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Some progress was visible in our ex-PM’s pathology towards the end of his interview with Andrew Marr this morning (watch in full above), but generally he still gives the impression of a man spoiling for an Armageddon.

He regretted the deaths he has caused but not that he was the cause of them.

He realised he had no idea of the consequences of toppling Saddam Hussein but he would do it all again.

He said Iraq needs a government representing all of its factions and to be endorsed by that famous democrat the Grand Ayatollah Sustani.

In the name of tolerance, he said he wanted to impose open tolerant societies on the Middle East and something called “properly-run economies”. Were we to say, “Good luck with that,” he would reply, “It’s what the majority want.”

As for what the well-armed, Book-bashing, death-loving, multi-minorities want? That is covered in his concluding remark wherein lies a seed of sanity, waiting to germinate.

“What we constantly underestimated about Iraq about Afghanistan about the whole of the region is that once you remove the dictatorship, then out comes this tribal ethnic and above all religious tension and . . . “

But he still wants “engagement” up to and including, he says, air strikes. Or, as he doesn’t say, up to and including World War III.