Tony Blair sat on the wall - Tony Blair had a great fall?

The one thing Tony Blair will never have is a great fall. He may have a slow slide into ignomy, but his unbelievable "well, look, right, yeah!" talent gets him out of any spot of bother. Honed to perfection whilst at Fettes, where he practiced his arts on housemasters and fellow pupils alike, it has taken him through life as the master of spin and political double entendre. No puns are ever intended. Just double meanings that the listener conveniently hears in single measure.

John Chilcot got a few "rights" from Blair yesterday at the Iraq Inquiry. I think the panel deserve a medal just for sitting it out. None of this will change a thing. Blair is convinced he is correct in his thinking. He now is quite at ease saying it was all about regime change. Getting the unvarnished truth out of him is like trying to get ferrets out of a sack without being bitten. Virtually impossible. That's probably why Chilcot has such a weary look about him at the end of sessions.

I saw some of it, but after a while I lost interest. I don't think I'm alone. Adam Boulton wasn't heaving his shoulders so much on Sky News. Always a sign that somebody is yesterday's man. Blair was that man yesterday.

Tony Blair's Iraq War finally undone by Lord Goldsmith

It had to come to it. Lord Goldsmith has spent years looking like a man who knows he's keeping the truth clenched behind his teeth. The Chilcott Committee, inquiring into the Iraq War decisions, submitted a written question to Lord Goldsmith. This arose because Lord Goldsmith was "uncomfortable" with Tony Blair's remarks in 2003. Blair told MPs that while a second UN resolution was "preferable" there were circumstances in which it was "not necessary" - in the event of the use of an "unreasonable veto" by a Security Council member. He also told the BBC's Newsnight programme on 6 February 2003 that if a country vetoed a further resolution "unreasonably" then "I would consider action outside of that".

The inquiry panel asked Lord Goldsmith if he felt those words were "compatible with the advice you had given him".

Lord Goldsmith replied simply "no".

We sort of knew that all along. The trouble with this war and all the carry-ons surrounding it is that Blair's government might as well have consulted a couple of educated weasels in getting their arguments across. The vast majority of the country still think Blair cooked up his reasons. He was going to war and that was that.

None of the main players comes out of this well. And for all their posturing Iraq is still a place that offers little or no security, a government of dubious merit, and a people desiring real peace instead of petty violence, car bombings and crime of all sorts.

Blair goes before the inquiry on Friday. Maybe this time he will crack, but I'm not holding my breath!

Tears of a spin doctor

Alastair Campbell got all weepy yesterday on the Andrew Marr Show. He feels aggrieved at not being believed about his testimony over the Iraq War handling. He told Marr he had been "through a lot on this". Well, no doubt he has, but so have millions of others for extremely different reasons. Some have been killed, others maimed and the truth itself has been sorely abused. Campbell came across as a man deeply troubled. I have no doubt he believes in this New Labour project. He gave his all to see Tony Blair esconced in No.10. But he must surely realise that he has a reputatation for being a devious liar at worst and a man who dissembles the facts at best. Maybe its all catching up with him.

Even if his version of events has some element of truth in it, most people can never believe that he and Blair were not up to something. All the evidence points to the fact that Blair agreed in advance with Bush to go to war over Iraq. It was an invasion. We were not targeted or at risk. Blair did not listen to anything he did not want to hear. Perhaps he believed Bush's crazed notions about this war "being over by Christmas". Such nonsense has always been trotted out to give a false sense of hope. The American neo-cons, led by Bush and his apparatchik Rumsfeld, thought they could make a killing over oil. No such luck. But the devious types are still rooting around trying to make a fast buck with "security" and "advice".

Campbell may cry a river of tears and part of me feels sorry for him. But in the end, his own rather viscious method of political operation has eventually caught up with him. He's in a Matilda situation. Nobody really believes him anymore.

Blair believes his own bull****!!

Tony Blair takes the biscuit, he really does. We now know that most of his warblings on Friday were a fine art of deception. He's deceived his own brain, it seems.

Now it is the turn of Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the head of the armed forces to sit in on the Iraq Inquiry. He said defence chiefs "simply didn't have enough time" to source everything they wanted for the invasion of Iraq. Ministers were warned of a "serious risk". He told the inquirers, "The problem of course was that we simply didn't have enough time, as it turned out, to do everything we needed to do before the operation started."

Soldiers died unnecessarily as a result. So what about the cloth-eared Blair? What did he think when told all this? And I assume Straw, Hoon and the rest of the New Labour cabal heard these words. What a shower! A conniving bunch of self-delusional fools. They just didn't want to hear what they didn't want to hear.

I hope Blair is recalled before this inquiry. Because if not, his weasel words will just be shunted into the documents and we will be told nothing more than that.

Jack Straw and his illegal war

So now we get nearer to the truth. That Jack Straw took legal advice in a rather cavalier way. In fact, he was too cavalier. Accusing people of being "dogmatic" and saying that "international law was pretty vague". Actually, it's not, but New Labour has never been a great follower of legal niceties.

I'd say it sums up this weasel wordsmith to a tee. Jack Straw has never been a man of principal, rather a man keen to bend with the wind. Trouble for him is that he won't be able to bend with the hurricane I hope is going to come and blow the New Labour flotsam and jetsam away.