Blog
Matthew Taylor
Thankfully, I wasn’t in Number Ten when the decision to invade Iraq was made. Whatever anyone thinks of the war (and we will have the report of the Chilcot Inquiry in the New Year), there is not much doubt that the process of decision making and communication leading up to the decision were deeply flawed. In particular, informed opinion and advice against the invasion was too easily dismissed, the case for the war overstated and the responsibility to develop a contingency plan for things going wrong shirked. As I have argued in the past, while these failings may be merely regrettable in the context of conventional domestic policy decisions, they are much, much more serious when facing the momentous decision to go to war.