Portrait of the Week – 7 May 2005

Britain held a general election, except in South Staffordshire, where the death of the Liberal Democrat candidate after ballot papers had been sent out required the holding of a by-election later. More than five million requests for postal votes had been met. The Conservatives had hoped that the result would be unexpected in the same way as that in 1970. The degree to which Mr Tony Blair was sweating prompted speculation that he would retire from domestic politics early on health grounds. Campaigning in Huddersfield before the election, Mr Blair said of David Blunkett, the disgraced former home secretary: ‘That is one of the most special people I have ever worked with in my life and I want to see him back where he belongs as soon as possible.’ The government had released the full text of the Attorney General’s advice from 7 March 2003 on the legality of going to war against Iraq; controversy over the subject was kept alive by the publication in the Sunday Times of a leaked minute of a meeting in No. 10 Downing Street on 23 July 2002 at which Mr Blair, Lord Boyce, Lord Goldsmith, Mr Jack Straw, Mr Geoff Hoon, Sir Richard Dearlove (the head of MI6) and Mr John Scarlett, then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, were present; Sir Richard, who had just returned from talks in Washington, said that the Americans now saw military action against Iraq as ‘inevitable’, adding that ‘the intelligence and facts were being fixed around policy’. The minute concluded: ‘We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action.’ A Coldstream guardsman was killed in action in Iraq. Another leak gave the name of 16 Labour peers to be created to give Labour a majority in the Lords; they include Mr Chris Smith, Miss Estelle Morris, Mr George Foulkes, Mr Tony Banks, Mr Jack Cunningham and Dr Lewis Moonie, who stepped aside to allow Mr Gordon Brown to stand for the newly formed constituency of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath; Mr Michael Portillo was said to have declined inclusion among the five Conservative nominations.