Like small-time crooks easily caught out by being interviewed separately, the Blair government has been caught out giving conflicting explanations in the Saudi arms fiasco, the latest scandal for this rancid government.

The gist is that the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, ordered the Serious Fraud Office to cease investigation of massive kickbacks, bribes etc between the Saudi government, arms dealers, and BAE, the world’s fourth largest weapons manufacturer.

Mr Tony told reporters that he had ordered the end of the inquiry because of the threat to British industry, while Lord Goldsmith claimed the Serious Fraud Office had made an operational decision based on the poor chance of a successful prosecution.

Indeed. It later emerged that the Saudis had threatened to withdraw intelligence cooperation if the inquiry persisted, including information sharing on al-Qaeda; ie, one part of the Saud family telling us what the other parts of it are up to. Hilariously, this was then labelled as a decision that had to be made because the “war on terror” was in jeopardy.

What? Having established that the Saudis are up to their neck in al-Qaeda, and that slush money funds terror campaigns, we are told that the illegal transfer of tens, even hundreds of millions won’t be investigated to keep us safe.

You have to be thankful, I guess, for the opportunity to be a vulgar Marxist from time to time. Terror is fought by destroying civil liberties, while the accumulation of armaments capital rolls on unabated.

But it was no coincidence that it happened this week. As the bodies of murdered prostitutes were being pulled out of the Norfolk mud, the government was burying the Saudi arms inquiry and the cash-for-peerages story – Blair was interviewed by police this week, a time he had chosen.

Cynical? This is a desperate government, who believes – according to a leaked memo – that it faces a “sh-t or bust”(???) moment if it is to survive. If they saw 9/11 as a “good day to bury bad news”, the Ipswich Ripper is not an opportunity they were going to pass up.