The Prime Minister speaks

[This is the heading over an item posted by John Ashton this evening on the Megrahi: You are my Jury blog. It reads as follows:]

A number of press reports of the book launch, such as this one, on the Daily Record’s website, carry the following quote by the Prime Minister:

“This is yet another reminder that Alex Salmond’s government’s decision to free the UK’s greatest mass murderer was wrong. Writing a book three years after he was released is an insult to the families of the 270 people who were murdered.”

As well as being factually inaccurate – Abdelbaset didn’t write the book, I did – the statement begs a huge question: how can Cameron possibly comment upon a book that he hasn’t read? If he did read it, he would learn that Abdelbaset was convicted on shaky evidence; that the Crown failed to disclose many items of exculpatory evidence from the defence; that the real Lockerbie bombers evaded capture; and that the Libyan people endured 12 years of UN sanctions on the basis of evidence that ranged from shaky to concocted. Of course, those are things that he would rather not know, because they expose the hypocrisy and vacuity of his position on Lockerbie. Maybe I should send him a copy (I assume he can read, after all, he had an excellent education).