The nation appears to be more preoccupied by the denials of serious sexual misconduct by the Queen’s second son than by the more serious possibility that members of Her Majesty’s armed forces may have been guilty of torture and murder, but were saved from prosecution by an official cover-up. The Sunday Times and the BBC’s Panorama have published the results of their year-long investigation into several incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan where innocent civilians were allegedly shot dead, or beaten to death, by British soldiers.

“Stuff happens”, as Donald Rumsfeld once said in connection with the US army’s chaotic occupation of Baghdad after the defeat of Saddam Hussein. The most serious “stuff” occurs not just when individual soldiers commit criminal acts but when senior officers fail to report them and then cover up the crimes and their own complicity. That signals soldiers have the state’s permission to literally “get away with murder”.