Saudi money wins over justice

Just wow.

This is the day when the UK officially became as corrupt as a tinpot African dictatorship.

This is the moral low point of New Labour. If there was any decency left in the Labour Party they would make Blair resign by sunrise tomorrow. But there isn't. All the decent people have left the party and all that is left is a rump of acolytes and cynical hangers on.

This is disgusting. A national disgrace and a shame on all of us.

This is absolute corruption.
We overrule our own anti-corruption laws to save a squalid arms deal with an appalling crooked dictatorship who steal their nation's natural resources and torture and execute freely. Goldsmith tells us that a "prosecution could not be brought"; clearly it can be bought.
Labour's moral compass is well and truly buggered.
And Blair/Bush tell us they're championing freedom and democracy in Iraq.
I'm so ashamed to have voted Labour in 1997. What a bunch of amoral crooks.

Why should anyone be slightly surprised? Two whitewashes in one day to protect Blair - being interviewed as a 'witness' in the cash for honours affair and now this.

While it's not something I personally consider likely, is it any wonder that so many people reject the results of the Diana enquiry, given that every other such undertaking in Britain is so blatantly tainted and corrupt?

We all look forward to the day when Blair leaves office. I increasingly wonder if this will ever happen without direct public action, as clearly Parliament and the judicial system have failed.

Goldsmith defended such a gross intrusion into the legal process by the Government, that it is in "the wider public interest" which he bleated," had to be balanced against the rule of law."

Which added to the failure to declare an invasion of Iraq as illegal, contrary to advice of his officers - who resigned over the matter, and makes him the most corrupt and dishonest Attorney General this country has had.

He should be impeached - a formal accusation of ‘wrongdoing’, where a public official is charged with improper conduct in public office - a high crime and misdemeanour beyond the reach of the law or which no other authority of the state will prosecute.

This is corruption of the highest order and exposes the rotten nature of the people at the core of Gubment in the UK - a day when we see the PM "interviewed" for accepting bribes for honours and Lord Plod exonerates the Dook of Edinburgh from murder.

A rare day in constitutional history. Is this what Bagehot meant by the "magic of the crown" ?

Just add it to stealing the Chagos Islands by an Order in Council after the highest Courts in the Kingdom ruled the stealing of them was illegal etc.,

Must lie down in a darkened room.

Where are the great 'Christian Moralists' in the Labour and Conservative front benches now? The men and women whose 'messianic' sense of justice lead them into Iraq and Afghanistan..? The erstwhile defenders of the 'rule of law' and international democracy?

A cynical betrayal of elementary justice on behalf of a brutal dictatorship and a corrupt corporation leaves them with no sense of shame or wounded rectitude. Their cultivated displays of moral outrage are reserved for the weak and defenceless. New Labour celebrates its orgies.

So now the Attorney General "balances the rule of law against the wider public interest"?

It seems that there are a number of questions the spineless Labour Party MP's should be asking.

* Who appointed him to this particular task
* What guidelines does he have for doing so
* Is the final decision his alone
* What judicial review may take place of his decisions (Sorry; I forgot. He is the Attorney General)

Robin Wilton analyses it concisely here.

Those lines don't seem to leave a huge amount of room for reading between: "if there's a risk of (a) losing 6bn, (b) offending the Saudis and (c) - horror of horrors - losing the deal to our French neighbours, then the rule of law takes a back seat".

Remember, in the new world of globalisation of which our prime minister so urgently thrusts upon us, we have to protect our vital industry (vital to civil servants and ministers for a bit of post career bunce) by eliminating competition.

I don't really understand why the Al Yamamah deal, which was made under a Tory government over twenty years ago, was dragged up again after all this time anyway. What are we planning for an encore? A public enquiry into the conduct of Neville Chamberlain at the Munich conference, perhaps?

BTW, here is the statement in the Lords.

What this episode shows is that it doesn't matter which party is in power, and whether they pass laws that are popular with the public, the arms industry still owns the government.

Another fine legacy for Tony Blair. He could choose to do something spectacular towards dismantling the UK military-industrial complex by exposing all the corrupt machinery. But no.

Keep this updated

goatchurch - And risk that cushy 'death dealing' job with the Carlyl group after his glorious reign? Come on mate!

If there's one thing we've learned. Some people are addicted to fags, some to booze, some to meth. Our dear leader is addicted to killing people.

I want to dance on the grave of Tony Blair.

Judging by John Major's comments on radio 4 this morning, I don't think even the Carlyle Group would want Tony Blair...

Some Labour MP on Newsnight last night made a hopeless defence of the whole affair. Even if you can understand that he wanted to protect the jobs in his constituency, he seemed incapable of acknowledging that this meant overturning the rule of law, let alone refusing to allow the SFO investigation to take its course. My favourite moment was when he tried to argue that the investigation should be dropped to ensure that the Saudis didn't buy an 'inferior' French product. The idiot: the whole point of bribes and a slush fund is that they buy your product, even if it is inferior, because you've coughed up the biggest kickback to the right people. When that happens, and the US or the French are the winners, the constituents will be out of job anyway.

So what job will Blair be able to get? One in Exxon with Philip Cooney? Maybe he could work for one of those mercenary companies in Iraq.

The BBC observed that he's smart enough to put to one side the effect on thousands of British jobs and billions worth of pounds for British industry, because he knows that this conflicts with international law.

But Why Does He Bother? What is the point in wasting time defending these arms company cretins, and standing in the way of an investigation that was very popular with the public? He's on his way out. There is nothing they can do to help his powerbase. We're all sick of the business of these companies. Let the French have it, so it can corrupt their own politics.

Was it the AG or a commentator who I head spout this beautiful snippet yesterday on the box -

"Its a question of balancing the law against the public interest"

Surely /the law/ should be /in/ the fucking public interest?