Peter Jackson column

Dec 7 2006 By Peter Jackson, The Journal

You really have to feel sorry for Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General.

First of all, he has had to take his share of the blame for the Iraq War, being damned if he advised Tony Blair it was legal, when he shouldn't have, and damned if he said it was illegal and didn't kick up a fuss.

Now, he will probably have to decide whether to plunge relations with Russia back into the Cold War deep freeze, by pursuing the killers of Alexander Litvinenko to, if necessary, the far ends of Siberia.

And, then, he may have to decide whether his boss, the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, should have his collar felt over the cash for peerages affair.

Finally, if all that was not enough on the poor man's plate, he also has to decide whether the Serious Fraud Office should kick into the long grass its long-running investigation into an alleged £20m slush fund linked to Saudi arms deals. In fact, his other dilemmas pale into insignificance by comparison. As far as the Iraq War goes, we are where we are, and no good crying over spilt milk and all that.

As for Russia, there's nothing we can really do about it and it will all blow over after the usual protests and denials. Tony Blair? He's going anyway, whether to the Old Bailey or the US lecture circuit, who cares?

But the Saudi arms deal affair is serious stuff. Here, the Attorney General is - to borrow the best mixed metaphor I ever heard on the BBC last week - `gazing over the precipice of a runaway train'.

Annoyed by Knacker of the Yard poking about in their Swiss bank accounts, the Saudis are threatening to cancel a £10bn order for Eurofighter jets, which could lead to the loss of an estimated 50,000 UK jobs. And, much worse, they are also threatening to give the order to the French instead.

If the French did get the order, the Saudis would, of course, have no fear of the Gendarmerie Nationale looking too closely into any sweeteners that might change hands.

No, it's only the British who are daft enough to pass laws against bribing foreign companies or governments and, in this case, try to enforce them retrospectively.