"Traitor" and "murderer"

Above: the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre where the Chilcott enquiry is being held (the florid building on the left is Westminster Central Hall).

Tony Blair has appeared at the Chilcott enquiry into the Iraq War. Pages of newsprint and hours of broadcast coverage have analysed his appearance and the answers he has given. It would be pointless for me to add to this commentary.

I can however talk about where (in my opinion) Tony Blair fits in our political culture.

As he left the enquiry there were shouts of "traitor" and "murderer".

Societies function much better when there are scapegoats onto whom all the ills of the people can be loaded. The scapegoat is then sacrificed, society is cleansed, the people can "move on". Sir James Frazer wrote about this sacrificial proxy ritual in The Golden Bough (particularly Chapter LVII Public Scapegoats, the expulsion of evils).

Whether this will work depends upon proving the point that Tony Blair acted unilaterally and "presidentially" in taking the decision to go to war. He seems to have admitted as such in his answers yesterday. In any case, the genius of New Labour was to take the unwritten British constitution (which functioned like Common Law in terms of precedents and agreed understandings) and to say "if it is not specifically prohibited we can do it" - and so almost by stealth they installed a presidential style of government.

Under a representative parliamentary system we are all guilty of the Iraq War. If however it is established that Tony Blair usurped the parliamentary system and established a presidental system then he (and one or two others) are guilty and the rest of us are off the hook. It's an important point in terms of the future of the Labour party (which is tainted by the war), the future of relations with the Middle East, the national sense of morality etc.

But Tony Blair is a slippery individual, and it is not clear how his sacrifice could be carried out (except in terms of his reputation, but that seems irredeemably trashed anyway).

In the Guardian George Monbiot endorsed this campaign http://www.arrestblair.org/