The red carpet is being rolled out again to yet another foreign dictator. Weeks after David Cameron took the leader of the biggest totalitarian state in the world to his local for a pint and some fish and chips, we’re now about to greet Abdel Fatah al-Sisi to the country. You must have heard of him: he’s the president of Egypt.
Cameron, one would imagine, will avoid taking the president to the pub this time to have a friendly chat about the 2500 plus political opponents murdered by the state since Sisi came to power or the 40,000 political prisoners jailed at some point during the Sisi era. Still, I suppose if we grovel enough, we can persuade him to invest in what’s left of our manufacturing industry. If you forget these minor blips on his CV, he’s probably a man we can do business with.
The way things are going, I imagine the hand of friendship will soon be offered to Abū Bakr al-Baghdādi, the leader of ISIS. He can bring Mohammed Emwazi along for the ride.
Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have rightly been given a sound kicking for their dalliances with the murderous IRA, not to mention Corbyn’s “friends” in Hamas and Hezbollah, but I got to thinking is Cameron’s government any better? Xi Jinping’s odious government spent the Chinese summer rounding up and imprisoning human rights activists and lawyers and it is believed that things are getting worse over there, not better. But what happened when he met chancellor George Osborne? Our Gideon was praised by the Chinese for his “mild manner” on human rights! Presumably, they rewarded Osborne by flooding the world with cheap steel and all but destroying our own industry.
I am glad that Corbyn is meeting these people and questioning their human rights record and I am sure he is not replicating Osborne’s “mild manner”. Yes, I am aware that many of these vile regimes are customers for our goods – we sell weapons to Saudi Arabia for goodness sake, where they behead someone every other day – but our leaders seem to think ethics is a county in north London.
Whether it’s Cameron and Osborne sucking up to assorted dictators and despots, or Corbyn and McDonnell inveigling themselves with despicable terrorists, it’s one of the same thing. Is there no one our leaders will not speak to and do business with or is it all fair game?
When Cameron visited Egypt back in 2011, he lauded the leaders of democracy movement. They won’t be around next week because Sisi has banned most of them from travelling or locked them up in prison. Some friends, eh?
