Blair threatened to resign if police interviewed him "under caution."

Blair's allies have made much of the fact that when he was interviewed by the police, that it was not done under caution, meaning that he was interviewed as a witness rather than as a suspect.

However, it is now being revealed that the police did not interview Blair under caution because he made it very clear to them that he would resign if they did so.

Allies of Mr Blair indicated to Scotland Yard that his position as Prime Minister would become untenable if he were treated as a suspect, rather than simply as a witness.

Detectives had hoped to question the Prime Minister under caution during the second of two interviews at No 10. It is understood that they wanted Mr Blair to clarify comments he had made during his first interview about an alleged cover-up by his senior aides.

Sources close to the inquiry said that there were difficult discussions before a political intermediary made senior detectives aware of the serious implications of treating the Prime Minister as a suspect.

"Make no mistake, Scotland Yard was informed that Mr Blair would resign as Prime Minister if he was interviewed under caution," said a source. "They were placed in a very difficult position indeed."

This is a fairly startling revelation. Indeed, such a threat is almost certain to have influenced the way the police approached this case and gets very near to the point of obstructing the police in their enquiries, especially as they intended to ask him, under caution, about remarks that he made during his first police interview concerning a possible cover up. Indeed, Blair is refusing to confirm even what he said during that first police interview, despite the fact that the interview was taped.

There were tensions over the first police interview with Mr Blair on December 14, which - unusually for a meeting not under caution - was tape recorded. Some days later, detectives sent minutes of the interview to Mr Blair's office to be "signed off" - for Downing Street to agree the typed notes were an accurate reflection of what had taken place.

Downing Street refused to sign them off even when detectives reminded political aides that the interview had been recorded and they were merely supplying a transcript of events. More than three months after the interview, the issue remains unresolved.

Am I alone in finding this extraordinarily sleazy and suspicious? Why won't he confirm what he said during the first police interview? And why did he threaten to resign rather than to be interviewed under caution?

I know his side will say that this was because to interview him as a suspect would have rendered his position untenable; but the truth is that - in any investigation into cash for honours - the man who gets to propose people FOR honours IS a suspect. Especially if he is also the man who was SECRETLY taking the cash.

So that argument is not only disingenuous, it is grubby beyond belief.

The police have not ruled out interviewing Blair, under caution, once he leaves office in a few months time. It seems certain that this affair will follow Blair long after he has left Downing Street, and perhaps , only then, will we find out what actually took place here.

But, for Blair, it certainly doesn't appear that he will be able to shrug this off as an over enthusiastic police force misinterpreting an arcane piece of law, which is how Downing Street used to portray this.

We must also never forget that Blair is a lawyer. He is well aware of what he is doing. And he is also well aware that the police will find it very hard to prosecute him if he lied during that first interview for the very reason that the interview was not conducted under caution.

However, for a man who promised to run an administration that was "whiter than white", this is yet another nail in his coffin. It's also ironic, when one thinks of the crime against international law that the Iraq war entails, that Blair could find himself in court for something like the cash for honours scandal, where no-one actually died.

I personally think he is guilty of far greater crimes than the ones for which he is being investigated.

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Tags: Cash for Honours, Blair, resignation threat, Lord Levy, Ruth Turner