Principles should come first

Nobody could have anticipated that the first major disagreement inside the new Conservative Government to have emerged so far would have been over human rights in Saudi Arabia. But this could be the start of something very important – even the rebirth of the concept of an “ethical foreign policy”. The Department of Justice had a deal with the Saudi Government, agreed by former Justice Minister Chris Grayling, to offer technical advice on penal policy. Michael Gove, the new Cabinet Minister for Justice, wanted to cancel the contract on the grounds of Saudi Arabia’s record on human rights.

Mr Gove was opposed in Cabinet, we are told, by both Home Secretary Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, but the Prime Minister finally sided with him. Though the connection is denied, the issue coincided with news that a 74-year-old British man had been sentenced by a Saudi criminal court to 360 lashes under sharia law for possessing home-made wine. And there was already concern in the British media at reports that a man who had been convicted by a sharia court of demonstrating against the Saudi regime had been sentenced to beheading followed by crucifixion. It is fair to ask just how bad a regime has to be before it is regarded as impossible to deal with.

Under governments of all persuasions, trade deals have been done with Saudi Arabia that have been worth billions to the British economy, not least in the supply of armaments. The prevailing policy is that said to follow Lord Palmerston’s dictum – “countries do not have principles, they have interests”. Thus the British interest was served by maximising trade, regardless of the repression practised by oppressive governments.

For decades, furthermore, Saudi Arabia has sought to export its brand of Islamic extremism, Wahhabism, to Muslim communities in the West including Britain. So the argument that Britain wants friendly relations with Saudi Arabia because it needs to share intelligence over terrorism is counterbalanced by the pernicious influence Wahhabism has had on the minds of young Western Muslims, making them susceptible to Jihadist ideas over the internet and through extremist Islamic preachers.

After his intervention on this one issue, David Cameron might be tempted to leave things well alone. But British policy towards Saudi Arabia is no longer just blatantly amoral but now utterly incoherent. If this one trade deal is off, all other trade deals must be questionable. In any event the lack of principle in favour of interests in British foreign policy is a convenient pretence. It was for principle that Britain went to war in 1914 and 1939, and other military interventions have usually been accompanied by moral justification, even if somewhat spurious.

It is time Britain began to wean itself from its dependence on trade deals with tyrannical regimes, and become an upright global citizen again. That is an entirely patriotic aim, fully in accordance with David Cameron’s beliefs about Britain’s proud place in the world. Michael Gove has shown the way for him to go.