Life, the Universe and Everything

There was a copy of the Daily Mail left lying around and like an idiot, I read it - not all of it; Richard Littlejohn has a whole page after all. The leader comment of the paper - I think it was Tuesday’s issue - concerned the abrupt termination of the corruption investigation by the serious fraud office’s investigation into the deal between the Saudi Arabian government and British Aerospace.

The basis of the story is that the Saudis wanted to buy some of the Typhoon fighters from us. The investigation was started because it appeared that the Saudis had - how can I put this - smoothed the deal along with a financial donation to BAE’s favourite charity. Had this bribe - sorry, alleged donation - come to light it could have caused the deal to collapse. The reason it did not is because the Saudis said if we pursued this investigation, not only would they not buy our weapons causing job loses in this country, but they would also stop sharing intelligence with us so that we could fight Islamist terrorist groups.

That is the background (we shall come back to that later) as simply as I can put it. The British government immediately stopped any investigation from proceeding because it was ‘not in the national interest’ that one of our largest weapons manufacturers was selling fighters to people that considered that they were beyond the rule of law.

Back to the Daily Mail’s leader comment now; they agreed that this investigation was not in the national interest because it would have resulted in job losses - British job losses, let us not forget that - and a diminishment in our ability to hunt out terrorist groups. The good bit though was the Daily Mail’s reasoning for stopping this investigation. After pointing out that it wished to be disassociated with actually agreeing with Tony Blair or a Labour government, the Daily Mail said - and I have to paraphrase here because I did not pick the paper up - that the investigation was right to stop because both the Saudi government and BAE systems have said they did not do anything wrong.

Rather a novel way of concluding investigations. How do you plead; guilty or not guilty? Not guilty. Fine, let us all go home and stop wasting taxpayer’s money: you obviously did not do it because you would have owned up, this is Britain after all. I wonder why Saddam Hussein did not try this line of defence: say you did not do it and the Daily Mail will find you not guilty.

Before I finish here, I will go back to the background. The Daily Mail agreed that our national security and employment figures should take precedence over the rule of law. I would like to disagree: by pursuing this investigation until a prosecution - and conviction should the jury decide on guilt - we would demonstrate that we actually hold the moral high ground in this country. If Saudi Arabia has to buy their jet fighters elsewhere and refuses to hand over intelligence to the UK because of bribery and corruption investigations, provided we publish all of our findings, who looks bad here? Is it the democratic monarchy of the United Kingdom or the kingdom of Saudi Arabia where they have threatened and bullied us into a position where we decide not show the rest of the world that they are a bunch of bullies? You decide.