A Squeak from the Bilge

One of the first and biggest rats to scrabble aboard the good ship Blair at its triumphant launch seems to be taking a few practice leaps in preparation for the going-under. Baroness Thatcher, Blair's spiritual godmother in everything from privatisation mania to White House sycophancy, has taken it upon herself to criticise the Prime Minister's decision to follow George W Bush into Iraq.

As Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher did her best to return the country to the Victorian age; and at eighty the Baroness retains her customary degree of up-to-dateness: "The fact was that there were no facts, there was no evidence, and there was no proof," she observed, a mere two years after the rest of us noticed. Asked whether she would have invaded Iraq given the intelligence at the time, she told the Washington Post: "I was a scientist before I was a politician. And as a scientist I know you need facts, evidence and proof - and then you check, recheck and check again."

Doubtless this healthy habit of mind underlay all her most amusing decisions; especially the one about the General Belgrano being inside the exclusion zone, and the other one about the poll tax being a jolly good idea. I am sure scientific rigour lay at the very basis of her attitude to Europe. She knew the Germans had started two world wars; she knew the French were shifty, garlic-scoffing weaklings; she checked, rechecked and checked again, and by Jingo! all of it was true.

As might be expected, despite her reservations over Blair's decision, the Baroness continues to believe that the military ousting of Saddam Hussein was a Good Thing. According to her aides, she wished that the removal of her government's favoured ally and trading partner "had been achieved by the first Gulf War ... which took place shortly after she was forced to resign". Had fate and the White House permitted, no doubt that is when she would have achieved it herself.