Brown Has to Regain Our Trust After the Bae Judgment

When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, he promised to be guided by his 'moral compass'. But exercising power often involves choosing not between polar opposites of right and wrong, but between greater and lesser evils.

What, for example, should a Prime Minister do when revelations due to be made in a high-profile court case risk compromising national security. Intervening would threaten judicial independence and violate constitutional principle, but failing to act could cost lives.

It is in those terms that Tony Blair presented his decision in 2006, along with then Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, to order the Serious Fraud Office to abandon its investigation of alleged corruption in a multi-billion-pound arms deal between Saudi Arabia and BAE Systems. The Saudi royal family had made clear that continuing the investigation would jeopardize intelligence co-operation, which could, in turn increase the risk of a terror attack on British soil. Mr Blair acquiesced.

But that decision, interpreted by Mr Blair as expediency for the greater good of the nation, was last week interpreted by the High Court as capitulation to blackmail, perversion of justice at the whim of a foreign state and a symptom of overweening executive power.

The High Court's version is more convincing than Mr Blair's. There is no evidence that Downing Street agonized over its decision or tried to stand up for judicial sovereignty. Instead, the government leapt on 'national security' as a pretext to kill off an inquiry that threatened bothersome diplomatic, political and economic consequences.

Would pressing ahead with the inquiry really have put Britain at risk? That we cannot know. Assurances from Mr Blair based on secret intelligence and legal validations from Lord Goldsmith are currencies devalued beyond use by the Iraq war. But we can say with some confidence that a state which threatens British lives so that it can preserve the financial affairs of its repressive monarchy should not be deemed a stalwart ally against terrorism.

Mr Brown has indicated, through a spokesman, that he supported Mr Blair's 2006 decision and that he will continue to oppose any investigation of alleged corruption in the Saudi-BAE deal. Meanwhile, the government has drafted legislation to enshrine in law the Attorney General's right to stop criminal proceedings on grounds of 'national security', while surrendering the right to meddle in all other cases. In other words, the government will relinquish a power it never used and strengthen one it has clearly demonstrated it can abuse.

It is possible to conceive of rare situations when threats to national security require the use of extraordinary executive power over the judiciary. If we are to trust a Prime Minister to exercise that power, we must have confidence in his 'moral compass'. Mr Brown assures us he has one, but his stalwart adherence to Tony Blair's view of the BAE-Saudi case suggests he is not navigating by it.