Owen replies: Quite – that was Anthony not me. I’ve never said any such thing, as far as I recall.

An error that might involve criminal charges is of course especially difficult for a politician, or indeed anyone else, to admit to, but even in such cases piling perjury onto the original offence in the attempt at cover-up can’t be regarded as a rational course of action, unless there’s an odds-on chance of getting away with both the offence and the perjury. And experience doesn’t seem to suggest that the odds are often favourable to the offender-perjurer. Original offence and subsequent mendacious cover-up are both increasingly easily detected and exposed by media enthralled by their self-appointed roles as ‘investigative journalists’, performing a vital function that parliament has virtually ceased to perform, at any rate in Britain.

PS: I hold no blazing torch for Peter Mandelson, but I don’t think your assertion that his two forced resignations from ministerial office were the result of his attempts to cover up previous offences is fair. In the case of the second resignation it seems most unlikely that he had committed any offence at all, still less that he had tried to cover it up. And in the first case my recollection is that as soon as the facts about his personal loan, and his failure to declare it to the Cabinet Secretary (probably through lack of awareness of the obligation to do so), became known, he made no attempt to deny them or to cover them up. In both cases he was forced out of office by Tony Blair’s impetuous and premature impulse to punish first and inquire into the facts afterwards.

Brian

Owen – I agree that politicians are on the whole decent, well-intentioned folk, but it does seem that the higher up the system you look, the less appealing they get.

I can think of countless local MPs that are honest, diligent and good people. But it just doesn’t seem as if they’re the ones that procede.

Mo Mowlam and Robin Cook, perhaps, are two noticeable recent exceptions.

Regarding your hypothesis, I’d take a Gary Becker line. They do normally get away with it, but the costs are huge (how many private sector managers get fired for small misdemeaners?). I think the explanation lies in the natural proclivity of those who seek power – we shouldn’t be surprised that their arrogance in the face of misdemeanor leads to their downfall.

Not quite. The position as I understand it is that the intelligence reports on which this claim was based was “well founded” (which is not quite the same as saying that they were “correct”.)

In 2003, the British Government asked Lord Butler to chair an inquiry into the intelligence relating to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. The full text of the report is here. As far as I know, the conclusions of that review are the basis of the UK Government’s position.

The relevant extracts are:

494. There was further and separate intelligence that in 1999 the Iraqi regime had also made inquiries about the purchase of uranium ore in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this case, there was some evidence that by 2002 an agreement for a sale had been reached.
…
499. We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government’s dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” was well-founded.
…
503. From our examination of the intelligence and other material on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa, we have concluded that:

a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.

b. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports, the intelligence was credible.

c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium and the British Government did not claim this.

d. The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it.