ord Hutton is a deluded booby who understands modern British politics about as well as Saddam Hussein grasps the laws of cricket. He simply cannot believe that a British Prime Minister could ever behave in an underhand manner, or that he would deliberately surround himself with Stalinist gangsters.

And so, rather than see the truth that glares and gibbers before his face, he has turned the whole world upside-down to fit his comical prejudices.

The guilty are exonerated, the innocent condemned and poor David Kelly himself is given a post-suicide tickingoff for failing to follow nonexistent Civil Service rules.

The nation looked to Lord Hutton for justice. It has got the same back-to-front justice as the man who tackles a vandal outside his home, then finds himself in the dock being lectured by a pompous judge while the unpunished lout smirks and sniggers in the gallery and prepares to sue for damages.

We have all seen exactly the same evidence that he has seen but I have yet to meet a single person who thinks that he came to the right conclusion.

His verdict is complete tripe. If Alastair Campbell is so innocent of everything, why exactly did he resign all those months ago? It must be the first case of a man resigning because he did his job with perfect propriety.

Why, even the Prime Minister admitted his post was 'at risk' last weekend, before he and his friends at The Sun newspaper had been given their advance copies of the report. Why would that be, if he is so guiltless?

All this is perfectly obvious to anyone who has been paying attention to the way modern Britain is run. Lord Hutton can be excused, I suppose, on the grounds that he is an innocent abroad, better suited to settling neighbour disputes in Toytown than coping with the real world.

But what really baffles me is the way that our society's leading figures have responded, for this week the essential truth of Andrew Gilligan's report has become clearer and clearer.

David Kay, former chief US weapons inspector in Iraq, repeatedly says London and Washington were wrong about Saddam's supposed arsenal.

Rolf Ekeus, a former weapons inspector, accuses the British and US spy services of 'trying to play up to their masters'.

Greg Thielman, a former expert at the US State Department, publicly criticises Anthony Blair and George Bush for giving a 'distorted' impression of the Iraqi threat.

The question of whether they actually knew they were feeding their citizens wrong information is really only an issue of whether they were a) stupid, b) self-deceiving or c) lying. None of these excuses is specially creditable.

Instead of hooting with laughter at the Hutton Report, far too many have taken it seriously.

The over-rated Tory leader Michael Howard showed his true mettle by swallowing its conclusions hook, line, sinker and fishing rod too. Why did he not take the risk he is paid to take, and reject it? His later attempts to quibble over minor parts of it blew up in his face when Anthony Blair sweetly pointed out that he had just accepted all its conclusions.

Then there was the strange response of the BBC, not so much spineless as totally boneless, like a jelly crawling backwards across the floor. Why on earth did Chairman Gavyn Davies and Director General Greg Dyke resign? Mr Dyke seems puzzled as to what he is supposed to have done wrong, as well he might be.

And why did the nobodies of the BBC Board of Governors allow that walking damp patch, Richard Ryder, to issue that shameful apology, a speech so cringing that it makes Chamberlain's post-Munich remarks sound like a battle cry?

If the Blair Government can get away with this, then it will swell still further in power and arrogance. From being a general, vague threat to liberty and democracy it will become an infant tyranny, for if it is now a punishable offence to tell the inconvenient truth about what Mr Blair does, who is next after the BBC?

Do not forget that, for the most part, the BBC has been a fawning servant to New Labour since before it was elected, conducting a war of scorn against the Conservative Party and its supporters, excluding Labour's opponents from the national debate where possible, treating them with sneering unfairness when it had to let them on the air.

But for our new rulers, that is not enough. Nothing short of total obedience will do, for the truth that Lord Hutton cannot acknowledge is that our Government thinks it is so good and virtuous that it can do no wrong.

Unless challenged and defeated early on, this attitude leads step by step to dictatorship, in fact if not in name. Hutton, together with the feeble response of the Tories and the BBC, represents a very long stride in that direction.

Permit me to mention one or two things here that Lord Hutton-might ponder. The first is that his inquiry utterly failed to find out why Dr Kelly took his own life. But on Page 83 of his report there is a haunting piece of evidence from Janice Kelly that I cannot get out of my head. She says of the morning before his death: 'I was physically sick several times at this stage because he looked so desperate.'

It is my guess that all the fiends out of Hell had moved into the Kellys' house that day. I believe the couple were feeling the full blast of snarling fury which comes from worldly power when it is frustrated and demanding something it cannot get, something dishonourable and dishonest.

I merely ask, as Lord Hutton failed properly to do: What did officials really say to Mr Kelly in those last hours? What threats were made to his livelihood and thus to his very manhood? What did they press him to do or say, that he could not bear to do or say, so that he preferred death? And who was ultimately responsible?

These questions, the heart of the whole matter, are simply not answered. Justice has not been done. Our freedom to criticise our masters has diminished and the world now feels darker and colder than it did this time last week.