The campaign to force the Prime Minister to “come clean” on his role in the Lockerbie bomber’s return to Libya is, at best, a farce and, at worst and more likely, hypocritical hokum that has no other purpose than to fill news pages and airtime and to improve Conservative prospects in next year’s general election.
Nobody suggests that Mr Brown had any formal or legal responsibility for the decision. But David Cameron insists that he should tell us whether, in his personal view, the Scottish Justice Secretary was right to send al-Megrahi home. That is a demand for the Prime Minister either to offend America, our closest ally, or alienate Libya — a nation that is being slowly encouraged to co-operate with the democracies of Western Europe. The leader of the Tory party ought to explain which of these he prefers and which he thinks would be in Britain’s best interest.
I believe that al-Megrahi was released in the interests of compassion rather than because of fear that, were he to die in jail, Libyan oil supplies would be cut off. That view is supported by the more responsible commentators who only set out the conspiracy theories in order to discount them. But, if it was Britain’s economic health that the Prime Minister had in mind, does the leader of the Conservative Party think that Mr Brown’s priorities were wrong? If so, when did Mr Cameron, and the hysterical commentators who parrot his demands, come to the conclusion that political necessity — the demands of diplomacy, security and trade — should not influence government decisions on whether or not to compromise with terrorists?
Should we have negotiated with Archbishop Makarios and Jomo Kenyatta, both of whom were held responsible for the deaths of British servicemen? Was Willie Whitelaw right to meet leaders of Sinn Fein long before there was any hope of the IRA “laying down its arms”? Could the American Government be justified in using Wernher von Braun — whose V1 and V2 rockets had been targeted on London — to develop its own intercontinental ballistic capability?
I am inclined to support all of those decisions. But what about the agreement to allow the Libyan murderers of WPC Yvonne Fletcher to leave Britain under the cover of diplomatic immunity? To me that seems indefensible. But it was defended by people who are now criticising Mr Brown.
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Gordon Brown does not come out of the last week unscathed. He is clearly guilty of the grave political offence of not taking the fight to the enemy. His failure to expose the cynicism of his assailants goes some way to explaining the Government’s opinion poll rating.