- Tony Blair: cleared!
- BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies: "resigned!"
- BBC Director General Greg Dyke: "resigned!"
- Comrade Andrew Gilligan: two engines out and a third on fire!
Not that we're gloating over it or anything. Margaret Wente in today's Toronto Globe and Mail:
Tony Blair's long public nightmare is over. The chairman of the BBC is toast, and Andrew Gilligan's career is dead. The BBC board of governors is huddled in emergency sessions to deal with Lord Hutton's finding that its editorial system is fundamentally flawed.I wouldn't be so sure about Gilligan's career being dead, though, just because he's probably about to "resign" from the BBC:
Friends of the reporter today suggested he was on the verge of quitting the BBC following Lord Hutton's excoriating report, which concluded that his story on the government's Iraq dossier was "unfounded".I imagine Al-Quds Al-Arabi will offer him a job.
The BBC journalist is understood to have accepted that his career on the Today programme, which broadcast the fateful 6.07am report , is over.
Naturally, al-Guardian is complaining about it, and predicts Bad Things for Blair:
The venerable WF Deedes says the PM will find it hard to escape the "weight of his past". Like Harold Macmillan, who survived the 1963 Denning report but soon suffered a bout of ill-health that led to his replacement, Mr Blair may leave Downing Street sooner rather than later.I'm sure we haven't heard the end of this. At least, I hope not.
Update: Gilligan shipwrecked!
CNN will offer him a job. He is the type of journalist they like to hire.
I was going to say "Naw, they've already got Peter Arnett," but they don't anymore, do they?