So there we are – the end of a pretty self-assured performance from Alastair Campbell, hardly surprising perhaps for a man accustomed to presenting an entire government.
When we got to the final break of the day and Campbell nonchalantly asked the panel what they’d like to ask him about next – “What’s to go?” – that was probably the moment he appeared to have taken over the driving seat.
Which isn’t to say that there weren’t moments. True to form Roderic Lyne picked up after the lunch break with a flurry of questions about the apparent gulf between the official September 2002 WMD assessments (“intelligence remains limited”) and Blair’s assessment a fortnight later that Saddam’s WMD program was “beyond doubt”.
Lyne raised the tantalising possibility that JIC papers from the period might one day be released; if they showed that such a gulf existed had the PM misled the Commons?
Absolutely not – Campbell maintained that the “beyond doubt” words were almost irrelevant.
Lyne made similar points about the claim that the WMD threat did not just exist but that it was growing, a phrase absent from the JIC assessments. Campbell said at the end of the day the PM had to make decisions, and he did so on the basis of all the material he’d seen.
Campbell said that he stood by every word of the September dossier, but perhaps wisely he didn’t waste much time defending the Februrary 2003 one.
As soon as it appeared on Channel 4 News he realised there would be a feeding frenzy; it was a mistake, he said, it didn’t help them make their case and serious changes had been made to how information of this type is revealed.
Other exchanges that stood out: Campbell on Clare Short being excluded from the cabinet’s inner circle, in effect implying that she was considered to be disloyal and untrustworthy.
And the moment when, the day after the huge anti-war march in February 2003, most of the officials attending a meeting realised that their relatives had been among those protesting.
But a strong performance overall, even including one or two matey exchanges with the panel – Lyne: “Thank you for staying on so long, showing considerable stamina – more than when [we] used to run.”
I can’t help but think that that sort of familiarity won’t go down terribly well outside the inquiry…