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As one of the (so far few) Conservative MPs to have publicly supported the proposal to debate the Prime Minister’s impeachment, I was not surprised by Cedric Talbot’s reaction to it from Tokyo (Letters, 4 September). He misses the point and in doing so falls into the trap set by the No. 10 machine. It wants us to forget the reasons for invading Iraq used by the Prime Minister in his Commons speech in March 2003 and what we now know he knew or ought to have known then; to concentrate only on the benefits for Iraq that have flowed from the war; lazily to accept that any criticism of the Prime Minister for his conduct in taking us into the war is to tolerate, if not positively support, the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein, to be an opponent of the war and a disloyal critic of our brave troops; to believe that because the Prime Minister has been exonerated by the narrowly focused Hutton and Butler inquiries, his integrity in all things and at all times is not open to doubt.
The argument in support of impeachment is not based on the wrongness of going to war. If it were, I would not support it. It is based on the need for Parliament to check the executive, to remind even the most powerful in our country that they are not supreme, and ourselves that a functioning parliamentary democracy depends on trust and truth. President Bush told the American people why he was leading his country to war, and whether you agree with him or not, no one can accuse him of saying one thing in 2002, something different in early 2003 and something else in 2004. Examine our Prime Minister’s record over the same period and ask yourself if he can claim to have been as consistent or as candid with Parliament, the Parliamentary Labour party and the public as the President was in the United States of America.
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