The BBC has posted the transcript of Tony Blair’s inquisition by Jeremy Paxman and some carefully (and not so carefully) selected British citizens.

There’s a few points well worth making about this. The first is that Paxman seems to have put more hostile questions to Blair in about an hour than Bush has faced in the whole time he’s occupied the White House. I know there are historical and cultural reasons why it is thought unseemly for a sitting President and a member of the press to be brawling on television, and it’s not like the Queen goes twelve rounds on Hardtalk every day so the kid gloves treatment of Heads of State is not just confined to America, but I do think American democracy would be stronger if this kind of thing took place over here.

Secondly, while I thought Blair came off a fair bit worse for wear against Paxman, he did pretty well against the studio guests, several of whom (well all and only the male ones, to be precise) seemed more concerned with cheap shots than serious argument. When the guests did ask serious questions, Blair gave them reasoned responses. I didn’t agree with many of his answers, but he was clearly taking the questions seriously. I was especially impressed by this:

Female 2: Yes, I think we should be adopting a policy of contain and deter with the Iraq conflict.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Contain and deter?

Female: Yes, and I’m very concerned that we’re following the US along a line of conflict and war and I don’t understand why we’re taking that line.

TONY BLAIR: Well, let’s go back to this issue of containment, because I agree of all the arguments against this, this is the best one.

I mean, OK Saddam’s a bad man, he’s a terrible man, he’s got these weapons but can’t we work out a policy of containment.

Blair then provides a long answer about why he doesn’t think that will work, noting (correctly) that sanctions are not a morally acceptable way to contain Saddam because they only hurt the Iraqi population, not the leadership, and (less plausibly) that inspections won’t work either. But one important point, to me at least, is that Blair managed, in the two sentences just quoted, to acknowledge that his opponents have arguments of merit, and provided a summary of that argument that didn’t (particularly) caricature it, and accurately noted that since that line of reasoning acknowledged Saddam is a ‘bad man’ he couldn’t respond by simply saying Saddam is a bad man. This is all perfectly civilised behaviour, the kind of thing that goes on everyday in philosophy seminar rooms and I hope a lot of other places, but it’s simply not something I can imagine some of the more partisan American politicians doing, including practically everyone in a leadership role in the White House. Maybe I’m just wrong about this.

Anyway, the most important point to come up was something I hadn’t seen reported elsewhere before, probably because I just haven’t been paying attention.

JEREMY PAXMAN: OK, so they report back next week. Will you give an undertaking to this audience, and indeed to the British people that before any military action you will seek another UN Resolution, specifically authorising the use of force.

TONY BLAIR: We’ve said that that’s what we want to do.

JEREMY PAXMAN: But you haven’t given an explicit commitment that those are the only circumstances under which British forces will be used.

TONY BLAIR: I haven’t but what I’ve said is this – those are the only circumstances in which we would agree to use force except for one caveat that I’ve entered.

And I’ll explain exactly why I’ve done this. If the inspectors do report that they can’t do their work properly because Iraq is not co-operating there’s no doubt that under the terms of the existing United Nations Resolution that that’s a breach of the Resolution. In those circumstances there should be a further Resolution.

If, however, a country were to issue a veto because there has to be unanimity amongst the permanent members of the Security Council. If a country unreasonably in those circumstances put down a veto then I would consider action outside of that.

JEREMY PAXMAN: But Prime Minister, this is, you say, all about a man defying the wishes of the United Nations. You cannot have it both ways.

If one of the permanent five members of the Security Council uses its veto and you, with your friend George Bush, decide somehow that this is unreasonable, you can’t then consider yourself absolutely free to defy the express will of the Security Council. What’s it for otherwise?

TONY BLAIR: First of all, let me make two points in relation to that.

Firstly you can’t just do it with America, you have to get a majority in the Security Council.

Secondly, because the issue of a veto doesn’t even arise unless you get a majority in the Security Council. Secondly, the choice that you’re then faced with is this. If the will of the UN is the thing that is most important and I agree that it is, if there is a breach of Resolution 1441 which is the one that we passed.

If there is a breach and we do nothing then we have flouted the will of the UN.

This I thought was pretty interesting. Set aside the somewhat tortured arguments (on each side) about what reveals the will of the UN. Blair is saying he won’t go to war without a resolution supported by nine members of the Security Council, since it is only the failure of such a resolution at the hands of the veto that would lead to taking un-UN-endorsed action. Now I’m no expert on Security Council deliberations, but I had the distinct impression this was far from a done deal. (And Slate agrees.) So the UN could still really hold up this game.

(Link to BBC transcript via Atrios. We will resume regularly scheduled philosophical broadcasting now.)