IT WAS billed as the libel trial of the century, but the spectacular eleventh hour abandonment by former trade minister Neil Hamilton of his £10million "cash for questions" action against The Guardian has none of the disappointment of a cancelled show.

For this sudden departure stirs up more intriguing questions and allegations than those that might have been heard by the jury.

The nub of the suit was that the newspaper had falsely alleged that Mr Mohammed Al Fayed, owner of the famous Harrods store, had paid Mr Hamilton to ask Commons questions and that the MP's fellow plaintiff, parliamentary lobbyist Ian Greer, had acted as go-between.

The stage was set for a public probe in the law courts into sleaze at Westminster.

And all this when, already harmed by earlier cash-for-questions scandals and driven to appoint a parliamentary commissioner for standards, the government, in the midst of the Tory party conference and the pre-election build-up, was hardly likely to welcome more muck-raking.

Prime Minister John Major and his deputy Michael Heseltine, both due to be called as witnesses, must be mightily relieved the action by Mr Hamilton and Mr Greer has been dropped.

But that satisfaction must have been dulled today by The Guardian's claims that not only were its original claims about cash for questions entirely true, but they represented but the tip of an iceberg - an assertion supported by its naming today of four more Conservative MPs who, it alleges, were also recruited by Mr Greer to lobby on Mr Al Fayed's behalf.

So, the inevitable suspicion that Mr Hamilton had succumbed to pressure to back down and spare the government unwelcome embarrassment is fascinating but wobbly - as the upshot has been only more disturbing mud-flinging about what goes on behind the scenes at Westminster.

Why else, then, might the case have been withdrawn?

Mr Hamilton says he had run out of money.

Mr Greer speaks of taking a sensible commercial decision.

Both protest their innocence

But it is also evident that the two fell out following the disclosure last week of a Downing Street document concerning a telephone conversation in which Mr Hamilton was asked by Mr Heseltine if he had ever had any financial links with Mr Greer and in which Mr Hamilton said he had not.

Intriguing. And one more perplexing part of the puzzle.

But there is no satisfaction in an unsolved puzzle - not when what it obscures is allegedly an iceberg of corruption at Westminster.

Let us have the answers.

And The Guardian's suggestion today that they be sought not only by the parliamentary commissioner for standards, but also by the Inland Revenue and perhaps even the Director of Public Prosecutions is not a bad idea.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.