Blessed Are the Pure in Bomb

The Ascended Incarnation of the Reverend Blair has resentfully denied suggestions by certain uncharitable and backsliding persons that he is delaying publication of the Chilcot report on the Iraq crusade. In fact, his reverence, who displayed such manly certainty about the weapons of mass ethereality and the moral imperative to turn Iraq from a Stalinist dictatorship into a recruiting station for al-Qaida, does not even know why the report is being held up. His reverence is positively eager for the report to be published, so that the gleaming lily-whiteness of the Blair conscience may be displayed once again, to the incalculable ethical improvement of those who may have missed it. The actual cause of the delay is the Americans, who seem to have some objection to the idea of someone publishing George W Bush's pillow-talk with his poodle; heaven alone knows why. If the Reverend Blair could hurry things up, whether by bombing a few more wogs or taking a very large fee, then undoubtedly the Reverend Blair would do so. But such power, pouts the Reverend Blair, is no longer his to wield; and the delay, like so much else, is not his fault. Tony says it, so it must be true.