David Aaronovitch got it in a nutshell at the start of the Guardian debate at Hay. The debate proposition was that "Further investigation into Tony Blair's decision to go to war in Iraq is pointless. It is time to move on." As Aaronovitch said, if you agree with that proposition, you have no real incentive to turn up for the debate. You've moved on, a pretty sensible course of action on a night when the heavens were emptying over the Welsh borders. Surely only the irreconcilables would turn out on a night like this.
From the chair Jonathan Freedland took an early show of hands to see if Aaronovitch's suspicion was right. Maybe about 20% of the audience turned out to be movers-on. But after an hour of vigorous argument - Simon Jenkins and Aaronovitch for the motion versus Philippe Sands and Zia Sardar against it - the balance had shifted. When Freedland called a closing show of hands, the result this time looked more like 40% in favour and 60% against. A clear majority for further investigation - but the movers-on had won over more people than their opponents.
And frankly I am not surprised. It wasn't just that Jenkins (in particular) and Aaronovitch performed better than their opponents - though they did. They also had much the better arguments. You absolutely do not have to be in favour of the Iraq war to believe that the demands for yet another inquiry are less about getting to the truth and more about getting revenge on Blair and all his works.
The truth is that we know pretty much what happened over Iraq between 2002-2003. It's not a good story. Blair wanted to do what the Americans wanted to do. If that had included not invading Iraq, Blair would not have been for invasion. But the US administration was determined to invade, so Blair was determined to go with them. He spent a year or so trying to secure the political cover to allow this to happen - and mostly he succeeded, not by lying but by determination - wholly mistakenly in my view.
The cabinet could have stopped him if they had wanted. Parliament could have stopped him too. Neither of them did. Nor did the voters in 2005 when they too had the chance. The processes were followed. The processes endorsed Blair's strategy. That's not Blair's fault. It's ours. It doesn't make Blair's strategy right, but it does mean that inquiries will solve the problem that the whole awful episode exposed.
Calls for further inquiries are calls of pain. That doesn't make them in any way improper or illegitimate but it ought to focus us on what they are - and on what they are not. Sands is very passionate about the need for further inquiries, but he is completely indiscriminate about what sort of inquiry it should be. I'm not going to be pedantic about it, he announced. It could be an official inquiry tribunal, a privy council inquiry, a criminal trial or a truth and reconciliation commission - or even, one sensed, a Channel 4 spectacular. This gives the game away. Sands wants Blair to be called to account - not the truth. And that means that these calls for further probes - interesting and in some respects revealing though they would be - are not going to achieve their goal.
The political reality of Iraq - in the British context - is that it has been a disaster. It was a monumental domestic political error. It has disabled Blair as a political leader, helped to discredit other aspects of the Labour project, weakened British influence in international affairs and traumatised parts of a generation, in a few cases with catastrophically inhuman consequences. That's not a mystery. It's something we have to live with and deal with. It's not good, but it's where we are. Regretting it will get us nowhere. That's why, I suspect, the proponents had the better of the argument last night but also why so many remain unreconciled.
