Britain’s relationship with Saudi Arabia has long shown that, with enough money floating around, the British establishment can be coaxed into the most unpleasant behaviour. The multi-million-dollar corruption around BAE’s Al-Yamamah arms deal is only the most extreme case.
Last week Union flags were flying at half-mast, in a government-mandated show of sympathy on the death of the king of Saudi Arabia.
But David Hencke has unearthed, and David Allen Green has explained, something more than symbolic. The English Ministry of Justice is taking money to work with the Saudi punishment system. Yep, they are taking some £6 million to work with the world leaders in flogging and beheading. As Green says:
There are many responses to the horrific brutality of the legal system of our ally Saudi Arabia. One is to ignore it; another is to seek to improve it. But on the face of it, it takes a peculiar callousness to use UK civil service resources to try to make money for the UK government out of it.