AN apology from Tony Blair for taking the country into war against Iraq would solve very little.

For a start, Mr Blair is personally convinced that he was absolutely right to go to war, and so an apology is impossible.

That is as it should be: if we have a leader who can take us into war one minute and then change his mind and apologise the next then we are in real trouble.

If Mr Blair were to apologise for taking the country to war, his position as Prime Minister would become untenable. The decision to go to war was a huge judgement call. Once a Prime Minister starts apologising for his lack of judgement - particularly on an issue of such magnitude - his time in No 10 is coming to an end.

Finally, while the war was never popular - even with those who supported it - a majority of the country and of Parliament did narrowly at the time support Mr Blair.

The British public are not so hypocritical as to use the easy nature of hindsight as justification for giving a leader a good kicking in the ballots.

The reason for the kicking - and the anger about Iraq that exists - is surely because of what has happened since the Allies 'won' the war more than a year ago.

The Allies - headed by Mr Blair and George Bush - appear to have had very few concrete plans for how Iraq would be rebuilt. They hadn't worked out a role for the United Nations, hence no new UN resolution for a year; they hadn't worked out how they were going to maintain security in the fractured country, hence frantic attempts to recreate the Iraqi army a year after it was scraped.

As a result, Iraq has degenerated into a bloody mess. There is nothing so depressing as, day after day, watching more civilians die - yet that is what British voters have been doing every night on the ten o'clock news for the last year.

And they know that we are responsible for that mess - no matter how honourable our intentions were for causing it.

The best way for Mr Blair to solve his ballot box embarrassments is not to apologise for doing what he believed to be correct - but to galvanise Mr Bush into really using the UN to bring peace and democracy to Iraq as quickly as possible.