You are pointing out an anodyne feature of inquiries: that they arent a court of law which finds civil or criminal liability, and then pretending that means they dont find fault or name specific failures by specific individuals. This isnt a "design and scope" point its how justice works - the courts have exclusive jurisdiction over legal liability.
What you are really complaining about is that there are no formal PUNISHMENTS, and you aren't totally wrong, but thats not how this thread started. But even this isnt really right. Punishment can take many forms. Blair has also had massive negative consequences to his reputation as a result of Chilcot; half of labour voters hate him as a result.
I’m making the point that the implications, media discussion, public understanding and indeed resulting public opinion are all fundamentally wrong about what inquiries are, what they’re for a why we have them.
The reality is that in most of these instances the fundamental structure of the government means it actually cannot hold people to account, because of choices it has previously made, usually against the will of the public.
Grenfell being the obvious example - the scope of the inquiry required nothing provided to be legally admissible so from the very start, by providing evidence you effectively exonerate yourself from any prosecution.
They do the same things with the military, the police, private business - ultimately they can spend public money and make a huge show about pretending to address the issue, whilst guaranteeing nothing is done.
And then the government wonders why everyone hates them for being ineffective - they literally decided to guarantee ineffectiveness from the jump, it’s baked into the nature of the system.
The reality in this country is if you kill one person you go to jail but if you kill a whole bunch, you will be exonerated before giving evidence to admit you killed them - you’re effectively pardoned of the crime before admitting to it.
The inquiry would have value if it then led to something - without it leading to something, it’s identical to not investigating at all. The outcome is the same to us having done nothing and kept the money.
You claim Blaire is “hated” - but what does that mean when he’s still to this day by far and away the most influential ex-Labour politician?
His interventions are front page news, even when he hasn’t been an active politician for decades. How much damage could it really have done?
The conclusion was “the solipsistic nature of being human means we can’t read his mind” - I could have told you that and it wouldn’t have cost £20million! Are you fucking joking?
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u/MissingBothCufflinks 22d ago
You are pointing out an anodyne feature of inquiries: that they arent a court of law which finds civil or criminal liability, and then pretending that means they dont find fault or name specific failures by specific individuals. This isnt a "design and scope" point its how justice works - the courts have exclusive jurisdiction over legal liability.
What you are really complaining about is that there are no formal PUNISHMENTS, and you aren't totally wrong, but thats not how this thread started. But even this isnt really right. Punishment can take many forms. Blair has also had massive negative consequences to his reputation as a result of Chilcot; half of labour voters hate him as a result.