Television - The testimony of a man whose values got him into trouble. By Andrew Billen Betrayed by New Labour (Channel 4)

It is now clear that the greatest political scandal of my lifetime - last year's unilateral declaration of war against Iraq on the false premise that it was planning to attack our allies - will go unpunished. Every instinct tells me that, in America, John Kerry is about to lose humiliatingly to George Bush. In Britain, having survived his domestic wobbles, Tony Blair is once again beaming with self-righteousness. The Tories are compromised, the Lib Dems are still the wrong side of credibility: like Bush, Blair will walk the next election.

Since we now know that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs to attack us with, and therefore that Bush and Blair could have had no proof that he did have any, we can conclude that we went to war for the simple reason that the US president wanted to change the regime of a country that cocked a snook at America, the last superpower. It is an understandable, if primitive, reflex. Blair's motives are more obscure, and may include a mixture of wishing for practical reasons to keep onside with the US and a genuine loathing of Saddam's tyranny. All we can know for certain is that Blair could never have truly believed that Iraq was developing a weapon capable of wreaking mass destruction in 45 minutes.

Blair's reasons for going after the BBC and its director general, Greg Dyke, are clearer and even less honourable. They are not dissimilar to Bush's reasons for going after Saddam. In a state where the sole political superpower is new Labour, the BBC remains the only institution of any standing in the habit of taking it on. One morning, one of its defence corps, Andrew Gilligan, claimed the government had "sexed up" this 45-minute malarkey. The charge wounded because it was true, but the government could defend itself up to a point because the reporter was shaky on his details. In an ideal world, Dyke would have investigated and corrected what needed to be corrected. But this was not an ideal world. It was one in which Dyke could have papered his office with the complaints of the government's chief bruiser, Alastair Campbell, about his organisation's coverage of Iraq. Dyke rightly, but incorrectly, stood by his correspondent's story.

Dyke's rough but serviceable self-authored film (19 September) was a portrait of disillusionment, a strange thing for one who had worked in ITV for 30 years to make (such men, surely, have few illusions left). Dyke, it turned out, never had great faith in Blair. They met at a friend's dinner party 20 years ago, when Dyke mistook Blair's declared wish "to serve" as a desire to join the priesthood. The last thing Labour needed, he concluded when he was disabused, was another barrister. But Dyke did believe in Labour, to the extent that he gave it and its new leader cheques amounting to £55,000.

When Dyke was appointed director general of the BBC, the Times (my paper now, but not then) was understandably suspicious of a conflict of interest. Yet it had mistaken Dyke's motives. He supported Labour not venally, nor out of blind loyalty, but because it represented values that mattered to him - and among these was the principle that broadcasters should be independent from government. His documentary showed him saying as much at the press conference after he got the job. He did not think, he told us in voice-over, that this belief would prove so crucial - or so fatal.

On the details of his 6.07am two-way on Radio 4's Today programme, Gilligan gave a better, calmer defence at the Edinburgh Television Festival than Dyke did in this documentary. Dyke's tone was much more belligerent. Like many a boss who has lost his job, he risked sounding as if he was making a second career out of bitterness. Wisely, then, he widened his argument into an attack on a pattern of cynicism, spin and bullying that, he said, characterised the government.

He and his former chairman, Gavyn Davies, were particularly good on the nice-guy-nasty-guy routine that Blair perfected with Campbell. Campbell would write a ranting letter; Blair would send another, or make a phone call, full of gestures of conciliation. In the end, it was Campbell - even though he no longer worked for Blair - who did for both Dyke and Davies, demanding their heads when Lord Hutton had barely finished reciting his report.

The programme began and ended with Dyke standing on the bridge outside the Royal Festival Hall in London, the venue of Blair's 1997 election-night party. Midway through, he was shown stalking Broadcasting House, another building that had contained his hopes. After a show of demurral, the BBC let him and his film crew in - a gesture either of self- confidence or, perhaps, of understanding that no one is as impotent as yesterday's man. Like a ghost, Dyke visited his old office - now, quite literally, a dump.

The documentary (and Dyke's memoir - which, to his credit, he did not plug) was an important portrait of our power- corrupted rulers. Contrary to current myth, not everyone at the BBC admired Dyke. Some in the arts thought him a philistine. Among the 6,000 e-mails of support he received when he left came one, he admitted, that read: "Fuck off, Dyke. I am glad you are going. I never liked you anyway." But nothing became this man's headstrong tenure at the BBC like his noisy, resentful leaving of it.

Andrew Billen is a staff writer on the Times

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