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**Hugh** · 13-08-2023, 13:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pierre

I will also post in depth later when I have the time. I would just like to pull you up on something.

Voted on yes, based on a pack of lies, a complete fiction put forward by Blair and Campbell, just because Blair had promised his support to Bush.

How they never got done for misleading parliament is beyond me compared to recent goings on.

So, I therefore, reject that caveat to your question.

It wasn’t that simple - Iain Duncan Smith strongly supported it, because of his links to US neo-Cons, and dragged the Party along with him.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/...acked-the-war/

Quote:

Why, then, did traditional Tory scepticism fail to make an impact at Westminster? The main reason was that any change in party policy was impossible under the current leadership. As shadow defence secretary in the late 1990s, IDS had developed close contacts with neoconservative think-tanks in the US, whose blueprint for a new American security policy has since been adopted by the Bush administration. Their chief concern was the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the need to take pre-emptive action to ensure that they did not fall into the hands of rogue states and terrorist organisations. IDS shared these concerns. He made his first speech warning of the dangers of WMDs in 1995, and subsequently wrote about the risks in a pamphlet published in 2000 that was reissued in 2002. Indeed, IDS had been talking about the need to tackle Iraq long before 11 September.

Given his track record on the issue, IDS could hardly do anything other than take a hawkish line on Iraq. Nor was there much attempt by his colleagues in the shadow Cabinet to persuade him to tone down his rhetoric. According to one shadow Cabinet member, Iraq was regularly discussed but at no stage did anyone express strong reservations over the policy. Outside the shadow Cabinet, a number of junior frontbench spokesmen did express reservations – indeed, four were to quit – but the shadow Cabinet itself was comfortable with the policy. Nor was there much resistance offered in the 1922 Committee, dismissed by many MPs as ‘virtually defunct’. About 25 MPs, many of whom were critical of party policy, turned up to hear IDS speak at a meeting in September 2002, but there was little consensus over what alternative strategy the party might credibly pursue. Indeed, Tory opponents of the war refused to do what Labour opponents were doing and organise themselves to lobby their colleagues. Nobody wanted to be accused of engineering party splits.

Meanwhile, the leadership went out of its way to win over doubters. Throughout February and March, the shadow Foreign Office team of Michael Ancram and Alan Duncan (who struggled to overcome his own reservations about the party’s hardline stance) held a weekly meeting to discuss the policy with backbench MPs. Bernard Jenkin, the shadow defence spokesman and, along with IDS, by far the most hawkish member of the shadow Cabinet, also spoke to waverers. At the same time, the whips mounted a successful operation to bring doubters into line.