If any of the rules of war are to be rewritten, the UK and US are the countries least suitable to assume that task

He might look like a superannuated nightclub bouncer. He might sometimes act like one. But John Reid is actually one of the government's more cerebral members. So when the Defence Secretary talks about rewriting the rules of war, his words should be taken extremely seriously.

Reid's 3 April address to the Royal United Services Institute think-tank should be seen, on one level, as a useful contribution to the debate about the norms that were enshrined after the Second World War to protect state sovereignty and territorial integrity. The debate was already under way in the 1990s - a belated response to the world's inaction in the face of humanitarian outrages in Rwanda, Bosnia and elsewhere. Tony Blair made a stab at it in his Chicago speech of April 1999, in the midst of the Kosovo conflict. It assumed a new momentum following the events of 11 September 2001. The Prime Minister returned to the theme, battered by Iraq but apparently unbowed, when he set out a revised version of his doctrine of "international community" in March 2004.

The main points of contention had been the principles of intervention. In the present circumstances - where states are threatened by "non-state actors" such as al-Qaeda - at what point, on which terms, and with whose approval can a war legitimately be waged? The debate has since moved on and taken an even more dangerous turn.

In Washington, it has long been axiomatic among neo- conservatives to argue that the Geneva Conventions are no longer valid. Reid - one must assume at the behest of that close friend of his, the Prime Minister - has lent his support. The conventions, he says, were created more than half a century ago, "when the world was almost unrecognisable", and when states abided by their obligations to others. Even a cursory knowledge of history would suggest that the Nazis, whose ultimate defeat created the new world order, might have abided by certain (but not all) conventions on the battlefield, but were responsible for the single greatest crime of the 20th century. Now, Reid argues in the same vein, "We are finding an enemy which obeys no rules whatsoever."

One may argue that the conventions need updating. After all, no law exists in a vacuum. But Reid - and those who share his view - is committing two cardinal and, one would have thought, simple errors. By descending to the same level as the enemy, an army that might have gone to war out of good intentions loses any claim to the moral high ground. Hearts and minds that otherwise might be won are forfeited. The furore that has surrounded the ill-treatment of inmates at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, and the confinement of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay without legal recourse, testify to that.

Perhaps significantly, Reid declined to condemn either the Americans' use of extraterritorial custody or their so-called rendition flights of suspects to and from countries with records of torture. In so doing he is going further than Blair, who at least has called Guantanamo an "anomaly", and has set himself against a number of cabinet colleagues who have expressed varying degrees of discomfort at these tactics.

The second reason Reid is wrong is that if any rules are to be rewritten, the UK and US are the countries least suitable to assume that task. On virtually every count, the proselytising for and prosecution of the Iraq war either bent or broke acceptable codes of behaviour.

Blair and those around him like to talk of values. They are right to identify possibly the sole criterion by which voters now judge politics. And yet, on matters of warfare, they fall terribly short. It is shameful for the Labour Party that in recent years it is often Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs who have taken it upon themselves to stand up for basic rights. Guantanamo's "procedures and presence offend every principle of international jurisprudence", parliament heard in February. The MP speaking was Tony Baldry, a Tory.

There is no reason why the rules should not be adapted to suit the altered circumstances, as long as they reinforce consistency and fairness. However, there is every reason why Britain, one of the worst flouters of those rules, should not be one of the countries to lead that process. Only the international diplomatic/legal forums and, in particular, the United Nations can be trusted to enact such a change.

Fake sheikh nonsense

George Galloway (deep breath) is absolutely right. That a high court judge should have granted the News of the World an injunction preventing him from disseminating photographs of the undercover reporter Mazher Mahmood (aka "the Fake Sheikh"), even for a short time, is a piece of legal nonsense worthy of Mr Justice Cocklecarrot, or perhaps of the judge that E L Wisty might have become, had he had the Latin. It is remarkable enough that the paper had the gall to seek an injunction in the first place, as the News of the World is not exactly known as a respecter of privacy. But how could a judge take it seriously? Mahmood, we are told, needs anonymity because of threats from criminals he has targeted. Please. He needs anonymity because his paper wants to sell more copies. If his bosses are really worried about his safety, let them pack him off to a well-earned retirement somewhere quiet - in the Gulf, perhaps.

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