A blackmailers' charter

Gareth

The Saudis signed a contract with the British govt and expect it to abide by the terms of the contract, which include secrecy. Throughout this investigation, the british govy has known exactly the details of the financial transactions between BAe and the Saudis, because the British govt was the prime contractor. Strange as it may seem, British laws don't apply in Saudi Arabia - if the British police wish to spend years trying to uncover official and commercial secrets, the Saudis are entitled to refuse to co-operate. I don't think there is any merit whatever in the counter-productive action that Melanie advocates.

Dee Ranged

Hence a judicial forked-tongue no less.

Gene

Gareth, mate, you're absolutely right.

British laws don't apply in Saudi Arabia, but British laws are supposed to apply in Britain (where the arms etc were made).

So since when was it decided that British laws be suspended when some external state threatens to allow people to be murdered over here?

Who voted for that?

No wonder Russia's secret services think they can swan about the place with no-one giving two figs what they're up to.

They're Russian and Saudi, so it's their culture, innit? Can do what they like - ya get me?

stanley Jerusalem

Conversation in
"A man for all Seasons"

Arrest him!
-For what?
-He's dangerous!

-Libel. He's a spy!
-That man's bad!

-There's no law against that.
-God's law!

-Then God can arrest him.
-While you talk, he's gone!

Go he should, if he were the Devil,
until he broke the law.
-Now you give the Devil benefit of law!
-Yes, what would you do?

Cut a road through the law
to get after the Devil?

Yes. I'd cut down every law in England
to do that.

And when the last law was down,
and the Devil turned on you......where would you hide, Roper,
the laws all being flat?

This country is planted with laws
from coast to coast...
...Man's laws, not God's,
and if you cut them down...
...and you're just the man to do it...
...do you really think you could stand
upright in the wind that would blow then?
Yes.
I give the Devil benefit of law
for my own safety's sake.

QED

And while we all get into a tizz thinking about public safety and giving into a foreign blackmailer, we are being made to forget that the real reason the appeal was lost had nothing to do with these considerations: it has to do with the fact that were the case to come to a public airing, we'd all find out where the money, all those billions, actually went. That's what at stake here. Nothing else. So the threat comes from inside ... as it always does. This time I'm not demonising the Saudis (not that they need any help).

Roy

When once you could be hanged, and at the minimum transported for the most trivial of crimes, now it seems the highest the most noble in the country, their grandest eminences, most honourable, principled, upright, incorruptible, have lowered themselves a thousand light years below those early so called criminals and submitted to blackmail in the business of their country. What an example the good Lords are making. That is, if the public (for which Law Lord Members do their work) ever get it explained to them what has taken place.

Geoff M

Britains ancient rights and liberties are just a moveable feast. They are whatever the judges decide they shold be.

It is interesting how upright and immoveable the Judges are when faced with terrorists.

Their rights have to be upheld at all times regardless of the consequences but, strangely, they are flexible in the case of blackmail and threats by Saudi's.

If they can be flexible in some cases then why not others? If common sense and "real politic" can be taken into account for some caese then why not others?

If they can apply the law in the UK's "interests" where bribes to Saudis are concerned they why not when dealing with people who would cut our throats as we lie abed?

As with much of public life in the UK it is a mixture of cant and hypocracy.

The sooner the British people take their country back the better. We truly need a revolution in the UK if we are to avaiod a decent into madness, fuelled by irrational liberals and cringing subserviance to Islam.

A thourough cleansing of the body politic, the media and academia is required before we can truly be considered a democraticaly governed and free people.

Hysteria

eloquent posts - but Geoff - what's your plan to achieve it ? Armed insurrection ?

Ain't gonna happen!

Stephen Rothbart

Gene, when we were at war with Germany, many of Britain's rules of law were changed. Germans living here, even Jewish ones, were sent to camps on the Isle of Man for example, just for being German.

The main case here is whether any British people were at fault for this and clearly there were. It probably started with the PM and is part of the real politik of dealing with bad people in order to defeat even worse ones, although it may be hard to find many worse than Saudia Arabians and their extreme versions of Islam.

The main question that no one seems to answer, except for Melanie, is whether this country is at war.

I believe we are. The enemy is extreme Islam, and no matter how distasteful to have to keep good relations with the Saudis, we may have to, just to keep the true lunatics in their place.

Just as we fought alongside Stalin against Hitler, even though he was just as evil as Hitler, we have to choose some strange bed-fellows when we go to war.

To bring Blair to justice would be wonderful if he were involved in anything underhand, but the big picture for me is:

1 We ARE at war.
2 In war time, civilian rules get broken all the time so just hope it does not get worse than that.
3. No one who reads The Spectator, or for that matter writes for it, knows ALL the facts, so we are probably not able to judge.

stanley Jerusalem

Stephen Rothbart - So It's not the Foreign Ofice and the Treasury trying to stifle the truth about bribes then?
I thought it was just everyday venality with a lot of noughts on the end.
Wow! Thanks Stephen.

Jonny Mac

"Instead, it has now shown Saudi -- and the rest of the world -- that in Britain threats are not futile at all but are on the contrary extremely effective; and that far from forbidding pressure on an independent prosecutor, Britain now says such a prosecutor is correct to give in to it."

Not so. The judgment says that in the extraordinary circumstances of this particular case, the prosecutor's action in halting the prosecution was not unlawful; not that he was "correct" to give in to blackmail. You, and many of the commentators on this thread, are confusing law and policy. Whether an action is right, and to be encouraged, and is sensible policy, is a wholly different question from whether it was lawful. This is not liberal pedantry, but a defining element of how our democracy works.

London Calling

There certainly is more to this than meets the eye, but we will never know the true facts, but my guess is that this has less to do with Intelligence and more to do with dodgy dealings, of which would have opened another Pandora’s box for the public to scrutinise.

Welcome to the real world, it never went mad, it already was...

michael

Er, shouldn't it be

A blackmailer's charter, not
A blackmailers' charter?

stanley Jerusalem

Michael- It all depends on how many blackmailers may be identified - anyway, it's all rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic, innit?

Hereford

Michael, wrong publication mate... You want www.private-eye.co.uk. Click on Pedant's, or is it Pedants', or even Pedant Corner :o)

Stephen Rothbart

Stanley, it probably is about those things and normally I would want this investigated. But hunt for the truth MAY hurt relations between a foul dictatorship that is helping us fight the extremists living among them, but who for the moment are, like Stalin's Russia, our Allies.

My point is not that a crime may have taken place and you should ignore it, but that, during a war, sometimes you have to make compromises to win it, and I quoted the suspension of law that allowed Jews of German origin to be rounded up without trial or investigation, and herded into the same camps as Nazi sympathisers during WW2.

Neither actions were correct, but, given the threat to the nation as a whole, were felt necessary.

We don't know what the security services did or did not do to influence this decision or why.

You live in Jerusalem, I suppose, and Israel has a court of law to investigate wrongful death. Yet in an operation where an innocent person dies as a result of the actions of the security forces in fighting terrorism, the act of legal manslaughter is suspended against the soldier involved.

So the law is overlooked for the greater cause. Otherwise no one would volunteer.

So we have to accept that in times of war, we have to do things that are outside normal legal processes.

If the pursuit of the fraud involves alienating the very criminals that are helping us persecute those responsible for the terrorism, then someone has to decide what is best for the greater good.

Just as the Police forces everywhere protect some criminals from prosecution if they act as informers, so they can land the bigger 'fish' so we have to accept sometimes that injustices will happen.

Really no difference.

One can make a good case for law to be upheld no matter what, or for a more flexible treatment if the decision will result in a better conclusion.

I am certainly not condoning the fraud, or the people behind it, but sadly, life is not simply black or white.

stanley Jerusalem

Stephen - Life is definitely not 'Black & White' but if we are 'at war' it would be nice to be told by the powers that be.
This would mitigate the conspiracy between the arms manufacturers, the Treasury and the Foreign Office.
They would have an excuse for their dissembling.
Trouble is, I think they would behave in the same way even if we weren't at war. That's what really stinks about the whole thing.The knowledge that their behaviour is not dependent on our state of war but on their desire to remain undetected and above the reach of the laws that govern the rest of us.
I would have liked to have seen every Law Lord resign rather than compromise themselves.
Fat chance!

michael

No, because if it is more than one blackmailer, it should be;

The Blackmailers' Charter
(Plural)

but this is about a single blackmailer, in which case surely it should be;

A blackmailer's charter.
(Single)

Gordon Neil

No outpouring of legalism or sophistry can mask the shamefulness of this episode. A so called friendly state (Saudi Arabia) fearful of what the SFO investigation might expose, sought to blackmail the British Government into bringing pressure to bear to close down the investigation. Rather than take responsibility and confront diplomatically and politically that hostile act by the Saudis, our government capitulated and pathetically and embarrassingly brought pressure to bear on the SFO, to stop the investigation. The cowardice displayed by our government in the face of this hostile act by the Saudis is the clearest possible indication that they are unfit to govern. The behavior of the Saudis in threatening actions which would reduce the effectiveness of our intelligence agencies, hamper our diplomatic efforts in the region and expose the populous of this country to greater danger, is the clearest indication that they are untrustworthy and all their activities that bear upon this country, including investments and gifts of funds to elements here, should be subject to the most rigorous and very public scrutiny.

phil

Stephen keep up the commom sense, you have said it how it is !
-if this country chooses to do business with dishonest people then one can expect the outcome to be how it is -why should we make the honest workforce be the ones who suffer -it is of course they who would lose their jobs,, it is .the princes who will line their pockets with their own nations treasure ,all included in an inflated price that we receive , to give back again -complicated?then try football corruption . MEANWHILE STOP THE CROCODILE TEARS and face up to the facts when dealing with corrupt people ..then do not ever deal with them again -a fat chance of that !!

Trek

I was told at the time that about 50,000 jobs would be lost in Britain if the deal hadn't been done. That surely was the reason for its going ahead.

Roy

Probably it's as well, now we can look upon the British Law Lords gown and wig on the same level as the Arabian robe, headdress, and black head ropes. On special occasions there could be an exchange of garments with an invitation to the media to take snaps.

Geoff M

Hysteria - you are quite right and, I think, get my point.

My post is about aspiration not expectation.

Quite simply the British are sleepwalking into oblivion and, frankly, they deserve it.

The situation we have is not just the work of a few politicians. The judiciary is unable to see the consequences of its "purity of law". The media love a good story and mostly feed off the colopsing society around them. The police, local authorities, quangos and academics all subscribe to a childish liberalism.

As for the rest, most are just lost in their own little world of "having and getting" - a world that will come crashing down around them.

For me, I've got out and now look upon the UK as a sinking ship - but one where all the rats have stayed on board!

David Raynes

There is surely a missed point error in the whole tenor of this debate. The threat from Saudi was largely spurious, in the end they need UK support (from time to time) to maintain their present State. The threat was magnified and played up because that suited HMG and avoided political embarrasement all round-for everyone. These are the political games that get played, arguing about them as if they are serious points gives these games credibility.

Byron in Wahroonga

***the Saudis signed a contract with the British govt and expect it to abide by the terms of the contract, which include secrecy***

Gareth, it's natural that the parties involved in a corrupt contract would want it kept secret.

Byron in Wahroonga

***Wardle aborted his investigation after Sir Sherard Cowper-Cowles, the ambassador to Riyadh, had repeatedly claimed to him that ‘British lives on British streets’ were at risk, and that the Saudis were, in effect, willing to see UK citizens murdered by terrorists if they did not get their way***

Louis XIV never had to make those threats while bribing Charles II and James II. You could reasonably argue there's been an improvement in transparency.

james

forget nicieties of law this is realpolitik; if we don't want the billions of pounds the saudi government are willing to give us then, no doubt, the french, americans or germans will welcome them with open arms.
when in rome do as the romans do; in that part of the world business is only done with bakeesh.