Iraq inquiry: Hoon's sombre last stand

It was advance-trailed in some quarters almost as Hoon’s last stand, the embittered former cabinet member’s final chance to exact revenge on Brown after the disastrous secret ballot attempt earlier this month.

And Hoon did land a few blows, both on Brown (for withholding Treasury funding) and perhaps more surprisingly on Blair (for re-deploying troops to Afghanistan in 2006 before their work had finished in Iraq.)

But it was a somber session, and unsurprisingly so.

179 British armed forces personnel and MoD civilians died during Operation Telic (along, of course, with untold numbers of Iraqi nationals) and no politician involved in having sent them there will have taken the decision lightly or been able to put it from their minds ever since.

A couple of enduring images (noted at those rare moments when the QEII’s wifi outage wasn’t fomenting thoughts of revolution in the press room).

I very much liked the notion of Donald Rumsfeld – initially “somewhat suspicious” of New Labour socialism – paying more attention to proceedings in the House of Commons than Hoon himself had time to.

Much less so the terrible thought of enhanced body army making it all the way to Iraq, but not always to the men and women who needed it.

News came out last night that 3,041 people have applied for tickets to watch Blair give evidence on Friday (29 Jan) – but there are just 60 seats in the inquiry room.

Another large viewing facility is being set up elsewhere in the QEII; full details on the press release.

A short session later with evidence from the political director of the FCO and then Sir David Omand, formerly permanent security for security and intelligence coordinator 2002-2005.

Sir David once told me the problem with journalists is that at the end of the day our business is all about entertainment. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

Keep track of the Iraq inquiry minute-by-minute on Twitter: twitter.com/iraqinquiryblog.