Iraq War inquiry: U-turn complete

One item of news overshadowed by yesterday's 'excitement' over the election of a new Commons Speaker was the completion of Gordon Brown's U-turn on the Iraq War inquiry, large sections of which will now be held in public.
 
Thanks, apparently, to a nice little deal done between Downing Street and the Brown-appointed inquiry chief, Sir John Chilcot, evidence is expected to be taken largely on oath and in public - precisely what most MPs had expected would be the case before Brown stunned them by announcing it would all be in private.
 
Chilcot is meeting opposition party leaders to hear their views on how best he should handle the inquiry and it is expected there will be more developments, perhaps widening the membership of the inquiry team as demanded by the Tories.
 
All this should take the heat out of tomorrow's Tory-led debate on the affair but it leaves one question tantalising Westminster. Will former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his spin doctor Alastair Campbell be forced to give evidence on oath and in public? There are plenty of people who would relish the prospect of that little scene being played out on the nation's, even the world's, TV sets.
 
The Prime Minister's spokesman will only say that it is entirely a matter for Sir John whom he invites to give evidence and how they give it. But it is inconceivable that Blair and Campbell would not be asked.
 
It is believed Blair urged Brown to announce a private inquiry precisely because he did not want to be forced to give evidence in public and on oath. He last gave evidence in public to the Hutton inquiry in 2004 but that was not on oath.
 
Critics have long argued that Hutton was a whitewash because it was not tasked with answering the key questions of whether the war on Iraq was legal in international law and whether Blair deliberately misled parliament and the public over the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction which, it transpired, did not exist.
 
As Blair is now the European Union's special envoy to the Middle East it is thought the last thing he wants is another public session reminding the world, among other things, of his role in the Iraq war and his friendship with and loyalty to former US President George Bush and his strategy of pre-emption. And that is leaving aside the possibility, slim though it is, that fresh details emerge of his campaign to take Britain to war.
 
But if Blair cites national security as a reason to speak behind closed doors and Chilcot goes along with it, the inquiry will be written off as another whitewash before it even gets off the ground.
 
Over to you Sir John, as Downing Street now likes to say. ·