Will every missing-child inquiry get the Downing Street treatment?
Wednesday 18th May 2011, 6:00AM BST.
At the request of David Cameron, Scotland Yard is to review the case of Madeleine McCann, writes Peter Rhodes.
The PM may come to regret it.
In all probability the Yard will find nothing. No body, no abducted child – just more years of anxiety and blame.
Blame is tacky, corrosive stuff. In this terrible case, some blame has stuck to the Portuguese police and some to the McCanns.
Now that David Cameron has tried to do something, some folk will inevitably blame him for not doing enough.
And once he has called for a review in this case, how can he deny other cases? Will every missing-child inquiry get the Downing Street treatment?
It is a golden rule of politics not to get involved with hopeless causes.
When David Cameron, father and family man, decided to intervene in the Madeleine McCann case, he was thinking with his heart, not his head.
