CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

The poor poll showing increased concern already apparent among Mr Blair’s own
back-bench MPs, especially those who had only reluctantly swung their support behind
the Government in the run up to the crucial house of Commons vote on the eve of the
war. Their concern was heightened from a sense of failure properly to execute the post-
conflict phase which, as argued above, undermined the jus ad bellum 172 . (See p105 for
discussion of the impact of this at the international level). Months before the damaging
local election results, Toby Helm, Chief Political Correspondent of The Daily
Telegraph, summarised the damage to Blair thus:
In summer 2002, before Iraq had become the dominant issue in world
diplomacy, he looked untouchable. His reputation in the EU and the US was
unrivalled among world leaders. A Daily Telegraph poll … put Labour nine
points ahead of the Tories.
By contrast a survey … … last month (Feb 2004) put Labour five points behind
(the) Conservatives. Inside the Labour Party the war poisoned the
atmosphere…(and) Mr Blair lost two Cabinet ministers.
For a time Iraq even threatened to end the Blair premiership as a row between
Downing Street and the BCC over its justification ended with the death of Dr
David Kelly, the government scientist.
A Commons vote on university tuition fees in January saw Labour anger spill
over on to Mr Blair’s domestic agenda as his majority of 161 was cut to just
five. Had he lost it would probably have been the end. 173
The relevance of the University Top-Up Fees vote, is explained by Matthew D’Ancona,
writing in The Sunday Telegraph. Backbench objections to what was a central plank of
the Government’s education policy were, argues D’Ancona, ‘unreasonable’ but
reflected a deep-seated anger with the Government front bench, stemming almost
entirely from dissatisfaction over the Iraq policy: ‘What has driven the Labour party
mad? The Iraq war, certainly: the lesions left on the British body politic are still raw
and festering. In the eyes of a growing number of backbenchers the Prime Minister is
now behaving more like a commander-in-chief than a party leader.’ 174
At their 2004 Annual Conference, members of the Liberal Democratic Party called on
Mr Blair to resign as an adopted motion declared the war with Iraq ‘unjustified and
based on misleadingly presented and falsely interpreted intelligence.’ 175 Perhaps most
serious for Mr Blair, though, was the damage done to his standing in his own party and
the splits that resulted even in his Cabinet. The loss of two Cabinet members is referred
to by D’Ancona: Robin Cook, a former Foreign Secretary, resigned as Leader of the
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