A quote from Daniel Hannan MEP at his blog, 30 October 2007

For the past 48 hours, our television studios have been filled with well-fed, sleekit men in pinstripes telling us how critical Saudi Arabia is to British interests. “British interests” is, of course, a much nicer phrase than “my place on the board of a Saudi-funded company”, which is often what they really mean, but never mind. […]

Let’s stop for a moment and analyse the contention, made by every recent British Prime Minister, that the Saudis are “our key allies in the region”. What precisely are these “allies” doing for us? […] Most of us now know that 15 of the 19 bombers on 11 September 2001 were Saudi nationals, and that the majority of foreign jihadists in Iraq are also Saudis. At the same time, there is growing concern about the way Riyadh funds some of the dodgiest mosques in Europe. A devastating new paper by Policy Exchange, authored by Dr Denis MacEoin, draws attention to material sponsored by the Saudi authorities which describes Jews and Christians as enemies of Muslims, lauds jihad and urges that apostates be killed. We meekly accept that it is impossible to open a C of E church in Riyadh, yet we put up with this insidious hate-mongering because, well, the Saudis are “our key allies in the region”.

[…] Saudi Arabia is one of many dictatorships around the world, neither the mildest nor the harshest. We should deal with it in a brisk and businesslike manner, as we do the many other regimes which fall somewhere between the categories of “distasteful” and “rotten”.

This, though, is not enough for the Saudi lobby in London. So determined are they to grovel to the House of Saud that they secured the prejudicing our legal system in order to prevent a handful of princelings from being accused of bribery. […] When a free democracy lowers its standards in order to accommodate a sleazy autocracy, the former is diminished and the latter magnified. We are, all of us, slightly cheapened by the readiness of our leaders to appease a handful of rich men. […] I never thought I’d say this, but I admire the LibDems, who have boycotted meetings with Saudi officials. That they are behaving ethically is clear enough. But they are also behaving patriotically, advancing Britain’s true interests, as opposed to the interests of a handful of lobbyists, government contractors and defence conglomerates.