I worked for Blair. Why did no-one on the inside speak out about his wars?

Tom Bower's Blair biography is a terrific work of journalism. But will future prime ministers be able to trust future cabinet secretaries if they are prepared to tell all?

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The Daily Mail is taking a rest from beating up on David Cameron’s U-turn on Europe to return to its favourite target – Tony Blair. The serialisation of Tom Bower’s new biography allows for all the Mail’s favourite headlines to be used, from deception over the Iraq war, to opening floodgates to European immigrants and the hint of a dalliance with Mrs Citizen Kane. The latest is to call Blair “a dictator”. What next in the Mail’s lexicon of Blair-hate – Pol Pot?

TB on TB is a match made in heaven and as with all of Tom Bower’s extensively researched biographies it will be and deserves to be a best-seller.

There is a curious bond between the Labour left and the Tory Party as both have a vested interest in trashing Blair. The left cannot forgive Blair for winning three elections as a reformist European-style social democrat. The right cannot forgive Blair for denying to the Conservatives their divine right to rule for the longest period ever in the last hundred years. Indeed, Blair’s unspoken alliance with Paddy Ashdown’s and Charlie Kennedy’s Lib Dems meant that Tories were excluded from full control of the British state for nearly 20 years.

So while Blair’s predecessor went off to make zillions upon leaving office and conducted the most famous affair in recent parliamentary history, as well as presiding over the disaster of British foreign policy in the Balkans, he is not considered worthy of the Tom Bower treatment.

Like him or loathe him Blair is going to stir passions and produce biographies as long as British political history is written.

However there is one curious aspect of the TB biography which deserves further exploration. And that is why did no-one protest at the time about Blair’s foreign policy interventions?

There were marchers down Whitehall and all honour to them. But there were no protestors inside Whitehall. Why not? It is all very well for the cabinet secretary at the time, who gladly accepted a peerage with all its perks and expenses from Blair, to complain that Blair “deceived” the cabinet and by extension Parliament and the nation.

It is quite a charge for the most senior state servant to make. No previous cabinet secretary has said something similar about a prime minister he served.

For good or ill, senior civil servants have the same deontological obligations as doctors, lawyers and priests – namely to be involved in the most confidential discussions and decisions but to keep quiet.

Lord Turnbull has now invented a new doctrine at the invitation of Tom Bower. It is terrific journalism but will future Prime Ministers trust future cabinet secretaries if they are prepared to tell all?

I had the smallest of walk-on parts as Blair sent me to the Foreign Office as PPS and Minister for eight years 1997-2005. I do not recall Robin Cook or Jack Straw ever admitting concerns or criticisms about what Blair was doing. After he was dumped as Foreign Secretary, a sacking that wounded him deeply, Cook did resign with maximum dramatic effect during the Iraq war debate in the Commons.

But as with Clare Short’s hokey-cokey resignation it was a gesture and not a serious political move. Had he resigned earlier jointly with other ministers it might have had an impact similar to Anthony Eden’s resignation over Chamberlain’s conduct of foreign policy in 1938.

Robin Cook was proud of his role in military intervention in Sierra Leone, Indonesia and above all in the Balkans including the air attacks on a European city, Belgrade, which were carried out without UN authority or approval.

Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Indonesia created a culture of interventionism and use of military force that Labour ministers and certainly TB quite enjoyed. Having knocked off Sukarno and Milosevic as it were, Saddam seemed just another trophy to add to the wall.

I kept a daily diary during all that period and travelled with senior FCO officials or met them and Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) officials in different world capitals as a Minister. I do not recall a single one at any meeting in the FCO, at the UK missions in New York or Washington or any other capital, uttering a single word of warning or even raising an eyebrow.

There was one FCO lawyer who resigned and again that is to her honour. But the Whitehall machine, at least in the years I worked at the FCO, kept mum. I don’t doubt there were members of the Camel Corps as the FCO fondly dubs its Arabists who thought the Iraq intervention was mad and bad just as there were apologists for Milosevic who thought his rule was acceptable.

But they said nothing at the time. Now they discover the courage of their previously well-hidden convictions and concerns. Like many, I am now of the view that Britain’s involvement in destroying the states of Iraq and Libya and the encouragement of civil war in Syria are blunders. But I do not accuse the prime ministers and foreign secretaries who made those errors of bad faith. So I am of no interest as a witness to writers like Tom Bower.