Brown's inquiry appearance overshadows Treasury evidence
Any real chance of today’s DfID and Treasury witnesses getting onto the news bulletins was pretty much scuppered by the news Gordon Brown would appear before the inquiry.
It’s every performer’s worst nightmare – being upstaged by the warm-up act. Any real chance of today’s DfID and Treasury witnesses getting onto the news bulletins was pretty much scuppered by a discreet exchange of billets-doux between No. 10 and the inquiry.
Chilcot’s no fool; he spoke before of not wanting the proceedings to become a political platform, far less a football. In his Thursday letter he told the man who appointed him: “The committee remains concerned about that mounting risk.”
Nevertheless the offer to give evidence early was made and at about 09h00 this morning Brown’s acceptance was received.
As hacks we’re obviously delighted; another day of high drama and all the set-piece-eventery the Big Hitters entail. But it will be interesting to hear what some of the armed forces relatives feel as the inquiry inevitably – to whatever degree – gets hijacked by party politics.
In the event the scheduled witnesses didn’t offer up many surprises. DfID’s Suma Chakrabarti added an “unworthy” to Lord Turnbull’s description of the Alastair Campbell’s remarks about Clare Short as “very poor”. I did Tweet @campbellclaret offering a right to reply but answer (thus far) came there none.
For HM Treasury Nicholas Macpherson had a pretty good stab at rebutting Geoff Hoon’s budget-slashing allegations earlier in the week. He couldn’t remember the MoD complaining at the time, he said, and in any case had the generals handled their finances better the Treasury wouldn’t have needed to park its own tanks on their lawn.
Let’s see that get the same sort of headlines Hoon won after his evidence (but please don’t hold your breath).
A press-room colleague noticed something interesting towards the end of Macpherson’s session. Had he referred to Chancellor Brown by name even once during the 90 minutes or so that he was up? The transcript will be the judge but we thought not.
We’re back with a double-barrelled vengeance at 14h00 on Monday; Defence Secretaries Des Browne and John Hutton.
This will only make sense to rabid followers of twitter.com/iraqinquiryblog but Nick Witchell and I are really going to miss the QVC Beauty Crush ladies. He and I debated nipping into their conference for a manicure or a massage several times today.
Heck, it’s a half day at Chilcot – for all I know he’s in there now, the lucky so-and-so.
