The reality of what has been done to Iraq ought to produce a level of moral revulsion to shake our political establishment to the core. It ought to generate mass movements demanding that those responsible be held to account, that changes be made to ensure such an outrage is unthinkable in the future.

How, after all, can our political system have become so rigged, so unrepresentative, that a vast mass of voters opposed to the war are forced to choose between a Labour party that launched the invasion and a Tory party that insists it would have invaded even if it had known there were no WMD? How can we have become so fundamentally disenfranchised?

One reason is that the means of mobilising dissent are monopolised by a corporate media system that is closely allied to the state. Over the course of three days last week, the extent of the BBC's servility to power was starkly revealed...