Don’t knock ‘secret deals’. We’ll need one soon

As a founder member of the Guild of Blair-Bashers, someone who reacted strongly against him from our first encounter at dinner when he was only an opposition spokesman, as a commentator who railed against the invasion of Iraq the moment the idea was mooted and right through to the end, and as a journalist who throughout Tony Blair’s time at No. 10 beat my tiny fists against the imposter I always thought him to be, perhaps I may deserve your attention now, after Chilcot, that I have something to say in Mr Blair’s defence?

I don’t believe that in any important way the former Prime Minister lied. And I don’t agree there would have been anything wrong with his giving secret undertakings to the President of the United States.

These seem to me to be the two significant moral charges Blair’s foes and critics have been making. They relate to personal probity.