Guido is a bit confused by the Foreign Secretary’s welcome of the verdict on Saddam. Guido is happy to see him despatched to hell by the hangman, he was after all a mass murderer and torturer. Killing tyrants and torturers has been Guido’s preferred pastime for centuries…

Remember New Labour on the other hand has an ethical foreign policy (no really). The Foreign Office has since 1998 had a Death Penalty Panel comprised of the great and the good working to end this practice. Indeed the UK has ratified Protocol 13 of the ECHR, banning the use of the death penalty in all circumstances, including time of war. Every year at the United Nations the UK co-sponsors the annual EU resolution on the death penalty at the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.

So has Britain’s Foreign Secretary made any “demarches” or representations to the Iraqi government? No, on the contrary, Beckett revels in victor’s justice: