Geoff Hoon is not an heroic figure — as he, and we, discovered a fortnight ago when he declared his attempted putsch a failure within hours of its launch. This was the beginning and end of Mr Hoon the political mover and shaker.
All Cabinets have people like him at their heart: not ambitious for the top job but men — and occasionally women — of office, keeping the machine running, unglamorous, reliable, low-key, avoiding trouble, defusing problems, seldom making headlines and, above all, surviving.
The late Merlyn Rees played a similar role in the Wilson and Callaghan administrations of the late 1970s, as did Tony Newton in the Major Government and Margaret Beckett in the Blair years.
So it is no surprise that Mr Hoon’s evidence was undramatic yesterday. He will not have enhanced his reputation, but nor should it suffer much, such were the low expectations.
Mr Hoon occupied one of the three main ministerial posts during the run-up to, and aftermath of, the Iraq war, but he was never a crucial player. He had not committed himself early on and presented himself almost as a victim of circumstances rather than their master.
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He never put his foot down, or insisted, when he could and should have done. Other people were responsible, not him, for not ordering more enhanced combat body armour in October 2002; it was Tony Blair, not him, who stopped the Ministry of Defence making logistic preparations for war in the late summer of 2002 when the military wanted it; and Gordon Brown did not give the department as much as it needed over the long term.
The overall impression given by him and earlier witnesses is of decisions being taken only when they had to be, of failures of preparation and planning. But these are not just retrospective judgments. Many of the failings were clear at the time. Leaving aside what Mr Blair says, and does not say, on January 29, Mr Hoon and other ministers never stood back and challenged the drift of events and demanded a broad-ranging review of the alternatives to war.