What made Jack Straw tell the truth about the botched coup in Equatorial Guinea?

Jack Straw, though by no means a distinguished foreign secretary, nevertheless possesses animal cunning. He is an acknowledged master of dissimulation, contrivance, machination, manoeuvre, evasion, guile, trickery, craft, diversion, disguise, distortion, persiflage, falsehood, deception, sophistry, stealth, artifice, sharp practice, underhand dealing, sleight of hand, subterfuge, prevarication and every other stratagem of concealment and deceit. Occasionally, however, the Foreign Secretary is capable of candour. This was the case with his parliamentary answer to Michael Ancram, the shadow foreign secretary, two weeks ago.

Ancram wearily asked Jack Straw when the British government first knew of the botched coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea last March. A characteristically long space of time elapsed before the question was answered. But the answer itself was to the point. ‘In late January 2004,’ replied Straw.

This answer is pregnant with significance, and casts the failed coup — led by the mercenary Simon Mann with alleged backing from (among others) Sir Mark Thatcher — in an entirely fresh light.