Soft Power, Hard Cash

A committee of MPs has been looking into Britain's relationship with the Reverend Blair's favourite Islamic fundamentalists and has concluded, predictably enough, that there are a few public-relations difficulties. Saudi Arabia, on whose orders Blair told the Serious Fraud Office to drop an investigation into BAE Systems, is by happy coincidence Britain's biggest market in the Middle East and one of our most enthusiastic weapons purchasers. Just like the Reverend Tony before him, Britain's Head Boy insists that in order to help improve human rights in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, we must continue profiteering exactly as we are. The Government has asserted that "nothing is off the table", although presumably Daveybloke and his chums would balk at urging Riyadh to sign up to anything so tainted with Euro-communism as the Declaration of Human Rights. The foreign affairs committee noted with particular concern that, even after the Reverend Tony, "some witnesses not only disagreed with UK policy but appeared to disbelieve the government's account of its private conversations with Saudi Arabia on reform" and concluded, in the best message-movie style, that there was fault on both sides despite apparently universal good intentions.