I wonder how many people will change their views about the Iraq war as a result of the Chilcot Enquiry. I suspect that as the intensity of scrutiny has risen, as each player repeats the views they were known to have held before, the answer is ‘very few’.

But it has not been a waste of time. Last week saw two of the more interesting contributions, from Lord Goldsmith and, of course, Tony Blair.

Lord Goldsmith had been accused of changing his mind on the legality of the war. I had always regarded the second UN resolution as more of a political imperative than a legal one and his explanation reassured me of that. The legality issue has its origins long before 2003.

For many years, following Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait and his attacks on the Marsh Arabs and Iran, using chemical weapons of mass destruction, the international community had imposed tough sanctions against Iraq. Were those sanctions working? No. The Iraqi people were paying a very high price as Saddam’s manipulations led to their intense suffering.

A quarter of Iraq’s population had fled as refugees, whilst those who stayed were subject to oppression, cruelty and murder. The sanctions had not achieved their aim but could not have been allowed to remain in place. Something had to be done to enforce the international community’s condemnation of Saddam, even before considerations of terrorism and whether or not weapons of mass destruction still existed were taken into account.

Tony Blair gave an impressive performance before Chilcot, acknowledging faults in the ‘dodgy dossier.’ His blend of rationality and passion was the same as when he convinced me to vote for the war in 2003. We were damned if we did go to war, damned if we didn’t. At that time public opinion, albeit briefly, actually supported military action.

We await the enquiry’s outcome with interest.