Robin Wilton's esoterica

As I mentioned in my previous post, the Corner House group went to the High Court on Friday to request a judicial review of the Serious Fraud Office's decision to abandon an investigation into allegations of bribery in a £43bn arms deal between BAe and Saudi Arabia. Among other things, the group wishes to establish whether the SFO was justified in claiming that it would harm national security to proceed with the investigation, whether that argument in turn was the result of undue political pressure, and whether the whole affair puts the UK in breach of the OECD convention against bribery. The judge approved their request, noting that the case "cries out for a hearing".

The deal in question dates back to 1985, so it pre-dates what, in a delightfully waspish piece, Matthew Norman of The Independent describes as 'the mythic New Labour era of "ethical foreign policy"'. Indeed, the current guardian of Britain's foreign policy, David Miliband, was only 20 at the time. We can't really blame him for the original deal, then, or whatever subsequent allegations may be levelled at the SFO over its conduct in the matter. But what if similar circumstances were to arise again?

Mr Miliband was brave enough to allow his first speech as Foreign Secretary to be co-hosted by civil advocacy group Avaaz, and perhaps the Q&A there is instructive. One of his comments on ethical foreign policy was to note that "we sometimes need to decide whether to engage with countries to pursue our goals or to break off dealings with them and take a principled, declaratory stance".

Fair enough; obviously, it seems that in this instance the decision was not for the principled stance... so let's look to his other remarks to see what might argue for 'continued engagement'. Well, he refers to human rights, so perhaps there's a lot of common ground between him and the Saudis on that one.

Yes, well... moving on: he also makes all his remarks in the context of 'values and interests'.

That, presumably, is where the judicial review's focus on 'shared interests', national security and Middle-East unrest will be of most relevance. But if one removes oil, money and Middle East regional politics from the equation, maybe Mr Miliband would be guided instead by shared values. Let's have a look at those.

We're allowed to drink, eat pork products, gamble and look at naked bodies - but we're not allowed to dismember thieves, take multiple wives or stone the latter should they prove adulterous. We have ASBOs, but we don't have a Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (more's the pity, perhaps); if we did, it probably wouldn't be the agent of summary public corporal punishment, which is increasingly unfashionable.

Female clothing in the UK is often less modest than in the Saudi Kingdom, but on the other hand, British men generally wear trousers in public unless they are clergymen (in which case a Saudi-style dress may be appropriate).

Both countries have laws relating to blasphemy, though in practice in the UK, blasphemy is considered a matter of poor manners rather than grounds for a summary death sentence. It is acceptable for British works of art to include representations of the human form, whether or not they depict religious figures. It is acceptable for symbols such as crosses to appear in newspapers, on calendars and on the sides of toy ambulances. The same latitude is extended to other symbols.

Women in the UK may go out in public unaccompanied, or accompanied by male non-relatives; they may work, drive, vote and run the country. Both countries are monarchies, but in the UK, that includes the possibility that the monarch might be female.

Well, maybe Mr Miliband has some other, better list of shared values which he'll be able to refer to should the need arise.