THE MOSS INQUIRY

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Monday's The World Tonight featured an anticipatory report on the Chilcott Inquiry into the Iraq War by Paul Moss. The war has always been controversial across the political spectrum, dividing opinion in all sorts of unexpected ways. Moss's report drew on a number of voices, saying what they wanted from Chilcott, but they mostly came from one side of the argument, and from the Left.
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There was Rose Gentle, the anti-war campaigner (co-founder with Reg Keys of Military Families Against the War) and candidate for the Spectre Party in next year's general election. Her son George was killed in the war. Next came Philippe Sands, lawyer and professor of law at University College London, author of books attacking the war, and Bush and Rumsfeld in particular, a man married to the daughter of American socialist André Schiffrin. Then there was retired British ambassador Oliver Miles, who has campaigned for a change of policy in the Middle East and written a long series of articles for The Guardian. Next up was Amyas Godfrey, a Fellow of Royal United Services Institute, who served in Iraq (and on whose political stance I'm unable to comment). Finally, there was a voice from the centre-right, Matthew D'Ancona of the Sunday Telegraph (and until recently editor of The Spectator).
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As a revealing (if trivial) aside, I noticed that Mr D'Ancona alone was extended the discourtesy of being referred to only by his surname. Here is a list of all the proper names used in Moss's report, exactly as Moss used them (yeah, I know!):
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Sir John Chilcott
John Chilcott
Gordon Brown
John Chilcott
John Chilcott
Sir John Chilcott
Rose Gentle
Philippe Sands
Lord Goldsmith
Lord Goldsmith
Tony Blair
Oliver Miles
Amyas Godfrey
Tony Blair
Matthew D'Ancona
Tony Blair
D'Ancona
Sir John Chilcott
Tony Blair
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