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Spring-heeled Jack Straw is no more. One of the longest serving British parliamentarians, holder of several of the "Great Offices" of the British state, Straw's sense of entitlement to power led him to be so confident of "elevation" to the House of Lords that he was secretly filmed on C4 "Dispatches" boasting it was in the bag to a bogus Chinese company. He thought it was a Chinese take-away - another bumper pay-day in the world of the revolving door between Westminster and commerce- but it is he who has been taken-away, and metaphorically shot.

It was the last straw for new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn . Such sleazy shenanigans are commonplace amongst the Blairites. Though on nothing like the industrial scale of their leader Mr Blair (my film The Killing$ of Tony Blair will show just how vast and murky are the financial killings of Blair).

One by one the Blair Rich Project officer class have been entrapped by undercover journalists describing themselves as "taxis for hire". Iraq War defence minister Geoff Hoon, former Health Minister Stephen Byers, are both effectively banished from the parliament building such was the brazenness of their touting themselves.

Almost all of the others, Gordon Brown (successor prime minister to Blair) Alistair Darling former Chancellor of the Exchequor (finance minister) are now Bankers, Hoon an executive of a military-industrial helicopter company from whom in his former capacity he bought many a whirly-gig. Byers and Milburn (another former Health Secretary) make a fortune from the private health care industry. Former Defence (and much else) minister John Reid married a millionairess and has since dwarfed her wealth with that of his own. I knew him when he was a communist living in a council house.

But Jack Straw, a former Foreign Secretary and one-time contender for the leadership itself, was a cut above the rest. He entered parliament earlier than all the others and stayed longer. Even as late as 2014 he was still selling the case for war and further foreign intervention in places like Syria. In my own final clash with him I asked on the floor of the house how he had the brass neck to even show his face after the disasters he'd helped lead us into, never mind asking for more of the same.

It had all been so different once.

He had started as a sufficiently radical president of the National Union of Students that MI5 opened a file on him and tapped his telephone. Later as Home Secretary (Interior Minister) he would decline to look at a file built up over decades by his very own underlings. And presided over many a file being opened on others - including me.

He had entered Westminster as chief aide to Barbara Castle, the best woman prime minister Britain never had, a firebrand left-wing cabinet minister. When late in life she went off to the European Parliament, Straw succeeded her in her Blackburn parliamentary constituency. And there he remained - no firebrand, more an incendiary bomb.

When Tony Blair took office in 1997 he developed the policy of what is now known as RTP - Right to Protect - a new international (well the resurrection of an older Palmerstonian one actually) nostrum by which with or without United Nations or other legal authorisation the powerful could launch attacks upon anyone (highly selectively of course) in the name of RTP.

When taxed as to why "there" as opposed to "over there", they'd say "just because we cant intervene everywhere isn't a reason why we should intervene anywhere".

Mr Blair chief foreign policy adviser Robert Cooper put it best when he entitled his small pamphlet on the issue "The New Imperialism". For the avoidance of doubt he was advocating it not denouncing it.

The nexus of Blair Straw Cooper at al then led Britain into more wars in fewer years than at any time in British history - not excluding the height of empire and the age of Palmerston and his "gun-boat diplomacy" when the as the music-hall song put it "We don't want to fight, but by jingo if we do, we've got the men we've got the ships, we've got the money too".

Sierra Leone, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and the list would've been longer if they could. Blair told me personally (in the library corridor of the House of Commons, outside the Gentleman's lavatory to be precise) that he would if he could invade Iran, Zimbabwe, Syria and Burma (though he later went to work for the Burmese Junta - business is business).

I clashed repeatedly with Jack Straw over nearly thirty years in Parliament but 9/11 2001 saw hostilities intensify. In my Spectator Award winning speeches of that year I warned that "if we handle this the wrong way we will create 10,000 new Bin Ladens" (I chastise myself now for this inexcusable under-estimation).

"These airplanes which attacked the twin-towers did not come out of a clear blue sky" I said but "out of a swamp of bitterness and hatred, regularly watered by our double standards and support for injustice in the Muslim world"..

With an astonishing lack of historical memory, during a debate in early 2002, Straw echoed the vainglorious idiocy of the officer class of World War 1 when he said our troops should "all be home by Christmas" (he really did say that)

When I rose to say "our troops will not be home by ten Christmases hence" (again apologies for the underestimation) Straw laughed out loud. And invited the House to laugh along with him. And how they laughed...

Jack Straw is not laughing now. Instead of Baron Straw of some castle or other he is plain Mr, purveyor one presumes of Chinese Fancy Goods somewhere. He felt not the cold steel of Her Majesty's sword commanding him to "arise Sir Jack". Nor the ermine robes around his shoulders instead of the red flag of his youth. Nope.

Jeremy Corbyn could not have sent a clearer message that as long as he is the leader of the Labour Party there is no room for those accused of war crimes (a case involving Straw's alleged involvement in the kidnap and rendition of a Libyan couple is before the British courts (though in secret) no room for the liars and leaders of one illegal war after another in the ranks of the reborn Labour Party.