Blair's booby trap, Bitter Short, has spit venom at her former boss, pouring out her heart and hatred at the Chilcot whitewash. But the ex-cabinet minister didn't have the guts to quit at the time, instead backing warmongering Blair's illegal war. Short needs a wake-up call, not another audience.
The Orange Party has little time for Short.
For all her protestations now, the New Labour minister voted for Blair's war on the back of a pack of lies, leaving 179 UK soldiers dead along with hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians and an almighty mess.
Cook was a politician of principle, delivering a devastating resignation speech on the eve of war. Short blew her chance as the only other New Labour MP with an ounce of principle and dignity, by staying on.
Getting short shrift from Campbell, who told Chilcot “she was very difficult to handle”, implying she might leak like a sieve, Short was a loose cabinet cannon. Campbellspeak that she refused to be bullied and beaten into submission.
Short's 'testimony' to Chilcot had the whiff of ancient history - resurrected when the now Independent MP set out her stall for Chilcot on Marr's TV sofa on Sunday.
There’s no love lost between Short and Blair. To hear her again wade into Blair and his cronies satisfied some of the blood lust for warmongering Blair and the Mail. A refreshing counterpoint helping to ease the pain of sitting through six hours while the slippery showman lectured Chilcot.
The “preachy” PM’s evidence to Chilcot was “ludicrous,” she told Marr, repeating her view to Brown's Chilcot placemen that Blair's cabinet was "misled" into thinking the war with Iraq was legal.
Attorney general Goldsmith had been "leaned on" to change his advice before the invasion. Blair "and his mates" decided war was necessary and "everything was done on a wing and a prayer." All good stuff with the ring of truth.
Slamming Blair's account as "historically inaccurate", she added: "I believed them at the time. You don't want to disbelieve your prime minister in the run-up to war and you want to believe the leader of your party. You want to be loyal."
But Short was loyal with one hand and holding out for a plumb job as she took the Blair shilling with the other. Only to later wake up and realise it was all a "con". In stark contrast to the honourable Cook who saw through the lies and quit.
No word from Short on pal Brown, recalling only how they cuddled up "having cups of coffee with me and saying 'Tony Blair's obsessed with his legacy and he thinks he can have a quick war and then a reshuffle'."
Blair “marginalised” Brown in the build-up to the war, she told Chilcot. The then chancellor neither opposed nor supported the invasion, she told Marr.
Which leaves Bunkered Brown facing Chilcot in complete denial, denying a war even took place on his treasury watch.
But for all her faults and failing for the anti-war lobby, Short has one redeeming feature which has stuck in the throat of the Orange Party.
Once asked how she thought Blair has changed over the years, she gave a spine chilling reply: "He developed a taste for war."
Mid pictures Scarfe, Sunday Times, Private Eye
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