The decision to hold a judicial inquiry into the death of David Kelly is a grave misdirection of public resources, attention and thought. Far from bringing clarity to the conduct of policy, it has already encouraged the worst traits in our opposition parties, the media and our wider political culture.

The inquiry provides a chance for those in the shallow end of journalism and politics, who prefer cynicism to argument, to indulge their endless, pointless search for another Watergate. The personnel management practices of the Ministry of Defence will be scrutinised, amid empty talk of Deep Throats and smoking guns, for behaviour that will bring down Alastair Campbell, Geoff Hoon, or who knows, Tony Blair himself. From the Liberal Democrats to the Daily Mail, a gallery of opportunists will be hunting for “killer” evidence of misbehaviour. They are the unspeakable in pursuit of the unprovable. And all the time the real issues will be ignored.

The Iraq war raised hugely important questions that the Government, Opposition and press have a duty to tackle. Can the United Nations ever be an effective guarantor of international order? Given the twin threats of rogue nations and weapons of mass destruction is there any alternative to pre-emptive attack? Can fundamentalist Islamic terrorism be countered by a series of limited police actions or do we need a more far-reaching plan for reform in the Islamic world? All these are important public policy questions on which the lives of thousands depend, but not a single one of them will be given a moment’s notice by the media and political circus around Hutton.

Instead of asking how we can better prevent fanatics killing innocents in the future, there will be endless and profitless speculation about what drove one individual to kill himself. Dr Kelly’s death is a source of great sadness to those who knew him. Their grief should be respected, but it does not compel the creation of a judicial inquiry.

The only person “responsible” for David Kelly’s death was David Kelly. The proper place for an examination of the facts of his suicide is a coroner’s court.

In any case, the whole Hutton hoo-hah is not really about Dr Kelly. Well before he took his own life politicians with a grudge and journalists with an agenda were demanding that a judge be sent for to try the Government for daring to win the war in Iraq. Those pressing for an inquiry wanted it to advance their political goals: some wanted to tarnish the Government’s press operation; others wished to undermine the Government itself; yet others hoped to discredit the whole notion that Western powers are entitled to use force as they see fit in defence of their people and their interests.

None of these groups has been driven by a disinterested desire to arrive at the truth. All of them wanted a tribunal, which by its very existence implies that the Government and its behaviour over the Iraq war are deeply questionable, if not positively criminal. In that respect judicial inquiries are just like wars. They are a continuation of politics by other means.

This Government, of all governments, should have realised that. It profited from the Scott inquiry, or the “Scott inquiry into the covert sale of arms to Iraq” as it became known thanks to Robin Cook. Except that the Tory ministers smeared did not actually sell arms to Iraq covertly. Or even overtly, as the inquiry eventually conceded when it stated that “applications for such exports were generally processed very quickly and invariably rejected”. But no one remembers that conclusion. All people remember is that a judge had to look into these weapons deals, therefore there must have been something pretty fishy about the Tories, arms and Iraq. Which is what the Government’s enemies on the Left wanted to insinuate all along.

In a similar vein, the Macpherson inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence was not a calm and forensic investigation into the facts of that young man’s murder. It became a political exercise in appeasing radical activists, who were using race as their campaigning issue, that made a whipping boy of the Metropolitan Police. The Savile inquiry into Bloody Sunday is not a neutral process either. It is a sop to Irish republicans, cooked up as part of the peace process, with the Army this time cast in the role of scapegoat.

What unites the Scott, Macpherson and Savile inquiries, beyond their explicitly political context, is the ideological purpose they have served. In all three it is the State’s legitimate exercise of authority that is held to be questionable, if not criminal. And in all three the agenda of those on the radical Left, or the cynical fringe, is dignified with the weight of a judicial bottom.

The same process is now occurring all over again with the Hutton inquiry and the media/political campaign alongside it. Under question, indeed under implicit attack, is the right of the Government to make the best possible case for its actions in a hostile media climate, its right to expect civil servants to abide by the rules of their job and, above all, its duty to neutralise potential threats before they are unleashed. After all yesterday’s deliberations only one thing has become truly clear. The Hutton inquiry has already sat for one day too long.

michael.gove@thetimes.co.uk

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