The much awaited Hutton report is an absolute vindication for Tony Blair and a catastrophe for the BBC.

--Andrew Sullivan on Wednesday

Some 56% of [British] voters believe the Hutton report was a whitewash, according to a YouGov poll in the Daily Telegraph.

Despite the report, the poll found 67% of people still trust BBC news journalists to tell the truth and 31% trust the Government.

In an NOP poll, half of those questioned said Lord Hutton was wrong to clear Mr Blair and his aides of any "underhand and duplicitous" naming strategy. A clear majority, 56%, said the peer was wrong to lay all the blame at the door of the BBC.

His inquiry was branded a whitewash by 49%, with 40% disagreeing, in the survey for London's Evening Standard. And a full independent inquiry into the reason Britain went to war with Iraq was supported by an overwhelming 70%.

Three times as many people trust the BBC to tell the truth than the Government, another poll showed today. However, almost half, 49%, trusted neither side, the ICM survey for The Guardian found. Just one in 10 had faith in ministers compared with 31% who believed the Corporation.

--icWales

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Update: Well, even Sullivan seems to be figuring it out now. Today he quotes an e-mail he's received about the Hutton inquiry, which the e-mailer calls "a joke":

Everyone I have spoken to here who is not directly involved in politics (but who keeps a "watching brief" on events as they affect our daily lives) is horrified. We seem effectively to live in an elected dictatorship: over-reaching powers of Tony Blair without any check whatsoever; supine parliament (whose powers of scrutiny have been wrecked by said Prime Minister); pliant judiciary; and a commercial media hamstrung by regulation preventing any form of political partiality. The inquiry seems to have suddenly clarified the unease that a number of us here have felt deep down for some time....