Sheikh Things Up

For a second day, there comes no denial from Theresa May or anyone else. Therefore, the words of Jeremy Corbyn stand on the record of the House of Commons, that British military advisers are directing the Saudi war in Yemen, and are thus complicit in the war crimes that are the cause of the worst humanitarian disaster in the world today. Why is there any other news than this?

And what becomes of those military advisers? They go on to work for the arms companies that are currently being allowed to sell to Saudi Arabia in order to prosecute the war in Yemen, and indeed to any other purpose to which Saudi arms might be put, whether in Iraq, or in Syria, or in Britain. Those companies used to fund both parties. But we may safely say that they are only bothering with one of them these days. 

British politics now divides between the pro-Saudi party and the anti-Saudi party. We can all see who is consorting and cavorting with dictators and with terrorists. Specifically, with the joint worst dictatorship in the world, which is the global nerve centre of Islamist terrorism, including in the United Kingdom. A threat to national security, indeed.

We have no influence over Saudi Arabia, unless we wished to plead guilty to influencing its current domestic and foreign policy. And we could do perfectly well without its money. If we had the sense to dig our own coal again and to build enough nuclear power stations, then we would not need its oil, either. We do not in fact need it at all.

Corbyn understands this. But when the British arming of the Saudi war in Yemen was last brought to the floor of the House of Commons, then anti-Corbyn Labour MPs ostentatiously abstained. Since then, however, the hateful Michael Fallon has been forced from office, it has been found that British-made cluster bombs were being used by Saudi Arabia in Yemen, and we have had yesterday's astonishing admission by silence at Prime Minister's Questions.

The supply of British arms to Saudi Arabia needs to be brought back to the floor of the House of Commons as a matter of the utmost urgency. The rather good Labour Chief Whip ought to publish in advance the list of MPs with leave of absence. For anyone else, abstention this time ought to mean deselection in due season, and universal moral revulsion with immediate effect. No such person ought to be re-elected. Therefore, no such person ought to be reselected.

But a certain number of them will still get through, and the next General Election is going to result, either in another hung Parliament, or, far less probably, in a tiny overall majority for one or other of the main parties. You know what you have to do, brothers and sisters. You know what you have to do.