The Downing Street memorandum of July 23, 2002, leaked in The Sunday Times yesterday, does not change the widely accepted impression about what happened in the run-up to the war. But it provides important corroborative evidence.

Mr Blair maintained the appearance that war was not inevitable because of the hostility of British public, and Labour, opinion. For him, all options were open, when, as the conclusions to the July 23 note show, “we should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action”.

Mr Blair was personally committed to getting rid of Saddam and to stand by Washington. But all the discussions were about how to get to a situation where this would be both legally and publicly acceptable. The British side had concluded as early as March 2002 that the Bush Administration was not only determined to get rid of Saddam by military action but was also not too concerned about the legal questions or about supporting evidence.

This raised problems for Mr Blair. As Jack Straw concluded, “the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.” That led to the double track of diplomatic manoeuvres and a private commitment to back the US that Mr Blair could not admit.

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