The Butler report into the intelligence assessments that preceded the invasion of Iraq has one merit - it unwittingly shows that the British state and the New Labour regime that oversees it, pose a greater threat to our lives than Saddam Hussein's mythical "weapons of mass destruction" ever did.

This is a lawless regime. That is the only conclusion to be drawn from Blair's statement that despite the absence of WMD, it was right to invade Iraq because the world is a safer and better place without Saddam Hussein. Forgetting for one moment the 10,000 and more civilians killed in Iraq, the chaos that has consumed Iraq and the looting of the country's assets by foreign corporations, what does this signify?

It means, crudely, that the end justifies the means, whether the facts are correct or even whether there are legal justifications. You can invade another sovereign country simply because the regime does not meet your approval. The fact that this breaks international law, which only allows for military action by one state directly threatened by another, is neither here nor there as far as New Labour is concerned.

To provide a veneer of authority, you tell the so-called intelligence services to come up with the goods about the "threat". They rummage around their cupboards, phone up a few "contacts" - some of whom stand to gain from an invasion - and produce the "smoking gun". Anyone who questions this process is either ignored - as were the scientific experts at the Ministry of Defence - or hounded, as was Dr David Kelly. Then you invade. Simple, really.

Except more and more people have seen through these weapons of mass deception. New Labour functions in an unholy merger with the capitalist state machine, with groups of compliant spooks and civil servants whose job it is to sustain this government in power. Even the Cabinet is sidelined, as the Butler report showed, in favour of the clique around Blair. Democratic rights are whittled away, people are jailed without charge or trial on the say-so of ministers and minorities like asylum seekers made targets.

The legitimacy New Labour once derived from electoral victories has evaporated, largely because of its alliance with business and financial interests, both in Britain and in the shape of the Bush regime in the United States. Many of the elements of dictatorship now exist, as the background to the invasion of Iraq demonstrates. New Labour lives from one lie to the next, piling one on top of the other. First it was WDM, then it was the "evil" nature of the Saddam regime, then it was creating democracy in Iraq. None of these are the real reason for the invasion and occupation, which were essentially about opening up the Iraqi economy to the world capitalist market economy.

Butler said there was a collective responsibility for declaring that WDM existed in Iraq when none did and refused to single out individuals. Well, taking him at his word, we agree that the state as a whole connived to concoct evidence to justify an illegal invasion, from MI6, through to the Attorney-General, civil servants together with the New Labour regime. Inadvertently, Butler has strengthened the case for constructing an alternative, democratic state in place of the rotten, self-seeking, one we have now, which cannot tell the difference between lies and the truth.

Movement for a Socialist Future
15 July 2004