Iraq

If Tony Blair were to go to the newsagents to day to see how his performance is being reported on the front pages,  he'd be in for a pleasant surprise. He does not feature - certainly not in the biggest sellers. The extra-curricular activities of John Terry make the the lead story on the Mail, the Sun, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mirror. Blair himself is relegated to the inside pages on most.  Of all today's press coverage, The Times is probably the most damaging. "Tony Blair was branded a murderer and a liar last night,". But even Blair-hating papers like the Daily Mail find it hard to compete with the John Terry story, which journalists have known about for days but been unable to report (I gather that there are more explosive revelations to come).

As Tony Blair prepares to sit in the dock tomorrow, I suspect he knows he’ll walk it. The focus is on the case for war and how it was spun – which will be his Mastermind specialist subject. Nor will anything new be uncovered. As one of the journalists whose summer holiday was eaten up by the Hutton Inquiry, I have been getting a sense of deja lu throuhout the Chilcot Inquiry – and Hutton was more informative because he exposed emails written at the time. They had more meaning and impact that the hazy recollections we hear now. The real story is one that Chilcot has unearthed almost accidentally: the betrayal of Basra.

He may be a chateau-bottled shyster, but there is no better communicator of policy than Alastair Campbell. He has penned an article in the FT arguing that the lesson that should have been learned from the Iraq war was how to communicate strategic ideas and objectives. The lack of clarity that came to define Iraq now afflicts Afghanistan: ‘It was hard to discern that approach in the run-up to the Afghan surge being announced, or after it. The surge should have been followed by co-ordinated communications across the alliance. That job is not being done with the vigour and consistency that it should, and the systems of co-ordination have weakened since Iraq.

And so it came to pass that nothing came to pass. Geoff Hoon gave evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on the same day as a convention of anaesthetists visited the QE Conference Centre. Perhaps their presence contributed to the somnolent proceedings. Beneath the apparent narcolepsy, Hoon made two important points. First, he was convinced that the intelligence contained in the two dossiers established the threat of WMD “beyond doubt”, which will assist Blair when he gives evidence, especially after Alastair Campbell’s recent ‘clarification’.

As Paul Waugh notes, it was just like old times. Alastair Campbell told us all to grow up and trust in Tony. Naturally, controversy about the dossier was the product of over imaginative hacks, and Campbell asserted that the caveats of experts are nothing compared to a PM’s need to take major decisions. It was a sensational spin operation. Inspired by Uriah Heep, Campbell cast himself as the humblest of functionaries amid grand events. In doing so he was unremittingly arrogant, almost to the point of delusion.