The public seems unperturbed and it may yet be that the legal advice to Tony Blair on the Iraq war and the ensuing controversy may help him to win the British election, writes Frank Millar, London Editor.
The British public think him slippery and untrustworthy. But they also apparently respect him, find him charismatic, and still intend to vote for him next Thursday.
That was the uplifting breakfast-time message for Tony Blair from yesterday's polls as he prepared to travel to the city to launch Labour's business manifesto, and again defend his character. And it was a bravura performance from the prime minister as he donned his favourite Thatcherite garb to play the leadership card and face down his critics over Iraq.
The Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaders Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy were insistent last night that Mr Blair still had questions to answer: specifically as to why his attorney general seemingly moved from equivocal to unequivocal support for the war in the two weeks before it commenced.
As the government was sensationally forced to relent and publish Lord Goldsmith's secret legal advice to the prime minister in full, Mr Howard again accused Mr Blair of deceiving parliament and the country. And he hailed Wednesday night's leaked summary and yesterday's full disclosure of the attorney's advice on the legality of the war as "devastating new evidence that when Mr Blair said 'I have never lied', he was not telling the truth."
Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond said Mr Blair should resign, while former Father - longest-serving member - of the Commons, the retiring Labour veteran Tam Dalyell, hoped Labour's internal processes would see Mr Blair removed from office soon after the general election.
However, a defiant and assured Mr Blair said the long-awaited "smoking gun" in the attorney general's opinion on the legality of the war had been "a damp squib", as he hammered home his newly confident message about an issue which he said, in the end, came down to leadership and judgment.
There was no conflict, he maintained, between the attorney's previously unpublished advice to him of March 7th, 2003, and his advice to cabinet 10 days later to the effect that the military action was lawful.
Moreover, and importantly, Mr Blair the lawyer revealed: "The purpose of the advice was to show how the war could proceed lawfully." There could hardly be any surprise that two weeks before the allied invasion the attorney was counselling that "the safest legal course would be to secure the adoption of a further resolution to authorise the use of force" against Saddam Hussein.
Lord Goldsmith's careful exploration of the arguments on both sides was necessitated by the "negotiating history" preceding the passage of UN resolution 1441 giving the Iraqi regime one final opportunity to meet its disarmament obligations.
As he observed in the summary of his conclusions, leaked to the Guardian and Channel 4 on Wednesday, "the language of resolution 1441 leaves the position unclear and the statements made on adoption of the resolution suggest that there were differences of view within the [ Security] Council as to the legal effect of the resolution".
Mr Blair himself had "worked his socks off" to try and secure a further resolution, only finally abandoning the effort when France made clear it would oppose any further resolution containing an ultimatum to Saddam.
But nor had the attorney suggested military action would be unlawful without a second resolution. Indeed he did not believe such a resolution, if it was forthcoming, needed to "be explicit in its terms" beyond recording the council's conclusion that Iraq had failed to take the final opportunity offered by 1441.
Nevertheless, Lord Goldsmith also told Mr Blair: "Having regard to the information on the negotiating history which I have been given and to the arguments of the US administration which I heard in Washington, I accept that a reasonable case can be made that resolution 1441 is capable in principle of reviving the authorisation [ for use of force] in 678 without a further resolution."
This "revival" argument related to the resolutions authorising the use of force against Iraq following its invasion and annexation of Kuwait in 1990. And it crucially informed the final judgment given by the attorney in his parliamentary written answer 10 days after his private advice to Mr Blair, when he advised that the military action was indeed lawful.
Despite the fact that Lord Goldsmith's definitive opinion and the basis for it were published at the time, just three days before the invasion began, people may yet be surprised at the connection to the seemingly unrelated events of 1990.
All the connections are made in the full text published yesterday. Indeed, several sources agreed that careful reading of Lord Goldsmith's private opinion suggested the clear direction in which the attorney was headed.
UN resolution 678 referred to in the attorney's parliamentary answer authorised coalition forces to "use all necessary means to force Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait and restore international peace and security in the area".
The resolution gave the legal basis for Operation Desert Storm, which was brought to an end by the ceasefire set out in resolution 687 in 1991. The conditions for the ceasefire in that and subsequent resolutions imposed obligations on Iraq "with regard to the elimination of WMD [ weapons of mass destruction]".
Resolution 687 suspended, but did not terminate, the authority to use force in resolution 678 - nor has any subsequent resolution terminated the authorisation to use force in resolution 687. As the attorney told Mr Blair: "In reliance on this argument, force has been used on certain occasions. I am advised by the Foreign Office legal advisers that this was the basis for the use of force between 13 and 18 January 1993 following UN presidential statements . . . condemning particular failures by Iraq to observe the terms of the ceasefire resolution."
Having reminded Mr Blair of the use he and then president Clinton had made of the "revival argument" as recently as 1998, Lord Goldsmith acknowledged the difference between the US and just about every other member state as to whether it was for the Security Council to determine any Iraqi breach justifying the use of force by reference to the earlier resolutions.
While acknowledging the revival argument was controversial, he went on: "I agree with my predecessors' advice on this issue. Further, I believe that the arguments in support of the revival argument are stronger following adoption of resolution 1441."
He explained this was "because of the terms of the resolution and the course of the negotiations which led to its adoption". He then illustrated how it could be argued that previous council practice and resolution 1441 show that the phrase "material breach" signified a finding so serious as to revive the authorisation for force in 678, and that the "serious consequences" referred to in 1441 could be accepted as indicating the use of force.
Specifically, he told the prime minister: "I disagree, therefore, with those commentators and lawyers who assert that nothing less than an explicit authorisation to use force in a Security Council resolution will be sufficient."
The suspicious layman might think that to the old adage about "lies, damned lies and statistics" might be added "and legal opinions, too".
Careful study of his opinion left a number of close observers with two distinct impressions yesterday.
First, that this was the government's senior law officer going about the serious and weighty business of government, exploring all the issues, considering all the arguments, in a way that the citizen would expect - and in a manner not always suggested by Mr Blair's much criticised "sofa" style of informal government.
And second, that there is nothing here at least to support the view that this was an attorney heavily inclined to find the war illegal but who was mysteriously persuaded to change his mind in a remarkably short period.
Determined to press their perceived advantage on the generalised issue of "trust", Mr Howard and Mr Kennedy will have it otherwise. However, the view was certainly forming in some quarters at Westminster last night that the enforced disclosure of the attorney's full advice had actually helped the government's position.
This in turn fuelled suspicion that Mr Blair would have been better to have published of his own volition long ago. But he did not, and some expert number crunchers expect him now to take some hits in the polls.
They may be countered, however, by a certain public incredulity at a Conservative leader insisting that he would have confided all the attorney's "doubts" about the legality of the action to cabinet, parliament and the country, and still have made the case for war.