Shared Values

The hotbed of leftist subversion that is the British high court has conspired with the anti-ministerial forces of Corner House and the anti-peacekeeping Campaign Against the Arms Trade and ruled that Tony and his chums showed excessive regard for shared values when they leaned on the Serious Fraud Office to drop its investigation into the al-Yamamah arms deal between BAE Systems and the House of Saud. As Kim Howells has pointed out, Tony and his chums share many values with the nice men in Riyadh. Tony has no problem with torture, and neither does the House of Saud. Tony likes big guns and jet planes, and so does the House of Saud. Tony likes big money, and the House of Saud more than likely believes that he is not wrong there. Tony has an invisible friend in the sky who judges his every action and finds most if not all of them to be the actions of a pretty straight sort of guy; it seems not impossible that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and his servant Prince Bandar are parties to a similarly convenient covenant. Accordingly, when Prince Bandar displayed his respect for British fortitude by threatening to withhold information about potential terrorist attacks, Tony and his chums were all of a tizzy. "If this caused another 7/7," squealed the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, "how could we say our investigation is more important?" As one would expect, therefore, Tony and his chums caved in. Tony's lawyer chum, Peter "the Rock" Goldsmith, had a bit of a chat with the hapless Robert Swardlewardle, who agreed to damage the reputation of his own department because the matter was "an exceptional case in exceptional circumstances", which self-evidently justified the British government's pandering to the wants of some Islamic fundamentalists. The Serious Fraud Office is now "carefully considering the implications of the judgment and the way forward" while the Government considers rushing through a law to make "national security" a more legally watertight excuse for illegality than it seems to be at the moment.