Chameleon Magazine

Watching Ed Balls trying to embarrass Nigel Farage over a £5 million donation was one of those moments that makes you wonder whether Westminster suffers from selective amnesia.

Now don’t get me wrong. Donations can be questioned. Donations can be scrutinised. That’s part of politics.

But there is something undeniably ironic about a former member of a government generation associated with one of the most expensive and controversial foreign policy decisions in modern British history trying to act shocked by a private donation.

Five million pounds.

That’s the figure we’re supposed to be outraged by.

Five million.

Not the billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money spent pursuing a war justified by weapons of mass destruction that were never found.

Not the enormous cost to the public purse.

Not the long-term consequences.

Not the lives lost.

Not the families left behind.

Not the soldiers who paid the ultimate price while politicians confidently assured the public they knew exactly what they were looking for.

Apparently we’re supposed to focus on the £5 million.

It takes a special kind of political memory to become outraged over a private donation while seemingly forgetting one of the most expensive mistakes ever presented to the British public as a certainty.

The irony is almost beautiful.

A political class that once asked taxpayers to fund a war in search of weapons that never materialised is now demanding answers about money that didn’t come from taxpayers in the first place.

That’s not to say questions shouldn’t be asked.

Questions should always be asked.

But before climbing onto the moral high ground, it might be worth checking whether it’s built on foundations that can actually support the weight.

Because some of us remember the speeches.

Some of us remember the promises.

Some of us remember the certainty.

And some of us remember what happened when that certainty turned out to be wrong.

Westminster often assumes the public has a short memory.

The problem is that some memories are simply too expensive to forget.