By Nick Cohen, doing a nice line in ‘patriotic’ patronising and writing in The Observer

“I broke the story about the government’s apparent hounding of Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan. But ever since reading Thursday’s Guardian, I’ve been wondering if the FO wasn’t provoked.

Instead of looking Islamism in the eye, Murray declares that Bush and Blair longed to distract attention from their troubles and ‘dodgy’ intelligence about the alleged airport bombers ‘gave them a chance’.

Even as a conspiracy theorist, my former protege isn’t up to much. Compare him to the bloggers who say it is an MI5 plot to make John Reid PM or the eminent commentator who assured me that the airlines were behind it. They want to ban hand luggage so they can speed up the delivery of passengers to planes, he said. Now they have the excuse to increase their profits.

Hey, what’s the matter with you? Join the dots.”