Why on earth aren’t we more shocked by the scandal of Al Megrahi?

My favourite document in the cache released by the Cabinet Office this week is the one that starts ‘Dear Muammar’ and ends ‘yours sincerely, Gordon Brown’.

My favourite document in the cache released by the Cabinet Office this week is the one that starts ‘Dear Muammar’ and ends ‘yours sincerely, Gordon Brown’. Have you seen it? In the first sentence, our former prime minister reminds the Libyan despot that they recently met at a G8 summit. Pretty bleak, that. It is as though Brown felt close enough to the freakout dayglo bampot of the Middle East to address him by his first name, but not so close that he was confident Gaddafi would actually remember who he was.

This is the note in which Brown tells Gaddafi that Al Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, is about to be released on compassionate grounds, but that it would be nice if he, Gaddafi, didn’t make a fuss about it.