At the time of the electoral protests in Tehran, Iranian staff at the British embassy were being accused by the Iranian authorities of treason and fomenting unrest. There was only muted support for the reform movement in Iran from the international community.

Last month we saw the British Embassy in Tehran ransacked and vandalised and the ambassador withdrawn. The same authorities in Iran that were able to disperse tens of thousands of democracy activists in 2009 were seemingly unable to protect the Embassy and its staff from harassment.

The lack of vocal support for human and democratic rights in Iran was carried over into initially tepid and ambiguous support for the rights of protestors across the Middle East, until the violence and repression reached levels that could not be ignored.

On Iran, attention is focused almost exclusively on the potential nuclear threat (WMDs) and escalating sanctions (largely ignored by Russia and China) – the precursors to the invasion of Iraq.

If there are to be any lessons from Iraq – it is that we need to provide an outlet and genuine visible support for voices in Iran that seek a progressive and democratic counterweight to the overbearing dominance of the theocracy that seized power following the overthrow of the Shah.

These foreign policy issues are often serious and complex, particularly in the Middle East.  The UK needs to maintain a principled and consistent advocacy for protection of human and civil rights, that is not abandoned in favour of the apparent stability of ‘better the devil you know than the one you don’t’ or traded off for concessions on inspection of nuclear facilities. In this way we will be better prepared to respond to potential unrest in Iran following the inevitable collapse of the murderous Assad regime in Syria.

Gaddafi was donned with a veneer of respectability and allowed to maintain his parasitical domination of the Libyan people, without external criticism, in return for giving up Libya’s nuclear weapons ambitions. Are we to repeat the same mistake with the equally brutal and repressive rulers of Iran?

As Liberal Democrats we should be able to reach out and engage with reformists in Iran that seek only the freedoms and human rights that we take for granted in the West. Our support for universal human rights should be unequivocal and untainted by the belligerency of despotic regimes.  It is these reformists in Iran that may hold the key to muffling the drumbeat to war and advancing the future prospect of a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East.

That transformation only goes so far. For it has taken months and around 3,500 deaths to bring about sanctions which are of the sort that other countries have imposed already. Moreover, one of the most important countries, Syria’s second largest trading partner Iraq, abstained on the vote and is refusing to abide by the trade sanctions.

The wider picture of humanitarian intervention is also changing, with increasing support for the idea of a “responsibility to protect” civilians from war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing even where the abuses do not cross international borders. The legacy of Iraq hangs heavily over such discussions, but with more recent events in countries such as Ivory Coast and Libya, the increasing message to dictators is that keeping your violence simply within your own borders is no longer enough to make the international community pass by.

Just as I’ve written before about the problem with ‘the kinetic stuff’ getting the attention in news reports at the expense of reporting the wider military, economic, social and diplomatic issues, so too with international action there is a risk of over-concentrating on the dramatic ahead of the lower profile, more diffused but more effective steps.

In particular, if you view a major purpose of humanitarian intervention to be saving lives, then the most effective way is often to spend the money that fuels planes, pays for bombs and funds missiles on international aid instead.

Benjamin Valentino’s recent study argues:

Perhaps the most frequently ignored costs of humanitarian interventions … have been what economists call opportunity costs – the forgone opportunities to which the resources for a military mission might have been put. These costs are considerable, since military intervention is a particularly expensive way to save lives.

International public health programs are almost certainly the most cost-effective way to save lives abroad. The World Health Organization estimates that every year at least two million people die from vaccine-preventable diseases alone (millions more die from other easily treatable infectious diseases, such as malaria or infectious diarrhea). This is an annual toll more than twice as large as the Rwandan genocide and more than 200 times the number of civilians who died in Kosovo. Measles alone killed more than 160,000 people in 2008, almost all of them children. It costs less than $1 to immunize a child against measles, and since not every unvaccinated child would have died from measles, the cost per life saved comes out to an estimated $224. Even using the exceedingly generous estimates above of the number of lives saved by military intervention, this means that on a per-life basis, measles vaccination would be 3,000 times as cost-effective as the military intervention in Somalia and more than 500 times as cost-effective as the intervention in Bosnia. The provision of antimalarial bed nets may be more efficient still – costing only between $100 and $200 per life saved. The final bill may be even lower, since preventive public health expenditures such as these often more than pay for themselves in averted medical costs and increased productivity.

As Valentino acknowledges, there are both moral and practical limits to these sorts of calculations. In practice too it is often not an either/or choice as the money used on military intervention does not come out of international aid allocations.

Even so, his figures are a good reminder of the importance of the government’s welcome commitment international development spending over this Parliament.

The lives saved may not get the headlines, but they are still lives saved – which is what matters most.

The advances made by the Free Libya Forces in Tripoli would have been unthinkable just a few months ago. Unimaginable, even, for the generations of young Libyans who have never known a world without Qadhafi. Now, that world is within their reach. The momentum for change is breathtaking and, for the cynics who said change wasn’t possible, who had written off the Libyan uprising, written off the Arab Spring, clearly, they were wrong. The movement for freedom hasn’t been stamped out. It’s alive and kicking, and it’s here to stay.

So today I want to be absolutely clear: The UK stands shoulder to shoulder with the millions of citizens across the Arab world, who are looking to open up their societies, looking for a better life.

Nick goes on to describe the three ways that the UK will support the Arab Spring:

• supporting Libya as it moves to a stable, prosperous future
• using our influence to create a new international partnership with the region better at encouraging reform
• providing practical help to nations in transition

Nick gives the background to the uprisings: “Youth. Technology. A lack of opportunity and inclusion. Factors which have collided to create citizens who want more, who know more, who aspire to more, but who are denied it at every turn.” He points out that it was young people who ignited the Arab Spring:

Traditional political groups only joined later on. We shouldn’t be surprised by that. Two thirds of the region’s population are under 24. They are better educated than their parents, healthier, more connected to the global community, more exposed to modern consumerism, and, with it, a sense of personal choice. They know they have a right to be heard. They know they deserve jobs and opportunities. And – most importantly – they now know that change is possible.

He sums up:

Across North Africa and the Middle East, the UK will continue to support the will of the people. We believe in their self-determination, we share their values. And we know that reform is the route to stability and prosperity there and that, in turn, helps jobs and security here.

The UK took a lead in mobilising international support for action to help secure change in Libya and we will continue to stand up for the aspirations of citizens across the Arab world. We are helping forge a new, more effective international partnership with the region and we will continue to provide practical help to states in transition.

We’ll need to keep our approach under continual review. The situation is fast-changing. But one thing I can say with certainty: to every citizen in this part of the world demanding greater freedom, to every young man and women in search of a better life, to every society determined to open itself up, the path to political freedom and economic opportunity is long, but you are on the right side of history. The UK stands with you.

You can read the full speech at the Deputy Prime Minister’s website.

“The oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it,” said Tony Blair in February 2003. His protestations were sufficiently effective that in media and parliamentary debates, raising the oil issue became a sure-fire route to losing credibility. And so Chilcott, who invited only official witnesses to give evidence, never considered it.

I wanted to know what was really happening to Iraq’s oil, and to that end I spent five years requesting several hundred government documents under the Freedom of Information Act. Unwittingly, I was exploiting Blair’s greatest regret. A few days ago I released via the Independent some of the revelations from those documents.

“Iraq is the big oil prospect,” began the minutes of one meeting in the Foreign Office in November 2002. “BP are desperate to get in there”. This was one of at least five meetings between government officials and oil companies in the run-up to the war. BP and Shell both denied any such meetings took place.

In a meeting in October 2002, representatives of BP, Shell and BG (the former British Gas) asked Trade Minister Baroness Symons for the government’s help in getting them some of Iraq’s oilfields after the war. Symons agreed that “It would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government”. In other words, if British forces fought in the war, British companies should get their share of the spoils. Quite apart from the contradiction with the official statements, that policy would appear to be potentially illegal under the Hague Conventions. And an Early Day Motion in 2006/7, signed by 145 MPs of all parties, warned the government against interfering in Iraqi oil decisions.

Tracing the history of the occupation, I found that whenever faced with a choice between supporting the development of an effective democracy in Iraq or achieving their own interests (especially on oil), British and American officials consistently chose the latter.

I also released recently three government strategy documents from the early stages of the occupation, which set out exactly how Britain hoped to achieve the transfer of Iraq’s oilfields from the public sector to companies like BP and Shell. The documents’ authors knew very well that Iraqis would be appalled at their plans, and tied themselves in knots trying to square that knowledge with their idea of Britain’s “vital interest” in the future of Iraq’s oil and the public denials of any attempt to influence Iraqi oil policy. “We will wish to push the message on [foreign investment in the oilfields] to the Iraqis in private,” wrote one, “but it will require careful handling to avoid the impression that we are trying to push the Iraqis down one particular path.” In 2007, a Foreign Office civil servant told me that he believed a public consultation among Iraqis on the future of their oil should be avoided for risk of a “knee-jerk reaction” that rejected foreign company involvement.

The official account of the war still makes little sense. Weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. The removal of a dictator, only to back some of the most authoritarian politicians in post-Saddam Iraq. A country that threatened international security which eight years on, US officials are saying needs a continued foreign troop presence because it can’t even defend its own borders.

The determined exclusion of oil from the account makes the war impossible to fully understand. After all, oil provides 95% of Iraqi government revenue.

A September 2004 survey found nearly two thirds of Britons had lost trust in ministers since the Iraq war. Chilcott’s is the fourth public inquiry into the war. But if it does not examine strategic interests, it will fail to rebuild trust in government any more than the previous three.

Greg Muttitt is not a Liberal Democrat, but works with MPs of all parties on issues of public interest related to the Iraq war. Fuel on the Fire is published by the Bodley Head and available via Amazon.

‘The Independent View‘ is a slot on Lib Dem Voice which allows those from beyond the party to contribute to debates we believe are of interest to LDV’s readers. Please email if you are interested in contributing.

In his speech, Clegg said that Libya different from Iraq because:

First, the Libyan action is unambiguously legal. Iraq was not.

Second, there is a clear humanitarian case for intervention in Libya. In Iraq the case rested solely on the danger posed by weapons of mass destruction, a case which turned out to be illusory.

Third, the Libyan action has strong support in the region, not least from the Arab League. For Iraq there was strong opposition from many neighbouring countries.

Fourth, there is today a strong emphasis on post-conflict stabilisation and aid, led by the UN – compared to the chaotic aftermath of Iraq.

Fifth, the military action in Libya is taking place within strict constraints and with clear aims, compared to the all-encompassing military action in Iraq in 2003.

As reasons for treating Iraq and Libya different, it is a pretty good list – especially when you remember that the Liberal Democrats have traditionally been willing to argue in favour of military intervention, most notably in the Balkans but also supporting it in places such as Sierra Leone.

However, apply those five tests to the Ivory Coast and it is not at all clear why Britain pushed for intervention in Libya in a way it has conspicuously failed to do for the Ivory Coast, despite the UN estimating that up to a million people have fled and the UN warning that war crimes may have been committed.

On Nick Clegg’s first and second points, there is already a limited UN force in the Ivory Coast and a draft UN resolution to strengthen its mandate was tabled last week. The combination of widespread inhumanity and feared war crimes provide strong grounds for supporting the new UN resolution. If it were to be passed, the legal and humanitarian cases for further action in the Ivory Coast would be at least as strong as in Libya.

On his third point, neighbouring countries in West Africa are calling for stronger UN action, partly because of fears that a refugee crisis may cause violent unrest in neighbouring countries. This is an intervention that would be welcomed in the region, not one that would be opposed.

On Clegg’s fourth and fifth points, if the international community chooses there can be an emphasis on the post-conflict state of the Ivory Coast and, given the presence of a democratically elected President who has been kept out of office by force, there is a clearer route to a stable and democratic country than there is in Libya. In neither country is it straight-forward or likely to be easy, but if the difficulties are not reasons to hold off in Libya (and I don’t think they are), then they are certainly not reasons to hold off in the Ivory Coast.

So the difference amounts to the lack, so far, of a further UN resolution in the Ivory Coast – and as a permanent member of the Security Council, that is something the UK could be pushing for. Based on Nick Clegg’s five tests, the hundreds of deaths and the hundreds of thousands of refugees, it should be doing just that.

Those twin ghouls are ghosts of conflicts past, conflicts where Britain intervened and expedited disaster, such as Iraq , and the countries where the UK sat on its hands, and watched disaster unfold, such as in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

There are a number interesting, and from a Lib Dem point of view welcome, feature of the debate concerning the possibility of the western intervention in Libya, has been the focus from many different viewpoints, of the requirement for a multi lateral response, with the debate centring on whether the collective response should come from NATO, the UN or the EU, the latter being the view posited by Nick Clegg.

One of the key reasons that Liberal Democrats around Britain took to the streets in opposition to the Iraq war was that they didn’t believe the arguments about WMD, and when it became clear to Blair and cheerleaders that the British public didn’t believe them on this either, the argument switched to being about ‘liberating’ the people of Iraq, and instilling democratic western values.

This last argument is now being passionately trotted out again, often by the same people who only discovered it late in the day over Iraq, and is called “Liberal Interventionism”.

The first thing to point out about this idea is that it’s not new. The concept of invading another country to improve the lives of the people there was at the heart of British Colonial expansion. Whatever historians may think today, it was rare for political or military leaders in the past to say that
Britain’s motives in colonising were selfish. The purpose was to spread Christianity and civilisation.

It is in this tradition that much of the debate over Iraq was latterly framed, and it’s becoming a feature of the debate over Libya. Some commentators and academics would at this point highlight the traditional argument about cultural relativism, and whether the British system, politics and
government are worth exporting.

This is not particularly a point I want to explore further here, partly because Nick Clegg did it much better in a speech recently:

These values (liberal values) are sometimes referred to as ‘Western values’ -but only by people who do not know their history.

While much of Europe had still to emerge from the Dark Ages, the Baghdad of Haroun al-Rashid saw a flowering of free religious debate and openness to learning from non-Muslim sources.

But there is an even more traditionally liberal argument to be made against Liberal Interventionism. Liberalism is based on the idea, whether applied to commerce, to science, or to moral questions, that centralized, hegemonic and top down development, however progressive and liberal in thought or outcome, can never allow the society to which they are applied to achieve its full potential
in the way that society would if the society in question had been allowed to follow its own path to development.

I am not making an argument for the British government to ignore Libya, multilateral sanctions, arms embargoes, aid programmes and no fly zones will create for the Libyan people the freedom to pursue their own vision of freedom.

British troops marching through the desert sands to forcefeed that freedom may allow Britain to exorcise some of those past ghosts, but will in the long term restrict the spirit and ideas of true progress and a more liberal world from emerging in a part of the world where some of the earliest steps towards such a
world were taken.

Nick Clegg has voiced his support for possible military intervention in Libya, saying that any action would be carried out in order to “uphold international law”.

The deputy prime minister, whose Liberal Democrat Party opposed the war in Iraq, said: “This is not Iraq. We are not going to war”.

His comments came after Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed that UK forces would join an international operation to enforce a UN resolution which demands an end to attacks on Libyan civilians.

For the full story, and a video of the BBC’s interview with Nick Clegg, see the BBC website.

The country’s most senior civil servant … said the cabinet should have been told of the attorney general’s doubts about the legality of invading Iraq before Tony Blair went to war.

“The ministerial code is very clear about the need, when the attorney general gives written advice, the full text of that advice should be attached [to cabinet papers]“, Sir Gus O’Donnell told the Iraq inquiry.

The clear implication of his evidence is that Blair breached the code of conduct ministers have a duty to uphold.

You can read the full story here.

The Ed-supporting New Statesman has been keen to promote his anti-Iraq war credentials — see for example their third-hand hearsay evidence here — but there appears to be nothing on the public record to back up his claim.

We are left, therefore, with Ed Miliband’s voting record in the one full Parliament in which he has served. Take a look at the new Labour leader’s voting record in the House of Commons, as recorded by PublicWhip.org.

As you can see, Mr E. Miliband has a proud 0% voting record on the issue of ‘Iraq Investigation – Necessary’. There were 10 separate votes in the House of Commons in the period in which he has been an MP: in not a single one of these did Mr E. Miliband take the opportunity to make clear, or even hint at, what he now so sincerely believes: that the Iraq war was wrong.

(Incidentally, you will see in the screenshot above a few other issues on which Mr Miliband’s voting record over the last five years contradicts his new-found love of most Lib Dem policy: he voted 100% in favour of ID cards, 100% in favour of ministerial powers of intervention in coroners’ inquests, 100% in favour of Labour’s programme of post office closures, 100% in favour of reducing the powers of Parliament, etc.)

Now Mr E. Miliband will maintain, as he did in his BBC Radio 4 Today Programme interview this morning, that he was bound by collective responsibility; that however sincere his own reservations about Labour’s full-throated support of the Iraq invasion, it was necessary for him to suppress his own voice for the good of the government as a whole. And of course for much of the public, he’s a blank canvas, not identified with the Iraq policy — so chances are this ruse will work.

But Ed Miliband made this point emphatically in his speech yesterday:

This generation wants to change our foreign policy so that it’s always based on values, not just alliances.

“Always based on values.” It’s a little hard to see how the values which led Mr E. Miliband to act as voting fodder for his government in the division lobbies on Iraq are the same as the values that led Charles Kennedy and his fellow Lib Dem MPs to brave the insulting taunts of Labour and Tory MPs to vote against the Iraq war when it mattered most. Values are usually easy to discern years later with the benefit of hindsight. But real values are about having the guts to take a stand when the path ahead is confused and difficult.

I hope to debate these questions with Lord Wallace, Lord Clement-Jones and Nadhim Zahawi MP (Cons) at a fringe meeting at the LibDem party conference on 22nd September (see below for details).

But whatever your views on the war, it is a fact that many in Iraq and certainly in Kurdistan view it as a liberation. While certainly mistakes were made, many Kurds and Arabs have benefited and most important of all, the people of Iraq have been given the opportunity to have democracy in place of dictatorship.

The Lib Dem manifesto states, “We will put British values into foreign policy – fairness, democracy and the value of human life”. After decades of war and dictatorship these are the values and principles that Iraqi democrats are striving to achieve. We recognise that we need the support of the international community and above all our allies such as the UK, to develop our democracy.

Today we are developing our economy in order for our people to benefit and prosper. This has opened the way for International companies to invest, trade and do business in Kurdistan as the gateway to Iraq.

But in Kurdistan, British companies are rare in comparison with the French, the Germans, Austrians and Italians. This is despite the very high regard for British goods and standards and the view that we are Britain’s friends and allies. In cultural exchanges also Britain could do much more, for example by having a greater British Council presence in Kurdistan, similar to the French Cultural Centre in Erbil, our capital.

There have been many friends in the Liberal Democrat party who supported the Iraqi Kurds during our darkest days. We are also pleased that Lord Clement Jones and Baroness Nicholson among others are today advocating greater British engagement with Kurdistan and Iraq. Perhaps it is time for the Liberal Democrats to engage with our people, which is to the mutual benefit of both our countries.

The Liberal Democrats are against isolation, and after decades of extreme isolation, Kurds and other Iraqis want to be part of the world community. We hope that the Liberal Democrats will look at Kurdistan and Iraq differently: as an emerging democracy, trade partner and ally.

Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman is Kurdistan Regional Government High Representative to the UK

Fringe meeting – Leader or laggard: Is Britain being left behind in Kurdistan and Iraq?, on Wednesday 22nd September, 1-2pm, ACC Liverpool, Hall 4B. Speakers: Lord Wallace, Lord Clement-Jones, Nadhim Zahawi MP (Cons), Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman.

To most people watching this is not a surprise. The Lib Dems’ opposition to the Iraq war, which was supported by both Labour and the Tories, is pretty well-documented, I think it’s fair to say. The fact that the Lib Dems and Conservatives have reached a coalition agreement does not alter the past, nor does it alter politicians’ individual views. Why should it?

And yet the response from some journalists has been to label this a “gaffe” – a term otherwise known as a politician saying something he believes which a journalist hopes to be able to spin into a story.

Indeed, it’s interesting to see how a story like this can develop. For example, the first notice I can see taken of Nick’s “illegal” comment was by the Spectator’s James Forsyth. While praising the Deputy Prime Minister’s performance he noted:

Clegg has long called the invasion of Iraq illegal. But it is a different matter to do so when standing in for the Prime Minister and speaking from the Treasury bench in the House of Commons. That implies it is the official position of the government, with all that entails.

I’m not entirely sure it does imply that. But it’s interesting how this musing by Mr Forsyth becomes concrete fact by the time The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland refers to it:

As some Tory observers have already noted statements offered at the dispatch box during PMQs have the status of government policy. Are we now to understand that the coalition regards the 2003 invasion as “illegal”?

I think Mr Freedland’s question can comfortably be added to John Rentoul’s ever-expanding list of ‘Questions to which the answer is no’.

But first prize for hyperbolic over-egging the pudding has to go to the Evening Standard’s Paul Waugh, who suggests today was the ‘Worst day yet for the coalition’, and then lists a desperately thin series of speculative and pedantic snippets to justify his OTT-ness.

I have just started reading Nicholas Jones’s absorbing account of the general election, Campaign 2010. He makes the telling point of quite how out-of-the-loop the media commentariat were during the creation of the coalition, quite how irrelevant to the whole process they were.

It strikes me they’ve never really caught up, perhaps never wanted to. The Coalition doesn’t fit within journalists’ trite-and-tested formula that ‘government splits’ are news. Yet everyone knows the government is split. The public understands there are two different parties in government (compared with two different factions during the Blair/Brown years) and doesn’t expect us always to agree, and certainly not on issues which divided us in the past, such as Iraq.

The media’s inflated response to Nick Clegg’s utterly unsurprising statement that the Iraq war was “illegal” tells us much more about the banal quality of political reporting in the Westminster Village than it does about supposed tensions in the Coalition.

Commenting on Eliza Manningham-Buller’s evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry, in which she said the conflict in Iraq ‘substantially’ increased the threat to the UK from international terrorism, Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, Tim Farron said:

“This is a shattering blow for Labour’s claim that the Iraq war did not increase the terrorist threat to Britain.

“We already knew that this was a disastrous war for our own brave service personnel and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Now we have the head of MI5 at the time saying it increased the threat to Britain – the precise opposite of what Labour claimed it would do.

“As Foreign Secretary in the last Government, David Miliband must come clean on why his administration misled the British people on this issue for so long.”

Notes to editors

1. Appearing before the Chilcot Inquiry today, Eliza Manningham-Buller said:
“What Iraq did was produce a fresh impetus to people prepared to engage in terrorism.”
“Al Qaida had not focused on the UK. It attacked us abroad in 2003 but it became clear that its ambition was to attack us in the United Kingdom.”

2. When asked by Roderic Lyne, “To what extent did the conflict in Iraq exacerbate the overall threat your service and your fellow services were having to deal with from international terrorism?”, Manningham-Buller replied, “Substantially”.

3. Labour has long denied that the Iraq invasion led to an increased terrorist threat against the UK. In 2004, Jack Straw said: “No one should get the idea that somehow if you were a country which was opposed to the military action in Iraq, you are less of a target for al-Qaida.”

As he launched Labour’s international LGBT manifesto last Wednesday, foreign secretary David Miliband made one howler, echoed by another in the manifesto’s text.

He said: “Under Labour the UK will continue to be a beacon of hope for LGBT people.”

This delusion sounded a lot like Home Office minister Phil Woolas’ article last year, when he wrote that he was proud of the attendees of the London Pride march who’d found sanctuary in the UK – never mind that his office would have refused them and fought tooth-and-nail to remove them.

The pair should form a double act.

An Amnesty International report released today said that gays in Iraq have no protection from the state and are allegedly even being targeted by some security forces. Yet Miliband’s ‘beacon’ government would tell those seeking our sanctuary they could safely return and be “discreet”.

Recent research from the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group on 50 refused asylum cases found that many were told to go home and not act gay.

You can read the full piece here.

First up, is Ming Campbell. Now Ming didn’t always have the happiest time at PMQs, but there were times when he hit his stride perfectly, and this was one such occasion, on 24th January 2007, when shaming Tony Blair’s failure to debate in the Commons whether troops should be withdrawn from Iraq:

(Also available on YouTube here).

Secondly, how could we forget Vince Cable‘s starring turn as acting leader? Certainly Gordon ‘Mr Bean’ Brown will never forget it:

(Also available on YouTube here).

And finally, here’s Nick Clegg in one of his early appearances at PMQs taking Gordon Brown to task for failing to give Gurkhas the rights due to those prepared to give their lives for this country:

(Also available on YouTube here).

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

• No longer a hustings virgin – Keith Angus campaigning in Hackney North
• What a great way to spend my Birthday, even more campaigning! – Qurban Hussain in Luton South

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

2 Big Stories

Landmarks go dark, millions unplug for Earth Hour

The white-shelled roof of the Sydney Opera House fell dark Saturday night, one of the first landmarks to turn out the lights in an hour-long gesture to be repeated by millions of people around the world who are calling for a binding pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Asian cities followed Australia and New Zealand as the fourth annual Earth Hour cranked up. Buildings in some 4,000 cities in more than 120 countries were expected to unplug to reduce energy consumption and draw attention to the dangers of climate change, according to organizers. (AP)

Iraq’s Allawi says open to all in coalition talks

Iraq election winner Iyad Allawi said on Saturday he was open to alliances with any faction and wanted quickly to form a government that would build strong relationships with its regional neighbors.

Allawi’s secular, cross-sectarian Iraqiya bloc won by a two-seat margin in preliminary results released on Friday over the State of Law coalition led by Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who said he would challenge the results.

With neither of the leading blocs close to the majority needed to rule alone, the tight race portends lengthy and divisive negotiations to form a government as Iraq seeks to escape years of sectarian warfare and U.S. troops prepare to pull out. (Reuters)

Sunday Bonus: the moving Lego barchart

Here it is in all its glory, complete with construction instructions:

Its publisher (one Iain Dale, Esq) reports that it “is outselling Why Vote Conservative by a factor of 9 and Why Vote Labour by a factor 25. Indeed, so popular is the LibDem book that we have almost sold out of the entire print run, meaning that we will have to reprint after only ten days of sales.”

He speculates that one reason might be the Lib Dems’ minor coup in persuading Colin Firth, actor and campaigner for refugees’ rights, to contribute to the book. Here’s a brief excerpt from his 5-page article, in which Colin explains why he’s turned away from Labour and to the Liberal Democrats:

As a once committed Labour voter I, like so many, have been appalled by the abandonment of the values they advocated while in opposition, each Labour Home Secretary seeking to outdo the last in sheer viciousness. For me, their conduct on asylum alone is reason enough never to be able, with any conscience, to contemplate voting for them again. Increasingly I’ve found that when I’ve appealed for help on these issues the only sympathetic and engaged responses I’ve had have been from the Lib Dems. (Without wanting to digress, the same is true on Iraq, Guantanamo and rendition).

I have been left without a sense of party affiliation for many years and I’m not addressing this issue driven by such an affiliation. It’s the other way round; I’ve started looking to the Lib Dems because of my own long-standing feeling on issues such as these. I’m not an apologist toeing a party line, I’m a newcomer whose focus on the party is a result of fresh (by my standards) reasoning. When I look for compassionate and intellectually rigorous politics I keep coming back to them.

If that’s inspired you, then why not buy the book? It’s available here – while stocks remain!

You can read my fellow LDV co-editor Mark Pack’s review here.

And if you want to be in with a chance of winning a copy of ‘Why vote Lib Dem’, and you’re on Twitter, here’s what you need to do: click here and follow the instructions.

Today is notable as the day before LDV’s fascinating fringe event on how to make authoritarian MPs pay at the ballot box – do join us tomorrow in Birmingham to find out how.

302 years ago today, Queen Anne was the last British monarch to withhold Royal Assent from a bill of Parliament.

In 1864, Sheffield saw a Great Flood when a dam under construction burst. The ensuing inundation wrecked a number of bridges, destroyed 800 houses and killed 270 people.

People born on March 11th include Laurence Llewellyn Bowen, Harold Wilson and Douglas Adams; and deaths include Alexander Fleming, John Wyndham and Slobodan Milošević.

2 Big Stories

Parties battle over high speed rail

Will Labour’s Y or the Conservative Reverse-S win the day? Find out in The Times

Clegg will unveil 4 demands

The Independent is trailing party leader Nick Clegg’s keynote conference speech. Will he take Stephen’s sage coalition advice?

Mr Clegg will use his party’s spring conference in Birmingham starting tomorrow to unveil “four steps to fairness” that would be his initial negotiating demands for backing a minority government led by David Cameron or Gordon Brown.

Four things, you say? Whatever could they be?

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

• Stuart Bonar puts the costs of the Iraq war into perspective
• Jennie Rigg trumpets the rise and rise of the sex-positive feminist

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

One final thing – did you realise how big and scary Google is? Bonus points if you can identify the end image before the film gets to it.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

• Fraser Macpherson has the party’s latest Scottish TV broadcast
• The Futility Monster ponders how many friends we can have

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

2 Big Stories

Brown ‘disingenuous over war funds’

The Press Association reports:

The head of the Armed Forces at the time of the 2003 invasion accused the Prime Minister of being “disingenuous” in saying that he provided military chiefs with everything they asked for.

While he expressed “regrets” over the failure to plan properly for the aftermath of the invasion, Mr Brown strongly rejected allegations that, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he had failed to provide the forces with the resources they needed…

“He’s dissembling, he’s being disingenuous,” Admiral Boyce told The Times. “It’s just not the case that the Ministry of Defence was given everything it needed. There may have been a 1.5% increase in the defence budget but the MoD was starved of funds.”

Who is winning the grassroots campaign?

The British Elections Studies has the first results:

The British Election Study currently has a large-scale pre-election survey in the field which asks people if they have been contacted by one or more of the political parties in the last six months. Such contacts could take the form of canvassing, telephoning, leafleting, emailing, or messages via social network sites like Facebook and Twitter, the most common form being leafleting. This provides a measure of the ground war so far.

The survey shows that about a quarter of the electorate have been contacted since July 2009, and the chart shows the percentages contacted by the different political parties. It is apparent that the Conservatives are way ahead of their rivals in contacting the voters, reflecting in part the effects of the funding provided by Lord Ashcroft. Even more interesting is that the Liberal Democrats came second in the list with a contact rate of 46 per cent [to the Conservative Party's 58%], and Labour came a poor third by contacting only 35 per cent.

Sunday Double Bonus

Ironic psephology corner: Conservative voters favour electoral reform. Should someone tell the MPs?

But more important, the best pothole photo ever. FACT.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg says that the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War has provided enough information to suggest that the war was illegal.

Speaking on Radio Tay on Friday morning at the same time Prime Minister Gordon Brown was facing questions at the inquiry in London, he said: “I’m not a lawyer, but my view is that now there is sufficient evidence to sustain the claim that this was illegal.”

“A Dutch inquiry into the Iraq war came to the conclusion that it was indeed illegal, and flew in the face of international law…

“It is not a court of law, the Chilcot Inquiry, it was explicitly set up not to determine whether it was illegal or not so that is going to have to happen elsewhere by the lawyers, by the court, but my view is that I have heard enough now to suggest that this wasn’t taken in line…and worse, more than that, there is clear evidence which has come out in the Chilcot Inquiry that the Attorney General who is supposed to be the guardian of the legality of doing things was flip flopping from one minute to the next, and there is overwhelming evidence and very serious allegations that he was pressured into keeping silent about his own reservations about the illegality of the war by Jack Straw, by Tony Blair and by others.

“That shows the extent that they were prepared to go to silence concerns about the illegality of the invasion.”

You can listen to the full set of questions and answers on the topic here.

Lord Lester QC, a leading human rights lawyer and expert in international law, believes Lord Goldsmith failed in his responsibilities on Iraq. “He didn’t give the correct legal view,” says the Lib Dem peer.

As Britain went to war in March 2003, 16 out of 17 international law experts disagreed with Lord Goldsmith’s decision. “The case is completely overwhelming that Lord Goldsmith’s final view was contrary to international law.” …

Lord Lester describes Lord Goldsmith’s decision to miss the Lords debate on the legality of the war on 17 March 2003 as “devious and sneaky”. As Lord Lester explains, Goldsmith “was reluctant to allow parliament to question him because the answers would have been devastating. It meant the government was not called into account on the eve of the war.”

After the invasion of Iraq, Lord Lester battled to find out the date on which the government first sought and obtained legal advice. The information was so sensitive he had to use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain it.

“It became apparent the legality of war was discussed when Tony Blair had gone to see President Bush, at a very early stage, in April 2002. The decision was in everyone’s minds long before most people thought it was.”

Lord Lester has watched the Chilcot inquiry closely but is frustrated there are no lawyers on the panel. “Although they are doing a fine job in asking questions, the inquiry lacks the kind of punch and direction that a skilled counsel for the tribunal would of had. I can’t understand why they never did that.” …

What happened before Britain went to war was a “scandal” according to Lord lester. Parliament was misled about the Attorney General’s true advice, and the cabinet was not presented his full opinions.

“It was deplorable, as a matter of proper government, that neither parliament nor government was properly informed.” Lord Lester continues, “The attorney General had the difficult decision: should he resign or should he he not? His conscience will live with him forever.”

You can read the report here.