Richard Ingrams' Week: Winners and losers in the game of political hindsight

At our Oldie Literary Lunch on Thursday, Carol Thatcher told how her mother was recently asked by a visitor what she thought about Iraq. "I don't start wars," she replied without a second's hesitation. "I end them."

Some diehards may argue that invading the Falklands did not really amount to the ending of a war. But you can see the old girl's point.

And at least when her statue was unveiled earlier this year in the House of Commons she was not attacked by the likes of Harold Pinter and John Pilger, who are now leading a surprise protest against a new statue of Lloyd George.

His offence, apparently, was to order the bombing of a number of countries, including Iraq, during his premiership, not to mention the sale of peerages and a generally racist attitude towards the lesser breeds. (No mention is made of his adulterous philandering for possibly obvious reasons.)

In the circumstances it seems rather unfair that the Welsh Wizard should be denied a statue when a similar case could be made out against, if not Margaret Thatcher, then almost all those statesmen with statues in and out of the Houses of Parliament.

Churchill was just as keen on bombing Iraq as Lloyd George and even approved the use of poisonous gas. And wasn't he at Kitchener's side in the Battle of Omdurman helping to mow down the Fuzzy Wuzzies?

Even Clement Attlee, supposedly despised by Churchill, gave the OK to the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan. And he's got a statue.

One moral is that there may be hope even yet for Tony Blair. After all, he is Lloyd George-like in his various bombing campaigns, not to mention his bestowal of peerages on the undeserving.

And by the time they get round to putting the statue up, all such things could be forgotten and Harold Pinter won't be around to mount a protest.

Darkness falls on the clocks debate

Tomorrow we will be putting the clocks back, with the result that it will start to get dark around teatime.

Over the years a campaign has been mounted to leave the clocks unchanged so that the winter darkness is transferred to the mornings. The campaign by now has the support of all kinds of official bodies including the CBI, the tourist authority, the BMA and Age Concern.

It has also been pointed out that, with the current concern about obesity, it makes sense to have lighter evenings when more people would be able to take exercise and get out in the open – hence the support of the Sports Council. All these advantages have been known for some time yet nothing has been done to make the change. It used to be said that it was the opposition of the Scots, whose mornings would be much darker, that was the main obstacle – both of the main political parties fearing to alienate their diminishing bands of Scottish supporters. Now, however, with the Scot Nats in charge, the Scots are presumably free to have their own Scottish time if that is what they want.

The other traditional argument against the change was that it would make life very difficult for the postmen. But even that argument no longer has any force in an age when postmen, if they are not on strike, seldom get round to delivering the letters much before noon.

* One thing you can say for certain about Norman Baker, Lib Dem MP for Lewes. He's not a nutter. So when he told me recently of his conviction that Dr David Kelly had been murdered, I paid attention.

Norman at that stage was cagey, not wishing for the story to get out in advance of the book he has written. But now we have more details – most notably the fact that the knife with which Kelly was supposed to have slit his wrist bore no fingerprints.

Quite apart from that, several respectable forensic experts have cast doubt on the medical evidence used to support the suicide theory. The question remains: if he was murdered, who did it?

David Kelly was privy to all manner of Anglo-US government secrets. If he felt he was going to be used as a scapegoat he might very well have decided to turn nasty – which could involve him in disclosing rather more damaging information than anything to do with dossiers.

All this is speculation. The story reminds me a little of the Profumo affair and in particular the sad case of the osteopath Dr Stephen Ward. Like Kelly, Ward regarded himself as the friend of the establishment, and when rumours about Profumo began to circulate, although he knew the truth, he initially defended him. But as soon as it looked as if he was to be made a scapegoat, Ward exposed his former friend as a liar. It didn't stop him from being put on trial, and in the end he committed suicide. But, in that case, nobody to my knowledge suggested he had been murdered.