The senior British civil servant who took seven years to produce a report into the UK’s involvement with President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq has given his first interview a year after the two-million-word document was published.

Though the report itself was damning in its assessment of the entirely false claims that Saddam Hussein still had weapons of mass destruction and his finding that there was no justification under international law for the invasion, the man who led the inquiry, Sir John Chilcot, has this week looked back on his report and used the typically measured terms of a British civil servant in an interview with the BBC.

He said that Blair had not been “straight with the nation” but also said that the then British prime minister had an “emotional” belief in the need for regime change in Iraq and the evidence for the existence of WMD, that it was claimed at the time could be ready for use within hours. Chilcot also said that as a talented professional advocate, Blair’s response to challenge was to present the very best case that he could. In an interesting observation, Chilcot said that Blair had been “emotionally truthful”.

One reason why the report took so long to be published was that, under its terms of reference, those who had given evidence were entitled to read and comment on those sections that dealt with their part in the build-up to the invasion. It has never been revealed the extent to which Blair and others criticized in the document succeeded in persuading Chilcot to make changes.

While not the widely feared whitewash, the report was also not the incisive forensic exercise that many Britons hoped for. As it became clear that the UK was going to join the US-led coalition in the invasion, more than a million people took part in an anti-war demonstration that snaked through the streets of London.

The Iraq war did not destroy the political career of Tony Blair, one of the UK’s most extraordinary prime ministers. It did, however, wreck his domestic reputation, even though internationally he still retained much respect.

Blair told the Chilcot inquiry that he regretted the lack of post-invasion planning which had unleashed the chaos which gave rise in Iraq to Al-Qaeda and then Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS). He never properly addressed Bush’s false claim that Saddam was hosting and actively supporting terrorists and was linked to the enormity of the 9/11 New York and Washington massacres. Nor has he ever responded to the likelihood that George W Bush was more than anything finishing his father George Bush’s business with Saddam who had survived his humiliating defeat and ejection from Kuwait in 1991.

Blair has since repeatedly said that he regretted the death of UK servicemen in the 2003 invasion and added, also the death of Iraqis. Yet his “emotional” belief in what he did has brought death to hundreds of thousands and violent instability to millions. The pity of it is that he has never acknowledged that his support for the ill-planned and substantially ignorant US-led overthrow of Saddam was plain wrong. The one crucial thing that this otherwise most gifted of politicians has never been able to bring himself to say is: “Sorry”.