Blair is not guilty of mendacity but of weakness and poor judgment

Swimmers, scanning the sea for signs of danger, look beyond what breaks the surface. It is by the slight but unexpected troubling of the waters that hidden peril is often best located. Where something jagged lurks beneath or where two currents collide, a sudden agitated choppiness in a small patch of sea may tell us more than the great, regular rollers which we know how to breast.

Most people seem to think that as regards the David Kelly affair, the Prime Minister himself is out of the roughest water; that Lord Hutton’s evidence-taking has somehow ‘cleared’ Downing Street — or at least that lesser figures are conveniently placed to take the rap. I too expect Mr Blair to escape. But a curious perturbation on the media waves last Sunday morning should have reminded us how tricky the position remains for him, and how much logic-chopping and evasion may lie in store early next year, before we finally tire of the story and (as Mr Blair regularly urges us) ‘move on’.