Daily catch-up: Blairhatefest enters its 13th tedious year of propaganda

Plus the Sound of Music fan who won the 2015 election and 'How do you solve a problem like Maria?' and other unanswered questions

Two Minutes' Hate courtesy of General Boles

Smoking gun signed in blood we all know, reported the Mail on Sunday yesterday. It has found a 2002 memo from Colin Powell, Secretary of State, to George Bush in the Hillary Clinton emails. It shows that Powell was saying in private what Tony Blair was saying in public: "Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary."

For the Mail on Sunday and the legion of haters, this confirms their internally inconsistent conspiracy theory. David Davis, the Conservative MP, tells the newspaper: "The memos prove ... what many of us have believed all along." Of course they do. For Alex Salmond, who believes in ghosts, they prove the "net is closing" on Blair, as it has been, in the minds of those who disagreed with him, for 12 years.

The Powell memo is alleged to prove that Blair committed Britain to war a year before it began (the "signed in blood" phrase is Christopher Meyer's contribution to the hater myth, although he specifically said he didn't know if it applied). That Blair thought Saddam was a threat that had to be confronted, and that he thought Britain should stand shoulder to shoulder with the US in confronting such threats, was known at the time. That Blair committed Britain to military action come what may is neither supported by the memo ("should military operations be necessary") nor possible, as he accepted that there should be a vote in the House of Commons on the question.

What was important about the Crawford meeting in April 2002 is that it was where Blair started to persuade Bush that he should take his case to the UN. But that doesn't fit the myth.

The other sentence in the memo noticed by the Mail on Sunday is that Blair would present to Bush "public affairs lines that he believes will strengthen global support for our common cause". In other words, Blair was a better communicator than Bush. Again, this was known at the time.

The reporting of events 13 years ago has become so detached from what actually happened that it has become a stylised fiction, indistinguishable from The Trial of Tony Blair, a fairytale for happy haters.

• My column in The Independent on Sunday is about Lynton Crosby, the lover of The Sound of Music who ran the Conservatives' election campaign.

• The Top 10 in The New Review, the Independent on Sunday magazine, is Unanswered Questions in Songs. In addition, Graham Kirby ‏nominated: "How do you solve a problem like Maria?" "How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?" and "How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?"

Adrian Brodkin said: "There are so many that I ask myself 'Where Do I Begin?' By Shirley Bassey who also asked, 'What Now My Love?' and 'What Kind of Fool Am I?'"

I had a lot of nominations for this one. Slugworth, for example, proposed: "Do you know the way to San Jose?" by Dionne Warwick, "How can I be sure?" by David Cassidy, "Have you ever seen the rain?" by Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Why can't we live together?" by Timmy Thomas, "How will I know?" by Whitney Houston, "Is she really going out with him?" by Joe Jackson (although that might be a rhetorical question) and "Why can't I be you?" by The Cure.

• Also in The Independent on Sunday is our monthly ComRes opinion poll. This found that voters generally think Boris Johnson would make a better prime minister than George Osborne, but that Conservative voters prefer the Chancellor.

• And finally, thanks to Moose Allain's 10-year-old son for this:

"Wouldn't the world become 10 times more boring if someone came along and told us the meaning of life?"

And thanks to Moose himself for a partial answer to his son's question:

"Peli-Man, Peli-Man,

"Does whatever a pelican."