David Hencke, Westminster correspondent
Thursday August 26, 2004
The Guardian
MPs are planning to impeach Tony Blair for "high crimes and misdemeanours" in taking Britain to war against Iraq, reviving an ancient practice last used against Lord Palmerston more than 150 years ago.
Eleven MPs led by Adam Price, Plaid Cymru MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, are to table a motion when parliament returns that will force the prime minister to appear before the Commons to defend his record in the run-up to the war. Nine of the MPs are Welsh and Scottish Nationalists, including the party leaders, Elfyn Llwyd, and Alex Salmond, and two are Conservative frontbenchers, Boris Johnson, MP for Henley and editor of the Spectator, and Nigel Evans, MP for Ribble Valley.
A number of Labour backbenchers are considering whether to back the motion, though it could mean expulsion from the party.
The MPs' decision follows the commissioning of a 100-page report which lays out the case for impeaching Mr Blair and the precedents for action, including arguments laid down in Erskine May, the parliamentary bible, on impeachments dating back to medieval times.
The authors are Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and Dan Plesch, honorary fellow of Birkbeck College, London.
Under the ancient right, which has never been repealed, it takes only one MP to move a motion and the Speaker has to grant a debate on the impeachment. This means, at the least, Mr Blair will have to face a fresh debate on his personal handling of the war and there will have to be a vote in parliament on whether to institute impeachment proceedings.
In effect, impeachments were discontinued after Lord Palmerston, accused of concluding a secret treaty with Russia, survived an impeachment debate in 1848. The proceedings were replaced with a convention on ministerial responsibility, with ministers being forced to resign if they misled parliament. The last two cases involved the Home Office minister Beverley Hughes, over immigration clearances in Romania and Bulgaria, and Peter Mandelson over the Hinduja passports affair.
Mr Price said he believed the case was compelling. "To dust off Victorian constitutional histories and examine precedents from the time of Charles I and Chaucer may seem bizarre. But the conduct of the prime minister has left people and parliament with no alternative if we are to preserve the very basis of democracy."
Thursday August 26, 2004
The Guardian
MPs are planning to impeach Tony Blair for "high crimes and misdemeanours" in taking Britain to war against Iraq, reviving an ancient practice last used against Lord Palmerston more than 150 years ago.
Eleven MPs led by Adam Price, Plaid Cymru MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, are to table a motion when parliament returns that will force the prime minister to appear before the Commons to defend his record in the run-up to the war. Nine of the MPs are Welsh and Scottish Nationalists, including the party leaders, Elfyn Llwyd, and Alex Salmond, and two are Conservative frontbenchers, Boris Johnson, MP for Henley and editor of the Spectator, and Nigel Evans, MP for Ribble Valley.
A number of Labour backbenchers are considering whether to back the motion, though it could mean expulsion from the party.
The MPs' decision follows the commissioning of a 100-page report which lays out the case for impeaching Mr Blair and the precedents for action, including arguments laid down in Erskine May, the parliamentary bible, on impeachments dating back to medieval times.
The authors are Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and Dan Plesch, honorary fellow of Birkbeck College, London.
Under the ancient right, which has never been repealed, it takes only one MP to move a motion and the Speaker has to grant a debate on the impeachment. This means, at the least, Mr Blair will have to face a fresh debate on his personal handling of the war and there will have to be a vote in parliament on whether to institute impeachment proceedings.
In effect, impeachments were discontinued after Lord Palmerston, accused of concluding a secret treaty with Russia, survived an impeachment debate in 1848. The proceedings were replaced with a convention on ministerial responsibility, with ministers being forced to resign if they misled parliament. The last two cases involved the Home Office minister Beverley Hughes, over immigration clearances in Romania and Bulgaria, and Peter Mandelson over the Hinduja passports affair.
Mr Price said he believed the case was compelling. "To dust off Victorian constitutional histories and examine precedents from the time of Charles I and Chaucer may seem bizarre. But the conduct of the prime minister has left people and parliament with no alternative if we are to preserve the very basis of democracy."
Comments
Hide the following 10 comments
good stuff
26.08.2004 11:55
but the point of this action is to have some proof in the history books
that some believe democracy is a dead duck in UK PLC
even if it bombs
this will be achieved...
I salute you
Captain Wardrobe
What if ?
26.08.2004 12:34
If Blair goes there will have to be a General Election, the Conservatives currently lead in the poles with the UKIP a credible risk to the Lib Dems as the third party. Howard will become PM. Labour will be out of power for ten years.
Voter
self destruct
26.08.2004 12:38
They f..k it every time, big time. They do. You know they do. They're doing it now.
another voter
Labour Future
26.08.2004 13:47
Labour under Blair finaly got the message that the Tories had been hoping they wouldn't realise for years - The UK people will never elect a Socialist government, because of this they now represent the standard middle of the road message of European politics where presentation is everything. The only way for the Left to win real power is to do what we did in Liverpool and the old days of the GLC. Work in the background and take power after a moderate has been elected.
ex GLC
executed bliar
26.08.2004 14:35
however if blair was put in the dock it would give the families who are the victims of his war a bit of pay back.
blair will already go down in history as the most dishonest PM we ever had in the last 150 years.
anyone who oppose this war should welcome this impeachment, remeber when clinton was impeached ,it made internatiional news, of course this is more of a serious crime and i woulld be in favour of him being publicly executed.
labour=conservative=neo liberalism
lets build the alternative and build on the success of RESPECT
red letter
What ?
26.08.2004 14:37
eerrrr what "success" would that be then ?
Sees failure despite claims
Vaz
26.08.2004 14:48
communist
why Blair is a LIAR
26.08.2004 16:00
i put together a page on the e-mails that were released...
this message was received Friday, August 29, 2003 03:21:11;
I suggest you look into the United States Defense Department's Central MASINT Organization and it's role in collecting and analyzing weapons intelligence in Iraq.
On February 9, 1993 Department of Defense Directive 5105.58 created an intelligence office for the purpose of locating, characterizing and tracking Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, Smart Weapons and Conventional Weapons and associated facilities in Iraq and throughout the world through the use of spaceborn and airborne MASINT ( Measurement and Signature Intelligence) remote sensing technologies. This office is now known as the Central MASINT Oragnization.
In 1994 the CMO published a book with the provocative title "CENTRAL MASINT ORGANIZATION BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL WARFARE INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION STRATEGIES BRIEFING" yet it has never been mentioned in any news media coverage of such weapons intelligence collection in Iraq. Why not? It certainly seems relevant.
In 1996 the House Intelligence Committee designated the CMO as the primary source of, and supreme authority on, Weapons of Mass Destruction intelligence.
It was also considered to be the agency most critical to the survival of the United States of America as a nation in the 21st century.
In 1996 the CMO created the Covered Lantern real time hyperspectral remote weapons detection system that can be deployed on unmanned aircraft.
In Febuary of 2001 FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested in the most catastrophic espionage case in American history. What made Hanssen's spying so damaging was that he sold secret CMO documents to the Russians. At the time the news media widely reported that the CMO could detect and track nuclear, biological and chemical weapons anywhere in the world.
Yet two years later, as we prepared for war with Iraq, the same news organizations apparently developed selective amnesia and completely forgot about the CMO and it's amazing remote weapons detection technologies.
In all the months we have been hearding endless debates about the claims that Iraq possessed and deployed weapons of mass destruction the news media, including journalists who reported the Robert Hanssen story, have never asked the Bush administration if the CMO confirmed, or ruled out, to a scientific certainty that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration itself, in all it's endless talk about weapons of mass destruction, has never once mentioned the existence of the CMO even though it plans to spend one hundred and forty-four billion dollars over the next four years for new tactical remote sensing technologies to enable the CMO and the Air Force's National Air Intelligence Center to conduct real time detection , analysis and tracking of individual weapons anywhere on the face of the earth as part of Rumsfeld's "military transformation" program that includes the Department of Defense HYPERSPECTRAL IMAGE EXPLOITATION initiative.
Is it possible that President Bush and Tony Blair deliberately ignored exculpatory CMO data that inconveniently proved that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction? Did Iraq actually destroy it's old, and militarily useless, WMD stockpile as they claimed?
After all we never saId WE did not have proof they did, just that THEY did not provide documentation. MASINT would easily detect a weapons incinerator and it's 1500 degree plus temperatures anywhere in Iraq and could easily analyze the smoke to see exactly was was burned there and how much. The no fly zones place all of Iraq within easy reach of MASINT sensors on US remote sensing aircraft, not to mention the CMO's Covered Lantern unmanned aircraft designed to locate concealed and camoflaged weapons .
Why else would the Bush adminstration suppress the CMO's remote sensor "weapons inspections" intelligence?
Why was CMO intelligence never made available to United Nations Weapons Inspectors who distracted the news media on the ground in Iraq for years?
Does the news media censor all references to the CMO or are they just ignorant of it?
Why does the news media think the CIA and NSA are the ultimate source of "WMD intelligence" when the CMO reports to Donald Rumsfeld, not George Tenet or Condolezza Rice?
Both CIA and NSA have no MASINT capability of their own.
Why has the CMO been excluded from all discussions about Iraq and why is it virtually unknown to the public when it ought to be at the very center of the discussion on weapons of mass destruction and pre-emptive warfare?
With increasing violence in Iraq and no traces of WMDs yet found don't the people of America and Great Britain have a right to know the plain truth about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or lack thereof?
The CMO is, according to the Congress of the United States, the ultimate authority on weapons of mass destruction intelligence. The budget for CMO technology over the past ten years has been vastly larger than the budget of the United Nations Weapons Inspections in Iraq.
Yet not one journalist has ever asked the obvious question.
What does the CMO know about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?
XXX X Pasadena, CA USA for more on MASINT see:
Captain Wardrobe
the outcome doesn't matter
26.08.2004 23:39
But then, every member of parliament who's stayed in his or her party, who has failed to holler out against the warmongering and genocide, perfectly self-evident since,- oh- lets say September 01 - are perfectly complicit in the acts of criminality
These acting now are offering something in the way of redemption - funnily enough it's pleasing to see wankboy Boris in there, though purely for the purpose of his own agenda to be sure
Never mind the consequences - the lack of WMDs in Iraq fatally undermined Blair anyway - if he was intended to stay they'd have been there - rest assured
dh
@see failures despite claims
27.08.2004 09:25
it gain 12.5% in leicester bye election. no other non-stream party since 1979 (apart from SDP) has gained anything near figure in a bye election. the greens managed in 1989 to get 10%, the BNP in 2002 got 7% check the facts.
if that not a success i dont know what is.
it will be interesting to see the results of the hartlepool by election where RESPECT is standing. this is mainly a white working class area.
red letter