Whatever the truth about the latest allegations, there does seem to have been a rush to judgment in the Madeleine McCann case – a rush to judge the Portuguese authorities over here. A glance at British headlines and online discussions might give the impression that the Portuguese police are the truly guilty parties, traduced for daring to interrogate the McCanns as formal suspects.

Yet cast our minds back a few weeks, and the same critics were cheering reports that British detectives were “finally” to be involved. When they found traces of blood, these were sent back to Britain for DNA analysis. Now we are meant to be outraged because, based on the first results of these British tests, which apparently suggested traces of Madeleine’s blood in a car that her parents hired after she disappeared, the Portuguese authorities have acted.

What were they supposed to do with this blood DNA evidence? Ignore it, on the basis that two doctors from a Leicestershire village seemed like thoroughly decent people? The formal suspect status means more misery for the McCanns. But the Portuguese are following their normal procedures, allowing them to put more serious questions – and giving the McCanns the right to refuse to answer.

However, all of this foreignness appears unacceptable to many British observers. In some eyes, Portugal is Europe’s banana republic and not to be trusted, the police seen as divers and cheats like that Cristiano Ronaldo. Why, one officer was even caught having a two-hour lunch break in the midday heat! And their secrecy laws go against the British tradition of turning private tragedies into public spectacles. Perhaps we should boycott holidays on the Algarve in protest, as one Sun reader demands online: “Time to show are [ sic] support for the McCanns and are [ sic] country!”

I carry no flags for the police in Portugal or elsewhere. It seems that they were slow off the mark. They certainly appeared slower to treat the McCanns as possible suspects than the parent-baiting British authorities might have been. If reports of the police pressurising the McCanns under interrogation and offering a deal for a confession are true, it would be reprehensible – but hardly unheard of. What do you imagine the British police might do in a suspected child abduction/death investigation?

The one certain fact is that we still have no idea what happened to Madeleine, and little idea what evidence the secretive investigation may have found. Against that background, pantomime exhibitions of ignorant emotionalism – with people here and in Portugal alternately cheering and booing the police or the McCanns – can benefit nobody. We are not going to find the truth about that lost little girl by losing our sense of perspective.

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