Forget saving Blair’s legacy. Our troops must come first

Like old soldiers, controversies do not die, they fade away. Iraq is set to become one of these. The argument is exhausted. So are the protagonists. So are you. So am I.

Listening to the Prime Minister interviewed by John Humphrys on the Today programme on Thursday, I became aware of a once keenly contested debate limping into the sunset. Ever pugnacious, there was yet a sort of sigh in Mr Humphrys’s voice: an inquisitor coming to accept that he never will get a signed confession from this prisoner — belabour and stump him though he may. From Tony Blair we heard the weary defiance of a man who knows he fails to convince, but knows too that he can flail his way through this spat, as he has through every spat before it. Flounder as he may, Mr Blair has become almost impossible to floor.

And as he reeled towards another messy draw, I said to myself: Grow up. What are we asking for? The heads of Blair and Bush on a stick?

It isn’t going to happen. They’ll both retire, grow rich, grow grey and grow mellowly adept at explaining, for the umpteenth time at the umpteenth banquet that, whatever the consequences of what they did, the consequences of not doing it would have been even worse. Few will choose to believe them, but nobody will ever prove them wrong.

Henry Kissinger is still defending his corner over Vietnam. Doyens of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament still insist that the Soviet Union would have crumbled anyway. And Arthur Scargill will die unrepentant about the miners’ strike. Bad causes must be left to wither on the vine.

I find myself suddenly attracted to the Blairite exhortation to “move on”. Let us turn our backs not only on this but on another increasingly pointless argument: the question of what is likely to be Tony Blair’s principal legacy. For the word “likely” doesn’t come into it, and we may dispense with “principal” too. It will be Iraq. Only Iraq. The marble headstone is ready, and there is only one word on it.

Sometimes there simply isn’t an argument. Justly or unjustly a single story towers above the rest in a leader’s career. Churchill? The legacy was victory. Roosevelt? The New Deal. Eden? Suez. Nixon? Watergate. Attlee? The welfare state. Reagan? The fall of the Berlin Wall. On Thursday Mr Blair declared himself proud of what he had done in Iraq. Here at last, then, is a meeting of minds. Let us agree that Iraq is Blair’s legacy, agree to differ on whether that legacy is good or bad, and move on.

For the party most likely to form the next Government, the Conservatives, the need to move on is especially strong. It is now impossible for the Tories to disentangle themselves from the original decision to go to war. An opportunity to do so was briefly presented when it emerged that the Conservative leadership, along with the rest of the country, had been misled over the reasons for the invasion. At that moment the official Opposition could logically and honourably have withdrawn its support for the occupation, but it did not do so. Now it is too late. To renege on its backing for the principle of the invasion only because the subsequent war of occupation is being lost would impress no one. It would look opportunistic.

My Times colleague, Daniel Finkelstein, has indicated (without himself advocating) a possible way through: to say that the decision was “right” in the sense that it appeared reasonable in the circumstances of the time. Events later, events that were unforeseeable at the time, may cause us to regret the decision, but this does not mean we were wrong to take it when we did. It’s not, for instance, foolish to set out without an umbrella if the sky is clear and the forecast benign, even if a freak shower later causes us to regret the decision. In logic, anyway, the Tory party could in this way reconcile its original support for the war with a change of mind today. But it might look slippery, too clever by half. The time it has taken me to construct this paragraph and make the argument (I hope) intelligible suggests that it would not work on a soapbox at the next general election. Nevertheless, in the court of history I think that “if we had had known then what we know now . . .” is the Tories’ best ultimate line of defence. It is probably what the majority of the voters think, too.

The party, however, needs a more immediate way of getting off the hook, for there is surely neither mileage nor wisdom in urging the present Government forward in Iraq. Nor is there profit in buying into what is evidently going to be HMG’s official line, that Britain will withdraw “when the job is done”, which is, er, now.

We have lost. The job has not been done. The job cannot be done. Most people can see that. There is in the air a palpable sense of frustration and defeat. Not for a second will most voters entertain the possibility that the Iraq policy has been a success or that the troops are coming home because their task has been accomplished. If that’s what ministers want to claim, and what Gordon Brown (if he becomes Prime Minister) tries to claim, then the Tories should have nothing to do with it. By most citizens it will be treated with contempt. All the evidence suggests that the public are ready to admit defeat, and ready for their Government to admit defeat, even if ministers are not. Interestingly, polling data show even greater hostility to the war among Conservative voters than among the public as a whole.

So, for the official Opposition, how to get off the hook and back in touch with its own supporters? The answer does not lie in playing catchup with the Liberal Democrats. Charles Kennedy and Sir Menzies Campbell have rightful possession of the antiwar, peacenik, march-against-Bush constituency. And anyway this is slightly uncomfortable ground for Tories because it risks appearing antimilitary. Mr Kennedy was at his least comfortable when accused of “undermining the troops”. The British public, who admire their Armed Forces, are very sensitive to anything that could seem to undermine young men and women whom politicians have sent to war. So are many Conservative backbenchers, as David Cameron will know.

He should go with the Tory grain. Here’s how. The Conservative message on Iraq must be that what is now paramount is the safety and wellbeing of our Armed Forces. All other considerations should bow before this. Hopes of establishing a liberal democracy in Iraq, plans for training up a local police force and Iraqi Army, deference to Washington, sparing the blushes of a beleaguered president, support for the Iraqi Prime Minister and his Government, even the security and wellbeing of the Iraqi people themselves — all these things must now take second place behind the overriding need not to expose our troops to avoidable danger as we draw our forces down.

If that means not dragging out the withdrawal too long, speed it up. If it means not leaving behind a depleted garrison that could be susceptible to surprise assault, then bring them home. The question that must take priority is not “What’s best for Mr Blair’s legacy?” It is “What’s best for the men and women we have sent there?”

To die in a military offensive in a war that looks winnable may be a bearable sorrow. What would be insupportable would be to die in a retreat executed in a manner aimed more to save face than to save soldiers’ lives. As it becomes ever clearer that Britain is disengaging from an operation that has not been a political success, more deaths of British Service personnel will seem increasingly to be lives lost in vain.

The saddest casualties in war are always the ones closest to the armistice. The Conservative Party should seize this truth and make it its own. “If we’re pulling out, make it swift, decisive and clean,” should be the Tories’ theme.

Matthew Parris

Matthew Parris writes regular Notebook and Opinion columns in The Times. He joined the newspaper as a parliamentary sketchwriter in 1988, a role he held until 2001, having formerly worked for the Foreign Office and been a Conservative MP from 1979-86. He has published many books on travel and politics and an autobiography, Chance Witness, for which he won the Orwell Prize in 2004