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A day of gaffes from Nick Clegg and David Cameron
The Mole: Cameron flunks his WW2 history. But Clegg’s claim that Iraq invasion was illegal is more serious
Well, that was not a great day for the terrible twins, Nick 'n' Dave. Nick Clegg was the first to make a gaffe, claiming in his first ever turn at PMQs that the Allied invasion of Iraq 2003 was illegal.
In a snarky exchange with Jack Straw, substituting for Harriet Harman on the Labour front bench, Clegg, standing in while David Cameron visits Washington, said: "We may have to wait for his memoirs, but perhaps one day he will account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all: the illegal invasion of Iraq."
Ouch! The invasion may have been illegal in Clegg's personal view, but Prime Minister Cameron has always said he backed the war and, anyway, we're still in the midst of a long-running and expensive inquiry - by the Chilcot committee - one of whose aims is to ascertain whether, indeed, the invasion was legal or not.
Downing Street spin-doctors were still picking up the pieces yesterday afternoon - "individual members of the coalition government are entitled to express their person views etc etc" - when Clegg's boss made his own gaffe.
Having picked his way through the Washington minefield - the Afghanistan withdrawal, the BP oil slick, the Lockerbie saga - Cameron fell straight into the quicksand when, during an interview with Sky News, he described Britain as having been "junior partner" to the Americans in 1940, a full year before the US deigned to enter the war after Pearl Harbour.
"I think it's important in life to speak as it is, and the fact is that we are a very effective partner of the US, but we are the junior partner," said Dave. "We were the junior partner in 1940 when we were fighting the Nazis."
Ouch again! Downing Street, besieged by historians, generals and furious Daily Mail columnists reminding them that the Brits had fought the Nazi menace without any solid American help until 1944, tried to get out of it by saying Cameron had been referring to the 1940s in general. But the damage was done.
"I am quite sure if Winston Churchill were alive today he would be dismayed," stormed Gen Sir Patrick Cordingley, former commander of the Desert Rats.
Labour had a field day, too. "David Cameron is guilty of talking down Britain and disrespecting Second World War veterans who know that Britain was fighting alone against Nazi tyranny while America was still putting its fighting boots on," said former defence minister Kevan Jones.
No doubt an inquiry will now be launched into how Cameron achieved a grade A when he took his History A-level at Eton in 1984. But in the short term, Clegg's gaffe is actually the more serious.
Clegg - and Downing Street - can claim all they like that he was expressing a personal view, but the fact that he said it from the very formal setting of the House of Commons dispatch box means he could well have increased the chances of charges being brought against the British government over the Iraq invasion in an international court.
Philippe Sands, professor of law at University College London, told the Guardian: "A public statement by a government minister in parliament as to the legal situation would be a statement that an international court would be interested in, in forming a view as to whether or not the war was lawful." ·
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Well, I must be bored, I just read this - but why does anyone take the Ant and Dec of politics seriously anyway? They did not win the election, Brownian motion lost it by random incompetence. It just fell in their laps...better quality of suit material in their laps of course, nicer hair of course, but just the same slop of socialism with tinge of fiscal rectitude. Many of us wise always thought Brown never had it, let alone lost it...but all this begs the question, why do we think THEY are running the UK? The EU makes 75% of our laws now, they are just the puppets of the Franco-German alliance coyly known as EU27 by the EU watchers and commentators. They need us as cash cows to fund the shindig, but we don't get to be in charge, just the opposite, we get to pay and shut up. They don't call it the Brokeback relationship for nothing you know.
Junior partner, indeed! Was Cameron referring to Clegg?
...and remember - while the US declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor in December '41, it was Germany who declared war on the US: not the other way round. If Germany hadn't done this, would the USA have come to our aid at all or just restricted themselves to the Pacific arena? Hitler's hope of stretching the US forces and so defeating them backfired, and meant we could, and did, win. We needed their help, but they were our accidental saviours and to relegate Britain to 'junior partner' status even before the USA were goaded into joining us in Europe is insulting to our country and armed forces - then and now.
By the end of 1940, America was providing the bulk of the material and protecting British convoys in the Atlantic. Without this assistance, the UK would have been forced to sue for peace before the end of 1941. The UK only became the junior partner after Sicily and the weight of numbers would have made any other arrangement absurd.
Just be glad that the Japanese got the US into it because the American public (against their better interests) wanted nothing to do with any more European adventures. If Iraq wasn't illegal it should be. Any other verdict would make a mockery of Nuremberg and every sacrifice by either country in stopping Hitler. In fact it's almost beginning to seem as though the nazis won after all.
The technicalities of whether the Deputy PM has landed the government in deep trouble do not concern me half as much as Mr Cameron's attempt to suck up to the Americans - shades of T Blair, I fear. Far from being the "junior partner" we were for most of the war completely alone, and I don't remember the Americans coming to help us until the final stages. Mr Cameron may be too young to have been there but a lot of us were and will find it hard to forgive such denigration of our forces.
A day of gaffes!!Your lot had thirteen years of daily gaffes!!!
I think the comments by Cameron are far more serious -in fact I believe they are an insult to every Briton. Little did I expect an old Etonian to crawl this low, a junior partner indeed. Cameron I lived in London all through the Blitz, assuming you know what the Blitz was, and through my father met many Polish airmen, but no Americans. Remember the Bundt movement pushed hard by Lindbergh were all for keeping America out of the war.
I did not like Gordon Brown as Prime Minister but it seems to me he did not crawl. Perhaps, since you disgust me, you might retire and let Nick take over. Are you going to hand Hayward over for cross-examination (bullying)) over the release of the Lockerbie bomber?
Maybe justice will be served after all! Bush and what's his name? The self seeking one that pretended to be Britains PrimeMinister back then, I remember, Tony Blair. Arrested and tried for crimes against the Iraqi people! Yeah, right!! I wish I could live long enough to see that.
Point of order - your claim in the 3rd paragraph that one of the Chilcot inquiry's "aims is to ascertain whether, indeed, the invasion was legal or not" is untrue. Following Clegg's statement, the Chilcot inquiry issued a statement saying it was examining the legal issues in the run-up to the war but would not make a judgment about the legality of the war itself.
Whether the war is legal or not will most likely be spun out until all those who could be found culpable are either dead or beyond the arm of the law.
White men speak with forked tongue...