'Lynch mob' murder

BORIS JOHNSON, Conservative MP and Ex-Editor

Was this what we fought for? Is this really the lesson in human rights and Western values we hoped to deliver to the people of Iraq? This wasn't justice. This was a sectarian lynch mob. This was a snuff movie.

How dare the Prime Minister pretend that the hanging of Saddam Hussein is somehow nothing to do with him? He was the only Western leader of any importance to join George W. Bush in the war to remove Saddam.

It was Blair who sent thousands of British troops to join the coalition, and Blair who authorised the spending of at least  £5 billion on a war in Mesopotamia, and it was Blair who was therefore directly co-responsible for putting Saddam Hussein on the end of that rope.

Bush has at least had the guts to say something. Why not Tony? It is ridiculous to suggest that a silence is somehow tactful because this "is a matter for the Iraqis".

The trial itself was a farce, and, as for the six judges who attempted to preside, their careers can be summarised like the wives of Henry VIII: assassinated, resigned, sacked, resigned, sacked, survived (for now). Seven of the other lawyers were murdered, including Saddam's chief defence lawyer.

As for the suggestion that this was nothing to do with us, but "independent Iraqi justice", what total and utter tripe. Let us leave on one side the laughable suggestion that "America and Britain do not intervene in the affairs of sovereign Iraq" (tell that to Saddam). At every stage the Americans were in charge.

Come on Tony, give us one of your sound bites. What is your reaction to the Saddam snuff movie? It was Tony Blair who persuaded so many of us that Iraq would be better off without Saddam. Can he give a single piece of evidence in support of that claim?

Perhaps he can, even though 58,000 civilians have died, and 100 are dying every day; but we want it from the man himself. We don't want to hear any more from Margaret Beckett, with her babble about opposing the death penalty and yet being glad that Saddam "has been held to account". You can hold someone to account without strangling them in a dungeon, Margaret.

And we don't want Prescott with his moronic complaint that the release of the snuff movie was tasteless, as though the content itself was innocuous.

I want to hear from Blair himself. What does it tell him about his legacy in Iraq, that the execution of Saddam was accompanied by sectarian taunts and shouts? What does that tell him about his defining political accomplishment?

"You can tell, by the way I walk, I'm a busy man, no time to talk", sang the Bee Gees. Well, if Blair is so busy on his yachts that he has no time to talk to the British people, then he should stay in that Bee Gee mansion.

If he can't articulate his thoughts - our thoughts - on the disgusting death of Saddam, then he has ceased to give leadership. His premiership is effectively over.

* Boris Johnson resigned as editor of The Spectator magazine when he became a shadow government minister in December 2005.