Tony Blair is beguiling the Chilcot Inquiry once again. He was majestic last time
– quick witted, sincere and convinced. There was nothing in that benign hearing room to alter, as he might have put it, the ‘calculus of risk’. His ease was sufficient to crack subtle jokes at Gordon Brown’s expense, and most emerged from the hearing believing that
Britain had actually been at war with Iran. He is already ploughing those same furrows, albeit with a barely audible note of impatience, irritated that these banal proceedings continue.
Iran is the new Iraq, Blair says, and he publicly takes a ‘hard line’ against Tehran, just as his government, in its entirety, had done with Saddam Hussein. Pressed further on the subject of Cabinet discussions, Blair revealed that junior members of his Cabinet were concerned about the political consequences of close alliance with President Bush, (not unreasonably as it proved.)
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