Sir John Chilcot says Blair damaged trust in politics

Sir John Chilcot isn’t a man who deals in pithy quotes. His Iraq War inquiry report came in at two-and-a-half million words, and even the executive summary was 150 pages long. Yet Chilcot’s assessment of Tony Blair during his select committee appearance this afternoon was about as damning as he could manage. Asked whether the former PM had damaged trust in politics, Chilcot had this to say:

‘I think when a government or the leader of a government presents a case with all the powers of advocacy that he or she can command, and in doing so goes beyond what the facts of the case and the basic analysis of that can support, then it does damage politics, yes.’

Chilcot went on to say that he ‘can only imagine’ it would take some time for this trust to be restored. The idea that Blair has dented faith in politics might seem like a moot point: ‘Of course, he has’, many will say.