Tony Blair’s appearance at the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war yesterday was inevitably controversial. Equally inevitably, it revealed little or nothing that we did not already know.
If anyone had hoped that the former Prime Minister would recant his decision to take the country into a war that was almost certainly illegal, he would have been disappointed. There was no apology, no regret; the bereaved parents of servicemen who filled the public gallery would undoubtedly have left feeling cheated of the “closure” that they hoped Blair’s testimony would bring them.
Watching Blair yesterday evening on Newsnight, I was struck by how much he had physically changed since that 1997 May morning, when he swaggered into Downing Street, clasping the extended palms of the flag-waving Labour staffers who lined his way.
Here was a grey, haggard, drawn-looking man, with a hunted look in his eyes, almost unrecognisable as his former self. His hands, reported Newsnight, shook as he opened the bottle of water at the start of the six-hour evidence session. He looked deeply ill at ease.
The old Blair communication devices, however, were still on display: the widened eyes (sincerity), the answers prefaced with “Look” (authority), the catch in the voice (emotion).
But, truth is, we all know those tricks now and they just don’t work any more.
The only wonder is that they ever did.
The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war may yet blow up in the face of Gordon Brown, with collateral damage to his predecessor.
Perhaps predictably, the Iraq inquiry, announced with great fanfare by Gordon Brown last as part of his latest (but probably not his last) relaunch, has proved a dubious PR triumph for the Prime Minister.
