I reproduce this from the Mail on Sunday of 9th February 2003:

'IF we go to war I shall not stop criticising this folly. Our troops will not be fighting for this country, but for another country and against Britain's interests.



Before the bombs start to fall I will try one last time to deal with the feeble, stumbling case for attacking Iraq.



Yes, Saddam Hussein is a dictator. So is Jiang Zemin, the Chinese leader, recently welcomed here on a State visit and guarded from protesters by British police.



Jiang Zemin's regime constantly threatens its neighbour Taiwan, illegally occupies Tibet, imprisons hundreds of thousands in its Lao Gai concentration camps and possesses weapons of mass destruction by the megaton, plus rockets to deliver them.



China is a much more potent threat to peace and stability than Iraq, and the free world should be taking firmer steps to deter and contain it. But America constantly appeases China. So do we.



Talking of appeasement, the pro-war faction claims that those who oppose the war are the same as those who would not stand up to Hitler in the Thirties. This is historical rubbish. When Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland, the democracies did nothing. They did nothing when he swallowed Austria and Czechoslovakia.



When Saddam invaded Kuwait, the West stood up to him, and threw him out. He is most unlikely to do it again, and if he does he knows he will be thrown out again. So why should he? Nobody is appeasing him.



If we know that Saddam has developed dangerous weapons, then we can simply destroy them, as Israel did when it bombed the Osirak reactor in 1981. No war followed though, stupidly, both President Reagan and Margaret Thatcher condemned this wise and sensible act.



This war is part of an ill-thought-out American plan to obtain a strategic foothold in the Middle East. This will only work if America stays in Iraq for decades, and even then will be very hard to manage.



Yet it is already clear that Washington does not intend to hang around in Baghdad any longer than it has to, and that British troops will be given the job of policing the 'democracy' which is supposed to appear by magic once Saddam has gone.



Why? We couldn't afford to do this in 1921, when we invented Iraq by drawing some lines on a map, and we certainly cannot now. In return for this humiliating role, what do we get?



America has already forced us to surrender to the IRA. It wants to shove us into a European federal state. If we are such valued allies, why are we treated like this? It is time we had a Government which stood up for this country's independence.'

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And in case any Tories think it's not their fault, this from the MoS on 2nd March:



'THE worst government in modern British history is trying to hustle this country into a stupid and unpopular war which has nothing to do with us and is against our interests.



It hopes to get away with this even though our armed forces are not fit to fight, thanks to years of neglect and cheeseparing.



So what does the Opposition do at the moment of truth, when the ground is trembling beneath New Labour's feet and there is a real possibility of unhorsing this ghastly regime?



In the most important vote to take place in the Commons for decades, the Tory Party backs the Government.



I just cannot understand why so many Conservatives are in favour of this Left wing war.



Why don't they make the connections? Mr Blair wanted to disarm this country in the face of the Soviet threat, a real threat from a monstrous and bloodstained tyranny. Mr Blair was against retaking the Falklands. Mr Blair has handed Ulster over to rule by terrorist factions. Mr Blair is even now trying to sell Gibraltar to Spain. And, above all, he aches to abolish our national independence and liberty by scrapping the pound and placing us beneath the dingy shadow of a Brussels constitution.



Yet suddenly this serial surrender merchant, appeaser and anti-British defeatist is hot for war against Iraq, a nation which, for all its many faults, poses precisely no threat to this country.



The truth is that attacking Iraq appeals to Mr Blair because it is not in British interests. It is a new kind of liberal imperialism which ultimately threatens the whole idea that countries are free to govern themselves as they see fit.



And what about these vague and grandiose promises of a new democratic Iraq? For Heaven's sake, the Labour Party still hasn't managed to introduce democracy in its one-party heartlands of Scotland and the North East. How likely is it Mr Blair can impose it on Basra?



These excellent arguments have been left to rust by a Tory Party which seems to think war is conservative. Wrong a thousand times. War, for the past century, has been the handmaid and herald of state control, Socialism, inflation and high taxation, doing limitless damage to the Church, marriage and the family, stability, order and morality.'