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Anyway, did you know Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah is town this week on a state visit? He’ll meet the Queen, Gordon Brown and David Cameron:

Yet both political leaders refuse to make a commitment to even mention human rights to the king. Instead, he will ride in a golden carriage with the Queen, and be guest of honour at a Buckingham Palace banquet.

Apparently though, there is trouble in paradise. Abdullah’s not happy about how The War Against Terror is going and lays some of the blame at the UK’s door.

Now, he’s got a point – I’ve got an apple tree with a better mind for international affairs than New Labour. But coming from a man who rules a country that gave us Osama bin Laden and the majority of the September 11 hijackers this is, how shall we put it, a bit sodding rich.

Look at Saudi Arabian society as a whole with its embrace of torture as a method of state, the limited rights of women, capital punishment and the rest of its filthy little tools of oppression. An ordinary person finding themselves as the head of state of such a place would in all probability take their own life in a shame-driven suicide. You wonder what King Abdullah’s excuse is. Maybe Prince Charles helps keep him chipper.

Hearing King Abdullah rail against extremism and terrorism is a bit like listening to the owner of an abattoir extol the virtues of veganism. I’ve written about the Saudi government before – and the tawdry grunting bunk-up we euphemistically call our ‘relationship’ with it – and I’m repeating myself but there you go.

One really does wonder just what we get out of this relationship other than the carcinogenic effects it has on our democratic process and legal system. Sure the Saudis buy our weapons and we rub along in The War Against Terror but if you’re a British citizen being tortured in a Saudi jail or seeking redress after the fact, our relationship with the House of Saud helps not at all and in fact militates against your case. A copper investigating a case about shady arms deals and bribery and oceans of moody cash might as well not bother. And who really gives a damn? Yet we have a system of morals in this country that paints welfare claimants as spawn of the devil.

No doubt there are those that say we should hold our ally close and they may be right. However, the way British ministers bow and scrape before Saudi princes, with their unspoken blackmail of their withholding ‘vital’ terror intelligence should we look too closely at their slush funds, you have to wonder if it’s more about mollifying a potential enemy rather than dealing with a proper friend. It’s certainly the diplomatic equivalent of hugging a volatile maniac who menacingly tells you how to run your affairs but who you tolerate because there occasionally might be the odd drink in it for you.

Conservative shadow defence secretary Liam Fox – and presumably in the queue to fluff Saudi arms buyers should the Tories triumph at the next election – called the Lib Dems’ Vince Cable ‘juvenile‘ for boycotting King Abdullah’s visit. This, while Fox’s boss tugs his forelock for the old bastard like a public school fag, is one of the most serious cases of projection I’ve ever come across in all my years as an amateur psychologist. That Vince Cable, eh? With his concern for human rights and the probity of the British state, he needs to bloody grow up. What’s that Cameron? Sorry, I’m all out of boot polish – why don’t you use your tongue instead?

Arms, as we’re told by those in the know, is a strategic industry worth billions (but not that many) and employing tens of thousands – although that reasoning didn’t stop us herding ship builders, coal miners, steel workers and car builders into call centres and onto incapacity benefit. Quite clearly, Brown and Cameron abase themselves before the Saudis through selfless, slavish adherence to British interests. No doubt there are those who thank God every day that building machines to kill people puts food on the table but I’m glad I don’t have to make that ethical calculation.

And so we finally see the trick Robert Mugabe has been missing all these years. If only he’d had the foresight a few years back to strike a multi-billion pound arms deal with British weapons manufacturers, our Prime Minister and leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition would be shaking his bloody claw this very day and he’d be picking up a few sundries in Harrods for the missus.