A disdain for rules that still haunts Tony Blair: The dangers for Britain of a Prime Minister making up international law as he goes along are clear, writes SIMON WALTERS
The last Prime Minister to provoke the resignation of a Whitehall legal mandarin by flouting international law is still haunted by the consequences.
Elizabeth Wilmshurst, Foreign Office legal expert, resigned on the eve of the 2003 Iraq War in protest at Tony Blair‘s secret last-minute decision to overturn her official advice that it broke international law.
He did so after Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, under massive pressure from No 10, conveniently changed his previous advice that it was illegal without a second United Nations ruling.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The resignation yesterday of the head of the Government’s legal department, Jonathan Jones, may not be a matter of war and peace. But the principle is the same: the dangers for Britain of a Prime Minister making up international law as he goes along are clear.
The last Prime Minister to provoke the resignation of a Whitehall legal mandarin by flouting international law is still haunted by the consequences. Pictured: Tony Blair
As was the case with the Iraq War row, the legal details concerning Mr Jones’s departure are complicated.
But Mr Johnson only has himself to blame for the most controversial element, his decision to go back on the agreement with the EU concerning Northern Ireland. Last November, when he was trying to woo Ulster Unionists to back his Brexit deal, he promised there would be no customs checks between Britain and Northern Ireland when we finally leave the EU.
Critics said he could never deliver such a commitment. Sure enough, the Unionists duly accused Mr Johnson of betrayal when he went back on the pledge in the EU withdrawal agreement he signed with Brussels. Now he has gone back on that too.
Nor is it only the EU who are crying foul. If Mr Johnson flagrantly breaks this international law how on earth could any country trust him to abide by any other treaty, demanded his No 10 predecessor, Theresa May, yesterday.
Elizabeth Wilmshurst, Foreign Office legal expert, resigned on the eve of the 2003 Iraq War
His hope that he could explain away rewriting his Brexit deal as merely tying up ‘loose ends’ was blown out of the water when Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis openly admitted it breached international law.
For Tony Blair, international legal niceties mattered less than the fact that despite being told by his own legal chiefs that the Iraq War was illegal, he had promised US President George Bush (again in secret) a year earlier that he would do just that.
Unlike Mr Blair, no one can accuse Mr Johnson of not being open about his intentions.
He won an election landslide pledging to ‘get Brexit done’. Critics accused him of similar reckless bravado last year when he said Britain would leave the EU, ‘no ifs or buts’ and – eventually – did just that.
After seeing Brexit in danger of coming undone under law-abiding but lacklustre Mrs May, many of the millions who voted for Mr Johnson will not care about the legal small print.
In his defence his latest move may be more akin to an unlawful but possibly effective tactical ploy in the long-running Brexit diplomatic war, rather than, in Mr Blair’s case, an illegal move in a real war.
As with Mr Johnson on Brexit, Mr Blair had gung-ho public support for the Iraq War.
Two decades later, I would estimate a majority wishes Mr Blair had not forced little-known civil service lawyer Mrs Wilmshurst to walk out.
Mr Johnson will be hoping that history is kinder to him for forcing little-known Mr Jones out.