In the short term, it calls into question the ingrained reluctance of the Foreign Office to make a fuss about British nationals held abroad. But there is no international legal provision that safeguards the rights of “foreign” combatants fighting against one power in another country – once the US had decided, unilaterally, that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. Nor is there anything that governs the rights of individual countries to represent their nationals in such circumstances. This has to change.The second lesson is for the British Government and may be best absorbed over time. No appeal to the “special relationship” hastened the release of any British citizen held at Guantanamo.

Mr Blair allied this country with the US to go to war in Iraq President Bush’s state visit came and went. There were times when the attorney-general seemed to be commuting between London and Washington to argue the case. The single most urgent lesson to take from Guantanamo is that no one, wherever they are from, whatever papers they carry, in whatever circumstances they are apprehended, should be able to fall into such a judicial limbo ever again.There are international rules of commerce policed by the World Trade Organisation; there is a Law of the Sea; there are scores of international treaties on borders. Even so, other countries’ nationals were released earlier than the British “five”, and four Britons remain incarcerated. When it came to US national security, the special relationship counted for nothing.In the long term, this is good reason to reassess this country’s American preference in foreign policy. If they were engaged in armed combat against British forces, then thought needs to be given to whether this is, or should be, a crime – and of what order. Among the more disgraceful aspects of an utterly disgraceful saga is that none of this has yet been elucidated.Guantanamo was, and is, a judicial vacuum – and devised as such by a US administration that wanted primarily to take people it suspected of being al-Qa’ida or Taliban fighters out of circulation and extract from them every ounce of information they could.

Almost £900,000 of the £1.8m cost of the film came to the makers in lottery cash. Little wonder the makers seem so blas?bout whether anyone actually wants to see their work.Cinematic art does not need to be commercial, of course But nor does it need subsidising.. The assiduity of Scotland Yard in announcing an investigation into the five soon-to-be freed British Guantanamo detainees even before they have been released may seem premature, an overreaction designed to quell Tory agitation for treason trials. In one respect, however, the decision is thoroughly laudable, for it shows that at least someone, somewhere is trying to set these strange and unprecedented cases into a recognised judicial framework, even if the attempt comes more than two years too late. Indeed there is a strong case for tightening up the regulations. But the Government should be using the tax system to help boost a successful industry in the face of intense overseas competition It should not be undermining a British success story. In Britain, as elsewhere in Europe, this has led to the production of a score of dismal, self-indulgent disasters.The latest turkey is Sex Lives of the Potato Men, a catering comedy set in the sink estates of Walsall, which the kinder reviewers have described as “vile”, “grubby” and “appalling in every department”.

Some measure of tax relief is justified, because of the high risks attached to film production and the need to rival competing low cost locations such as Ireland or Eastern Europe.Less acceptable is to see subsidies handed out to film-makers via the lottery. Last year saw a welcome 85 per cent increase in the amount spent by American film makers in the UK.This is why it is worrying to see a slew of British-made films facing the axe, following the Chancellor’s decision to close a tax loophole that he says is being abused. Forty films, and hundreds of jobs, are directly affected.If there has been abuse, then the Treasury is right to review the rules. Apart from the deserved crowning of Touching the Void as Outstanding British Film of the Year, few homegrown movies, directors or stars even scraped on to the shortlists. An American, Scarlett Johansson, even stole the red-carpet limelight while pocketing the Best Actress accolade.
But there is no cause for despair.