George Bush, there would have been a mutiny. (Not that the Americans were ever much interested in rounding up IRA men.)

It is astonishing to think that, in the summer of 2006, the White House effectively hijacked and very nearly 'blew' a security service operation largely based in Britain and that we are now paying the price.

There was a nail-biting thriller published in recent years (I won't give the title; ­ it would be like giving away who did the murder in The Mousetrap) based on the premise that a recent prime minister was in effect an agent of the CIA. It's a good read but ultimately unconvincing. The CIA doesn't have to recruit clever young men at Oxbridge in the hope that they will one day sit at the heart of the British establishment and do Washington's bidding. We just seem to roll over and do what we are told out of deeply ingrained habit.

Our senior politicians and some civil servants simply have no concept of British sovereignty vis a vis the United States, not even in the world of covert security and

intelligence where, frankly, we make the Americans look like amateurs.

Tony Blair, who was in charge in the summer of 2006, may have developed abject obedience to the US into an art form, but I doubt if things are much different today and even more whether things would be any different under a different government. At least the 'airline plot' trial has allowed this particular aspect of our national security to be examined.

Sadly, given the slowness of our legal system, the recent difficulties in more than one high-profile terror trial and our strong sub judice rules, the British public will have to wait many more months before it has access to the full picture about the state of jihadist terror in this country and our national security strategy. Let's hope in the meantime our masters are beginning to get it right.