The United Kingdom is stumbling from one crisis to another and such instability has probably not been seen since the execution of Charles I in 1649. Here we have a modern prince, a former party leader, struck down by the might of the people, or at least the might of the inquiry commission led by Sir John Chilcot.

The massive twelve volume report states, “Britain joined the 2003 invasion of ‪‎Iraq before peaceful options had been exhausted”, and that Britain’s policy was “based on flawed intelligence which was not challenged and should have been”. It also confirms what we already knew: Saddam Hussein did not pose an imminent threat to the UK in 2003, and there was no definitive proof Iraq had WMDs. Under the leadership of Tony Blair, the UK chose to join the invasion before all peaceful options for disarming Saddam had been exhausted, thus establishing that war was not the last resort. It does not claim unequivocally that the war was “illegal”, opening the former PM to war crime proceedings. A tarnished reputation is as close as we will get.

The report exposes the total lack of seriousness, commitment and knowledge of the UK foreign policy machine. Brexit is another case in point where the economic mess is entirely caused by a misshapen foreign policy.

In the US and Spain — the other major western supporters of the war — there was some form of electoral accountability. Leaders who supported the invasion — George W Bush and José María Aznar — were replaced by ones who had not, Barack Obama and José Luis Zapatero. In the UK, this never happened. Blair’s successors, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, had both supported the war. Theresa May, now favourite to replace Mr Cameron within the next two months, also voted in favour. Michael Gove, her rival for the Conservative leadership, said as in 2008 that the war was “a proper British foreign policy success”.

There is no east and west in this; men in power seem to be the same everywhere – greedy and shortsighted. While politicians in less-developed states only have the means to exploit and destroy their own countries, these men have the money and the arsenal to create global fiascos.

Just like in the EU referendum, politicians easily misled the sheep-like population. By the time the war started in March, 53 per cent of the public were in favour, while 39 per cent were against. Opinion only changed as casualties mounted and photographs of tortured Iraqi prisoners were leaked.

If the leadership of the UK was so cavalier in putting troops in Iraq, one can only imagine how flawed and mistaken their American counterparts were at the time (and probably still are).