Did you see that vicar the other day who made all the kiddies cry by telling them that Father Christmas couldn’t

Did you see that vicar the other day who made all the kiddies cry by telling them that Father Christmas couldn’t possibly exist – I mean, I was like, hello, why don’t you tell us about your boss, then, and how he manages?”The thing is that it doesn’t make much sense at all, but it doesn’t matter – I mean, if we can’t understand the second verse of ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’, I don’t suppose it makes much of a theological impact on the infant’s carol service. But we like it, don’t we? The Salvation Army brass band in Sloane Square, the roasting chestnuts at Oxford Circus, the boy who won Pop Idol turning on the lights in Regent Street – OK, maybe not that. But it’s nice nonsense, isn’t it?”"I notice you didn’t go and give the waits a quid, though, you Scrooge.”"Oh, they’ll be back.”p.hensher independent.co.uk
More from Philip Hensher. In the run-up to the 1992 US Presidential election, the right-wing Republican hopeful Pat Buchanan had his people issue a bumper sticker which sought to taunt George Bush I for both the state of the economy and the failure of US troops to go all the way to Baghdad at the end of the Gulf War “Saddam Hussein’s still got a job,” it said. “Have you?” It is looking increasingly as if no one will be able to use that slogan against George Bush II Nothing is definite. But Tony Blair’s declaration yesterday that war is still avoidable, while true, cannot disguise the fact that it looks more rather than less probable than it did even a few weeks ago. Even more significant is the 12,000-page declaration from Baghdad which, by all accounts, does nothing to acknowledge the presence of any of the mass destruction weaponry the US and the British insist he has.

You don’t have to believe all the propaganda seeping out of the system in London and Washington to assume that it is largely the rehash of old documentation officials say it is.Certainly there are doubts – not least in parts of Whitehall itself – about whether the authorised leaks are helpful ahead of the meeting on Thursday at which Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, is due to give his own assessment of the declaration. But those Security Council permanent members, notably France and Russia, which have the full text and are also most reluctant to see a war in Iraq, would surely say so on Thursday if they unearthed evidence to the contrary in the document. In which case the semi-public briefings by US and British officials would contrive to look sinister as well as silly. As Downing Street and the White House are presumably smart enough to realise.So let’s give this assessment the benefit of the doubt for the time being.

So Saddam has passed up the chance to show a change of heart and suddenly “discover” – say – that some old chemical weapons facilities had been dusted off and found to be in working order. Instead he has fulfilled the fears of several neighbouring Arab regimes by deciding that weapons of mass destruction are actually crucial to his power. What next?One element of the long and tortuous negotiations in New York in the run-up to Resolution 1441, in which Colin Powell and Jack Straw were particularly active, was to insert a crucial little three word conjunction to the definition of a “material breach”. This means – or should mean – that to be in breach Saddam has to issue a false declaration and refuse to comply with the UN Weapons Inspectors. Which is why Mr Blix’s team should, and probably will, be allowed to continue their work, possibly up to the deadline of 27 January. If the Blix team were to be refused access to a specific scientist, or if Baghdad closed off sites which the UN inspectors, perhaps armed with hard US or British intelligence, asked to see, that would be a clear breach. But that hasn’t happened yet.This is more than a legalistic point, particularly in Britain.

For public opinion here would be greatly strengthened in favour of war if clear evidence were found to contradict Saddam’s denials. US officials are deeply sceptical about the inspection process, not so much because of any deficiency of Dr Blix, who, having been duped before, shows every sign of real determination, but because they believe the teams’ trips, especially the longer ones, are continually compromised by the Iraqis’ ability to discover the destination before they arrive. But that doesn’t alter the fact that either a hit by, or a patent concealment from, the inspectors would go a long way to overcome deep doubts about the war.It’s perfectly true that discovery isn’t the only way of providing evidence. As Mr Straw has been at pains to stress, Resolution 1441 obliges Saddam to account for a large amount biological and chemical weapon material left unaccounted for in 1998. According to the only accounts available, the Saddam declaration conspicuously doesn’t do that. And maybe the publication of satellite pictures would be enough to demonstrate that there is a breach But European public opinion could do with more. This isn’t so much an issue in the US, where public opinion, transformed by 11 September, is conditioned for war.