Calvin Bailey keeps his Iraq medal, issued to members of the British armed forces who served as part of Operation Telic, safe in a drawer in his home. It features a clasp, given to personnel who were part of the very first wave of flights to leave British bases to invade Iraq in March 2003.
So when the Labour MP for Leyton and Wanstead spoke at a meeting between Labour MPs and the prime minister on Monday evening, people listened. “I was exposed to and aware of all the things that were happening in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, the groupthink, the sense of unstoppable momentum,” he said on Tuesday. “If you look at what is happening right now, it’s materially different to 2003, but I think I can speak with adequate weight and credibility.”
As Keir Starmer wrestles with the domestic and global implications of offensive strikes by Israel and the US on Iran over the weekend, the shadow of the Iraq war lies heavily across Westminster. In the House of Commons on Monday, Starmer assured MPs that the government remembered the “mistakes of Iraq” and would always operate on a “lawful basis” and with a “viable thought-through plan” to the crisis erupting in the Middle East.
It is a position consistent with the argument put forward by Starmer QC in the pages of the Guardian in 2003. “Flawed advice does not make the unlawful use of force lawful,” he wrote. He also noted: “Military commanders on the ground will not thank the government if any action they take is later judged to have been in breach of international law.”
Bailey, a former wing commander with 24 years of service, recognises that there are many younger MPs who came of age in the era of the Iraq war, but he wants to send them a message: agonising over Tony Blair’s decision to support the US invasion two decades ago is, at this moment of extreme precarity, unhelpful.
Calvin Bailey MP speaking in the House of Commons. Photograph: House of Commons
“The real spectre of the Iraq war is not the decision-making process that was carried out at the time,” he said. “The actual spectre of the Iraq war is the Chilcot review. We shouldn’t be self-flagellating about how people view what is happening now through the lens of what happened then, otherwise what was the point of a £13m public inquiry? We should actually spend our time learning the lessons we paid to learn.”
It is likely the prime minister and his closest aides have been poring over a manual that Bailey has shared with many of his colleagues: The Good Operation, “a handbook for those involved in operational policy and its implementation”. Aimed primarily at MOD decision-makers, it is “designed to prompt its readers to ask the right questions as they plan for and execute a military operation, drawing in particular on the lessons of the 2016 Iraq inquiry (Chilcot) report”.
According to Bailey, Starmer’s approach is following that guidance closely – both in his initial decision to deny the US permission to conduct strikes aimed at regime change from British bases including Diego Garcia and RAF Fairford, citing international law, and the permission given on Sunday night to allow the US military to use the bases for “specific and limited defensive purposes”.
“The decisions have been entirely consistent with Chilcot and the planning and design that you would expect to see,” said Bailey. “But The Good Operation is also clear that when things change, you cannot dogmatically hold to the line.”
The lack of full-throated support for Trump’s actions in the Middle East has earned Starmer a series of rebukes from the US president, including a swipe that Starmer “is not Winston Churchill”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, has painted the prime minister as weak for using international law to avoid “clearly and unequivocally stating whose side” he is on.
But criticisms on both sides of the Atlantic were unlikely to have harmed Starmer’s standing, at least with his own MPs. “I think it could actually be quite helpful to him,” said one. Bailey was among those criticising the decision of other party leaders – and some in his own party – to present the decision facing Starmer as binary.
Other figures highly critical of the position taken by Blair in the lead up to the Iraq war offered cautious praise of the prime minister’s current stance. The Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, one of the remaining MPs who voted against the Iraq war, said Starmer had done “a better job than I expected”, by placing some distance between himself and the US president. “But I do worry that there is a slippery slope from defensive to offensive action,” he said. “So far, I think he’s played a better hand than I had expected, but I am worried that this could soon get out of control.”
Davey said that for MPs like himself who were vehemently opposed to the Iraq war, and among those who had started their political life in its wake, the war cast a long shadow. “I think Iraq is on everybody’s mind, it can’t help but be after these dramatic and appalling events,” he said. “I’ve never spoken to an MP who doesn’t regret voting for Iraq. The current crop of MPs might want to talk to them, and should reflect on that.”
Labour MP Jon Trickett, who voted against the 2003 invasion, said the most enduring lesson of Iraq was not simply the row over intelligence but the consequences of state collapse. A similar outcome in Iran was all-too possible, he said. “If the state falls apart under pressure from the intervention, you could imagine all kinds of problems of disorder rising.”
Iain Duncan Smith is among those who has very clear memories of a conflict that divided a nation. He had pledged Tory support for any future action against Iraq as far back as 2001. He supported the invasion saying: “The policy of containment is not working.”
Reflecting now on the stance he took more than two decades ago, he said: “I’ve always been of the belief that when America and Britain are actually together, then the world’s a safer place [and] we are more likely to get good, rational thought. If we’re absent, it makes that much more difficult.”
But in July 2003, Duncan Smith also accused Blair and his communications chief, Alastair Campbell, of creating a “culture of deceit” in their handling of the Iraq dossier row with the BBC.
Those mistakes must not be repeated again, he said. “The biggest lesson to be learned is don’t put out false prospectuses – be honest about what you are doing.”