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| Chilcot report live: families demand 'we just want the truth' | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| 7.31am BST | |
| 07:31 | |
| Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, Karen Thornton, whose son Lee was killed in Iraq in 2006, said she remained convinced that Tony Blair had exaggerated intelligence about Iraq’s capabilities and should face a trial for war crimes: | |
| If it is proved that he lied then obviously he should be held accountable for it … He shouldn’t be allowed to just get away with it. | |
| But she did not feel confident that John Chilcot’s report would provide the accountability she was hoping for: | |
| Nobody’s going to held to account and that’s so wrong … I think the people who lied should be held to account. | |
| We just want the truth. | |
| Updated | |
| at 7.37am BST | |
| 7.11am BST | |
| 07:11 | |
| Morning briefing | |
| Claire Phipps | |
| The big picture | |
| With John Chilcot publishing – after seven years of inquiry – his report into the war in Iraq, we can expect/hope that the rest of the day will be relatively quiet. The world of politics does sometimes remember how to do respectful. This might be one of those days. | |
| Tuesday night did, however, heap some news upon us, with the Tory leadership field thinning from five hopefuls to three. With the first round of voting by Conservative MPs completed, Fox was chased off and Crabb scuttled after him. | |
| Here’s how the voting looked: | |
| That saw Fox lopped off the list. Crabb then withdrew, apparently not wishing to prolong our, or his, agony, saying: | |
| I think, given the seriousness of the situation, the quicker we have a new and strong prime minister in place, the better. | |
| Both retreating candidates have decided instead to endorse May, putting her in a formidable position ahead of what will now be the final knockout round on Thursday. The two remaining Tory’s Got Talent contestants will then go to the public (as long as they’re paid-up members of the Conservative party) vote to determine who gets to move into No 10 and be the prime minister. | |
| Gove will be doing his stubborn best to be in that final two, insisting last night that he’s not dropping out: | |
| I think the message I have – optimism and hope about Britain’s bright future outside the European Union – is one that is shared by many Conservative members and voters, and indeed by the majority of the country … | |
| I think that they [party members] should have a choice between two candidates of experience, two candidates who have delivered in government departments, and above all they should have a choice between one candidate who argued that we should remain in the European Union and one candidate who argued we should leave. | |
| “Candidates of experience … who have delivered in government departments” might – should you be a cynical type who reads between the lines strung out for us by politicians – be a reference to the perceived lack of these things by Leadsom, Gove’s rival for that number two slot on the ballot. | |
| Claims by Leadsom supporter Bernard Jenkin that she held a senior role at “a large investment firm where she was responsible for managing hundreds of people and billions of pounds” are – reports the Times today, drawing on comments from a former colleague of hers on Reaction – not quite right. The Times reports: | |
| Andrea Leadsom has no experience as an investment banker … During 10 years at the investment fund Invesco Perpetual, from 1999 to 2009, she did not have any role in managing funds or advising clients. Despite the title ‘senior investment officer and head of corporate governance’ she only held approval from the financial services regulator – required for any roles dealing with funds or clients – for a three-month period from December 2002 to February 2003. | |
| A spokesman for Leadsom conceded: | |
| Anyone who reads Andrea’s CV and attaches a lot of weight to that particular role may actually be under some slight misapprehension as to what it was she actually did. | |
| Team Leadsom said it would be releasing her full CV this morning. But not her tax return. | |
| May released four years of her tax returns yesterday, showing that last year she earned a salary of £112,426 as an MP and home secretary, plus £617 in interest and £5,419 in dividends. She banks at Coutts, where they give new savers a mink piggy bank, which is nice. Gove flung his earnings into the public arena at the weekend, revealing his only income came from his job as education secretary (£117,786 in 2013-14) and as chief whip the following year (£96,071). | |
| Given the peak fever has receded, I’m not sure we can still call Labour’s leadership situation a crisis, but whatever it is, it’s still limping on. The take-home from hours of talks yesterday between deputy leader Tom Watson and trade union chiefs is that the shadow cabinet will take part in formal peace talks to try to bring together the party’s factions. As my colleagues Heather Stewart and Rowena Mason report: | |
| The TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, or her predecessor, Brendan Barber, are seen as potential chairs for the negotiations, which are aimed at averting an immediate challenge to Corbyn’s leadership and “cooling the temperature”. The role is likened by some senior party figures to that of Gen John de Chastelain, who oversaw the disarmament process in Northern Ireland. | |
| I’ll just let that final clause sink in for a moment … | |
| As for who’s in that shadow cabinet, the latest list was released by Jeremy Corbyn’s team yesterday; this seems to be the most up-to-date version but it does – wrongly – include the two peers who, while still technically in their roles due to different rules governing the House of Lords, are not attending: | |
| As we were... @LadyBasildon & @SteveTheQuip still not attending Shadow Cabinet - a position supported by our Lords frontbench team & Group | |
| Meanwhile, the Green party announced the five candidates – well, six, as one is a job-share joint ticket – in the running to succeed Natalie Bennett as its new leader, but because none of them has yet performed a devastating double-cross on a former friend, prepare yourself for a period of civility before a winner is announced. I know. It’ll take some getting used to. | |
| Has the UK Brexited yet? | |
| No. And yesterday Oliver Letwin – essentially now the UK’s minister for Brexit – confirmed that the government hadn’t made a plan for a leave vote. Don’t despair, though, because Letwin is confident that his new Cabinet Office Brexit team can have ready a “fine-grained, multi-dimensional” options paper before the new prime minister settles in her (ok, maybe his) seat on 9 September. | |
| On that pesky question of whether the triggering of article 50 needs an act of parliament, Letwin said legal advice was that it could be invoked under the royal prerogative. The government was due, by the close of Tuesday, to respond to a legal challenge arguing that parliamentary approval would be needed, but I think we can take Letwin’s revelation as a spoiler on that point. | |
| More financial wobbles today: the pound has sunk to three-decade lows and the Asian share markets have fallen. Yesterday, three British commercial property funds suspended trading as asset prices plunged. | |
| Today the Commons will – at Labour’s insistence – vote on whether the right to remain of EU nationals living in the UK should be guaranteed regardless of future Brexit negotiations. The vote will not be binding on the government – but it’s already proving to be a stumble in Theresa May’s otherwise fairly stomping route to No 10. | |
| You should also know: | |
| Naz Shah stands out as someone who has been prepared to apologise to the Jewish community at a local and national level, and make efforts to learn from her mistakes. In that regard, her reinstatement today seems appropriate and we would hope for no repeat of past errors. | |
| Read these | |
| Martin Chulov, in the Guardian, assesses the impact of the Chilcot report from Baghdad: | |
| Across the Iraqi capital, there is little sense that the long-delayed Chilcot report into Britain’s decision to go to war will change anything. Thirteen years after the invasion, the country is still reeling from the upheaval unleashed by the war. What was envisaged by planners in London and Washington to be a seamless transition from dictatorship to democracy has proved to be anything but. | |
| A tussle for control of post-Saddam Iraq has barely relented, and continues to ravage the country’s finances, communities and social fabric. Citizens say the relentless grind has become a ‘forever war’ that could rumble on over decades, ensuring that communities torn apart by sectarianism remain at odds for generations. | |
| ‘Nothing Britain could say or do can address this, or make up for it,’ said Safa Gilbert, a Christian who returned to her home city on Monday from exile in Lebanon. ‘Even if they wanted to help, they did not. And all they needed to do is understand the society first.’ | |
| In the New Statesman, Hilary Wainwright says many are misjudging Corbyn’s leadership style: | |
| The ‘strong man’ notion of leadership by which Corbyn appears all too often to be judged is not … just a matter of a macho style. It is embedded in the nature of the UK’s unwritten constitution and the immense but opaque power that it gives to the executive: extensive powers of patronage, powers to go to war be ready to press the nuclear button, negotiate treaties of various kinds and in many ways preserve the continuity of the British state … | |
| His credibility as prime minister, a different kind of prime minister from the current model, would require an effective challenge to the centralised nature of power in our political system. A challenge that would need to be made now, while in opposition, with extensive popular participation. | |
| At Politico, Nicholas Vinocur says the Brexit vote might not be the harbinger of victory Marine Le Pen hoped it would be: | |
| Prior to Brexit, Le Pen enjoyed a measure of exclusivity in being France’s Eurosceptic-in-chief. Both mainstream parties, President François Hollande’s Socialists and Nicolas Sarkozy’s Les Républicains, were equivocal about the EU and avoided advancing hard positions on the bloc’s future. | |
| But with Brexit, France has a chance to reassert its role in the bloc, and the mainstream positions have shifted dramatically. All leading candidates for the Right’s presidential nomination want to roll back Brussels’ powers, give more say to national parliaments and ultimately vote on EU reform in a vast, bloc-wide referendum. The only difference between that and Le Pen’s proposal? They do not want to give the French an option to leave. | |
| Schadenfreude of the day | |
| Courtesy of Germany’s Free Democratic party, which sent mobile billboards around London inviting glum pro-EUers to hop over to Berlin: | |
| Hey #London based folks, send us your pics if you see our billboard! #ZeitFürDasNächsteBerlin #Berlin @SebCzaja pic.twitter.com/yH3pZDLhsQ | |
| Celebrity intervention of the day | |
| Pop behemoth Harry Styles visited the House of Lords on Tuesday, as a guest of life peer Lord (Robert) Winston. At time of writing, Styles’ views on the UK’s withdrawal from the EU are unknown, but given that his appearance prompted this response from a Labour lords spokesman – | |
| My theory … is that he was in for the start of the two-day debate on Brexit and its consequences. He’s clearly heard that the government has no direction. | |
| – we can say with some certainty that this has not helped. | |
| The day in a tweet | |
| Labour still has no shadow attorney general. Lucky there's no legally tricky negotiations coming up. | |
| If today were a work of architecture | |
| It would be the Basilica of the Sagrada Família. Begun in 1882. Completed … not yet. Possibly by 2026. Or 2030. Maybe 2032. | |
| And another thing | |
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| Updated | |
| at 7.26am BST | |
| 6.53am BST | 6.53am BST |
| 06:53 | 06:53 |
| Chilcot briefing | Chilcot briefing |
| Claire Phipps | Claire Phipps |
| Good morning. Today’s live coverage will focus on the long-awaited publication of the Chilcot report on Britain’s role in the war in Iraq, as well as scooping up the day’s other political goings-on. | Good morning. Today’s live coverage will focus on the long-awaited publication of the Chilcot report on Britain’s role in the war in Iraq, as well as scooping up the day’s other political goings-on. |
| With so much news to sift through, I’m divorcing the early Chilcot news – the report itself is published at 11am – from the rest of the day’s developments; the regular morning briefing (covering leadership and Brexit latest) will follow this post. | With so much news to sift through, I’m divorcing the early Chilcot news – the report itself is published at 11am – from the rest of the day’s developments; the regular morning briefing (covering leadership and Brexit latest) will follow this post. |
| Do join us in the comments below or find me on Twitter @Claire_Phipps. | Do join us in the comments below or find me on Twitter @Claire_Phipps. |
| Chilcot: the timetable | Chilcot: the timetable |
| All times are BST (GMT+1). | All times are BST (GMT+1). |
| What is the Chilcot report? | What is the Chilcot report? |
| Announced on 15 June 2009 by then prime minister Gordon Brown, the inquiry was tasked with examining Britain’s role in Iraq from the run-up to the war, the military action and its aftermath, spanning a period from 2001 to 2009. Predicted to take a year, the inquiry has instead taken seven and has cost £10m. The finished report runs to 12 volumes and 2.6m words. | Announced on 15 June 2009 by then prime minister Gordon Brown, the inquiry was tasked with examining Britain’s role in Iraq from the run-up to the war, the military action and its aftermath, spanning a period from 2001 to 2009. Predicted to take a year, the inquiry has instead taken seven and has cost £10m. The finished report runs to 12 volumes and 2.6m words. |
| This six-minute video explainer takes you through the background – and the key questions the report will attempt to answer. | This six-minute video explainer takes you through the background – and the key questions the report will attempt to answer. |
| What the report will tell us | What the report will tell us |
| Chilcot says the report will not hold back from criticising those in charge in the period under review: | Chilcot says the report will not hold back from criticising those in charge in the period under review: |
| I made very clear right at the start of the inquiry that if we came across decisions or behaviour which deserved criticism then we wouldn’t shy away from making it. And, indeed, there have been more than a few instances where we are bound to do that. | I made very clear right at the start of the inquiry that if we came across decisions or behaviour which deserved criticism then we wouldn’t shy away from making it. And, indeed, there have been more than a few instances where we are bound to do that. |
| In the spotlight will be: | In the spotlight will be: |
| What it probably won’t tell us | What it probably won’t tell us |
| Some background reading | Some background reading |
| Updated | |
| at 7.18am BST |