"IF you had a school debate like that, people would think it's boring and pointless."

So declared Richard Hering, leader of the self-styled Citizens For Truth group who managed to force the first suspension of the House of Commons in 17 years. In reality, their protest wasn't very interesting - and certainly won't stick in the memory like the group of lesbians who abseiled into the House of Lords in 1998.

It was limited to four or five hardy souls yelling "Whitewash!" and "Murderer!" from the public gallery while the MPs seated below pretended not to notice and Tony Blair carried on reading from his prepared statement on the Hutton Report.

And it was all over in a matter of second as the Commons' bouncers, a formidable bunch disguised by tail-coats and silly trousers, dragged out the offenders.

But Mr Hering had a point - the debate on Lord Hutton's findings was, with no disrespect to the family of Dr David Kelly, was exactly like a boring, school debate. Mr Blair claimed he had not known Saddam Hussein's 45-minute weapons of mass destruction threat just applied to short-range weapons - even though Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon and Robin Cook knew the truth.

He would not have got away with that in a tussle for the Year 5c Debating Trophy and MPs told him so.

Choosing his words carefully, Mr Cook said: "I find it difficult to reconcile what I knew and what I am sure the Prime Minister knew at the time we had the vote in March."

The boredom was because the world has already debated Hutton in painstaking detail. All Wednesday's gathering provided was a stage for Mr Blair's friends and enemies - step forward Peter Mandelson and Mr Cook - to get together and chew the fat.

What MPs really wanted to row about was the latest inquiry announced by Mr Blair, this time into the intelligence which took Britain to the Iraq war.

The Liberal Democrats scattered their toys all over SW1, refusing to take part because the inquiry will not examine the political decision to topple Saddam. Meanwhile, sceptics on all sides murmured about the man appointed to head the probe - retired civil servant Lord Butler.

He has a fine CV serving five Prime Ministers - but MPs also remembered his embarrassing handling of Conservative "sleaze" complaints.

Leading a Whitehall inquiry into accusations of wrongdoing levelled at Jonathan Aitken, Lord Butler's approach was to put the claims to the Cabinet Minister and accept his word when he denied them. He adopted a similar approach when asked to investigate "cash for questions" claims against Neil Hamilton, again showing faith that a Minister would tell him the truth. Mr Aitken and Mr Hamilton both later come spectacularly undone.

Thoughts drifted off to the wonderful BBC2 programme, screened on Tuesday, called The Bunker: Crisis Command - Could you run the county? Three members of the public were made "ministers" and asked to take control as Britain faced a series of calamities, including a huge explosion at Waterloo station, an attack on the National Grid and a plane diverting from course to head for central London.

They got almost everything wrong: the plane crashed into the Houses of Parliament, the entire Tube network flooded and the economy lost £52 billion.

Were it real, who would be asked to head the inquiry into this debacle? Lord Butler, perhaps.

Updated: 11:39 Friday, February 06, 2004