A boring, narrowly focused and all too predictable UK general election has been energised this week by a furious row over prime minister Tony Blair's decision to go to war against Iraq two years ago. The leak of his attorney general's legal advice on the matter in March 2003 prompted Mr Blair to release the full text yesterday, something he has steadfastly refused to do until now.
It reveals an extraordinary transition from the nuanced and equivocal document delivered on March 7th, advising that another Security Council resolution explicitly authorising a war would be the safest legal course, to the March 17th opinion that a war without it would be legal.
Mr Blair's opponents say he leaned on the attorney general to change his advice and withheld the first document from the cabinet. He says political circumstances changed during the lead-in to the war, the advice reflected that and was accurate at the time it was delivered. Mr Blair insists his integrity is not at issue and that he made his decision in the best interests of the country and on the best evidence available to him. This is the trickiest part of his case, since the attorney general, Lord Peter Goldsmith, says clearly in his detailed document that "we would need to be able to demonstrate hard evidence of non-compliance and non-co-operation". Regime change is explicitly ruled out on legal grounds.
Mr Blair's opponents accuse him of lying because no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. Further, the change in Lord Goldsmith's advice over the 10 days amounted to deceiving the public that going to war was in accordance with international law. On a fair reading of the two documents it is difficult to disagree with this judgment.
A great historian, E. H. Carr, observed of German-Soviet relations between the two world wars that "few statesmen fail in an emergency to recognise a duty to lie for their country". Such fateful decisions are usually risky and ambiguous. But this was a war of choice, not self-defence. Mr Blair's retrospective justifications for it - that the world is better now that Saddam Hussein has been removed from power (and replaced yesterday by a democratically legitimate cabinet) - arise from regime change, not convincingly from UN Security Council resolutions. They sidestep the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction and the conclusion by UN arms inspectors that Iraq was in fact complying. It is not difficult to understand why in these circumstances Mr Blair should be accused of lying, even if the charge is loose and the lexicographical definition of the charge - an intentional false statement - not proven.
Although Iraq is a deeply divisive question in the election campaign, it lags substantially behind health, education, the economy, law and order and immigration in its salience for voters. But it does raise the important issue of trust and could dissuade Labour supporters from going to the polls next Thursday. That gives Iraq real traction.