Iraq

One of the biggest challenges facing the post-Iraq generation of foreign policy decision-makers, like William Hague and Hillary Clinton, is to balance the pursuit of overseas stability with promotion of the dynamic and sometimes de-stabilising forces that build countries' long-term stability and make economic and political progress possible. This may sound like an academic question but it is a very real change- and not just because the SDSR has made the task of building overseas stability a key government objective.   Take Iraq. After having lost an admirably violence-free and largely fair election, it looks likely that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will cling to power and the voter-winner, Ayad Allawi, will be denied a role in government.

Make no mistake: David Miliband has handled himself with a fair amount of dignity over the past few days. But now some of his frustration has simmered to the surface. ITV news cameras were trained on him earlier, and caught him leaning towards Harriet Harman as she applauded his brother's claim that the Iraq War was "wrong" (see from two minutes into this video). According to the lipreaders, he says to her: "Why are clapping? You voted for it." To which she replies, "I'm clapping because he's leader and I'm supporting him." The elder Miliband does not look impressed. To be honest – and although I didn't support the Iraq War myself – I feel some sympathy for his position here.

Boris Johnson has announced his candidacy for a second term as London Mayor. Here is what he wrote for the Spectator on the campaign trail last time round. How, as Mayor, I would help our brave troops, The Spectator, 17 December 2007 Even if the story is exaggerated, the underlying psychology is convincing. It is reliably reported that last month a woman in her thirties was doing her daily laps of the pool in Leatherhead, Surrey, when she became aware of an obstacle. A section of the swimming-pool had been roped off to allow 15 wounded soldiers to receive the therapy needed for their rehabilitation. It is hard to know what went through the young woman’s mind, but she must have grasped that these disfigurements had been incurred in Iraq and Afghanistan.

David Cameron’s father has suffered a stroke on holiday in France and so the PM is, understandably, travelling out there to be with him. This means that Nick Clegg will be standing in for him at PMQs. At the risk of sounding Jo Mooreish, this shift in PMQs personnel has political implications. Labour was always planning to use today to try and associate Cameron personally with Coulson and the whole voicemail interception story. That, obviously, can’t happen now. But Labour could ask Nick Clegg a series of awkward questions on this, has the deputy prime minister sought personal assurances from the director of communications about what he knew of phone hacking at the News of the World while he was editor and the like.

Even the literary critics have to wait until tomorrow for the Blair memoirs – but the book's contents are slowing spilling out onto the Internet this evening. A series of extracts has just been published on the official website, and the Guardian has extensive coverage, including an interview with the man himself. So far, there's nothing too surprising. Blair, for instance, lays into Brown – but adds that it would have been wrong to sack him as Chancellor. And he declines to endorse a candidate for the Labour leadership, beyond offering a handful of veiled criticisms of Ed Miliband. Coffee House will have more tomorrow.

It’s easy to be loose with a trifling £4.6m when you’re Tony Blair. Many will denounce his decision to give the advance and any royalties on his memoir to the British Legion as opportunistic - a cynical gesture characteristic of the man. As ever with Blair, there is more than a hint of a public relations exercise about this. But it is also extremely gracious, aiding people who prick his conscience. So I prefer to take his generosity at face value. As Con Coughlin puts it:   ‘Whatever you might think of Mr Blair, he always had the courage of his convictions when it came to defending our freedoms, whether it was confronting genocidal maniacs like Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic, or tackling the modern curse of Islamist terrorism.

Nick Clegg has made this statement on Channel Four News: ‘I have always been open that my personal opinion that the legal base is not justified for our going into war. That wasn't the view of the previous government, this government as a whole, the new coalition government, doesn't take a view on the legality of it. But I don't think it is right for me to enter government and somehow completely airbrush out well-known personal views that I have held and expressed for a very long time. ‘I am the deputy prime minister, I am also a human being who feels with great conviction about things. I don't think that politics is well served by politicians suddenly falling utterly silent on things that they are well known to feel strongly about.

Never one to miss the bus, Phillipe Sands QC has informed the Guardian that an international court would be ‘interested’ in Nick Clegg’s view that the Iraq War was illegal. Sands continues with his favourite homily: ‘Lord Goldsmith never gave a written advice that the war was lawful. Nick Clegg is only repeating what Lord Goldsmith told Tony Blair on 30 January 2003: that without a further UN security resolution the war would be illegal and Jack Straw knows that.’ Well, that would be right but for Goldsmith’s draft advice of the 12 February 2003, and his final clarification on 7 March 2003.

David Cameron has just made a quite spectacular mistake. Talking to Sky News he said: 'I think it's important in life to speak as it is, and the fact is that we are a very effective partner of the US, but we are the junior partner'. 'We were the junior partner in 1940 when we were fighting the Nazis.' The obvious problem with Cameron’s remarks is that, as any fule kno, the Americans did not enter the war until after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The error is even odder given Cameron’s penchant for war movies, he’s watched Where Eagles Dare 17 times apparently. This howler from Cameron following Clegg’s Iraq gaffe at PMQs, means that this has not been a good day for the Coalition.