I’VE ALWAYS hated “Gestapo” comparisons. You know the kind thing I mean: “That officer gave me a funny look – Honestly! It;s like Hitler’s Getapo!”

“Police state” is another one: “I was only doing 140, and they send me a court summons! It’s like Pinochet all over again…”

Not only are most of these comparisons plain silly, they’re incredibly offensive to those who actually lived through Nazi Germany or whose family were actually killed and tortured by Pinochet’s regime. It’s not just that the British police are being compared to the Gestapo: the suggestion is that the Gestapo were no worse than the Met. Or that people living in Britain have it as bad as Chileans in the 70s.

And so we return to the old “Is Tony Blair a war criminal?” nonsense, repeated today by Oliver Miles in the Independent on Sunday. As John Rentoul so sensibly points out, it’s number 180 in his series of “Questions to which the answer is ‘no’.”

If, by “war criminal”, we mean someone who led his country into a war that was unpopular with some people, then, yes, Tony Blair is undoubtedly a war criminal. But generally speaking, war criminals are people who deliberately ordered the targeting of civilians during a military engagement, or who either ordered, or did nothing to prevent, the execution or torture of their opponents. In other words, someone who “committed war crimes”.

No-one except the feeble-minded are seriously suggesting that Tony Blair is guilty of this second definition. And, as with “police state” and “Gestapo”, such accusations devalue the force of such accusations. The Gestapo? “Well, arguably some of their officers overstepped the mark, but most of them were quite helpful if you needed directions to the Reichstag.” Police state? “Not so bad, really, so long as you don’t mind being stopped and searched at railway stations once in a blue moon.”

War criminal? “Tony Blair’s as bad as Hitler, innit? I mean, taking Britain to war in Iraq after two votes in Parliament, then imposing democracy then withdrawing troops… I mean, two peas in a pod, eh?”