spoke at a meeting between Labor MPs and the Prime Minister on Monday afternoon, people listened. “I was exposed and aware of all the things that were happening in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, the groupthink, the sense of unstoppable momentum,” he said Tuesday. “If you look at what’s happening now, it’s materially different from 2003, but I think I can speak with the right weight and credibility.”
As Keir Starmer wrestles with the domestic and global implications of Israeli and US offensive attacks on Iran over the weekend, the shadow of the Iraq war hangs over Westminster. In the House of Commons on Monday, Starmer assured MPs that the government remembered the “mistakes of Iraq” and would always act on a “legal basis” and with a “well thought out and workable plan” for the crisis erupting in the Middle East.
It is a position consistent with the argument put forward by Starmer QC in the pages of The Guardian in 2003. “Error advice does not make the unlawful use of force legal,” he wrote. He also noted: “Military commanders on the ground will not thank the government if any of their measures are later found to have violated international law.”
Bailey, a former wing commander with 24 years’ service, acknowledges that there are many younger MPs who came of age in the Iraq war era, but he wants to send them a message: agonizing over Tony Blair’s decision to support the US invasion two decades ago is, in this time of extreme precariousness, pointless.
“The true specter of the Iraq war is not the decision-making process that took place at the time,” he said. “The real specter of the Iraq war is the Chilcot review. We shouldn’t be self-flagellating about how people see what’s happening now through the lens of what happened then, otherwise what was the point of a £13m public inquiry? We should actually be spending our time learning the lessons we paid to learn.”
The prime minister and his closest aides are likely to have been poring over a manual that Bailey has shared with many of his colleagues: The Good Operation, “a manual for those involved in operational policy and its implementation.” Aimed primarily at MoD decision-makers, it is “designed to prompt its readers to ask the right questions as they plan and execute a military operation, drawing in particular on the lessons of the 2016 Iraq Inquiry (Chilcot) report.”
According to Bailey, Starmer’s approach closely follows that guidance, both in his initial decision to deny the United States permission to conduct attacks aimed at regime change from British bases, including Diego Garcia and RAF Fairford, citing international law, and in the permission granted Sunday night to allow the US military to use the bases for “specific and limited defensive purposes.”
“The decisions have been entirely consistent with Chilcot and the planning and design you would expect to see,” Bailey said. “But The Good Operation is also clear that when things change, you can’t hold the line dogmatically.”
The lack of outright support for Trump’s actions in the Middle East has earned Starmer a series of rebukes from the US president, including the comment that Starmer is “not Winston Churchill.” Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has portrayed the prime minister as weak for using international law to avoid “clearly and unequivocally stating which side” he is on.
But the criticism on both sides of the Atlantic is unlikely to have damaged Starmer’s reputation, at least with his own MPs. “I think you might find it very useful,” said one. Bailey was among those who criticized the decision by other party leaders, and some in his own party, to present the decision Starmer faces as binary.
Other figures highly critical of the position taken by Blair in the run-up to the Iraq war cautiously praised the prime minister’s current stance. Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, one of the remaining MPs who voted against the Iraq war, said Starmer had done “a better job than I expected” of putting some distance between himself and the US president. “But I do worry that there is a slippery slope between defensive and offensive action,” he said. “So far, I think he’s played a better hand than I expected, but I’m worried this could get out of hand soon.”
Davey said that for MPs like him who were vehemently opposed to the Iraq war, and among those who had begun their political lives in its wake, the war cast a long shadow. “I think Iraq is on everyone’s mind, it can’t help but be after these dramatic and atrocious events,” he said. “I have never spoken to an MP who doesn’t regret voting for Iraq. The current generation of MPs may want to talk to them and they should reflect on it.”
Labor MP Jon Trickett, who voted against the 2003 invasion, said the most lasting lesson of Iraq was not simply the dispute over intelligence but the consequences of the collapse of the state. A similar outcome in Iran is very possible, he said. “If the state crumbles under the pressure of intervention, you would imagine that all sorts of problems of disorder would arise.”
Iain Duncan Smith is among those with very clear memories of a conflict that divided a nation. Already in 2001 he had promised support to the conservatives for any future action against Iraq. He supported the invasion, saying: “The containment policy is not working.”
Reflecting now on the stance he took more than two decades ago, he said: “I have always believed that when America and Britain are truly together, then the world is a safer place (and) we are more likely to have good, rational thinking. If we are absent, that becomes much more difficult.”
But in July 2003, Duncan Smith also accused Blair and his communications chief, Alastair Campbell, of creating a “culture of deceit” in their handling of the Iraq file dispute with the BBC.
Those mistakes should not be repeated again, he said. “The most important lesson to learn is not to publish fake leaflets – be honest about what you are doing.”
