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Commentators dissect Alastair Campbell's appearance at the Iraq inquiry.

the "Campbell effect" may have added relatively little facts it seemed to lead the committee to raise their game:

"Together, over five hours of exchanges, questioners and witness managed to elevate the much-criticised inquiry from generally underwhelming to nearly unmissable. If nothing else, the stage has been set for Tony Blair's appearance in a few weeks' time."

Alastair Campbell stood by every word of the Iraq dossier:

"So Campbell established himself as the last of the true believers, still clinging to the talking points he scripted back in the first years of the last decade, even as earlier witnesses to the Chilcot inquiry have steadily sought to distance themselves from the Iraq debacle. He gave not an inch to the fainthearts who believe that going to war to disarm a nation that had already disarmed was a catastrophic error."

blown away with revelations:

"There was nothing thrillingly original in anything he had to say as by and large he trotted out his lines with the practised ease of one who has done so before, and boned up hard for this latest viva. On the surface he did it pretty well, holding his temper, smiling when possible, and treating his interrogators to the contemptuous patience of the prissy boarding school headmistress whom a pair of sporadically donned and curiously effete spectacles made him resemble.

As warm-up man for Mr Tony Blair, in fact, he was perfect."

why he thought Alastair Campbell hadn't really said anything new:

"The truth is that, thanks to the earlier Hutton and the Butler inquiries into the run-up to the war, the British public has already been told almost everything that can be known about the background to the invasion."

the crucial piece of testimony is yet to come:

"Influential though he might have been, Mr Campbell was ultimately a media spokesman. He was making the case, not the decisions on Iraq. The true significance of Mr Campbell's testimony - as with all the testimony Chilcot has thus collected thus far - is the questions it raises for Mr Blair when he is eventually called to give evidence to the inquiry."

some insight into the feeling from the people covering the event:

"There have been a few laughs in the press room, not least when he claimed he was never obsessed with headlines."

Alastair Campbell made it just like old times:

"Inspired by Uriah Heep, Campbell cast himself as the humblest of functionaries amid grand events. In doing so he was unremittingly arrogant, almost to the point of delusion. Most extraordinary was his unabashed pride for his, Tony's and Britain's role in Iraq."

to the questioning of Sir John Scarlett the chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee and later the head of MI6:

"Will Sir John Scarlett follow the Campbell line and admit that yes, he did indeed break every principle of his profession and tell Mr Blair and Mr Campbell that the Iraqi intelligence was 'beyond doubt.' If he does, his professional reputation will be severely damaged."

And finally, his own conclusions of the day's events in his blog:

"Fair to say there was loads of the usual abuse that comes whenever anyone goes out and defends British policy on Iraq, but there was also a big expression of the counter view, which rarely gets airtime but which is there nonetheless."

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