“God help us if we have a siege of Baghdad. And God help us even more if there is street fighting in Baghdad.”

Voicing the sentiments of the rising tide of opposition within the British Parliament and public that opposes war, Dalyell feels that the conflict in Iraq and the shaky justification for joining with America to invade had severely weakened Tony Blair’s position as leader of the Labour Party and as prime minister. “And I hope it will damage it more, because he has done a very wicked thing. This is an unjust war and he didn’t do everything possible to avoid it; therefore it doesn’t meet the cultural criteria laid down for a just war. It is an unjust war.”

Commenting on the motives of the United States for going to war, Dalyell said: “They have a liquid agenda, Paul Wolfowitz was writing in 1991 about the need for a pre-emptive strike against Iraq and it was all about oil and Israel. In their minds, it was pre-planned for a long time.”

Far from being inevitable, Dalyell saw the war as opportunistic. “Blair’s war, Straw’s war and those awful people round Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheyney, Wolfowitz, Powell, Adleman, Fleischer, — they have hijacked the government of a great country, the United States, for their own ends.”

“They created the war; there was no need. The weapons inspectors should have been allowed to do their job. Better still, there should have been proper talks with the Iraqis many years ago. I pleaded with Blair to talk with them properly in terms of dignity — that Arabs should be treated with courtesy and dignity.”

Dalyell is a man of many contradictions. Correctly Sir Tam Dalyell, Bart. hereditary baronet, Eton, Oxford and the Scots Greys, he has been a Labour Party member from 1956 and sitting MP since 1962. The political biographer Andrew Roth, sees Dalyell as occasionally arguing on thin grounds to conceal his underlying pacifism. But Dalyell is no newcomer either to controversy or the political rough-and-tumble of the House of Commons.

He is known for his ability to focus on an issue and pursue it for years if necessary, making fine use of parliamentary procedure to harry ministers into submission. His record of opposition and open criticism of government includes the sinking of the Argentinean battleship Belgrano at the beginning of the Falklands war, after which he was suspended from the Commons for accusing ministers of lying over the affair, the Gulf War, and devolution of the United Kingdom. His most recent exit from the Commons was for refusing to sit down without his point being heard.

War, he agreed, has not been officially declared, and that means that the Geneva Convention does not apply. “And that makes it even worse than it already is. It is, in my opinion, an unnecessary war and I think that the British people are beginning to understand how they have been misinformed about so much.”

“The politicians have been disgraceful. Straw and Blair have been simply disgraceful,” he said.

Last year, Dalyell called Tony Blair the worst prime minister and Labour leader he had experienced in all his years in Parliament. A strong critic of Tony Blair’s presidential style of leadership, he described him as “a shallow actor.” “Harold Wilson,” he said recently, “weaved and ducked, but he kept Britain out of the Vietnam War.”

With the advance on Baghdad now slowed, the prospect of street fighting and urban warfare looms unattractively. “I don’t think the military men of today wanted this war at all — but what could they do about it? A number of senior military staff officers certainly didn’t want it, and I’ll bet some of the regimental commanders said ‘How are we going to explain this to our boys?’”

Where from here? “God knows. I know what I would argue for — and that is a UN-mediated truce, the inspectors to go back and a phased withdrawal. Now that may be unattainable. But I don’t know what the alternative is.”

As to the critical question of whether Saddam Hussein should stay or go, Dalyell sighed and said resignedly, “If he could remain there with dignity, there are people like Tariq Aziz who I know very well and indeed some others — then we could begin to talk again. But there’s got to be some payment for reconstruction, and we’re talking about tens of billions — but are we to go on and make the matter worse? The humanitarian disaster just beggars belief.” There was a very long pause in the conversation and his hand went over the telephone mouthpiece — “As you might get the impression, I feel very strongly about this…”

Colin Bell of the Scotsman has said: “If Tam has suffered from a self-destructive bluntness, it is largely the straight talk of an old-fashioned gentleman who refuses to dissemble or trim.”