The case for war was good – don’t let Blair’s dishonesty spoil it

A public school housemaster once described the difficulties, and amusements, of explaining the principles of school justice to ill-behaved youths. A boy would arrive in his study, complaining that he had been unfairly punished by Mr Snooks. The housemaster would remind him that he had spent the entire term making a thorough nuisance of himself in Mr Snooks’s lessons. If this detention might not have been strictly merited, what about the other 20 which he had somehow evaded? But boys were invariably deaf to such reasoning; they would merely slouch away with a weight of grievance on their shoulders.

Just like Alastair Campbell now; he has responded to recent events by wallowing in truculence and self-pity. Of course he was innocent of inserting the 45 minutes to WMD passage in a joint intelligence committee document. John Scarlett of the JIC and Richard Dearlove of MI6 – both outstanding public servants – would never have permitted it.