FROM the perspective that he wasn’t “dropped in it” by his former attorney general, yesterday may have been viewed as a relatively good day for Tony Blair.

Lord Goldsmith was at pains to quash suggestions that the former Prime Minister pressured him into changing his legal advice so that the invasion of Iraq could go ahead.

Indeed, it is astonishing that there should have been such an apparent disconnection between Mr Blair and his chief legal advisor in the run-up to the most momentous decision a country’s leader can take.

Instead, it was a trip to America which brought about Lord Goldsmith’s change of position – from insisting that the invasion was illegal, to suddenly taking the view that there was a “reasonable case” for war.

Allegations that President Bush’s legal advisor, John Bellinger, boasted that Lord Goldsmith had been “straightened out” will fuel the national perception that Britain jumped because it was shoved by America.

Lord Goldsmith’s appearance before the inquiry followed Tuesday’s evidence from former Foreign Office senior legal adviser, Sir Michael Wood, who said ministers brushed aside legal advice that going to war without approval from a UN Security Council resolution would be a “crime of aggression” in international law.

It all adds up to a very muddy picture indeed from a legal perspective.

Our view is that the case for going to war should have been rock solid – not just “reasonable” in the eyes of the Government’s leading legal watchdog.

Mr Blair has a lot of “straightening out” to do when he faces the inquiry tomorrow.