Mrs Galloway’s problems with the Queen of Spades

America’s numbering of the Saddam regime’s leading members, and issuing this order of precedence in the form of a deck of playing cards to aid American troops searching for them, has surely caused much unnecessary rivalry, jockeying for position and unpleasantness to one another on the part of the war criminals and torturers thus enumerated. This is so wherever any sizable number of them are in hiding together, whether underground in Baghdad, Tikrit, Syria – or Mr George Galloway’s Glasgow constituency of Kelvin.

None of the colleagues disputes Saddam’s right to being first on the list, and the Ace of Spades in that deck. It is accepted that he has worked for the position, and earned it; likewise his sons Qusay and Uday, respectively Ace of Clubs and Ace of Hearts. Some may regard the boys’ status as an example of nepotism, but think it imprudent to say so.

But Mr Tariq Aziz is also prominent.