The Rt. Hon. Sir John Chilcot, GCB, PC (born 22 April 1939) is a Privy Counsellor and former civil servant. His appointment as chair of an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath was announced in June 2009.

He was educated at Brighton College and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he read English and languages. A career civil servant until his retirement in 1997, he served as Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office, Deputy Under-Secretary at the Home Office in charge of the Police Department, and a variety of posts in the Home Office, the Civil Service Department and the Cabinet Office, including Private Secretary appointments to Home Secretaries Roy Jenkins, Merlyn Rees, and Willie Whitelaw, and to the Head of the Civil Service, William Armstrong.

His honours include CB (1990), KCB (1994), and GCB (1998). He became a Privy Counsellor in 2004, and was a member of the Butler Review of the use of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He acted as "staff counsellor" to MI5 and MI6 from 1999 to 2004, "dealing with private and personal complaints from members of the intelligence services about their work and conditions."

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He resigned from all of these positions in June 2007.

Blair was elected Leader of the Labour Party in the leadership election of July 1994, following the sudden death of his predecessor, John Smith. Under his leadership, the party used the phrases "New Labour" and "New Socialism" to define its policy, and moved away from its support of state socialism since the 1960s and created a new version of the ethical socialism that was last pursued by Clement Attlee. Critics of Blair claim that "New Labour" did not adhere to socialism as claimed, and that it effectively advocated capitalism. Blair subsequently led Labour to a landslide victory in the 1997 general election. At 43 years old, he became the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812. In the first years of the New Labour government, Blair's government implemented a number of 1997 manifesto pledges, introducing the minimum wage, Human Rights Act and Freedom of Information Act, and carrying out devolution, establishing the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales, and the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Anthony Brian 'Tony' Baldry (born 10 July 1950) is a British Conservative Party politician. He is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Banbury.

Born in 1950, he was educated at Leighton Park School, a Quaker school, and the University of Sussex where he read Law. He became actively involved in student politics and during his time at Sussex, took the Students' Union to the High Court on the grounds that the Students' Union was making "ultra vires" payments out of Student Union funds to various political organisations. Baldry v. Feintuck (1972) 2 All ER 81 for the first time defined the legal status of Students' Unions.

In the February 1974 general election, Baldry was personal assistant to Maurice MacMillan, then Chief Secretary to the Treasury and in the October 1974 general election, he was personal assistant to Margaret Thatcher. When Margaret Thatcher became Leader of the Conservative Party in 1975, Baldry joined her Private Office, mainly to work as the link between Mrs Thatcher and the "Britain in Europe Campaign", the "Yes" Campaign, for the 1975 EU referendum. Baldry was active in the European movement and won the Robert Schumann Silver Medal in 1978 for contributions to Europe. Baldry was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1975 and became a common lawyer. He joined the Oxford and Midlands Circuit. Baldry joined the Sussex Yeomanry whilst at University. He reached the rank of Colonel during his nearly 20 years in the Royal Artillery from 1971. Tony Baldry was first selected as a Parliamentary candidate for the Thurrock constituency for the 1979 general election where he secured one of the largest swings to the Conservative Party.

George Galloway (born 16 August 1954) is a British politician, author, journalist, and broadcaster, and the Respect Member of Parliament (MP) for Bradford West. He was previously an MP for the Labour Party, for Glasgow Hillhead and then its successor constituency Glasgow Kelvin from 1987 until 2005. He was expelled from the Labour Party in October 2003 because of his strident public opposition to the Iraq War. He subsequently became a founding member of the left-wing Respect Party, and was elected as the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in 2005. In 2010, Galloway unsuccessfully contested the seat of Poplar and Limehouse, and in 2011 he unsuccessfully contested the Glasgow list for the Scottish Parliament, before being elected as an MP in the Bradford West by-election, 2012.

Galloway is well known for his campaigns in support of the Palestinians in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In the late-1980s Hansard records him delivering a ferocious assault on the Ba'ath regime, and Galloway opposed Saddam's regime until the United States-led Gulf War in 1991. Galloway is known for a visit to Iraq where he met Saddam Hussein, and delivered a speech, which ended in English with the statement "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability." He has always stated that he was addressing the Iraqi people in the speech. Galloway testified to the United States Senate in 2005 over alleged illicit payments from the United Nations' Oil for Food Programme.

Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (born 26 May 1949) is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Islington North since 1983.

He attended Adams' Grammar School in Shropshire. He is the younger brother of Piers Corbyn, a global warming sceptic.

He currently lives in Finsbury Park and has three sons. Previously Corbyn lived in Lausanne Road in Harringay where he was active in securing the future of a small local park created from a World War II bomb site.

He is considered one of the most left-wing of Labour Party MPs and is member of the Socialist Campaign Group. He has a weekly column in The Morning Star. A long-time supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), he is one of its three Vice-Chairs. Before his election to Parliament, he was an elected councillor in the London Borough of Haringey (1974–83). He is on the London Regional Select Committee.

He was fiercely opposed to the Iraq War and has spoken at many anti-war rallies in Britain and overseas. He is an elected member of the Stop the War Coalition steering committee. On 31 October 2006, Corbyn was one of 12 Labour MPs to back Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party's call for an inquiry into the war.