Published: Friday, 5th February, 2010 9:00am

His left hand knows exactly what his right is doing

by Maurice O'Brien

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HOWEVER down in the mouth you're feeling about the temperature or the economy there is one major consolation.

Had Yo B and his pal George W contrived to keep their jobs a year or so longer, any of us still left would by now have been picking our way through the aftermath of World War Three.

That had to be the main conclusion after watching non-stickability Blair giving one of his great solo performances before the Chilcot committee.

He must have spent hours with his drama coach in front of the mirror perfecting the posture, the slightly nervous deference turning to benevolent statesmanship, and the perfect timing with which those specs were donned or removed. Right hand gesticulating in his personal defence and the left, palm towards his heart with the thumb at right angles, fingers outstretched, emphasising points about his Government's actions. Of course they never laid a glove on him and, when he'd twigged none of them knew what to do with a smoking gun and weren't ever going to ask the killer follow-up question, he became positively patronising.

But as he stressed his belief and faith; a belief and faith in anything from dodgy dossiers to non-existent WMDs, didn't you feel considerable relief that he's now a Middle East 'peace' envoy and not still George W's acolyte?

Most of his evidence was about him. Except the 54 times he mentioned Iran.

"The reason I take such a hard line with Iran, you can't afford the possibility that nations, particularly nations that are brutal rogue states that take an attitude that's wholly contrary, to develop or proliferate WMD," he burbled.

Make no mistake. Iran was next. Putin would never have stood for that. Boom!

- GOT MY 'cut the deficit and not the NHS' letter from Boy Dave. The front cover of the accompanying leaflet shows the lad himself, shirt sleeves hygienically rolled to the elbow, talking to an elderly lady wired up to some gadgetry in a hospital bed. That might suggest she's sick, except that she's laughing fit to bust. So what had Dave just told her?

- HARRIET Harperson, wittering on about equality while being poodled by the ineffective Justin Webb on the Today programme, said she merely wants a level playing field.

Of course that would be much easier to find had her Government not sold off more than 200 of them, along with 1,000 smaller community fields, since 1997.

She also confessed to deliberately shedding her public school accent to become more Labour-friendly. What are these idiots afraid of? Apart from themselves.