Everyone knows how tough it is to get a mortgage these days. Times are hard, despite the best efforts of the Labour government. Many congratulations, then, to Mr and Mrs Blair, of London, on having secured the home of their dreams.

One of the homes of their dreams, at any rate. You could hardly call the acquisition of the late Sir John Gielgud's Buckinghamshire residence down-sizing, either, not with its 11 bedrooms, all told, not at a price somewhere in the hazy region of £4m to £5m, and not when you already own five other properties.

Still, it is a tribute to the couple's lawyerly skills that apparently they were able to acquire the Gielgud gem, ornamental gardens and all, before it had even appeared on the market. That's the sort of acumen that also snags you a townhouse in Connaught Square (£3.5m); a nearby mews dwelling (£800,000); a couple of flats in Bristol (£500,000); and the good old Sedgefield constituency place (Durham prices, but historic value).

Mr Blair is good for it all, of course. How so, you cry, on a niggardly parliamentary pension of £63,468? An advance on yet unwritten, painfully-honest memoirs has to be worth the big part of £5m. J P Morgan, the American bankers, value a statesman's wisdom at £2m a year. Zurich, the Swiss finance company, think the same. And there are still people in China who believe £240,000 is a small price to pay to hear Mr Blair speak for 20 minutes.

Such are the fruits of ten hard years spent making tough choices, and who could grudge them?

Time and again, Mr Blair risked unpopularity by doing what he "knew to be right". One thing he knew without hesitation in December of 2006 was that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) must not endanger Britain's security by looking too closely at allegations that the defence contractor BAe Systems plc bribed various Saudis massively.

The government's own documents, never mind Mr Blair's public comments, recall a meeting between the then prime minister and his "independent" attorney general, Lord Goldsmith. The former said to the latter that "higher considerations" were at stake while the SFO nosed around the alleged payment of £1 billion to the Saudi Prince Bandar and his family. A staunch Gulf ally was threatening to withdraw "intelligence co-operation" vital in the war against al-Qaeda unless the investigation was halted. Assorted issues. First, as a general rule, politicians have no right to interfere in a criminal case. Second, matchless Saudi intelligence did not prevent Saudis assaulting the Twin Towers. Third, the House of Saud, courted so eagerly by Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown, is no-one's idea of democracy's bastion.

Finally, since BAe and Prince Bandar had both insisted on their absolute innocence of any wrong-doing, why would Mr Blair, or the Saudi government, be so concerned? Call me naive about the world of business, as many do, but if a company is free of every taint, why does it require something called an "ethical audit"? Such, along with 23 other recommendations, was nevertheless the conclusion offered yesterday by Lord Woolf, a former Lord Chief Justice invited by the company to run the moral committee rule over its corporate "culture".

His lordship did not study past events, whatever they may yet signify, and did not look into the execution of the Al Yamamah contract, or its relevance to the subsequent Al Salam deal. Apparently, that was not his job. But since BAe have been paying him £6000 per day for his exhaustive inquiry, he may have felt the need to say something useful. Some will believe he has done precisely that.

He has published his report, for one thing, just as the SFO has been granted leave to appeal against a High Court ruling. This last, from Lord Justice Moses and Mr Justice Sullivan, said inter alia that Her Majesty's Government had offered "abject surrender" to Saudi pressure over the original SFO inquiry. According to Lord Moses, Downing Street had acceded to a direct threat: "Drop it or else".

Then there is the further co- incidence that, while the SFO may have been our own abject fall guys, the US Department of Justice is less impressed by BAe's lobbying. It, and Swiss officials, are still interested in allegations of corruption. In fact, Saudi Arabia aside, Britain's national defence champion continues to face questions over its sterling work in Africa, Eastern Europe, and South America. Company reports must make fascinating bedtime reading for shareholders.

Not for the government, however. Al Yamamah is what you might call a legacy scandal, passed from the Tories (who still support Labour in a reluctance to inquire) on to the next lot. Thatcher straight to Blair, with not a single attitude towards a useful despotic regime unaltered: have some free symbolism.

But remember, always, that the original, infamous deal to flog Hawk and Tornado jets, with lucrative long-term maintenance and training arrangements, was between governments. BAe was, and remains, a mere contractor. Mr Blair must have kept those facts in his head. These were sovereign matters framed in commercial terms.

Which tends to make me wonder, even without Woolf's marvellous ethical audit, who was really in a position to authorise a £1 billion bribe? Alleged.

What we know for certain is that the placated Saudis went ahead with Al Salam last September: 72 Eurofighter Typhoons at prices (boasted the purchaser) no higher than those the RAF would pay. An old king, meanwhile, came to London, democratic protest got brushed aside, and Gordon Brown - what's a better word than "grovelled"? - did his bit.

But even Lord Woolf's elegantly-dressed window, all 152 pages on "Business Ethics, Global Companies and the Defence Industry", won't make this one go away. The Lords will have to make a decision on the High Court ruling by Moses and Sullivan, a ruling stating that the SFO acted both abjectly and illegally. The Appeal Court has been bypassed purely in the public interest. At some point, I think, someone will want to take a look at BAe's books.

The campaigners in this case - Corner House Research and the Campaign Against the Arms Trade - would like nothing better. I'd take a passing interest myself. I like to think that my interest in metaphysical questions is not recondite. So one old question: when you seek to corrupt, how corrupted do you become? I would also like to know how many national security excuses you can fit on the head of a pin.

Readers may, meanwhile, be interested to know that the secretary to Lord Woolf's inquiry was a gentleman named Jarvis. He was seconded, as it happens, from the Cabinet Office, presumably to ensure that the connections between a government, the arms trade, and an appalling regime were not misconstrued. Or am I being deeply cynical?

Perhaps I should wait for Mr Blair's £5m memoirs.