Subject: A very British tragedy
From: "openDemocracy"
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 20:24:59 -0000
To: "achtung almanac"

A very British tragedy

A week is a long time in politics. The Hutton report is no longer a simple victory for Tony Blair and defeat for the BBC: it has become a crisis for the British public realm. As the prime minister follows George Bush in announcing an inquiry into pre-Iraq war intelligence on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, http://www.openDemocracy.net presents the leading political historian and commentator David Marquand's crisp, devastating diagnosis of an unfolding drama:

* Hutton is not a whitewash - it's worse than that. There is a malaise at the very heart of British political culture

* Andrew Gilligan, the BBC journalist who accused the government of 'sexing up' intelligence information, and Alastair Campbell, Blair's former head of communications are "symptoms of the same sickness": contempt for the public in government and media

* 'Scoop hunting', like the political spin it mirrors, "is not an ornament of a free press…It is a cancer gnawing at its entrails"

* Tony Blair has in the end lost. "His credibility in shreds"

* Blair's "American ally. . . has hung him out to dry"

Read Marquand exclusively at www.openDemocracy.net
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-8-92-1709.jsp

Also on www.openDemocracy.net on the aftermath of Hutton:

David Elstein on lessons for the BBC,
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-8-92-1700.jsp

Douglas Murray on the wrong inquiry,
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-8-92-1699.jsp

and Anthony Barnett cracks Alastair Campbell's code.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-8-92-1704.jsp

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