THERE IS A GRAVE anxiety that gnaws away at Sir John Chilcot as he daily conducts his inquiry into the war in Iraq. By 11 o'clock each morning, as some former Foreign Office mandarin is dissembling about weapons of mass destruction or the legality of the invasion, you can see Sir John beginning to look troubled. A little after midday, this has developed into a rumbling and a mild panic. Soon enough, he will interrupt the evidence and inquire politely, but with some urgency, if perhaps now might be the right time to break for lunch? Or, he will add, in a spirit of democracy but with a slightly crestfallen expression, should we wait until 1 o'clock? Lunch is an important part of the Chilcot Inquiry, Britain's third sort-of inquest into the events that led up to the invasion of Iraq. This one has been convened because the present Labour administration, under Gordon Brown, wishes to decouple itself from the gravest failure of the previous Labour administration, under Tony Blair. Or at least I assume that's the idea. Anyway, over the course of several interminable months all of the British people who had anything to do with the war will be paraded before the inquiry and asked stuff.
