Portrait of the Week – 22 March 2003

British troops joined the American assault on Iraq, after a Commons debate in which an anti-war motion was defeated by 396 votes to 217 (including 139 Labour rebels), and a government motion seeking ‘all necessary means’ to disarm Iraq was passed by 412 votes to 149, a majority of 263. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said in the debate that if Parliament voted to pull out British troops, ‘I would not be party to such a course.’ Earlier in the week, on 16 March, when it had become clear that France would veto in the United Nations Security Council a resolution on Iraq tabled by the United States, Britain and Spain, Mr Blair had joined President George Bush of the United States, Mr JosZ Mar’a Aznar, the Prime Minister of Spain, and their host, Mr JosZ Durao Barroso, the Prime Minister of Portugal, at a press conference in the Top of the Rock club on the island of Terceira in the Azores after a four-hour summit contemplating war. Mr Robin Cook, the Leader of the House, resigned from the government the next day, saying, ‘I can’t accept collective responsibility for the decision to commit Britain now to military action in Iraq without international agreement or domestic support.’ Two ministers, Mr John Denham and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, also resigned. Miss Clare Short, the Secretary of State for International Development, had promised to resign but then said, ‘I have now decided that this would be cowardly.’ Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, said that the legal basis for action against Iraq came from resolutions 678, 687 and 1441 of the UN Security Council. The Fire Brigades’ Union cancelled a strike due on 20 March. Headline inflation rose from 2.9 per cent to 3.2 per cent; the underlying rate rose from 2.7