Iraq: How the rot set in for Blair's reputation
telegraph: For Tony Blair the conflict in Iraq resembles a debilitating disease. The onset was devastating and the patient has been sickly ever since. The damage done to his reputation for integrity can probably never be reversed.
Shortly before the invasion in 2003, more than 40 per cent of voters typically told polls they thought Mr Blair was doing a good job. After the war was won but the insurgency had begun, that figure fell to around 30 per cent. It has remained there ever since. Iraq damages the Government in two ways.
One is voters' disbelief in the good sense of the war itself. At the height of the conflict three years ago, 60 per cent of voters told YouGov they thought Britain and the US were right to take military action. That figure has now plummeted to 33 per cent. Nearly twice that proportion, 57 per cent, are convinced the invasion was misguided.
But specific disagreement with one Government policy would probably not have caused such permanent damage on its own. At least as important was the sense that voters had been sold the war on a false prospectus.
A YouGov survey long after the war itself had ended asked voters whether they thought the Prime Minister had believed what he was saying when he claimed Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and that his weapons posed a "serious and current threat".
Only a third of YouGov's respondents, 32 per cent, said they believed Mr Blair had told the truth as he saw it. Exactly double that, 64 per cent, thought he had either "exaggerated the threat in order to justify the invasion" (39 per cent) or, worse, that he had known all along that no weapons of mass destruction existed and was therefore deliberately "lying".
In other words, roughly two thirds of the electorate thought the Prime Minister was capable of gross exaggeration or even downright deceit. To this day nearly two thirds of voters believe he is dishonest. Worse, they simply assume that he is. Link
Shortly before the invasion in 2003, more than 40 per cent of voters typically told polls they thought Mr Blair was doing a good job. After the war was won but the insurgency had begun, that figure fell to around 30 per cent. It has remained there ever since. Iraq damages the Government in two ways.
One is voters' disbelief in the good sense of the war itself. At the height of the conflict three years ago, 60 per cent of voters told YouGov they thought Britain and the US were right to take military action. That figure has now plummeted to 33 per cent. Nearly twice that proportion, 57 per cent, are convinced the invasion was misguided.
But specific disagreement with one Government policy would probably not have caused such permanent damage on its own. At least as important was the sense that voters had been sold the war on a false prospectus.
A YouGov survey long after the war itself had ended asked voters whether they thought the Prime Minister had believed what he was saying when he claimed Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and that his weapons posed a "serious and current threat".
Only a third of YouGov's respondents, 32 per cent, said they believed Mr Blair had told the truth as he saw it. Exactly double that, 64 per cent, thought he had either "exaggerated the threat in order to justify the invasion" (39 per cent) or, worse, that he had known all along that no weapons of mass destruction existed and was therefore deliberately "lying".
In other words, roughly two thirds of the electorate thought the Prime Minister was capable of gross exaggeration or even downright deceit. To this day nearly two thirds of voters believe he is dishonest. Worse, they simply assume that he is. Link
posted by exoplanet at 12:09 PM
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