Georgia L Gilholy is a journalist.
In 2018 Jeremy Hunt, then Foreign Secretary, summoned the Saudi ambassador for a dressing down, after reports that Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi had been brutally murdered in the Islamic Kingdom’s Istanbul embassy. “If media reports prove correct, we will treat the incident seriously,” he warned.
Naturally, no such “seriousness” transpired. Instead, Downing Street will soon roll out the red carpet for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – who is attempting to rebrand himself under the less intimidating acronym “MBS”.
The slathering apologetics directed towards this tyrant is the death rattle of an establishment that has simply given up on our country. Britain is now too poor and weak to be fussy about who its friends are.
Young Brits are entering a job market which has experienced zero real wage growth since 2008. Is it any surprise that over one-third of British adults think the young would be sensible to up sticks and flee abroad – or that the number of internet searches in the UK for construction jobs in Saudi Arabia has soared by 293 per cent year-on-year?
Shortly after news of Number Ten’s plans emerged, a new Human Rights Watch report alleged that the Kingdom’s border guards have killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers on the Yemeni border and that, far from a rogue event or random tragedy, this is “committed as part of a Saudi government policy”. Imagine the outrage from Whitehall and Fleet Street if Russia had been the party responsible.
Nor has the Saudi response to the Iran-backed war with Houthi terrorists in Yemen, which has included the bombing and engineered starvation of civilians, been becoming of a civilised global partner. At home, harsh attacks on political dissidents, women, gay people, and foreign workers are too numerous and gruesome to list here in full.
Post-war human rights declarations, drafted by international bodies such as the United Nations, were little more than a diplomatic compromise, seeking aspirational agreements on fundamental rights between often deeply opposed governments and cultures.
As the continuation of endless horrors across the world, including in Saudi Arabia, testifies, it was never their purpose to attempt to find consensus on the philosophical basis for such rights, let alone enforce their universal and equal protection. For all the prestige vested by some in international institutions, the nation-state remains is the best vehicle available to protect our freedoms in the real, flawed world,
Yet we ourselves are failing at doing so. Not only is our economy on life support, but Brits now risk arrest for praying silently. In 2015, during another controversial state visit by a foreign tyrant, Tibetan protesters were arrested by police in London for waving flags near Xi Jinping’s car.
Is it any surprise our great and good fail to discern our country’s friends from its enemies? For example, last week David Rose, a veteran political journalist, wrote that:
“Earlier this year Iran and Saudi Arabia reached a partial rapprochement, brokered by China. Welcoming MBS to Downing St may help to ensure that this unsettling development goes no further – a valuable prize in itself.”
Certainly, an embolded bold Iran – possibly with nuclear weapons – is a major threat to the world. But can we seriously assume the Saudis hold Rishi Sunak in such high regard? It is Washington that really calls the shots, as both London and Riyadh well know.
Pretending that Britain’s Saudi ties are part of some genius game of diplomatic chess gives those who govern us far too much credit. On domestic policy we see how our politicians constantly jump and backpedal from one bullish lie to another, based entirely on optics and short-term gain. Why would their approach to foreign policy be any different?
As Mark Wallace has argued on this site, aiding Saudi’s murderous and torturous work in Yemen and elsewhere has been directly harmful to Britain’s reputation and interests, as is our addiction to their oil. International affairs must always involve some degree of compromise, but that is a different thing from encouraging dangerous and damaging reliance, as successive Labour and Tory administrations have done.
Allowing the brown-nosing of Riyadh to become a central part of our foreign policy was a choice, not an inevitability. Britain would not be in this position if we had invested in our own energy security. Our embarrassment is well-deserved and entirely self-inflicted.
A better future is always possible. But it cannot not involve an impoverished Britain pleading for a cut of hydrocarbons from a regime which cares nothing for its own citizens, never mind ours.