John Harris hits the nail on the head when he says the events of 2003 helped to destroy public trust in the government (20 years on, memories of the Iraq war may have faded, but it shaped the diminished UK we know today, 12 March). That tragic legacy still runs true today.
I respect the work that Tony Blair and the less recognised Mo Mowlam achieved in bringing peace to Northern Ireland. However, Blair’s legacy has shaped a generation that view politicians as untrustworthy. Blair, Alastair Campbell and their cronies in the government of the day manipulated the evidence available to them to justify the war in Iraq.
Today’s politicians, learning their craft from Blair’s legacy, have successfully positioned themselves such that they can use the benefit of the dark arts of modern politics for their own personal benefit.
Stuart Finegan
Lewes, East Sussex
• In the autumn of 2009, I was one of 30 or so members of various NGO delegations invited to attend an early morning pre-Copenhagen climate summit with Gordon Brown at Downing Street. “I need you to get as many of your members out there this weekend on this climate march, so that I can go to that meeting and tell world leaders that the British people demand action,” he told us.
At the end of his address he invited responses. I was the first to raise a hand. “Prime minister, the last time people actively took to the streets in February 2003, there were more than a million of them and you went ahead, ignored them and declared war on the pretext of faulty intelligence. Don’t you think that unless you make a categorical apology for misjudging them then, it will be impossible for people like me to convince them that this kind of demonstration of public will is worthwhile?”
You could have heard a pin drop. He muttered something about now not being the time to go over old ground. At the end of the meeting, I was accosted by No 10 officials who told me that my contribution was “far from helpful”.
Fourteen years on, I still remain of the opinion that the body politic as far as the Iraq war is concerned is in need of healing.
Mark Dowd
Manchester
• The date British politics broke was somewhat earlier than John Harris states. It was the day Tony Blair was elected Labour leader. I gave up voting Labour when he became leader as I could see he was just a male Margaret Thatcher. At the end of his first term, the Labour vote had crashed by 2.8 million and he only won as the Tories were even more unpopular. People I lived near in Nuneaton and worked with in the West Midlands gave up voting as the parties were “all the same”. When they next voted, it was for Brexit – something they felt they could influence. There is still a feeling in Nuneaton that “they are all the same”, and there is little faith in Keir Starmer.
This is Blair’s legacy: Brexit, Iraq and the most unpleasant and extreme government since the first world war.
John Parkin
Nuneaton, Warwickshire
• I recall Jeremy Corbyn’s words, spoken at the anti-war rally in 2003, in which I’m proud to say that I took part: “It will set off a spiral of conflict, of hate, of misery that will fuel the wars of the future.”
Suzanne Saxby
Wrexham
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