A fickle public

If the assault against Saddam Hussein is not quite going to plan, that fact seems to have been lost on the many shadow war cabinets meeting in session down at the Dog and Duck. Six weeks ago, when the troops were still gathering at the Iraqi border and the world believed that Baghdad would very likely fall to insurrection within 72 hours of an invasion, just 29 per cent of the British public, according to ICM, approved of war with Iraq. Now that coalition forces are digging in around Baghdad waiting for reinforcements, and larger numbers of Iraqi citizens than many expected are being caught in the crossfire, support for the war has surged to 52 per cent.

Other than to state an unavoidable truth – that most people do not hold consistent opinions on war or on many other issues of the day – it isn’t easy to explain why the British people should have behaved as they have done. There have been few revelations about Saddam Hussein’s regime in the past few weeks – and still no sign of his elusive stock of chemical and biological weapons – to justify such a shift in opinion. Are 23 per cent of Britons really sadists who were unexcited by the quick, surgical strike which was intimated by Donald Rumsfeld and his henchmen but who are enthused by the sight of body-bags and groaning victims on stretchers?

Surely, they are not. But they are easily swayed by fashion. When a million pacifists, red-blooded socialists and blue-rinsed peaceniks were marching through London waving banners, it was in vogue to support them. Now that our tommies are actually fighting, and dying, out in the Gulf, it seems treacherous not to cheer them along.