The ghosts that could come back to haunt Blair

I’m picturing Sir Tony Blair enjoying a fitting of his Garter robes after watching Boris Johnson stagger through PMQs. ‘I’m in the clear these days,’ he’s thinking. ‘So much water under the bridge, what could possibly come back to haunt me?’ Well, here are two items he might like to consider: the application of the 2003 US-UK extradition treaty in the case of Dr Mike Lynch; and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss’s statement that new sanction rules will mean ‘nowhere to hide for Putin’s oligarchs’ and their fin-ancial assets.

Lynch was the founder of Autonomy, a UK software firm which Hewlett-Packard of the US bought in 2011 for $11 billion — but subsequently declared worth very little, accusing Lynch of cooking its books to secure the price. The Home Secretary having last week approved his extradition to face fraud charges, Lynch is now set to join a line of British businessmen extradited under the 2003 treaty that was adopted as an anti-terror measure but has been criticised ever since for the way US justice uses it ruthlessly to lift white-collar UK suspects — whose only hope thereafter is to plea-bargain for mercy.