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British public's trust in Blair takes dive over Iraq row

British trust in Prime Minister Tony Blair has plunged over the suicide of a weapons expert tragically caught up in a bitter dispute between the BBC and the government over war in Iraq, an opinion poll showed yesterday.

And British voters were not alone in pouring scorn on an embattled government which has been put under a harsh spotlight by a judicial inquiry into the death of David Kelly.

After watching Blair's Thursday appearance at the inquiry, legendary Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein concluded: "The victim here was not David Kelly but Britain, Blair and the rightness of the Allied cause."

Just 22 percent of those responding to a poll by the Daily Telegraph newspaper felt that the government had, on balance, been honest and trustworthy. Blair, who swept to power on a promise to ban sleaze from government, received disastrous ratings. A poll back in 1998 showed 74 percent of voters trusted him. That has now shrunk to just 27 percent.

While no smoking gun has emerged to support the claim by a BBC reporter that the government "sexed up" a dossier to justify the case for a war most Britons opposed, the inquiry has exposed the workings of Blair's inner circle in unprecedented fashion.

And with no banned weapons found in Iraq, Blair's case for war and handling of its aftermath remain under intense scrutiny.

Bernstein, who with Bob Woodward broke the Watergate scandal that toppled Richard Nixon, wrote in the Daily Mirror "No American president would dare initiate such an inquiry. The inquiry in which the prime minister now finds himself a witness of questionable credibility, is not about Dr Kelly any longer. It is about what information was used to sell a war to the people and the legislatures of the US and UK."

The tabloid Sun, Britain's biggest selling newspaper, said: "Blair's attack on the BBC may be unprecedented but it is totally deserved." But the Independent newspaper called it "an assured performance that has not dispelled the lingering suspicions."
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