Tony Blair finally follows his conservative opponent David Cameron and answers questions from voters on internet video via John O’Farrell as a friendly interloper. The first hard-ball question: “What would you say the Labour party’s greatest achievement is?” Getting elected so much is his answer. What’s your greatest mistake? “Never answer that,” Blair answers.

In the second part, we finally get to Iraq. The question from a YouTuber: “Why didn’t you resign for taking the country to war on faulty information?” Blair says that we went to war over the breach of UN resolutions and that there’s “no doubt” Saddam violated them. He says that if he were still in power today “you’d have a different set of problems.”

“The judgment about Iraq,” Blair says, “will be made, in the end, in the longer term.” As opposed to the judgment being made in the shorter term? “For me, ” he says, “I can’t — and I’ve never been able to do this — say to people that I think it was the wrong thing to remove him, because I don’t. I think it was the right thing. I think what is happening in Iraq today is tragic and a huge challenge. But it is being deliberately created by people who don’t want the Iraqis to get their country on their feet when they do what to get it on their feet.”

Asked whether the lack of WMDs is a resignation issue, Blair says: “Well, I think if people thought they were being deliberately deceived, of course it would be. . . . We’ve had four different inquiries about that allegation and each has come to the same result. And they only could have come to one result.”

Blair concedes: “There’s no doubting about the political damage.” He says he has apologized “for the fact that the information was wrong” but that he will not apologize for removing Saddam and will not say that what was said about that was made up or a deception.

This is about as satisfying as sex on novocaine. Blair’s mood is uncomfortable and defensive and his answers incomplete. And this is hardly a grilling from the people since we don’t see all the questions on video and because we are not the ones asking the questions, in the end, but O’Farrell is. And Blair is not addressing as — as one can and should do on YouTube — but O’Farrell. They might as well have had his press secretary asking him questions: it’s less an interaction with the people and more of a video press release. But even given the controls they put on this, hand-selecting the questions and clearly prepping for him, it’s still an unsettling performance. It’s a good thing Blair is leaving office; he’s not made for the YouTube age.