I think there is something questionable about Dr David Kelly’s alleged suicide. I also strongly suspect that Blair and his government knew that the case for WMDs in Iraq was far weaker than they were letting on before committing to war.
Other than that, I'm not generally a believer in big conspiracy theories. However, I always ask myself four questions when faced with one:
1. What would be the purpose of the conspiracy?
For example, why would governments want us to believe the world is round if it were actually flat? Or why would Diana need to be killed? There doesn't appear to be any logical or compelling reason.
Blair and Iraq: Blair had a clear political motive for supporting Bush's invasion. Maintaining Britain's special relationship with America, preserving British influence in the Middle East and supporting an intervention the US administration was determined to pursue were all powerful incentives. WMDs provided the public justification.
2. How many people would need to be involved in the cover-up?
The more people involved, the less believable I find it. Heck, governments struggle to keep even a basic briefing out of the media in 2026!
Blair and Iraq: This wouldn't have required hundreds of people conspiring together. A relatively small circle of senior politicians and intelligence officials could have shaped the presentation of intelligence. The vast majority of MPs, journalists and the public would simply have been relying on information presented to them as credible, much of it classified.
3. How complicated would it be to carry out?
Take the theory that 9/11 was an inside job. The level of planning and coordination required would be staggering. You would also need to find people willing to carry out the various tasks involved without ever exposing the truth.
Blair and Iraq: There was no need to manufacture physical evidence, orchestrate an elaborate operation or recruit thousands of people. If intelligence was exaggerated, selectively presented or interpreted to support a predetermined conclusion, the government could simply present that assessment to Parliament and the public as justification for war. Relatively straightforward by comparison.
And this is where things get particularly interesting. Blair had committed himself to supporting Bush well before the September 2002 WMD dossier was published. The question is whether the intelligence drove the decision to go to war, or whether the intelligence was used to justify a decision that had effectively already been made.
The Downing Street Memo of July 2002 is particularly revealing. It recorded that American policy was already geared towards military action and that intelligence and facts were being fixed around that policy.
4. Was there a better or easier way of achieving the same objective?
Take the suggestion that COVID was deliberately used as a means of controlling the population. Why would anyone go to the trouble of supposedly destroying the economy, disrupting everyone's lives and then reopening everything a few years later as though nothing had happened? It doesn't really add up.
Blair and Iraq: Perhaps there were other ways of achieving Britain's foreign policy objectives, but supporting an American-led invasion, with WMDs presented as the immediate threat, was politically convenient. The atmosphere following 9/11 made that argument particularly persuasive.
Ultimately, I don't think you have to prove that Blair personally knew with absolute certainty that there were no WMDs. The more important question is whether he had sufficient reason to doubt the intelligence, yet presented the case for war with a level of certainty that simply wasn't justified.
The Chilcot Inquiry subsequently found that peaceful options had not been exhausted and that the intelligence assessments had been presented with more certainty than was justified. The Iraq Survey Group also found no stockpiles of the chemical and biological weapons that had been used to justify the invasion.
So, those are my four questions.
I'm not saying every conspiracy theory is impossible. Far from it. But I do think you have to look at motive, opportunity, the number of people involved, the complexity of the operation and, most importantly, the available evidence.
And sometimes the most plausible explanation isn't an elaborate conspiracy at all. It's a relatively small group of powerful people making decisions, manipulating information and then allowing everyone else to believe the story they've been told.