Helping British Business

Daveybloke's latest trip to the Middle East on behalf of Britain's arms dealers has been rather tactlessly supplemented with the release of Government figures demonstrating Britain's long record of friendly and obliging salesmanship. When it comes to what Britain's leading liberal newspaper politely terms "autocratic régimes" (they don't become dictatorships until they have the temerity to disobey orders), British governments have shown far more generosity over debts than the present administration has ever shown its native proles over the country's maxed-out credit card.

Britain lent money to Robert Mugabe so that he could buy Land Rovers; he said the vehicles would be used "with due respect for human rights", but by some unfortunate oversight they were used in crushing demonstrations. Britain lent Suharto money to buy armoured cars and jets which, despite Robin Cook's ethical dimensions, somehow ended up being used to massacre Timorese civilians. In a particularly delightful coup before the Falklands war, Britain lent Galtieri's junta the money to buy aircraft which were then used to invade the islands; and Britain also lent money to Saddam Hussein and Hosni Mubarak before the unfortunate transformations of those gentlemen from favoured trading partners into ravening ogres. Now that Mubarak has been removed, however, the Daveybloke administration has shown its sympathy for the Arab spring by demanding repayment of the debt which Mubarak incurred in acquiring the weapons to suppress it.