Chilcot report not likely this year

Categories: Latest News
Monday June 30 2014
Richard Norton-Taylor in the Guardian reports that the Chilcot Inquiry report is unlikely to be published this year despite criticism by the Prime Minister that further delays to it were ‘unreasonable’.
According to The Guardian, “Whitehall sources suggest the latest delay in the long-awaited report is the result of continuing disputes over criticisms the Chilcot panel plan to make of Blair and other ministers and advisers involved in the decision to invade Iraq.”
Former PM Tony Blair only recently wrote of current events in Iraq, ‘We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that ‘we’ have caused this. We haven’t.’ Comments which London mayor, Boris Johnson, argues are indicative of Blair’s need for ‘professional psychiatric help’.
In response to claims of his fear of what ‘point[ing] the finger of blame squarely at him’ could mean for his lucrative career since departing Number 10, Blair has denied that he lies behind the protracted delay to the publication of the Chilcot report.
News first published in the Independent on the likely 2015 publication of the report, has been met with some concern in Labour ranks with the Daily Mail reporting last month that “Labour strategists are said to be alarmed at the prospect of voters being reminded of the Iraq war in the months before the election, since the conflict was blamed for driving many of its voters to the Liberal Democrats in 2005 and 2010.”