23 members of parliament (MPs) from four minority parties have signed a
motion calling for Tony Blair to be impeached. They allege the prime minister is guilty of a serious breach of constitutional principles in making the case for war against Iraq and his conduct leading up to the war.
Plaid Cymru's Adam Price, who started the campaign, said "We must make a stand or watch the democracy we have fought so often for against foreign enemies be subverted from within. . . The rules of constitutional conduct have been brushed aside. The Cabinet table has been replaced with the sofa, Cabinet minutes with email and the facts replaced with belief."
The United Kingdom is a good deal less tolerant of lying politicians, usually requiring their resignation from office. Mr Blair has been the exception, clinging to office and defying his critics.
Specifically, Tony Blair misled Parliament about:
- Pre-war intelligence indicating weapons of mass destruction sufficient to pose a threat to the United Kingdom;
- Agreement with George W. Bush to go to war on a specific date regardless of progress within the United Nations;
- What he knew and when he knew it about the weakness of intelligence and the doubts about the case for war.
There is almost no chance of the impeachment occuring without the support of the majority Labour Party in Parliament. Nonetheless, the motion demanding a select committee of MPs be set up to examine Mr Blair's conduct and decide whether there are grounds to impeach him on charges of gross misconduct may have to be debated in open Parliament, embarassing the prime minister.
"What we are seeking to do is decide as parliament whether Tony Blair is a fit person to hold that post," Liberal Democrat MP Jenny Tonge told a news conference.
While not endorsing the impeachment motion, the other principal parties are using the motion to push for more transparency about Blair's march to war in Iraq. Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, said he would not support an impeachment process but called for the creation of a special committee of MPs to investigate the prime minister's powers to declare war. John Major, the former Conservative prime minister, said he thought the concept of impeaching a prime minister was "a rather silly one" but urged Mr Blair to publish the entirety of the attorney general's legal advice on the war.