British foreign secretary (at least until after polling day) Jack Straw has had something of a back-seat role in Labour's election campaign so far. He might have been better keeping it that way yesterday.
Instead Mr Straw picked up the cudgels - or the telephone to be precise - to do early morning battle over Iraq with John Humphrys on BBC Radio 4's early morning Today programme, and found himself comprehensively routed.
Even for lovers of the blood sport that can be politics, Mr Straw's unravelling was almost embarrassing. The backdrop was that leak to the Mail on Sunday newspaper purporting to detail attorney general Lord Goldsmith's doubts about the legality of the war in the days before he finally gave the all-clear for British troops to join the American-led invasion.
Mr Straw was insistent that the attorney's view presented to cabinet on the eve of war had been "unequivocal". And indeed Lord Goldsmith has maintained it was his independent view that the war was justified by the fact that Saddam Hussein was in breach of its disarmament obligations. That was the essence of his parliamentary answer of March 17th, 2003.
At issue here, however, was the full 13-page legal opinion the attorney sent prime minister Tony Blair just 10 days before. In it, the attorney allegedly suggested it might be for the UN to decide if Saddam was in breach of its resolutions; that a second UN resolution might be necessary to sanction military action; and that the British and American positions on legality were different.
This last point was not just something for the anoraks. Of absolutely pressing and wholly proper concern to the defence chiefs was the attorney's view that the war would be legal. For the consequence, had it not been, would have been British troops finding themselves prosecuted for war crimes.
The American Congress might have granted President Bush special war-making powers. But as one senior lawyer who monitored the situation closely in the run-up to war observed at the time: "British soldiers are citizens in uniform."
Pressed about these important caveats, and how he could say the attorney's advice had been unequivocal, Mr Straw countered he wasn't confirming what had been alleged in a leaked document. Asked if that meant people were entitled to believe the newspaper report was accurate, Mr Straw said they were not. He offered no satisfactory response when asked why, in accordance with the ministerial code, a full copy of the legal opinion had not been circulated to ministers.
And Humphrys stopped him in his tracks when he suggested there had already been four inquiries into all of these allegations going to the issue of the character and conduct of the prime minister: "None of those have said for a second that the prime minister lied or deceived anybody."
There had indeed been inquiries into weapons of mass destruction, intelligence, the decision to go to war and the death of Dr David Kelly. But there had been no inquiry into the question of the war's legality.
Why hadn't Mr Blair been shown the advice of the experts at the Foreign Office, who said the war was illegal? Different lawyers held differing opinions, the attorney's being the one that mattered.
Why not publish it? "The advice of attorneys general is never published," asserted Mr Straw.
"There is precedent for it," charged his tormentor. "Very, very limited" insisted the foreign secretary as he tried, in honour of Labour's election slogan, to look forward not back: "Where we have got to is a far better Iraq. . ."
Mr Blair is banking on the British people taking the same view when they vote on May 5th.
It is considered a truism that British general elections are determined by domestic rather than foreign affairs. Although there is no doubt the war has sharply informed the question of trust in the prime minister, the polls suggest Iraq is well down the voters' lists of priorities.
Labour's election planners will continue their focus on the economy and hope the renewed flurry over the war proves short-lived.
However, that can only be their expectation if they know the attorney's written opinion is not actually out there waiting to be published in full, or, alternatively, that it contains nothing that might change the political weather.