Richard Godwin: Deals with dodgy regimes show our double standards

Early in 1985 Margaret Thatcher issued a fawning apology to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. The newspapers had been raising questions about the al-Yamamah arms deal, which eventually saw Britain supply the Saudis with £43 billion worth of weaponry. There had been allegations that BAE systems had made £1 billion payments to the Saudi royal family to secure the deal. Our ally needed reassurance — and the Iron Lady was only too happy to provide it.

“I am convinced that the possibilities for co-operation between our two governments and peoples are very great indeed,” she wrote to the king. “I am particularly encouraged by Your Majesty’s welcome assurance that British press reporting on Saudi Arabia will not be allowed to influence our bilateral relations.”

These insights came to light this summer, when documents concerning the largest arms deal in British history were finally declassified. There were still redactions in the documents, perhaps honouring Thatcher’s promises of discretion to King Fahd.

However, they do illuminate two points that bear on the drama surrounding Britain supplying £5.9 million in prison training contracts to the Saudi regime — an issue helpfully raised last week by Jeremy Corbyn, quite an effective Opposition leader, it turns out, since David Cameron has now cancelled those contracts.

As we saw with his tabloid-inspired epiphany on the Mediterranean refugee crisis, Cameron is alive to the emotion of the moment. Clearly the well-publicised case of Karl Andree, the British citizen sentenced to 350 lashes for fermenting his own wine, bore on his decision. (Incidentally, I met a nice British woman at a cocktail event the other day who lives in Riyadh and told me I’d love its Prohibition-style drinking culture.)

It remains to be seen whether we’re in for some long-term change of strategy. For what the Thatcher documents show is first, that our leaders have form when it comes to grovelling to autocracies whose value the British electorates would view as repugnant. And second, it doesn’t really matter what the British press or public think about a regime that sentences a 74-year-old man to likely death by whipping for indulging a harmless hobby; condemns Ali Mohammed al-Nimr to crucifixion for attending a political rally when he was 17; executes prisoners (by some counts) at a faster rate than Islamic State; or exports its own repressive ideology almost as effectively as it moves barrels of crude oil.

Behind closed doors assurances will be made. Only last year Britain signed a £7 billion deal to provide Saudi Arabia with 72 Typhoon jets — which makes the controversial £5.9 million prisons contract seem rather piddly.

Now that Cameron has developed one of his sporadic backbones, many are echoing Philip Hammond’s concern that he has made us appear an “untrustworthy ally”. As Lord Palmerston observed: “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” So I suppose the trustworthy approach would be to shut up and take the money.

But as soon as our elected leaders strike these deals they have to accept that they surrender their right to lecture us about moral failings at home or abroad. Personally, I can’t see how the national interest would be served any less if they simply told the Saudis that they were only pretending to like them because they’re rich.