I'll agree there's a smokescreen, Gareth. Covers up a lot of failures.

I felt that in his "History will Absolve Me" speech, Tony came as close as he dared to admitting that he deceived Parliament because he thought it was necessary.

Though actually I don't think too many people actually were that much deceived, but it's convenient for some people to be able to make out retrospectively that they were, and that they actually believed the story Tony told them about the 45 minutes and all that.