So what is the Chilcot report and what are its implications?

[zabuzabu]

It's been investigating the Iraq war and it's going to say Tony should't have started it, is that right?

But Tony is no longer an MP and it's all a decade ago. So what exactly is going to happen as a result?

The BBC has already got all kind of experts explaining how Chilcot wuz wrong, gggrrr.

This is probably stupid but I don't understand why TB should be tried as a war criminal.

Is it because he lied? Because he started a war illegally? Doesn't that make him a liar but not a war crimjnal?

I imagine war criminals to be standing over mass graves laughing and encouraging his men to abuse the women. TB doesn't fit this "image."

Not trying to be a goady fucker, would very much appreciate a (simple) explanation.

TBs approach to government was to recruit to his cabinet only Ministers who accepted they shouldn't ask too many searching questions.

Ministers who were granted 30 min meetings, so not enough time for them to get into uncomfortable detail.

All that sofa-meeting stuff, open-necked shirts casual approach, the culture created by cronies like Alistair Campbell.

Alistair Campbell in particular has been pissing me off.

The country seems to have been entirely run by him & and his mate Tone.

And Tony Blair is a multi-millionaire on the back of everything he did. Pass the bucket.
I agree with pp, why should he make us ashamed to be British?

There's quite a few people felt ashamed to be British since Brexit, and now after Chilcot.
I certainly don't, but I'm ashamed of our government

And Jeremy Corbyn would be different if he had a Cabinet? All prime ministers keep their friends close. Lots do not have much of a discussion with the whole Cabinet which is why you get resignations from time to time. Someone in the minority will feel it is a resigning issue. All Cabinets have enemies within but if you do not control them, as Cameron has failed to do, you get dysfunctional Government.

The Cabinet and Parliament, after all, have to agree a course of action especially now that deploying troops divides so many people. This will lead to years of inaction on our part but it might make us far more realistic regarding capabilities and our role in the world, which we greatly over-inflate. We will soon have little reason to have an army. What is it going to do?

I apologise to Chilcot - I spelt his name incorrectly yesterday!

How young you must be daisy! In the 1970's the Labour Cabinet would have meetings with Union leaders in smoke filled rooms and send out for sandwiches and drink beer. What you wear has nothing to do with the quality of the decisions being made, thank goodness.

Do you remember the "Kitchen Cabinet"? This was Harold Wilson's inner Cabinet and it also included his Secretary, Marcia Williams, who became Lady Falkender. She was not even elected but she certainly was part of the inner sanctum. Margaret Thatcher had a press secretary called Bernard Ingham. He controlled access and spun for Mrs T. Again not elected but where do you think Alaister Campbell learnt how to be a press secretary? He copied Bernard Ingham. It appears that everyone thinks this form of Government is new - it is not! A course in recent history may help inform the discussion!

If Chilcot has any positive outcomes, it should be that informal decision-making is curbed and that other colleagues are free to ask searching questions and disagree. To say that AC and TB were different to other PM's is totally untrue. Others just got away with it.

All that sofa-meeting stuff, open-necked shirts casual approach, the culture created by cronies like Alistair Campbell.

The politics textbooks call that 'Blair's kitchen cabinet'. I agree that when big chunks of the important business is done informally, unminuted, almost casually, there is a lot of scope for problems.

TB is at least morally a war criminal. He may get off a reading of the letter of the law, but he is personally responsible for uncountless deaths.