Britain has sold its soul to the House of Saud. Shame on us

Britain has sold its soul to the House of Saud. Shame on us | Owen Jones

Outrage over the murder of Jamal Kashoggi will not last. Our complicity with this murderous dictatorship is a scandal

There is, finally, some scrutiny of Britain’s sordid relationship with one of the most abhorrent dictatorships on Earth. That it has taken the murder of a journalist – rather than, say, Saudi Arabia’s remorseless war in Yemen, now the world’s worst humanitarian crisis – is a travesty. Do not expect this moment to last. The British establishment and the Saudi tyranny are intertwined: the ties between our ruling elites and a regime that beheads dissidents, exports terror and slaughters Yemeni children are too lucrative to break.

Take our political elite. When he was prime minister, Tony Blair piled pressure on the attorney general to end a massive corruption scandal involving a Saudi arms deal. Since the Saudi-led onslaught on Yemen began, the British government has licensed £4.7bn of arms exports. British military advisers have even worked in Saudi war rooms. Germany has now halted arms exports to the Saudi regime; but even if more western bombs are dropped on school buses, there is no chance the Tory government will follow the German lead.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2EJ7jtC

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