IT has now been 1,645 days since Sir John Chilcot started his inquiry into the Iraq War.
By all accounts the report is done. It is completed, ready.
Yet still we wait to see the document.
Cameron’s demand to see a timetable from Sir John is an empty threat.
He is acting to be seen to be acting.
He is either “powerless” as previously claimed or he has the power to “demand” a timetable as said yesterday during his trip to Asia.
You have to wonder if Cameron’s inaction is because the current cabinet are “culpable” as Alex Salmond claims, or if it is because the Prime Minister has an eye on airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.
It is likely both.
It is no secret that a vote on airstrikes against Daesh in Syria is coming early in the next parliament.
There is increasingly consensus between the hawks on the Tory benches and those in the Labour party seeking to clean up the mess their government made in the early part of the 21st century.
It is ironic that one of the main aims of the Chilcot Inquiry was “to identify the lessons that can be learned”.
Surely we need now to looking at the lessons that can be learned from the Chilcot Inquiry.
There is no argument from us that this inquiry should be thorough.
That the panel have examined more than 150,000 government documents and cross-examined almost 130 witnesses is to be commended.
But the reason we have been waiting six years for the report to be published is not because of this thoroughness but because of the process of “Maxwellisation”.
Everyone mentioned critically in the report must be given a chance to respond before it can be published.
Surely it is time to look at this bizarre requirement. That is what a Prime Minister who actually cared about the publication of the report would do.
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