Blair testimony prods Britons in questioning his integrity

In a climactic moment in his worst-ever political crisis, Blair effectively declared that he never misled the nation in the run-up to the US-led war against Iraq.

He went as far as to say he would have quit if it was true -- as a BBC news report alleged -- that Downing Street had "sexed up" a September 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

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"If it were true it would have meant that we had behaved in the most disgraceful way, and I would have had to resign as prime minister," Blair calmly told the inquiry, headed by judge Lord Brian Hutton, on Thursday.

That soundbite led the evening newscasts, but in national newspapers Friday, his performance was billed as anything from "defiant" (The Sun) and "authoritative" (Daily Mirror) to downright dishonest.

"Neither the PM nor his spin doctor can be trusted," said the front page of the Daily Mail, the self-styled voice of middle-class England, referring to Blair's communications chief Alastair Campbell.

"When they say they are going to tell the truth, the suspicion must be that this is just another lie," it said.

The Hutton inquiry is delving into the circumstances behind Kelly's apparent suicide in July.

A former UN arms inspector in Iraq, Kelly served as a defence ministry adviser on Saddam Hussein's lust for weapons of mass destruction.

At the heart of the inquiry is the September 2002 intelligence dossier, which notably claimed that Saddam's armies could deploy chemical or biological weapons in just 45 minutes.