A week is a long time in politics, former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson famously said, and a year can be an even longer time when you are an autocratic dictator. This time last year, Muammar Gaddafi’s minions were rolling out the red carpet for the few foreign dignitaries who saw fit to attend the 41st anniversary of Gaddafi’s Al-Fateh Revolution.

This year it is quite a different type of guest celebrating at the Bab al-Azzizyah compound, the uninvited kind, and the only red carpet in Tripoli is one of blood, Libyan blood left in the wake of Gaddafi’s fleeing troops.

What a difference a year can make. This time last year western powers were bending over backwards to accommodate Gaddafi and his outlandish requests, in return for oil contracts and holding back the tide of irregular migrants trapped in Libya.

Today, on the very 42nd anniversary of the Al-Fateh Revolution, many of those same powers convene in Paris to plot out the future course of Libya, how to rebuild the country, to provide for a more equitable distribution of the country’s wealth and to determine how to bring the country and its infrastructure into the 21st century where they belong. In short, things which, despite the enormous wealth the country’s oil reserves proffered up, Gaddafi never did for his fellow Libyans.

For 42 years Gaddafi, his family and his acolytes ruled Libya with an iron fist. He was the Arab world’s longest-ruling leader and built his regime upon his brutal and eccentric personality cult.

Gaddafi had taken power in a bloodless coup in 1969, but bloodshed was the only way to remove him and his family from power. Had Gaddafi read and understood the writing on the wall and had he taken the route of Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali or Egypt’s Muhammad Hosni Mubarak, a great deal of bloodshed and loss of life could have been averted.

But, as we had said back at the beginning of the Libyan uprising, Gaddafi was to be a much tougher nut to crack, pun intended, and he was not one to relinquish power easily and without much bloodshed.

A visit to the archives of the Tripoli Post website yesterday showed just how much a difference a year can make. An archived article about last year’s Al-Fateh Revolution celebrations read like typical Gaddafi-placating propaganda.

Here is an extract:

“Libyans on Wednesday poured on to streets of Tripoli, the Libyan capital, in their thousands to mark the 41st anniversary of the 1 September 1969 revolution.

In Tripoli, as was the case with most places across the country, scores of celebrants danced and chanted pro-Gaddafi praises as fireworks lit up the night. Some others recited poems to the glory of the revolution and the Libyan leader, praising his achievements and accomplishments under the revolution.”

On the same page are the current day’s news updates.

Here is a selection:

“Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s loyalists appear to be committing suicide if they follow the fugitive leader’s stubbornness. Moussa Ibrahim, whose role has now been relegated to just acting as spokesman for the former leader, has dismissed the ultimatum issued by the NTC that expires at the end of the Eid holiday on Saturday.”

And: “A new transitional government in Libya will take the lead in establishing security, therefore the National Transitional Council has ruled out any major role for foreign peacekeepers in the country after the fall of the dictator Muammar Gaddafi, according to top UN officials.”

What a difference a year can make. A year ago Gaddafi sat pretty atop his oil reserves, accepting the advances of western leaders while the world humoured him, and his eccentricities, and appeared to have developed a case of amnesia when it came to the ruler’s heinous misdeeds of the past.

Today he is desperately clutching at the last straws of his almost-defunct regime, hoping against all hope that there could be some way out of this mess. But there is no way out, the noose is tightening and Gaddafi’s time is certainly up.

The one last decent deed the dictator could do would be to surrender, and in the process avert still more bloodshed, a potential massacre and a certain slaughter in his own hometown of Sirte.

That, sadly, does not appear likely.