Sir John Chilcot has said he does not believe Tony Blair was “straight with the nation” about his decisions in the run-up to the Iraq war. The chairman of the public inquiry into the 2003 conflict said the former prime minister had however been “emotionally truthful” in his account of events leading up to the war, meaning he relied on both emotion and fact.

Breaking his long silence on the matter in an interview with the BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, Chilcot said: “Tony Blair is always and ever an advocate. He makes the most persuasive case he can. Not departing from the truth but persuasion is everything.” Chilcot was later asked if Blair was as truthful with him and the public as he should have been during the seven-year inquiry. He replied: “Can I slightly reword that to say I think any prime minister taking a country into war has got to be straight with the nation and carry it, so far as possible, with him or her. I don’t believe that was the case in the Iraq instance.”(theguardian)…[+]