Dan Plesch

The attempt to impeach the prime minister for his misconduct over the Iraq war highlights the value of using the history of our democracy as a living instrument to preserve freedom today. The idea - first floated in these pages in January and led by Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price - is now supported by his own party, the SNP, the Green party and 20 individual MPs. Matrix Chambers is today giving us their legal opinion on the initiative. Sceptics sneer that the proposal is unrealistic, but the case for it is growing ever stronger. First, Tony Blair made many statements relating to the Iraq war that we now know were contradicted by the very sources - such as reports from the Joint Intelligence Committee - he claimed to rely on. The list runs to 40 pages in the report I prepared with Glen Rangwala, the WMD expert, for Adam Price. Second, any reasonable person would conclude that some or all of his statements were misleading. Third, there is a clear constitutional standard requiring ministers to resign for such conduct. Fourth, the pre-Iraq standard of resignation was applied to the MPs Beverley Hughes and Peter Mandelson. Hughes resigned because she forgot she had received one letter. Mandelson resigned first because he did not give proper information to his civil servants about a private loan, and again because there was a dispute about whether or not he had made a phone call to another minister. A reasonable person would conclude that the prime minister's misleading statements are far more numerous and serious than the above. Fifth, Blair remains in office, refusing any examination of his conduct. Sixth, if he gets away with it, a new constitutional precedent will have been established, namely that misleading the country is acceptable. Seventh, constitutional authorities such as Erskine May describe how impeachment can be used as a last resort. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/sto...1309808,00.html

Dan Plesch was born at Keele in Staffordshire and grew up in London. He studied history at Nottingham University and qualified as a social worker at Bristol University. In the early 1980s he was active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and began helping organise the Glastonbury festivals. In 1987 he founded the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) which he directed from Washington DC until 2001, when he was appointed Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies. In 2003 he then became an Honorary Fellow of Birkbeck College, University of London and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the University of Keele. He has written for the Guardian, the Independent, the New York Times, the Observer, Tribune, the Washington Post and the Washington Times. He has regularly provided live political and military analysis of evolving news stories for the BBC, CNN, ITN and other news media. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.