Alphabetical nonsense but in real life? In recent decades British governments have gone along with all manner of crooks and tyrants on the excuse that if we don’t sell to them others will. Morality trumped, as usual, by commerce.

Fortunately for those afflicted with this sort of blindness the overseas crook sometimes comes unstuck. If he disappears into the dustbin of history well and good. But what happens when he survives disclosure and carries on? Business as usual?

The Cameron regime clearly took this line when Malaysian super crook (and current Prime Minister) Najib Razak was proven to have stolen more than half a billion dollars of his own government’s money and connived at the theft of much more? Business is business after all. Just as tax avoidance is tax avoidance, to say nothing of fuelling the political machine.

So how best to dress up the fact that fraud, especially fraud involving “friends of Britain¨ is ongoing on a massive scale? One way, and subtle at that, is to neuter the authorities responsible for investigating and prosecuting fraud. First tell the Police that anyone wanting to report a fraud should make their complaint to the Serious Fraud Office.

If that does not deter the complainant instruct the SFO not to acknowledge any report involving less than a hundred thousand pounds. Then cut back the SFO budget to the point where, even if they wanted to, lack of funds prevents any effective investigation. Fraud is a minefield ringed by a fence of unscrupulous lawyers and real attempts to deal with it require financial and human backing. With little of the former there wont be any of the latter

QED. Fraud remains on the Statute Book but in practice has immunity from effective investigation and prosecution. If anyone disputes this proposition they may ask themselves why, despite national exposure in a national newspaper, the London based firm PetroSaudi is still in business and apparently untroubled by any of the authorities nominally responsible for investigating and prosecuting fraud.

This is a question that should be posed to the person ultimately responsible for what happens, and does not happen, in Britain. The new Prime Minister. Will it be business, or rather non-business, as usual or will something be done to clean the stink of crime and corruption out of the City of London?