Friday, February 05, 2010 

BAE and Saudis finally brought to book.

Away from the country's obsession with what's happening in other people's bedrooms, BAE Systems was today finally forced into admitting what we all already knew: that its deals involving both Tanzania and Saudi Arabia were sweetened by massive bribery and corruption. Not that it was our dogged and determined investigators at the Serious Farce Office that managed to get the company, which may as well be nationalised considering just how closely it works with the government, to own up to operating a massive slush fund which enriched the already filthily wealthy Saudi royal family, but instead the far more tenacious US Department of Justice.

Blair of course forced the SFO into dropping its own investigation to the Al-Yamanah deal, on the grounds of national security, based on spurious but outrageous threats from the Saudis, and also on deeply questionable claims that there was no guarantee of a successful prosecution resulting from the inquiries. The opposite was the case: the SFO had just succeeded in persuading the Swiss to give them access to bank accounts which would have provided prima facie evidence of the payments from BAE to the intermediaries of the Saudi royal family. As the statement from the Department of Justice makes clear:

"BAE agreed to transfer sums totalling more than £10m and more than $9m to a bank account in Switzerland controlled by an intermediary. BAE was aware that there was a high probability that the intermediary would transfer part of these payments to the [Saudi] official."

To call that an understatement would be superfluous. It is though a withering indictment of both of our legal system when it comes to combating corruption and also our willingness to interfere with what ought to be untouchable: the rule of law itself. The Americans, whom we often sneer at, are both more prepared to stand up to threats from bullies and also to prosecute their own than our craven and opportunist equivalents are. New Labour has been responsible for many disgraces, but this really does rank up there, along with Iraq, as one of their very worst abuses of power.

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2/05/2010 11:17:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, July 30, 2008 

A victory for the arms dealers, the kleptocrats and the government.

It's been buried thanks to the oh so exciting David Miliband article in the Grauniad, but the House of Lords today made a ruling which will potentially affect the rule of law and justice in this country for decades to come. Overruling Lord Justice Moses and Sullivan, who had came to the decision that the Serious Fraud Office had acted unlawfully in dropping the investigation into the BAE Systems slush fund, after the Saudis threatened not just to withdraw their co-operation on counter-terrorism, but also specifically made the chilling comment "that British lives on British streets" were at risk were it not be stopped, the law lords have very narrowly decided that the SFO director was acting lawfully.

Unlike Moses and Sullivan, the law lords have taken the view, like the government, that such threats are either a "matter or regret" or a "fact of life". It doesn't matter how outrageous the threats were, how if they had been made by a British citizen that he could have been charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice, as both the attorney general and Robert Wardle followed the correct procedures in deciding to drop the case, the Royal Courts of Justice were wrong in declaring that the initial decision was unlawful.

Legally, this can be understood and accepted. It however frightfully ignores the much larger, bigger picture: that the UK government was to all intents and purposes being blackmailed by one of its supposed allies. That is of course if we accept that the threats were to be followed through, which in itself is by no means clear. Even if the Saudis had withdrawn their counter-terrorism co-operation, all such information is now pooled between the main intelligence agencies, meaning that the CIA for one would have forwarded it on to MI5/6 as a matter of course. To give the impression that this threat was more real than it was, the Saudi ambassador expressly made the statement that "British lives on British streets" were at risk if the inquiry was not dropped. Rather than tell the Saudis to get off their high horse and make clear that due to the separation of powers such an investigation could not be called off by politicians, the government meekly gave in, as Moses and Sullivan initially ruled. Robert Wardle, the director of the SFO, had little choice but to cancel the inquiry, as it was clear if he didn't the politicians, including the attorney general, would go ahead and do so anyway.

It takes a moment to digest exactly what sort of precedent this sets. This ruling more or less means that any foreign power, whether an ally or not, can threaten our national security whether directly or indirectly in any case where one of their citizens or otherwise is being tried or even investigated, and we the citizens can do absolutely nothing to challenge the government if it decides that such threats are serious enough to drop that investigation or trial, as long as they have acted appropriately, as the law lords decided Wardle and Lord Goldsmith had. Say that by some miracle or another that the man accused of murdering Alexander Litvinenko, Andrei Lugovoi, was captured and to be put on trial. Russia wouldn't even have to necessarily threaten violence to stop the trial, all it would have to do is threaten to sever ties on helping with national security, or to not pass on information it has on terrorist activities, and the government could therefore conclude that as more lives than just one are being threatened, it would be perfectly lawful for the prosecution of Lugovoi to be dropped.

In practice, it's unlikely that such an extreme case would ever occur. No, what instead is apparent here that from the very beginning the government wanted the SFO inquiry into the slush fund dropped, not because the Saudis were making threats, but because BAE themselves wanted it dropped. It's been established time and again that BAE may as well be a nationalised company, such is the power it has over ministers. The Guardian's expose which initially altered the authorities to the slush fund connected with the al-Yamamah deal was severely embarrassing, even if it didn't have New Labour's fingers all over it. It proved what long been suspected: that BAE and the government had provided the Saudis with massive sweeteners so the deal went ahead, potentially over a £1bn in bribes, which enabled Prince Bandar to buy a private jet, and which was also spent on prostitutes, sports cars and yachts among other things. All of this is helped along through massive public subsidy: up to £850m a year. In other words, we are directly funding the Saudi royal family's taste in whores and vehicles, while its people suffer under one of the most authoritarian, discriminatory and corrupt governments in the world. Despite everything else, it really is all about the arms deals and the oil. The government got its way because it realised it could rely on the spurious defence of "national security". Moses and Sullivan didn't fall for that. The law lords don't either, and one of them, Baroness Hale, even made clear that she was very uncomfortable with having to overrule them, but had little legal option other than to.

The government response to the initial ruling, which understandably horrified them, was to completely ignore it except to appeal against it. There doesn't seem to have been any reaction today either. The groups that brought the initial challenge, CAAT and Corner House were far from silent:

Nicholas Hildyard of The Corner House said:

"Now we know where we are. Under UK law, a supposedly independent prosecutor can do nothing to resist a threat made by someone abroad if the UK government claims that the threat endangers national security.
"The unscrupulous who have friends in high places overseas willing to make such threats now have a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card -- and there is nothing the public can do to hold the government to account if it abuses its national security powers. Parliament needs urgently to plug this gaping hole in the law and in the constitutional checks and balances dealing with national security.
"With the law as it is, a government can simply invoke 'national security' to drive a coach and horses through international anti-bribery legislation, as the UK government has done, to stop corruption investigations."

Symon Hill of CAAT said:

"BAE and the government will be quickly disappointed if they think that this ruling will bring an end to public criticism. Throughout this case we have been overwhelmed with support from people in all walks of life. There has been a sharp rise in opposition to BAE's influence in the corridors of power. Fewer people are now taken in by exaggerated claims about British jobs dependent on Saudi arms deals. The government has been judged in the court of public opinion. The public know that Britain will be a better place when BAE is no longer calling the shots."

This ruling, as if it needed stating again, is far, far more serious than last week's involving Max Mosley. The media however on this case, with the exception of the Guardian or Independent fully supported the government's craven surrender, and will do the same over today's decision. When it personally affects them and their business models they will scream and scream until they're sick; when it potentially means, however spuriously, that "lives are at risk", they jump straight behind the government, and, of course, the money. Such is how democracy in this country works. The rule of law, justice being blind and everything else associated always comes second.

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7/30/2008 09:11:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, April 10, 2008 

Contempt is a two-way street.

"Why do they hate us so much?" is one of those wails that occasionally wafts from Westminster and into the press, politicians and commentators alike wondering why our representatives are either spat on, denounced as all the same or just completely ignored. There is a good case for making that the vast majority of politicians are not in it for themselves, that they genuinely do believe in some tangible concepts, and that they serve us with a diligence which many of us ourselves could neither achieve nor would want to attempt to. Then there's days like today, when the case for the defence seems so utterly overwhelming.

As Mr Eugenides writes, it's almost as if Gordon Brown at the moment has a reverse midas touch, where everything he goes near suddenly turns to shit the moment he opens his mouth about it. Here's the former clunking fist, the man accused of being Stalin, and he's being repeatedly made to look as if he's like another fictional ruler, the emperor without any clothes, debasing himself in public in front of the baying and mocking crowds. Half of this is because of his scattergun approach: one day declaring that plastic bags will be banished because the Daily Mail's just started a campaign up about them, the next deciding that malaria is the world's most pressing issue. Tony Blair wasn't immune to this either, as anyone who can recall his plea for Coronation Street's Deirdre's miscarriage of justice to be rectified can testify. The power behind the throne then though was Alastair Campbell, who compared to Brown's current advisers and chief spin doctor Stephen Carter was a genius and rottweiler rolled into one. Where Blair's spin was assured, either because it was done so well, or because the media was still involved in its temporary love affair with New Labour, Brown's is fast becoming his biggest weakness and in danger of turning him into a laughing stock.

Yesterday's announcement that Brown wouldn't after all be attending the opening ceremony of the Olympics was seemingly designed, in light of the protests in London and his own failure to so much as touch the flame when it arrived in Downing Street while the Chinese shell-suit mafia obscured him from vision, to be a good news story. Prime minister does decent thing despite potential pitfall over Britain hosting the next games! Easily offended Chinese get political equivalent of blowing a raspberry! Strong-man Brown says no to human rights abusers! Only, the slightest deeper look at the story exposed it for the fraud that it was. Brown had never explicitly stated that he personally was going to attend the opening ceremony; rather, span Downing Street, he was only always going to attend the closing ceremony, so that the spirit of the Olympics could be passed on. In any case, Tessa Jowell, the truly hapless Olympics minister is still going to attend the opening ceremony, so there's not going to be any boycott of any sort whatsoever. Within minutes of Brown/his lackeys making the announcement on Channel 4 News the entire thing had fell apart. The Conservatives, already fusillading Brown with accusations of dithering have yet another weapon to use against him, while the public themselves, not to mention those whom the gesture was meant to please, just feel cheated and almost lied to.

A very different sort of contempt but still one which reverberates around the country was thrillingly and damningly exposed by Lord Justice Moses and Lord Justice Sullivan in the Royal Courts of Justice. Although ostensibly the case brought by Corner House and CAAT was against the Serious Fraud Office's Robert Wardle after he caved into pressure from Downing Street and the Attorney General to drop the investigation into BAE's slush fund to the Saudis, this was a judgement that exposed the sham and sheer mendacity of Blair's government in its dying days. Prince Bandar, the man since revealed as receiving up to £1bn through the Al-Yamamah deal, waltzes into Downing Street, feeling the heat on the back of his neck because the SFO is close to accessing Swiss bank accounts that would confirm the allegations against BAE, and says that unless the investigation is abandoned, not only will the Saudis take their next big order of armaments elsewhere, but they'll also cut off diplomatic and intelligence relations. Instead of telling Bandar to get lost and take his blatant blackmail with him, Blair writes directly to Lord Goldsmith, who gives in and orders Wardle to drop the investigation.

It's worth quoting directly from the judgement, so sneering as it is of the government's action:
# The defendant in name, although in reality the Government, contends that the Director was entitled to surrender to the threat. The law is powerless to resist the specific and, as it turns out, successful attempt by a foreign government to pervert the course of justice in the United Kingdom, by causing the investigation to be halted. The court must, so it is argued, accept that whilst the threats and their consequences are "a matter of regret", they are a "part of life". (§ 6)

# So bleak a picture of the impotence of the law invites at least dismay, if not outrage. The danger of so heated a reaction is that it generates steam; this obscures the search for legal principle. The challenge, triggered by this application, is to identify a legal principle which may be deployed in defence of so blatant a threat. However abject the surrender to that threat, if there is no identifiable legal principle by which the threat may be resisted, then the court must itself acquiesce in the capitulation. (§ 7)

and
Had such a threat been made by one who was subject to the criminal law of this country, he would risk being charged with an attempt to pervert the course of justice. (§ 59

The rule of law is nothing if it fails to constrain overweening power.(§ 65)

The government's response to this tearing apart of its decision, this exposition of how they broke the rule of law itself so that one of the most vicious dictatorships on the planet could continue to be sold arms it doesn't need and so that its demagogic royal family can continue to receive vast payments courtesy of the UK taxpayer to be used on prostitutes, private jets and all the other trappings of unearned wealth while their own citizens are not even afforded the most basic of human rights? None. It's refused to comment. As has BAE, and the Serious Fraud Office itself, not to mention Prince Bandar. Perhaps it should be said that all those mainly involved have either gone or are about to go: Blair took Lord Goldsmith along with him, and Wardle himself is shortly to be replaced at the SFO. Even so, it doesn't slightly begin to justify the silence not just from the government, but from the Labour party as a entirety.

Dave Osler has already said this, but it's a point well worth repeating. This week much attention has been paid to events in Dewsbury, and discussion of whether the alleged abduction of Shannon Matthews was a scam from the very beginning. Her mother has been charged with perverting the course of justice, for not informing the police of all she knew and when she knew it. The government back in December 2006 did almost exactly the same thing, except on a scale completely alien to anyone in that part of Yorkshire. The difference is that Matthews is just a member of the underclass; Goldsmith and Blair were the land's highest legal adviser and the prime minister himself, yet they conspired to pervert the course of justice and in doing so broke the rule of law irrevocably. Some of those in Dewsbury have been warned not to take the law into their own hands as a response; who could possibly blame anyone for having complete contempt for the politicians responsible in this much larger and much graver case?

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4/10/2008 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, March 25, 2008 

And now, some rare good news, amid a tepid constitutional reform white paper.

Only 3 years after it was first passed, the sections of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 dealing with protests with 1km of Westminster are to be repealed. Presumably those members of parliament who justified the restrictions on the basis that Brian Haw's placards could hide a bomb might be moved to retract their words, and perhaps those convicted under the act might also have their records cleared, along with apologies from the government for how they were prosecuted simply for exercising their democratic right. Perhaps I might go piss in the wind.

That, sadly, was about the most radical part of today's white paper on the "constitutional renewal bill" (PDF). The other measures are either ones that have long been proposed or ones that are incredibly feeble. Hence the reform of the attorney general's powers, prompted entirely because of the concerns over the advice given prior to the Iraq war and Lord Goldsmith's role in the ending of the Serious Fraud Office inquiry into the BAE-Saudi slush fund are such that he/she in the future will retain the right to end prosecutions over matters of national security, which just so happens to be the specious reasoning behind the dropping of the SFO case! The change itself that the attorney general will have to report to parliament when he/she does wield that power isn't clear either; Goldsmith announced to the Lords previously that the inquiry was being dropped. Isn't that more or less one and the same thing?

The whole bill seems to have this aura of meaninglessness and paucity of radicalism about it. Parliament will now have to have all treaties laid before it and passed before they can be enshrined, but this won't apply to either EU or tax treaties, so how often this new parliamentary right will be exercised is open to question. The civil service will be formally made independent, which is long overdue, but again how much it will actually change anything is another matter.

As promised, the bill does set out how parliament will have a vote before war which is a much needed reform, but this doesn't inspire total confidence either. Two points open to question are that the attorney general's advice on whether the conflict itself will be legal under international law will not be provided in full but whether it's legal or not will be given, which is hardly sufficient either for those expected to vote on such a matter or for this country's standing on the international stage. It also won't apply to when special forces are being used, won't be retroactive, so if forces are sent in secretly then there won't necessarily be a vote once their mission becomes known, and if parliament is dissolved or adjourned when a conflict breaks out, again the government reserves the right not to recall parliament in order for a vote to be held. We'd better hope then a war doesn't break out sometime between July and the end of the party conferences at September, as the government will be fully justified in ignoring calls for a vote, just as it ignored calls for a recall to debate the Israel-Lebanon-Hizbullah war in 2006.

The other parts of the bill/white paper deal with public appointments, on which the government is yet to respond to recommendations made by the liason committee; the intelligence and security committee, which under the proposals is to be ever so slightly beefed up, with appointments made by the commons rather than the prime minister himself, briefings to be given making the committee's work more public, a role for an investigator previously assigned to be revived, and with a debate after publishing of reports in the House of Lords. This doesn't come close to what we really need, which is a watchdog similar to either prisons inspectorate or to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Similarly, if the directors of either MI5 or MI6 can make public speeches about just how dire the security situation is, as both the former and current head of MI5 has done, they should be expected to give their evidence to the committees in public. They can't demand secrecy one moment and give bloodcurdling speeches the next.

Finally the paper sees no reason to change the current archaic system of the prime minister appointing senior members of the Church of England to their respective posts, although it does deign to consider recommendations made by the Synod itself over the procedures, and the flag will now be able to fly from government buildings permanently.

That, it seems, is the key metaphor for the entire packaging. Everything else might be screwed, but the flag will continue to fly.

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3/25/2008 09:37:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, June 07, 2007 

Money, oil and planes. (But don't mention the corruption.)

December the 14th 2006 will rightly go down as one of the most shameful days in Britain's recent political history. Not only was the prime minister of this country questioned by the police, which 10 Downing Street did everything in its power to knock down the news agenda, but it was also the day chosen by the Attorney General to announce to the Lords that he was ordering the dropping of the Serious Fraud Office's investigation into allegations that BAE Systems had been keeping a slush fund through which it paid for Saudi officials' Rolls-Royces, Californian holidays and prostitutes.

That, it seems, may well have been the tip of the iceberg. Both the Guardian and Panorama are now alleging that the SFO investigation had discovered that one of the Saudi princes involved in signing the initial Al-Yamamah deal has since then been paid somewhere in the region of a staggering £1bn by BAe in quarterly payments to Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud's account at Riggs bank in Washington.

Every single thing that the Saudi royal family stands for and imposes on the country it despotically reigns over ought to be completely inimical to the Labour party. This is a nation which still carries out beheadings in public, discriminates against women in a way highly similar to that which was given as one of the reasons for why removing the Taliban from Afghanistan was justified, and carries out torture as a matter of course against anyone suspected of more or less anything, something which four British men experienced firsthand. Speaking after their failed attempt to hold the House of Saud to account over their treatment, Les Walker commented:

"It's all down to money and oil and planes. Don't upset the Saudis. That's the British government's view."

He couldn't have got it more right. When it comes to the possibility of causing offense to the notoriously easily upset Saudi royal family, that's something that we obviously just can't afford. This isn't you see, about a disgusting autocratic regime profiting from a British company paying huge amounts into the accounts of already stinking rich royals, let alone about interfering with the rule of law in this country, but about hurting the feelings of one of the most despicable governments on the planet. While we routinely rile the Iranian government, making numerous allegations about its closeness to militants in Iraq and Afghanistan which are completely impossible to prove, suggesting that Saudi Arabia, which we know for a fact does all in its power to export the Wahhabist ideology that highly influences the Islamic fundamentalism preached by al-Qaida, is something that we would never ever do.

Hence why Tony Blair, rather than couching his reason for why the SFO investigation was dropped in terms of the damage which the Saudis had threatened to do to the war against terror, an empty threat if there ever was one in the first place, he instead made clear that this was more to down to the fact that probing into the financial dealings of the Saudis was just something you couldn't do:

"This investigation, if it had it gone ahead, would have involved the most serious allegations in investigations being made into the Saudi royal family."

Well, you don't say. That was rather the point, was it not? In actual fact, we ought to treasure this Blair comment, for the simple reason that he's for once telling the whole truth. This wasn't anything to do with the Saudis saying they weren't going to fill us in on all the hot gossip they'd got from torturing the latest extremist it's arrested, which they would have continued providing to the CIA which would have in turn passed it on to us, it was all to do with the SFO getting far, far too close to the truth. The Saudis were in a panic back in December, sparking a hysterical campaign by those with vested issues in keeping the full details of the original dove deal coming out, fearing that the Swiss were about to give the SFO access to details of bank accounts that would have showed the corruption going all the way to the crown prince himself.

While the SFO did have evidence that the payments from the BAe slush fund had continued past the date when Labour had finally got around to making such corruption illegal in 2002, we didn't until yesterday know that the government itself was in danger of being found complicit, with Lord Goldsmith apparently panicked that all the dirty washing was about to be hung out in public, the Ministry of Defence and the government's arms sale department, the Defence Export Services Organisation, knowing full well what had been going on for nearly 20 years.

The rule of law then, let alone this government's execrable record on tackling corruption, was always going to come second. The only way that the Saudi royals are ever likely to be held accountable, at least until the oil runs out, is by their own people, and it's difficult to disagree with Ken Livingstone when he said he longed for the day when they're swinging from the lamp-posts. This government has instead done everything in its power to stop even the slightest possibility of cracks emerging in the House of Saud's facade of invulnerability.

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6/07/2007 10:45:00 pm | | | links to this post

Saturday, December 16, 2006 

The politics of lying.

There is an exemplary article in the Guardian today by David Leigh and Rob Evans, the two journalists who kick-started the Serious Farce Office's investigation, which debunks many of the myths surrounding the whole BAe corruption inquiry.

Elsewhere, can you possibly guess which newspaper wholeheartedly supports Blair 'n' Goldsmith's decision to drop the inquiry?

Good move

TONY BLAIR was right to scrap the Serious Fraud Office probe into BAE’s sale of Typhoon jets to Saudi Arabia.

If the inquiry had gone ahead the Saudis would have pulled out and taken their business to France.

Highly unlikely. No one else has been stupid enough to buy France's jet fighters yet, and the Saudis weren't going to go alone over corruption allegations that affect BAe more than they do the absolute monarchy.

The cost to Britain: 50,000 lost jobs and terminal damage to swathes of our industry.

Lies. At most 5,000 jobs in the UK were "threatened", as a report on the benefits of the Eurofighter by York University's Centre of Defence Economics made clear. BAe themselves are major benefactors of York University, sponsoring the National Science Learning Centre there. It seems unlikely that they would therefore underestimate the amount of jobs that BAe's Eurofighter scheme would support.

That, presumably, would have pleased the left-wing trouble-makers who suspect BAE paid backhanders to the Saudi royal family to secure the sale.

Indeed, the SFO is made up entirely of left-wing trouble-makers. Like the head of the SFO, who rejected the idea that the probe would have led to nothing, and those left-wing trouble-makers at the Financial Times, who denounced the decision. As for suspecting, well, isn't it funny how the next two sentences of the Sun's leader are given over to defending bribes:

No one likes paying bribes. Give them to one customer and you may have to give them to all.

But in some parts of the world no business is done without handing over a few sweeteners.

That the Sun feels differently to "Sun readers' money" being used to bribe Saudi princes by paying for them to have sex with vice girls (through subsidies), as they describe the murdered sex worker Anneli Alderton on their front page, than it does to "wastes of taxpayers' money" and benefit cheats is worth noting for the next time they righteously start a campaign against either.

It would only be fair at this point to note that Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud has a 6-7% stake in News Corporation, News International, the Sun's publishers' parent company. This doubtless has no bearing on the Sun's dignified and respectful editorial stand whatsoever.

Similarly, the fact that Sacha Baron Cohen's film Borat was produced by Fox has obviously not attributed to the fact that there have been two puff pieces in the Sun in two days regarding its chances of clinching awards, one written by failed comedian Johnny Vaughan, who has in the past been accused of not watching the films he "reviews".

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12/16/2006 07:41:00 pm | | | links to this post

Friday, December 15, 2006 

The death of Blair's essential values.

Lord Bell, described by the Guardian as an "arch-propagandist", who led the hysteria for the SFO investigation to be dropped.

December the 14th will go down in history as the day that the prime minister was questioned by police over the loans for peerages scandal, but the real outrage should be over two things: the shameless and overt attempts to overshadow the prime minister's questioning, and the decision to cancel the Serious Farce Office's investigation into corruption involving BAe Systems and Saudi Arabia's despotic monarchy.

The Grauniad reports that the Dear Leader hadn't informed other members of the cabinet that he was to be interviewed by Inspector Knacker yesterday, meaning that Alistair Darling, announcing the plans to close 2,500 post offices, and Douglas Alexander, publishing a report recommending new runways at Stanstead and Heathrow most likely had no inkling of how they were going to be pawns in Blair and 10 Downing Street's spin game. They had known for weeks that Lord Stevens was also going to be holding a press conference stating his findings from the inquiry into the death of Princess Diana. That meant that the tabloids were the following day bound to be heavily distracted in the least, and lo and behold, so it came to pass.

The broads and television news had to be additionally bought off, though. Enter stage left Lord Goldsmith, who decided to pick yesterday afternoon to inform the House of Lords that he was dropping the investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into allegations that BAe Systems was running a slush fund through which notable Saudis were getting such perks such as prostitutes, Rolls-Royces, and holidays in California.

His statement to the Lords is one of the most mendacious of recent times. He said:

"It has been necessary to balance the need to maintain the rule of law against the wider public interest. No weight has been given to commercial interests or to the national economic interest.

The prime minister and the foreign and defence secretaries have expressed the clear view that continuation of the investigation would cause serious damage to UK/Saudi security, intelligence and diplomatic cooperation, which is likely to have seriously negative consequences for the UK public interest in terms of both national security and our highest priority foreign policy objectives in the Middle East."

The only conclusion that can be come to, other than the one that Lord Goldsmith is a fucking liar, is that the Saudis had threatened to withdraw from the intelligence pact which means that all "intelligence" is pooled between the security services. Rather than call their bluff and accuse the Saudis of blackmail, interfering with the right of another sovereign nation to investigate possible corruption, Blair and Goldsmith rolled over. The message seems to be that even if you're a despotic regime that practices torture, bans women from driving cars, and stands for pretty much everything that the Labour party has historically opposed, all you have to do is threaten to stop cooperation and our politicians will drop everything to make it right.

OK, let's face it, the above is a load of bollocks. Goldsmith is a fucking liar. We already know this from when Blair more or less told him, or to give it Lord Hutton's take on why Alastair Campbell sexed up the Iraq weapons dossier, subliminally inferred that he had to change his mind over the fact that it is was possible war would be illegal. The Saudis may have threatened to withdraw cooperation in the wider "war on terror", but it was an empty threat. There's no way that the Saudis would have stopped giving the same material to the CIA, and the CIA would have passed it on to MI5/6 as a matter of course. The reality is that the SFO, for once, was very close to getting to the bottom of the whole corrupt concealed payments and perks packages which have been wetting the Saudis' whistles for decades. They'd either got the Swiss to hand over the details about Swiss bank accounts, or were just about to. Potential charges for current/ex-BAe salesmen/board members/executives might not have been that far off (the SFA apparently had informed Goldsmith they would need another 18 months, but that they were certain a case could be put together), with all the bad publicity and revelations about just how the taxpayer has been paying through subsidies for Saudi princes to bang whores likely to come out in the midst of any trial. This was something that BAe and the Saudis could not allow at any cost.

Hence the hysterical campaign by BAe, taken up nobly by the Daily Mail and the Sun, as described here by Unity, that tens of thousands of jobs were at risk, with the Saudis threatening to go elsewhere. It was all bluster. There had been some negotiations with the French, but they hadn't got anywhere. Local constituency MPs, worried that anger would be directed at them, also took up the cause, as Lyndsay Hoyle continued to do today, showing that he didn't have the faintest clue what he was talking about:

"Quite rightly they were happy with the news," he said, adding that it was a boost to a wide range of companies including Rolls-Royce, which builds engines.

"Tens of thousands of jobs were put at risk by a 1980s issue."

He said that the investigation had been going on for too long and there was no evidence of any wrongdoing. "Jobs would have gone," he added.

On the contrary, documents seized from a warehouse in Hertfordshire and obtained by the Guardian back in 2004 showed that payments from the alleged slush fund had contained past the date when corrupt deals were made illegal in 2002. As for evidence of wrongdoing, there was plenty of circumstantial, and it was the possibility of the SFO getting access to Swiss bank accounts that resulted in BAe and the Saudis realising they were deadly serious.

Whether Goldsmith's announcement was brought forward once Blair and Downing Street realised that the amount of cover they had counted on hadn't done the job, or if it was just a happy coincidence, we probably will never know, although we all know about this government's record.

The lie still had to be decided upon though for cancelling the SFO investigation. Whether doing so on the basis of jobs and "saving" the deal was potentially against international law is uncertain, but was likely to cause further anger among those who wanted to see the SFO finish its probe. Instead, the government hid once again behind "national security" and "counter-terrorism", when its clear that it had absolutely nothing to do with it. This was a political decision taken from up high, with Goldsmith playing the fall-guy and our "strategic interest" providing the fig leaf. That the courts are also less likely to disagree with a decision in the "national interest" was also a factor. The lefties are pissed off, but the majority of the right agrees with the decision, and everything balances out.

The further explanation given today by Blair 'n' Goldsmith is laughable. How could they possibly know that if the investigation had been allowed to continue that it wouldn't have resulted in a successful prosecution anyway? The attorney general could have waited until it was finished, then decided that there wasn't a case to prosecute, as would be within his rights. Instead he's brought further shame on his supposedly independent position by discontinuing it before it was even finished.

In the midst of all this the death of the Labour party becomes apparent. Cozying up to brutal dictatorships, selling them weapons and allowing them to torture our citizens without them then being able to seek recompense is one thing, but interfering blatantly with the rule of law and the right of government agencies to investigate when a crime has believed to have been committed is quite another. It's effectively given the Saudi royal family the right to do whatever they want, as it obviously won't effect them because of the "strategic interest". We've made clear that they and BAe are entirely above the law. Last week the following passage made up a part of Blair's speech on multiculturalism:
But when it comes to our essential values - belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, equal treatment for all

By Blair's essential values, he is no longer British, and no longer is the Labour party. It is now nothing more than a vessel used by those who are doing so for power, and for power's sake only. If yesterday isn't the beginning of the end for this government, then something really has gone wrong.

Related posts:
Chicken Yogurt - The Pariah Sketch
Nether-World - A Shameful Day for Blair and Britain

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12/15/2006 07:04:00 pm | | | links to this post

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