Neil Barnett recalls his encounters with the poisoned spy who has had the bearing of a marked man for years. The Russian intelligence services, Litvinenko told him, are purely political organisations, whose only purpose is to shore up Putin’s powerThe hotel off a main square in a central European capital was a seedy, low-budget place. When I asked the receptionist for Alexander Litvinenko in room 38, she looked at me blankly, then after some rooting around said, ‘We only have a Mr Jones in room 38.

A man I know who works for a large multinational corporation recently took the decision to trade in his people carrier for a Toyota Prius. Very eco-friendly, you might think, but as with so many apparently ‘green’ consumer choices, there’s more to it than meets the eye. For one thing, his girlfriend was so cheesed off — she wanted him to get a BMW — that he bought her a Mini Cooper by way of compensation. And the waiting list for a Prius is so long that for the foreseeable future both he and his girlfriend will be driving cars that run on carbon fuel.

The government is, on behalf of you and me, involved in the worst type of man’s inhumanity to man — torture. Yet with the honourable exceptions of William Hague and Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative party, the party I wholeheartedly support, the party that talks of compassionate conservatism, is failing to speak out about it when it should be shouting from the rooftops. Think of your wife or child screaming in unbearable pain, deliberately inflicted.