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“... At first sight, the Hutton Report seemed to provide further evidence of Tony Blair’s intuitive political genius. It was extraordinary to have reaped from the appointment of Lord Hutton a set of findings which transformed a crisis that threatened to be overwhelming into a vindication of every aspect of the government’s conduct, and of the prime minister’s moral probity in particular ...”

“... may be a weasel in talcum powder. One person who saw it coming was Ludovic Kennedy who, hearing Hutton named to head the inquiry, correctly predicted the outcome. I looked up the judge, then Sir Brian Hutton, in Kennedy’s Thirty-Six Murders, where he pinpoints one of Hutton’s ...”

“... provided by [the] British security services’. In the light of the evidence presented to the Hutton Inquiry, it is entirely believable that MI6 helped 10 Downing Street to persuade the British public that there was a case for war, just as the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon was doing in the United States. After all, John Scarlett, the present ...”

“... thirty years if a gun is involved). Ferguson got 22 years. Many, including Sir Anthony Hooper, a Lord Justice of Appeal until 2012, have serious misgivings about the use of joint enterprise. ‘The doctrine is too wide and should be limited so that only a person who intends to kill or cause grievous bodily harm is guilty of murder,’ Hooper told me. ‘A ...”

“... When I was asked, in November 1997, whether I would allow my name to be submitted to the Lord Chancellor for appointment as a lay member of the new Special Immigration Appeals Commission, I readily agreed, not only because I was flattered, but because I accepted that special procedures for appeals against deportation in national security cases were justified ...”

“... of evidence aren’t very well blacked out). And here is a question put by James Dingemans QC (Lord Hutton’s chief – and, currently, chiefly benign – inquisitor) to Alastair Campbell: ‘Mr Powell told us yesterday that you had told him that Mr Baldwin had told you that the person who told him this information was Mr Sambrook.’ Campbell’s ...”

“... point, ‘on which judges can build’. These fixed terms of imprisonment are a direct snub to Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, who last year published a directive for judges recommending 15 years as the minimum term for the most serious categories of murder. The proposed new legislation allows judges only a vestigial ...”

“... on the threshold of a savage deflation caused by too much personal, corporate and government debt. Lord Rees-Mogg and his American acolyte, to whom is attributed all the leg work, have been bold enough to set themselves up as 20th-century prophets of doom with more than a modicum of good reason. But their pessimism arises as much from flagrant conservative ...”

“... has sanctioned the killing of thousands in Iraq. He votes against the war but celebrates when Lord Hutton sandblasts the government’s slate clean. He is a diligent constituency MP but dislikes his constituents, at least en masse. They seem not to have registered that things have got better, as the song foretold. After the 2005 election victory, he ...”

“... Will Hutton, the Guardian’s economics editor, has produced a book which is part show-biz – it carries a passionate puff from Ian McEwan on the front cover and leapt straight into the bestseller list – and part political event: it clearly aims to provide a sweeping economic and political platform for Labour, has been elaborated with the help of Tony Blair’s adviser, David Miliband, and sees Blair’s election as leader as an epochal event, finally settling Labour’s commitment to social democracy ...”

“... the hedge and given an artist’s prospect of the countryside.28 August. T. Blair claims to the Hutton Inquiry that if the BBC had been right and the Iraq dossier had been ‘sexed up’ he would have resigned. This is presumably intended to pre-empt any calls for his resignation at the conclusion of the Inquiry, which, whether it reports so or not, has ...”

“... of Iraq in March 2003. He may have wanted to get the book out quickly while Iraq, WMDs and Hutton still dominate the headlines, but, more important, writing exclusively about the Blair second term allows him to construct a narrative of political disillusion shorn of awkward questions about the compromises that had been necessary for him to stay loyal ...”

“... by them. One example was familiar and acceptable to Charles Darwin: the successive offspring of Lord Morton’s mare. Crossed with a quagga (a now extinct zebra with stripes confined to neck and forequarters), the Arab mare delivered a hybrid with stripes in evidence. Subsequently mated with a black Arab stallion, the mare again produced an offspring ...”

“... W.G. Grace’, ‘Mr P.B.H. May’ – while the professionals are listed curtly as ‘Hutton’ or, at best, ‘Hutton, L.’? This was, of course, an utterly bogus distinction, as the leading amateurs were always paid juicy retainers. When Grace led a tour to Australia in 1873, he was paid £1500, while the ...”

“... Campbell’s ‘mate’ John Scarlett as head of MI6, following his loyal performance during the Hutton Inquiry, doesn’t look like the most shining example of New Labour preserving the ‘merit’ in ‘meritocracy’.* The prime minister sternly reminded the press that Scarlett was selected by an independent panel, but who can say what subconscious ...”