Goldsmith's game is up

To suggest now that he felt "uncomfortable" about statements made by war criminal Tony Blair in the run-up to the March 2003 invasion is beneath contempt.

Goldsmith confirms now telling Blair what anti-war campaigners said then - namely that UN security council 1441 did not authorise the use of force against Iraq.

Even the then prime minister accepted that a second resolution would be needed to make the war planned by George W Bush - and surreptitiously backed by Blair in April 2002 - legal under international law.

Blair's pledge to drag this country into an illegal war alongside the US was kept quiet at the time but was nonetheless real.

He lied to the people of this country and to Parliament and was single-minded in covering his criminal behaviour in something approaching legality.

That is why Goldsmith's initial silence about his legal advice, followed up by his weak-kneed acquiescence to Blair's war plans by means of a shabby second opinion, proved invaluable to the prime minister.

If Goldsmith had blown the gaff about the legal situation, he would have made it more difficult for spineless Labour backbenchers to allow themselves to be chivvied into the Yes lobby like sheep into a pen.

He remained silent while Blair fed Parliament the fiction that there were circumstances in which 1441 would be sufficient to justify an invasion.

He kept schtum when Blair introduced the new concept of an "unreasonable veto" to international law, which suggested that United Nations decisions could be disregarded if he personally disagreed with them.

In holding his tongue, Goldsmith failed the people of this country, assisting the prime minister to proceed as he wanted.

Blair was probably right to say at his first appearance at the Chilcot inquiry that he would have been hard pressed to authorise British involvement in the invasion in the face of a legal opinion stating that it would be illegal.

But the former prime minister was safe in the knowledge then that his legal adviser had bowed the knee to political pressure, contradicting his previous sound legal view.

Although Blair originally accepted that 1441 did not authorise military action - and this absence of a war sanction was cited to persuade sceptics to back it - he changed his mind once it became clear that the UN security council was opposed to an invasion.

Blair saw his main duty as backing up Bush and browbeating others into falling into line.

There is little point now in Goldsmith bleating about his insufficient involvement in government discussion or his frustrated desire to be closely informed of developments.

He had the key role to play. He was in a unique position to derail Blair's war chariot and he bottled it.

Blair will doubtless face a little embarrassment when he appears before the inquiry again this Friday, but he will clutch the lifebelt of the final legal justification for war that was squeezed out of Goldsmith.

If there was any justice, Blair would be facing an international war crimes tribunal alongside Bush.

However, a combination of military might and lack of political and legal integrity in Britain will probably ensure that he and Bush escape any accounting for their criminal acts.