Iraq inquiry: former mandarin proves reputation unfounded

I’m guilty. I admit it. Guilty of stereotyping. Prejudice against greys. Mandarinism. The track record for top civil servants at the inquiry, serving or retired, has not been terrific compared, say, with ambassadors and generals.

Consider for example former MoD head honcho Sir Kevin Tebbit who leapt in every time his fellow witness threatened to say anything controversial or, dare I say it, interesting.

So we didn’t enter this afternoon’s session with former Cabinet Secretary Lord Turnbull with terribly high hopes. Which was pretty silly really given his history: Turnbull has already bomb-shelled the media once before by describing Gordon Brown’s “Stalinist ruthlessness” and “complete contempt” for other ministers.

In the event it was a fascinating session. He attacked Alastair Campbell for describing Clare Short as untrustworthy (“very poor”), criticised Blair for allowing the ‘culture of challenge’ to ebb from Cabinet life and introduced the new (to me) phrase “granny’s footsteps” to describe the troubling way the September dossier was pieced together by No 10 and the spooks.

How was Middle East security ever going to be improved, he asked, by taking out Saddam Hussein and leaving Iran with a neighbour newly run by 15 million Shia?

Perhaps most moving were his remarks about the late Robin Cook. A number of commentators have said the former Foreign Secretary wasn’t always the easiest of people to get on with; I interviewed him once and was left with the distinct impression that mine were by some considerable degree by far the stupidest questions he’d ever been asked (then again maybe they were).

But Turnbull’s description of the “quite remarkable” man was highly affectionate. Alone in a Cabinet that had bought the case for war, Cook was the only person who wasn’t convinced about WMD or the failure of containment “and I’m sorry he isn’t around to take the credit for that”.

Surprising tribute to John Prescott too (with whom my sole personal contact was once being called a southerner of questionable parentage, in somewhat fruitier terms).

Turnbull, the man once responsible for running the machinery of government, praised a ‘staunch defender’ of the system who hated it whenever policies were leaked to the media. Perhaps that explains why he seemed to look so angry all the time.

I’m still not clear in my head whether Turnbull said that the Attorney General presented a significantly different version of his legal advice to Cabinet or just a subbed-down one that left out background and complexities.

But there was the collective sound of press-room jaws dropping when he hypothetically posited whether Blair had always actually been set on regime change and had just “talk[ed] the disarmament language.”

One left the QEII with the impression of a former mandarin exacting revenge on a government that he felt had demeaned governance.