The David Kelly Story

Some people are already saying that the tragic death of David Kelly is the beginning of the end for Tony Blair. David Carr at Samizdata thought Blair was in deep trouble even before the news of Kelly’s death and Iain Murray thinks we may now have reached a tipping point.

It’s clear that an increasing number of people are actively seeking Blair’s downfall. The New Statesman for example, which described Blair as a “psychopath” last week in a string of bizarre articles. The knives are certainly out; it’s just that, for the most part, they are poorly fashioned weapons wielded incompetently by the usual suspects.

The news of David Kelley’s tragic and untimely death will no doubt add considerably to the government’s difficulties but it is hard to see how it will do serious damage to Blair himself, unless he comes to be regarded as in some way culpable.

Much has been made of Kelly’s treatment at the hands of the Commons foreign affairs committee. The judicial inquiry that is to be set up under Lord Hutton will examine this, and will no doubt look again at the committee’s findings. People will quite rightly want to know how Kelly's employers, the Ministry of Defence, treated him after he came forward and how closely the government was involved. The Sunday Times is already asking serious questions.

Whatever the final judgment on the government’s handling of this matter, and regardless of the spin put on the story, I doubt whether anyone is going to seriously believe that Blair was somehow responsible for Kelly’s death. I make an exception for Glenda Jackson, the British Labour MP and theatrical dame, who is already calling for his resignation.

David Kelly will, I am sure, be lionised in some quarters as a courageous whistleblower. But what exactly did he blow the whistle on? The foreign affairs committee found the BBC’s Andrew Gilligan to be an “unreliable witness” but otherwise found nothing of substance. Kelly himself admitted that he hadn’t said many of the things attributed to the anonymous source in the BBC’s original report.

To my mind, the key question in all this is not how much responsibility Tony Blair will shoulder for David Kelly’s death, but whether or not Kelly was the source for the BBC’s story.

The answer to that question may yet do more damage to the BBC than to Tony Blair and his government.


If you’re looking for some background to this story the BBC has a timeline of events and if it's conspiracy theories you're after Tim Blair has some choice excerpts from Indymedia. I’ve also previously commented on the story here and here.

UPDATE
The BBC reports: "The BBC has disclosed that Dr David Kelly was the principal source for its controversial report claiming Downing Street "sexed up" an Iraq weapons dossier."