A surprise intervention in the Iraq inquiry debate comes today from Richard Madeley – hitherto unheralded as a foreign policy expert. The former This Morning co-host – currently sitting in for Zoe Ball on Radio 2 – appeared on Andrew Neil's BBC2 show The Daily Politics this afternoon to defend Tony Blair from all the nasty stick he's been getting. After some plangent piano music and a tasteful pan across Richard's bookshelf – Alanbrooke's war diaries, a Mary Wesley novel, Serious by John McEnroe – the crusader for truth and justice speaks out.
"I've always been deeply suspicious of received wisdom," Madeley announces, speaking fluent Alan Partridge. "You get up close to it, it can have a distinctly fishy smell." He goes on: "To accuse a serving prime minister of lying – to parliament, to the world, about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, is an incredibly serious allegation. And I don't believe it for one split second." Moving on to the comfy sofa, he argues that intelligence is often "rubbish" – Churchill had no knowledge about the V-bombs before they started falling, for instance. And governments do use spin, you know. "Look back at some of Margaret Thatcher's speeches that took us into the Falklands War. Spin city." We await the sequel – how about Judy Finnigan on why people should just lighten up and give the bankers a break?
