The Butler report said more about the shortcomings of Britain's official inquiries than it did about Tony Blair's integrity, writes Alistair Alexander from London Embellished the evidence of weapons of mass destruction? Undoubtedly. Exaggerated the case for war? Undeniably. But had the prime minister lied to the British public? Good heavens, no. As a former head of the British civil service, Lord Butler's report into the intelligence on Iraq, published last week, was never expected to rock the political boat more than was strictly necessary. But even so, its conclusions revealed more about the shortcomings of Britain's official inquiries that it did about Tony Blair's integrity. Not that Tony Blair saw it that way, of course. He told the House of Commons that the Butler Report, like the three inquiries on Iraq before it, settled once and for all the question of the government's good faith. "No one lied," he declared, "no one made up the intelligence; no one inserted things into the dossier against the advice of the intelligence services; everyone genuinely tried to do their best in good faith for the country in circumstances of acute difficulty." It was a mantra endlessly -- and very effectively -- repeated by government ministers on radio, television and in newspapers. But those ministers might reflect that, while they claim to have been exonerated by each inquiry, voters have increasingly come to the opposite conclusion: a poll this week found that a solid majority believe the prime minister lied over Iraq. For all the finesse of Lord Butler's language, his report could not disguise the one central and incontrovertible fact: Tony Blair claimed to have irrefutable evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction (WMD), when he had absolutely nothing of the sort. But Lord Butler certainly tried. While the report acknowledged the conspicuous lack of WMDs discovered in Iraq he nevertheless concluded, "it would be a rash person who asserted at this stage that evidence of Iraqi possession of stocks of biological or chemical agents, or even of banned missiles, does not exist or will never be found." And while Lord Butler accepted that the Iraq dossier might have stretched the case on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, he was scrupulously careful not to suggest any wrongdoing had occurred: "Our view, having reviewed all the material, is that judgments went to (although not beyond) the outer limits of the intelligence available." On the controversial claim that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons in 45 minutes, Lord Butler did conclude that it should not have been used. His report also revealed that the claim had been withdrawn by the Secret Intelligence Service before the Hutton Inquiry, yet, strangely, officials and ministers in that inquiry failed to point that out to the venerable judge at the time. But on the British allegations that Iraq had been seeking uranium from Niger, which have since been discredited by the CIA, Lord Butler concluded that the claims were right after all. Overall, it is very easy, when reading the report to forget that its consequences were a military invasion. But then a hallmark of this report is a meticulous separation of cause and effect. The effect that the dossier might have had on public opinion is discussed vaguely in Butler's report. But that is never connected to the cause of the dossier creation, on which the report appears to accept the prime minister's implausible explanation, that it was published simply to quell the "clamour" for information. Equally, Butler -- always a stickler for due process -- is critical of Blair's so-called sofa diplomacy, where key decisions are taken informally by him and his favoured advisers outside the rigid structures of cabinet government. But Butler finds no evidence of "deliberate distortion" or "culpable negligence" in the production of the dossier. The possibility that the former might very well have led to the latter, without of course leaving any evidence, appears not to have crossed the lord's mind. The report implicitly criticises the document's author, former chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) John Scarlett, by memorably concluding that JIC's authorship of it "resulted in more weight being placed on the intelligence than it could bear". But Lord Butler went out of his way to recommend that Scarlett's highly controversial promotion to lead Britain's Secret Intelligence Service should stand. Again, Scarlett's prospects of career advancement and the effect that might have had on the dossier's final content appears not to have been considered by Lord Butler. Considering that Scarlett's erstwhile American counterpart, George Tenet, resigned in what amounted to disgrace, Scarlett's promotion appears all the more remarkable. But when it comes to pointing fingers of blame for what is surely the most astonishing intelligence failure since the Trojans decided that a wooden horse would look splendid in the town square, Lord Butler keeps his digits firmly in his pockets. The report appears to shrug its investigative shoulders and conclude that everyone was collectively responsible for the failings, and therefore no one. And certainly not the prime minister. For all of Lord Butler's pulled punches, the report still adds to the already ample evidence that the government manipulated its intelligence to make the case for war. But Tony Blair appears to have brushed off the report with nonchalant ease. How does he get away with it? The simple answer is because enough people want him to. For many in Tony Blair's long-suffering Labour Party, the prospect of unseating the prime minister simply does not bear thinking about. Mr Blair's only rival, Chancellor Gordon Brown, has well- documented designs on Mr Blair's job. But any succession is unlikely to be smooth; after years of smouldering resentment between the Brown and Blair camps, a contested leadership following Blair's departure would probably become a political blood bath. So for Cabinet members and Labour MPs, despite their private dismay at their leader's conduct, in public, they conclude, it is best to suspend one's disbelief and pretend the whole ugly episode never happened. The press, in its endless and fruitless search for the "silver bullet" -- the single piece of evidence that could bring down the prime minister -- has overlooked the cumulative pattern of deception and cynicism that saturates British strategy on Iraq. But after the drubbing the BBC received following the death of Dr Kelly, few in the media have the stomach for a head-on confrontation with the government. Besides following the fourth report on Iraq, the press is understandably suffering from a severe case of inquiry fatigue. A consensus is emerging among politicians and journalists that Iraq is an issue on which voters must accept that they have little chance themselves of holding the prime minister to account. Last week two by-elections gave a strong impression of what the electorate actually thinks. The elections, held in Leicester and Birmingham, both traditional Labour strongholds, saw dramatic swings to the Liberal Democrats. Labour managed to hold one of the seats by a few hundred votes and lost the other. With large Muslim populations in both constituencies, few doubt that Iraq was a significant factor in the result. And after Labour's disastrous showing in last month's local and European elections, it is clear that Tony Blair is as much an electoral liability now as he used to be an asset. Rather than face up to this unpalatable fact, Labour Party officials point to the equally abysmal performance of the Tories. The most shocking result of the elections, however, was the poor turnout. Traditionally, by- elections attract turnout levels higher than general elections as voters seize the opportunity to give their leaders a normally well-deserved slap in the face. This time, however, the turnout in both seats hovered around a mere 40 per cent. Of course, this uncomfortable statistic was barely mentioned by politicians. If that result is representative, then it would indeed seem that voters have decided. Not against Labour or even Tony Blair, but against the entire political process.
