The Spectator

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said after the bombings in Iraq that there was ‘a struggle between good and evil’ going on there. Before the bombings, Mr Michael Howard, the leader of the Conservative party, said it was withdrawing support from the Butler inquiry into intelligence on purported weapons of mass destruction in Iraq because the inquiry was to be conducted in an ‘unacceptably restrictive fashion’; Mr Michael Mates, the Conservative MP on the Butler committee, said it was his duty to continue. Miss Clare Short was asked on Today on Radio 4 about spying on the United Nations and said: ‘These things are done. ...

Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, proposed internment without trial for those suspected of terrorist offences, and other measures such as wider telephone-tapping. The government said that migrants from countries joining the European Union on 1 May will not be able to claim some benefits until they have worked in Britain for a year. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said: ‘If they can’t support themselves, they will be put out of the country.’ But the criteria sounded unclear and open to legal challenge, as the European Commission lost no time in pointing out.

Mr Oliver Letwin, the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that the Tories wanted to freeze government spending, except that on health, education and pensions, and would fund increases there from economic growth. On the day he made his remarks, a report by the government’s efficiency review, headed by Sir Peter Gershon, said that perhaps £15 billion could be saved by transforming the way public-sector bodies worked; his prescription envisaged centralisation, economies of scale and regulation by penalties. Vodafone was beaten in its attempt to take over AT&T Wireless by the American group Cingular. Mr Mike Tomlinson, the former chief inspector of schools, recommended that GCSEs and A-levels should turn into components of a new four-tier diploma.

Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, announced plans to set up a Serious Organised Crime Agency, which was likened to the Federal Bureau of Investigations, to replace the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad, and to take over the functions of the Home Office and Customs and Excise in investigating the smuggling of people, tobacco and illegal drugs. Mr Richard Brunstrom, the chief constable of North Wales, asked on television: ‘What would be wrong with making heroin available on the state for people who want to abuse their bodies?’ Nineteen Chinese workers, two of them women, were drowned as they picked cockles in Morecambe Bay. One telephoned his home in China as the water rose about him.

The government announced a committee of inquiry into the accuracy of the intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war last year; it will be chaired by Lord Butler of Brockwell, the former Cabinet Secretary; the other members will be Mrs Ann Taylor, a Labour MP and chairman of the Commons intelligence and security committee (ISC); Mr Michael Mates, a Conservative MP and member of the ISC; Sir John Chilcot, the staff counsellor for the security and intelligence services; and Field Marshal Lord Inge, the former Chief of the Defence Staff. There will be no Liberal Democrat, since Mr Charles Kennedy, the party leader, decided not to support the inquiry.

The government narrowly carried the second reading of the Higher Education Bill, which makes provision for universities to charge British students an extra £3,000 a year. The vote was 316–311, with 72 Labour MPs voting against the government and 18 abstaining; Mr David Taylor, the Labour member for North West Leicestershire voted both for and against the Bill. Mr Jack Cunningham, a former Labour Cabinet minister, broadcast to the nation his view that the Labour rebels resembled the Militant Tendency. The next day Lord Hutton published a long report into the death of Dr David Kelly, the government expert on weapons.

Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, ordered a review of 258 convictions of parents for killing their children after the Court of Appeal ruled improper convictions based solely on expert opinions where two or more babies had died. Mr Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, met Samantha Roberts, the widow of a sergeant shot dead during the war against Iraq after having been ordered to hand over his body armour for use by another soldier. Lord Hutton announced that the report of his inquiry into the death of the weapons expert Dr David Kelly would be published on 28 January. This is the day after the Commons vote on government proposals on university fees, which Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, has been energetically trying to persuade backbench rebels to support.

The government proposed adding a surcharge to fixed-penalty fines for offences such as speeding and being drunk in public; it would be hypothecated to the compensation of victims of crime, but employers would also have to pay compensation for those injured at work by criminals. Asked in Parliament by Mr Michael Howard, the leader of the opposition, about denying having authorised the naming of Dr David Kelly, Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said, ‘I suggest you look at the totality of what I said. But I stand exactly by what I said then.’ Mr Robert Kilroy-Silk was suspended from his programme by the BBC after writing in the Sunday Express about Arab countries: ‘What do they think we feel about them?...

Mr Michael Burgess, the Coroner of the Queen’s Household, opened the inquest on Diana, Princess of Wales, the conclusion of which, he said, would not come for more than a year; he had asked Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, to investigate her death, which was on 31 August 1997; as Coroner for Surrey, Mr Burgess also opened an inquest on Dodi Fayed. The Daily Mirror published a sentence from a letter written by Diana in October 1996 saying, ‘My husband is planning “an accident’’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury, in order to make the path clear for him to marry.

When, at the insistence of the US Department of Homeland Security, the first armed ‘sky marshals’ take to British transatlantic flights, it is to be hoped that the in-flight movie won’t be Goldfinger. For anyone who has managed to avoid seeing any of the 40 years’ worth of repeat screenings, the Bond film concludes with the sight of Goldfinger’s portly frame being sucked through a plane window shattered in a gunfight with 007. It doesn’t take any great knowledge of aircraft pressurisation systems to realise that guns and planes do not mix. The pilots’ union, Balpa, has come to the same conclusion. Even former BOAC pilot Norman Tebbit, who supports the case for sky marshals elsewhere in these pages, does so with grave reservations.