Saudi arms deal cartoon
© Peter Brookes

This is a different situation to Iraq, because the arms we sell to Saudi Arabia are real, and therefore fairly harmless, whereas Saddam had those non-existent ones, and those things are lethal

It's clear now that what Jeremy Corbyn should have done every time he met a Middle Eastern politician "linked to violence". Instead of speaking in a meeting with them and shaking their hand, he should have behaved responsibly, and sold them £4.7bn worth of weapons like we do with Saudi Arabia.

Even the CIA now seems to accept the Saudis murdered their opponent by dismembering him and disposing of him in boxes. This is why it's alright to continue selling them arms, because at least they're tidy.

It's the tyrants who leave bits everywhere we should be tough with, because it would be immoral to sell Tornado fighter planes to a regime that left it to the cleaners to clear up after they'd murdered someone.

In any case, the Saudis have given plausible explanations for what happened. Firstly they pointed out that Jamal Khashoggi wasn't there, then they added the detail that he died there after a fight, which confirms how shady he was, that he was the sort of person who could get killed somewhere even though he wasn't there. Then they said he was killed by a rogue person. Next week they'll tell us he was the rogue person and dismembered himself, in a fight with himself over whether he was there or not.

It may seem confusing that the people who insist we shouldn't overreact, by reducing the amount of weapons we sell them, are often the same ones who, a few years ago, insisted we respond to Saddam Hussein's violence by mobilising half the world's armed forces to incinerate the place. But this is a different situation, because the arms we sell to Saudi Arabia are real, and therefore fairly harmless, whereas Saddam had those non-existent ones, and those things are lethal.

What we must hope for, is Hamas and Hezbollah finally come round to behaving in a way we can accept, and start dismembering their opponents more openly. Then Iran can announce not only have they abandoned their plans for a nuclear reactor, but also those plans were never there, and they've been chopped up and were set alight in a fight. And finally we can move towards an era of peace and honesty.

Conservative MP Kwasi Kwarteng is one of many British MPs who has contributed towards a strategy of friendship towards governments whose officials dismember people. He's been on trips worth £10,000 to Saudi Arabia, paid for by their government. This must be the reason so many Conservatives condemn Jeremy Corbyn for speaking on the same platform as people with possible links to violence: he's not getting a decent holiday out of them. Instead of a vague handshake, Corbyn should be tapping them up for three nights in a five-star hotel. He's a fool to himself.

Some Labour MPs have gone to similar trouble in the name of peace and friendship. For example, Paul Williams went on a trip there, paid for by the Saudi government. Cynics might wonder if the regime arranges these trips in the hope that in return, the politician starts saying pleasant things about them. But that would be unkind. Instead Paul Williams reported back, "I have seen a modern progressive Saudi Arabia that has totally challenged my views of the country."
labour party saudi arabia
Williams is the one in the middle
And that's turned out to be exactly right, because we now know that whereas they used to kill their opponents with an old-fashioned axe, now they apparently use the most advanced chainsaws. You can't get more modern and progressive than that.

These trips display overwhelming evidence of the Saudi royal family's good-hearted nature, flying people out there who have no influence other than being a member of parliament in the country that sells you £4.7bn worth of weapons, and putting them up in the smartest hotels with not a thought of anything in return.

And as they show them round, they're kind enough to miss out the slums and the bits where women aren't allowed to travel without a man's permission and the places where they behead people, because they don't want to spoil their mini-break.

Maybe the next trip these MPs can go on is an all-expenses-paid week in a 5-star hotel in Acapulco, paid for by Mexican drug cartels. Then they come back and tell us they've seen modern progressive drug barons that have totally changed their views of the poppy industry.

But if you're going to behave like this, you should do it properly, and no one can match Donald Trump. First he decided we should leave any judgement on the issue until the Saudi government has investigated the matter itself.

He's not received enough acclaim for this revolutionary attitude towards murder investigations. From now on every homicide squad should announce, "There's been a murder. So rather than waste our time on it, why don't we get the only murder suspect to tell us whether he did it or not, and there's no rush."

Then he said the US shouldn't reduce its arms sales to Saudi Arabia, because 450,000 American jobs depend on them. This may have seemed a little high, so he changed it to 600,000, and the next day to "one million jobs". Next week he'll say, "I've spoken to some of our astronomers, very clever people, and they tell me the moon is kept in place by our deals with Saudi Arabia, so if we reduce them, gravity will disappear and we'll all be covered in sea and that's very bad for jobs, really bad, very bad."


Comment: That's funny because it's kind of true! The US would go under the waves if Saudi Arabia was no longer a gas station generating trillion$ in investment to the US and its corporate interests around the planet.


Then he'll say, "It would be wrong to criticise the people who sent those bombs to Barack Obama and the Clintons, very wrong, because they employ a million people, all the fertiliser, all the wires, fantastic people, they create a lot of work."

And instead of doing it anonymously, whoever sent the bombs should announce there were no bombs, then say Barack Obama sent the bomb to himself in a fight, then insist there's no such person as Barack Obama.