Worst. Prime Minister. Ever?

There's been a lot of debate over the past couple of weeks about whether David Cameron will supplant Neville Chamberlain in the history books as Britain's worst Prime Minister ever. For what it's worth, I'd say Cameron edges it. If you read Winston Churchill's (admittedly self-serving) history of World War II, you'll find that he is surprisingly respectful of Chamberlain.  While he was frustrated at Chamberlain's attempts to find a peaceful deal with Hitler, culminating in the Munich accord, Churchill is full of praise for how Chamberlain turned on a dime as soon as he realized he had got it wrong, and threw all of his energies into preparing Britain for war. It's hard to see any of Cameron's contemporaries letting him off the hook like that.

Today, however, we have a powerful reminder that this is not just a two-horse race. The Chilcot Report into the 2003 Iraq invasion, more than ten years in the making and more than 2.5 million words long, provides a scalding appraisal of the actions of Tony Blair. In Chilcot's opinion, Blair misled Parliament and the country into thinking that there was no alternative to war; entered the conflict with no real legal justification: failed to provide adequate equipment for the thousands of men he so casually sent to war; and went into combat without even a moment's consideration for what would need to be done once the fighting ended. Except, of course, the fighting never really has ended, as this assessment by the CBC's Nahlah Ayed makes very clear.

Blair has offered a public act of contrition today, but as usual he has an excuse: "the intelligence assessments turned out to be wrong".  Really?  Even at the time there was a clear suspicion that those assessments were being manipulated for political purposes: the intelligence was being shaped around the decision to go to war, rather than the other way round. It's hard to forget General Colin Powell's embarrassing appearance at the UN Security Council, at which he presented the supposed evidence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Suffice to say the the parodies that immediately appeared online, featuring toy soldiers and Play-Doh, were at least as convincing as anything that Powell produced.  

If Blair were still in office as Prime Minister, he would without doubt be forced to resign in disgrace and without delay. As things stand, there doesn't seem to be any obvious way to hold him properly to account for his actions.  Since resigning on his own terms, he's had the better part of a decade to feather his nest with his consulting business and his public speaking gigs.  Given the catalogue of deceit revealed by Chilcot. we can at least hope that companies will think twice about hiring him as a consultant again -- and that anyone attending one of his speeches stocks up on rotten eggs and fruit. It's the least he deserves.