What to expect from the Chilcot inquiry: revelation or whitewash?

It has been seven years in the making at a cost of £10m and runs to 2.6m words. Chilcot’s report into the Iraq war finally nears publication, but will it be worth the wait?

Seven years and several political eras ago, on 15 June 2009, prime minister Gordon Brown made a typically grave statement in the House of Commons. “With the last British combat troops about to return home from Iraq,” he said, “I am today announcing the establishment of an independent inquiry which will consider the period from summer 2001, before military operations began … and our subsequent involvement in Iraq right up to the end of July this year. The inquiry is essential … Its scope is unprecedented … It will have access to all government papers, and the ability to call any witnesses.” Brown concluded: “I am advised that it will take a year.”

In June 2009 the Labour government was ailing after a dozen years in power. Less than a year from the next general election, according to the pollsters Ipsos MORI it was close to being pushed into third place by the Liberal Democrats. One of the main reasons for Labour’s divisions and decline then – and ever since – was the 2003 Iraq war so determinedly pursued by Brown’s predecessor, Tony Blair. The Lib Dems, many Labour voters, and MPs on the Labour left such as Jeremy Corbyn had opposed it. Other Labour MPs, including Tom Watson and Angela Eagle, had supported it. The Chilcot inquiry, as it soon became known after its chairman, Sir John Chilcot, a retired civil servant with a gentle manner, was Brown’s attempt to calm some of the enormous party-political, geopolitical and military disorder Iraq had unleashed – and to ensure that such a foreign policy disaster did not happen again.

Related: Tony Blair faces calls for impeachment on release of Chilcot report

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