We learned this week, courtesy of the Chilcot inquiry, that Mr Blair‘s public assertions in January 2003 that Britain could legally attack Iraq without a second United Nations resolution was not compatible with the advice he had been given by the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith. That is the sort of information – Mr Blair disregarding the clear advice of the government‘s own top lawyer – that could have brought down the Prime Minister if it had been widely known in 2003. At the very least it would have been deeply destabilising for the government as it locked Britain into American preparations for invasion.