IN one, obvious sense the outcry over the gestation of Sir John Chilcot's Iraq inquiry report is pointless.

No matter how many words it contains, nothing important will follow. There will be no amends, no retribution, and no-one, Tony Blair least of all, will wind up in the dock of the International Criminal Court at the Hague.

That much has been obvious for long enough. The charge of war crimes might be well-founded. There might be abundant evidence that the public was deceived when wishful thinking was disguised as reputable intelligence. In 2003, nevertheless, Blair commanded the British state. Were he to take the fall, the rest - spooks, generals, civil servants, law officers, hack special advisers and all - would have to take the fall. That isn't going to happen.

What could Chilcot do to Blair now that hasn't already been done by those who despise the former prime minister? Damage his reputation? Interrupt his special relationship with the Almighty? Reduce his market value on the international elder statesman circuit? Hardly.

Those who pay big corporate money suffer no qualms over the Iraq job. The British state is meanwhile unaccustomed to having former prime ministers arraigned. We are, as Blair is first to argue, the good guys, culpable only for "mistakes", no matter how murderous their effect. Besides, as a weird individual never tires of repeating, deposing Saddam was "the right thing to do". In a moral universe beyond the reach of Scripture, lots of wrongs still make a right.

So why the outrage over Chilcot? In part, it's simple. It flows from the sense that they really do think we're suckers who will fall for anything, no matter how flimsy, no matter how brainless. In another part, the shambles of the latest Iraq inquiry - the third, after all - seems only to prove that there's something very wrong with official Britain.

Forget probity. If you believe half the excuses, we - the preposition is used loosely, as ever - cannot even manage fibs. As Sir Peter Tapsell, Father of the Commons, rumbled last week, Chilcot's investigation of the entrails has taken longer than the inquiries into the Crimean debacle or the hideous Dardanelles farce. The Franks whitewash of Thatcher's Falklands excursion was speed-reading by comparison: commissioned in July of 1982, it was delivered, in all its shameless glory, by January 1983.

That might count as another element in the public's disgust. Last week, the remnants of the Tribe of Tony, the media and political types yearning still for personal exculpation for Iraq, were busy arguing that Chilcot is entitled to as much time as he fancies in the name of "due process". Sir John, they said, must "get it right", no matter what. The sentiments were delivered as though there is anyone left who believes that truth is a government's desire.

Instead, many were slightly offended because Britain can no longer stage a plausible sham. Blair won't be cuffed: this much we know. Yet there is something rotten in a state that cannot even manage an adroit deceit. If Chilcot is fiddling with footnotes in June - that's almost a certainty - he will have spent exactly as much time inquiring into the shady causes and conduct of a lousy war as the military expended on combat operations in Iraq.

That is, of course, absurd. It is as absurd as the idea that people who were at the heart of things fully a dozen years ago still need time to formulate "responses" to a draft of possible criticisms. It is as absurd as the notion that an inquiry which heard its last witness four years ago is still stumbling through the thickets of bureaucracy. It is as daft as the belief that delay will win a few more crucial months for the dust to settle over the guilty and allow political business to resume.

What was the purpose of Chilcot? There was the ever-worthy cause of truth, of course. There was the matter of voters and their right to know what was done - disgusting, criminal, pointless and bloody - in their names. There was the wee outside bet that a dishonest prime minister might get a public verbal stoning. But the important purpose, surely, was to begin to draw just a little of the poison from the suppurating body politic.

One of my old friends does a lot of current affairs TV these days. A few years back I heard him talk about attitudes towards politics. He bemoaned what he called cynicism. At the time, I wondered. Then, as now, I decided that I had become pretty cynical about pundits conducting intense discussions on voter cynicism. The "problem of apathy" was not my problem. Rationally, sensibly, with Iraq as exhibit A, there was a lot to be cynical about.

As the old political game-show falls into decay and farce, the phenomenon is well-enough recognised, yet entirely misunderstood, even now, by the contestants. In 2009, for one example, Gordon Brown thought he could get away with granting us Chilcot while insisting - a remarkable example of Whitehall obtuseness - that the inquiry should hear its evidence in private. The inept gesture failed, of course. The important fact is that the gesture was even attempted. Public cynicism was, as ever, deprecated.

What were we supposed to think? What are we supposed to think now, when Sir John can spend as long as it took to fight the Second World War failing to explain how Britain wound up in an ugly and stupid police action? Has he been obstructed at every turn by those with precious reputations to preserve? If so, let's hear it. Have Whitehall and the Pentagon been more than usually awkward? Chilcot - said every politician last week - is wholly independent and under the protection of Parliament.

It might be that Sir John is luxuriating in his independence and, politely, dawdling with a career civil servant's sense of urgency. If that's so, David Cameron and his opponents should have been kicking up an almighty fuss. These inquiries are not cheap and there is - lest we forget - the public's right to know.

More importantly, people such as Rose Gentle and the rest of those left bereaved by Blair's adventure have moral rights that trump all. Chilcot's deference to those with reputations and pensions at stake is of no importance.

These days, most of us struggle to believe a word governments tell us. A lot of that has to do, even now, especially now, with Iraq. The latest Chilcot delay caused a row because it seemed to treat credulity as a joke, with public opinion as a bad punchline. If the state persists with that kind of contempt things will go ill with those who boast of British democracy. It might already be too late.

Some cliches are to hand. Justice delayed and justice denied would be one. I never did believe that the deep state would provide Blair's head on a platter thanks to Chilcot. The real mistake was to think they are not entirely stupid. Treat the people as fools, however, and observe the result. They will repay contempt with contempt.