Why the Tories backed the war

Tories are used to getting blamed for many things, but to be blamed for a Labour Cabinet minister’s lack of principles is surely a first. That was their fate at the hands of Clare Short. For weeks, people have struggled to understand the former International Development Secretary’s failure to resign after calling the Prime Minister’s policy on Iraq ‘reckless’. Now we know that her hypocrisy was all the fault of the Tories. ‘Because the official opposition was voting with the government, a conflict was unavoidable,’ Short told Parliament. ‘I decided I should not weaken the government at that time.’

One of the most nauseating images of the postwar spin operation is that of a beleaguered prime minister gathering his family around him on the eve of war to warn them that he could be about to lose his job. Now Short has confirmed what few reporters bothered to mention: thanks to the Tories, Blair was never in the slightest danger of losing his job. The hagiographies tell of a prime minister heroically taking on the overwhelming opposition of his party and the country to send the armed forces into war. But what of Iain Duncan Smith, who also took on his own party and the country in order to keep Blair in office? The Tories were just as divided over the war as Labour was. Most Conservative MPs freely admit that the mood in their constituencies, even among party members, was largely one of opposition. How did IDS do it?

Indeed, his achievement was even more remarkable when you consider that here was a leader of the opposition whose position was said to be perilously weak, yet who adopted a policy on Iraq markedly at odds with the views of most of the diplomatic and military establishments, large swaths of the Conservative press (the Daily Mail remained sceptical right up until the fighting started), and a formidable array of party grandees, including two former foreign secretaries, Lord Hurd and Sir Malcolm Rifkind.