Neogtiating with the Saudis

There's a new Blog on the block, written by former British Ambassador to Sarajevo, Belgrade and Warsaw, Charles Crawford. Today he writes about the Saudi arms deal HERE. He analyses the result of this imaginary conversation...

S Arabia:

"Look, this corruption prosecution is just too much. Cut it out or all deals are off."

UK:

"You must be crazy. How can we stop it?"

S Arabia:

"You'll find a way. To be clear: the aircraft deal worth a gazillion dollars goes, plus we'll stop cooperating on terrorism"

UK:

"Look, if we do stop this we'll take an enormous domestic and international hit. Your venality got us into this mess. You need to deliver something serious too."

S Arabia:

(Thinks: "Phew. I've established the principle - now what's the price?") "OK, OK. We can do more on terrorism. We'll give you some cracking evidence to use against Osama Bin Liner whom you arrested recently."

UK:

"Not enough. We know that you have good stuff on Obama Bin Syko and Orama Bin Killin too. Let's have that as well."

S Arabia:

"If I hand all that over do we have a deal?"

UK:

"Yes. Why not quietly dispose of Odama Bin Nutta when he is your part of the world next week - we'll send you the flight details. But next time don't overdo the greed thing..."

S Arabia:

"Sorted. Oh, and we'll see you right on that Zappo fighter aircraft contract."

UK:

"I think that goes without saying."

S Arabia:

"Did I say anything ..?"

I suspect this blog needs to be added to my daily reads...

Freedom Under the Rule of Law is Being Eroded

If I wanted to live in East Germany, I would have moved there in the 1980s. I don't want to live in a country where local councils routinely spy on dog owners, or people who only want the best education for their children. I don't want to live in a country where surveillance becomes a watchword, where 1984 is considered a template rather than a work of fiction. And I do not want to live in a country where my government connives with arms dealers to tacitly condone bribery, corruption and worse and then cowers in the face of threats from a foreign government.

We have so far not heard a squeak from Number Ten in response to the Saudi Arms deal judgement in the High Court. We still don't know whether Gordon Brown will side with Tony Blair or do what's right. What we do know from this morning's papers is that the Conservatives are siding with the Government (despite not knowing what the government's position actually is). I am sorry they felt the need to say anything yet. Perhaps I am being too much of an idealist on this issue, but like Sam Leith in the Telegraph today I just do not buy the arguments here about the "national interest". As a country we are supposed to believe in freedom under the rule of law. Without the rule of law there can never be complete freedom. If the government decides that it will sidestep the rule of law on a big issue like this, it is open season for others to follow suit. And if the Opposition follows them in doing so, then are we to be surprised when people accuse politicians of being "all the same"? Leith writes...

'No one, whether within this country or outside is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice," is the ringing refrain of Lord Justice Moses's judgment on the Al-Yamamah fraud inquiry. It is a wonderfully fierce and lucid restatement of the principle of separation of powers and, in its context, an object reminder of why it is so important. It says, at root, that the law is the law: and that it operates independently of political convenience, diplomatic horse-trading, and calculations of personal or even national advantage. Bravo to that.

The argument for turning a blind eye to corruption in the arms trade is much the same as the one applied against closing tax avoidance loopholes for the super-rich. And it is, for all that it gets dressed up in the pompous language of international realpolitik, a playground argument: if we don't do it, someone else will.

If we didn't call off the dogs, we were told before the Serious Fraud Office's inquiry was halted, the Saudis would buy their fighter planes from France instead of us. So, for the greater good, we ought to let this one slide.

The problem with this reasoning is that by "recognising the reality" of corruption and conniving in it, you also perpetuate it. You forfeit not only your ability to talk without hoots of derision about an "ethical foreign policy" (remember that?), but any chance of applying pressure to others. "You go first" and "just this once" are shoddy principles on which to form policy.

Say you are a shopkeeper, caught selling a 14-year-old lad a two-litre bottle of White Lightning, some fireworks and a grab-bag of huffable solvents. What sort of defence is it to maintain that "everyone's doing it" and "he would have had got it from someone so it might as well be me"?

We recognise that excuse as pathetically childish and self-serving. So why, if the person concerned is an arms dealer, do we suddenly regard this as a sophisticated and hard-headed defence of British interests and a regrettable example of the way the world wags, but there it is old boy? Piffle, poppycock and monkey nuts.

I couldn't agree more.

The BAe SFO Inquiry: Brown's Invidious Decision

On 14 December 2006, the day when the government announced the SFO were abandoning their inquiry into the Saudi arms deal, I came under a lot of criticism in the comments section for writing THIS...

... and now the most shaming thing I think I have heard in years - the Attorney General announces the abandonment of the probe into BAe's fighter planes deal with Saudi Arabia. Let me put this bluntly. The government has backed down in the face of Saudi threats - it has acceded to blackmail. It argues that the decision has been made "in the wider public interest" yet it has basically prostrated the British nation at the feet of Saudi bribery and corruption. Shameful. Truly shameful. See how Blair, Goldsmith and Browne try to defend the indefensible HERE on the BBC News site. Today is the day the British people must now realise that this government isn't fit to govern us. They've brought shame on themselves, their government and their country.

I thought long and hard afterwards about whether I had called that one right. Today's High Court ruling convinces me that I did. No one denies that jobs are important. Few would deny that the national interest is also important, but surely the government must have known that that they were on shaky legal ground when making this decision? And the revelation aired by the BBC this afternoon that the Saudis blackmailed the government by threatening a 9/11 equivalent is beyond disgusting. For a British government to accede to that level of blackmail is shocking in its own right. Lord Justice Moses was absolutely right when he said this in his judgement...

"No one, whether within this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice. It is the failure of government and the defendant to bear that essential principle in mind that justifies the intervention of this court."

I'd happily second that. Gordon Brown now faces an invidious decision. Either he stands by what Tony Blair did or he repudiates it and faces the consequences. I don't envy him.