Legal Advice Confirms Blair not Fit to be Prime Minister, says Green Candidate
April 28 2005
A man who deceived the country over his reasons for going to war and ignored legal advice is not fit to continue as Prime Minister, said Leicester South Green Party candidate Matt Follett, today.
The Leicester South campaigner made the statement after a leaked memo revealed concerns by Britain's attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, in March 2003 about going to war without a second UN resolution.
"Tony Blair and his Government misled the British people on the most serious of issues,” said Mr Follett. “He took intelligence that was unclear and ambiguous, when he was clearly told otherwise. He repeatedly highlighted a claim that Iraq could deploy WMD in 45 minutes, when this figure referred to battlefield weapons, not long-range missiles. This shows that he was more interested in propaganda than in truth."
He added: "As late as February 2003, when I and my fellow candidate Geoff Forse and two million others were marching for peace, Blair pretended that he was looking for peace, saying that although he detested Saddam’s regime, he was prepared to let it continue if Saddam disarmed. But it turned out that Saddam had already disarmed, while Tony Blair had fully committed himself to supporting George W Bush in an invasion that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan later declared to be illegal. With such a track record, he would be likely to commit British troops in support of a US-led invasion of Iran, which reliable reports say is already being planned."
He continued: "Tony Blair still insists his war on Iraq was right, contrary to the majority view of the British people. The war resulted in the death of 100,000 innocent Iraq civilians and over 1600 UK and US troops. Despite the spending of billions of dollars on the war, basic services like water and electricity are still intermittent in Iraq because of the ongoing attacks by insurgents. In the UK we have witnessed an erosion of civil rights, detention without trial and a rise in Islamophobia."
Matt Follett concluded: “Such a man is not fit to be Prime Minister. Such a Government does not deserve to be endorsed. Nor does the Conservative opposition, which supported the war.”