SO THERE we have it, arch war criminal Tony Blair saved the world again. Who knew?

Giving evidence to the House of Commons foreign affairs committee yesterday, Blair said he believed his decision to engage with Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi in 2004 remained “important” in the present day as it had prevented Islamic State (Isis) from getting hold of chemical weapons.

Eh?As part of the process, he said, Gaddafi renounced weapons of mass destruction, bringing to a halt programmes to develop nuclear and chemical weapons.

“I think it is important that we brought them in from the cold, as it were, and important also in today’s context because I think — particularly if we had still had the residue of that chemical weapons programme in Libya today, given the state of Libya today and given the presence of Isis there — it would have constituted a real risk, even today,” he claimed.

Funnily he didn’t mention the fact that a key aspect of the “deal in the desert” was that Britain hand over Gadaffi’s opponents and their wives and children for rendition and torture.

But then that’s just a minor footnote in history for Blair and anyway he wasn’t asked about it.

He told assembled MPs that he had “never had any business interests in Libya.”Well that must have been the only country in which he didn’t.

Regarding the Arab Spring uprisings which saw the overthrow of Gadaffi and other North African leaders, he said that what they had shown is that the people in those countries would not accept being ruled over by a tiny minority unrepresentative of the population.

So … rather like his bosom buddies in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and pretty much every client of Tony Blair Associates Ltd then.

But again he wasn’t pressed on that, or anything else really.

To give you a flavour of the level of “questioning” Blair was subjected to I refer you to this comment by committee chairman Crispin Blunt.

In a devastatingly barbed attack Blunt told Blair that he regarded the reopening of Libya, with its vast oil resources, as “a signal achievement of your premiership.”

Not so much a grilling as a chance for Blair to top up his tan by basking in his own imagined glory.