Blair’s real crime

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. I write about it in the magazine this week: the evidence we have heard so far has told us plenty about how Blair turned the other way as Basra slid towards hell. In our rush to leave, we badged up militiamen – and handed over the police uniform, weapons, police stations etc.