Blair: PMQs sent a chill up my spine
TONY Blair has admitted it was “hell” to do Prime Minister’s Questions.
The former Labour leader said the House of Commons exchange would never be abolished but revealed he still relives the toe- curling moments he was caught off-guard.
Speaking at the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai, Blair said: “It was hell to do. Even now, on a Wednesday at midday, I’ll get a chill at the back of my neck remembering it.”
He added: “You remember the few triumphs and the many humiliations as if they were yesterday.”
Blair said PMQs would continue but added: “If you put 600 people in a small room and tell them to debate subjects upon which people have very strong views, they are going to be shouting and bawling.” VLADIMIR Putin has laughed off claims Russia were behind the UK nerve agent attack and said Sergei Skripal and his daughter would be dead had they carried it out.
The Russian president dismissed British accusations of their involvement in the poisoning as “nonsense” and added Moscow is ready to cooperate with London in the probe.
The March 4 attack in Salisbury left Skripal, 66, and daughter Yulia, 33, fighting for their lives.
But Putin, who referred to the incident as a “tragedy”, said if the British claim of them being poisoned by the Soviet-designed nerve agent were true, the victims would have died instantly.
He was speaking after casting his own vote in the Russian presidential elections – which reports have suggested he has won by a landslide.
Earlier yesterday, the Soviet ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, joked on TV that the Novichok toxin could have come from the UK.
Speaking on the Andrew Marr show, he suggested the nerve agent may have come from the Porton Down laboratory, which is about eight miles from Salisbury.
Investigators from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will visit the UK to collect samples of Novichok, the substance used to attack former double agent Skripal and Yulia.
The team from The Hague will use international laboratories to carry out tests on the nerve agent.
Independent inspectors are expected to arrive in the UK today to test the substance but the results will take at least two weeks.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson also appeared on the BBC show and claimed: “We actually have evidence within the last 10 years that Russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination but has also been creating and stockpiling Novichok.”
Johnson added it was “obvious” that Putin cared about the UK’s attitude to Russia.
He said: “That is one of the reasons why the UK is, as it were,