Chilcot

The Iraq Inquiry was established by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009, shortly after the bulk of British combat troops had withdrawn from Iraq. Unlike the earlier Butler and Hutton reports, which were criticised as "white-washes," Chilcot’s remit was exceptionally broad, covering the period from 2001 to 2009. The inquiry was granted unprecedented access to private correspondence, including 29 personal notes from Tony Blair to George W. Bush.

The report, comprising 2.6 million words, delivered a devastating verdict on the road to war. It famously revealed a note from Tony Blair to George W. Bush in July 2002—eight months before the invasion—stating: "I will be with you, whatever." This undermined the long-standing claim that the UK was seriously pursuing a diplomatic solution through the UN until the final moment. Chilcot found that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was presented with a "certainty that was not justified," and that the legal basis for the war was "far from satisfactory."

The report was equally scathing about the "occupation" phase. It found that the government’s planning for post-Saddam Iraq was "wholly inadequate," based on the optimistic and incorrect assumption that the UK would be able to reduce its military presence quickly. Instead, British forces found themselves overstretched and under-equipped, fighting a fierce insurgency in Basra while simultaneously being committed to operations in Afghanistan. Sir John Chilcot concluded that the British military role in Iraq "ended a very long way from success."

The legacy of the Chilcot Report is a fundamental change in how the UK approaches military intervention. It reinforced the "Chilcot principles": that military action should only be a last resort, that planning for "the day after" is as important as the invasion itself, and that the Prime Minister cannot bypass the Cabinet to make "sofa-style" decisions on matters of national survival.