International Trade Secretary Liam Fox has just announced he is pulling out of the upcoming “Davos in the Desert” conference in Saudi Arabia next week after revelations that the country was behind the torture and killing of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. This morning Guido revealed Tory Vice Chairman Rehman Chishti had received £46,000 from the Saudis, further research by Guido reveals that since 2017, 11 other Conservative MPs have declared all-expenses-paid trips to Saudi Arabia, funded by the Saudi government. These junckets are worth more than £85,000. Liam Fox will not be taking his planned trip to Saudi Arabia next week, but look at all the Tories who did…

• Richard Bacon
  • Trip to Saudi Arabia to understand the “strategic importance of the Coalition operations in Yemen.” 11-15 January 2018. Paid for by the Saudi Ministry of Defence. Value: £8,257.
• Alex Burghart
  • Visit to Saudi Arabia to meet with King Salman Abdulaziz Ibn Saud. 24-29 September 2017. Paid for by the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Value: £7,800.
• Leo Docherty
  • Visit to Saudi Arabia to meet with King Salman Abdulaziz Ibn Saud. 24-29 September 2017. Paid for by the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Value: £7,800.
  • Trip to Saudi Arabia to understand the “strategic importance of the Coalition operations in Yemen.” 11-15 January 2018. Paid for by the Saudi Ministry of Defence. Value: £8,257.
• Mark Garnier
  • “Fact finding” trip to Saudi Arabia. 11-15 February 2018. Paid for by the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Value: £7,802
• James Heappey
  • “Fact finding” trip to Saudi Arabia. 11-15 February 2018. Paid for by the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Value: £7,802
• Simon Hoare
  • Visit to Saudi Arabia to meet with King Salman Abdulaziz Ibn Saud. 24-29 September 2017. Paid for by the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Value: £7,800.
• Philip Hollobone
  • Trip to Saudi Arabia to understand the “strategic importance of the Coalition operations in Yemen.” 11-15 January 2018. Paid for by the Saudi Ministry of Defence. Value: £8,257.
• Mark Menzies
  • Visit to Saudi Arabia to meet with King Salman Abdulaziz Ibn Saud. 24-29 September 2017. Paid for by the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Value: £7,800.
• Stephen Metcalfe
  • “Fact finding” trip to Saudi Arabia. 11-15 February 2018. Paid for by the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Value: £7,802
• Andrew Mitchell
  • Meetings with the Government of Saudi Arabia in Riyadh. Paid for by the Saudi Government. 13-15 January 2018. Value: £6,629.67
• Keith Simpson
  • “Fact finding” trip to Saudi Arabia. 11-15 February 2018. Paid for by the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Value: £7,802

Following their visits Mark Menzies warned Ministers to not be “put off by siren voices that want us to disengage” with Saudi export markets, and Leo Docherty called for further trade engagement with Saudi Arabia “the right thing to do not only commercially, but strategically and morally.” 

U.S. intelligence is now reportedly “convinced” the Saudi state is responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. It’s worth keeping an eye on which MPs have been very quiet on this issue…

UPDATE: Bravo to Mark Menzies who has written a letter to the Foreign Secretary supporting a “thorough investigation”.

As the world learned this week of the horrific torture and murder of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi – he was according to some reports alive when his torturer began cutting him up with an electric bone saw – the register of MPs’ interests was published. The new register of interests reveals that Tory MP Rehman Chishti received £46,000 from Saudi Arabia between March 2016 and January this year for advisory work with the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies. Chisti only stopped taking the lucrative £2,000-a-month payments from the Saudis when he became Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party for Communities in January. The party position comes with a £10,000 honorarium.

Guido looks forward to getting the benefit of hearing Chisti’s inside view of the Saudi regime’s behaviour when he speaks in the inevitable debates on the matter in the Commons…

UPDATE: Dozen Tories Took £85,0000 of Junkets to Riyadh in Last Year

Guardian columnist Owen Jones has been taking aim once again at the hard left’s public enemy no.1 – a certain T. Blair, natch – using his latest column to decree that “A new party would just be a Blairite tribute act, discredited from the start”. Nothing to do with the rampant entryism and anti-Semitism infesting the once-great Labour Party, of course…

As well as getting a bit too friendly some admittedly pretty unpleasant dictators, also on the charge sheet was today’s revelation that the Tony Blair Institute has been receiving funding from the Saudi Arabian regime. Blair was dismissed as “beholden to the wealthy and powerful, including the headchoppers of Riyadh”.

Let’s hope Owen wasn’t reading, er, the Guardian on March 7th this year, where there were no fewer than three giant adverts paid for by none other than… the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia:

If Blair’s Saudi funding renders his political efforts “discredited from the start”, will Owen start applying the same standards to his own Guardian columns? Of course, the current leader of the Labour Party would never dream of cosying up to murderous dictators or taking funds from repressive regimes either…

h/t @jamesprice_tpa

A new report from the Henry Jackson Society finds that Saudi Arabia is “foremost” among the sources of foreign funding and support for Islamist extremist ideology in the UK. The study examines the ways in which the Saudi and other foreign governments stoke Islamist thought and activities in Britain. It finds that:

• Saudi Arabia has spent at least £67 billion promoting Wahhabi ideology abroad in the past 30 years;
• “A number of Britain’s most serious Islamist hate preachers sit within the Salafi-Wahhabi ideology” and have studied in Saudi Arabia as part of scholarship programmes, or have been provided with extreme literature and material within the UK itself;
• In 2014 it was estimated that Britain’s Salafi Mosques had a collective capacity for a 44,994 strong membership;
• In a minority of cases, institutions in the UK that receive Saudi funding are also run directly from Saudi Arabia;
• Saudi textbooks are used in a number of the UK’s independent Islamic schools;
• There have also been “numerous cases of British individuals who have joined Jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria whose radicalisation is thought to link back to foreign funded institutions and preachers“.

The report calls for a public inquiry in order to understand the foreign backing for Islamist extremism in the UK:

“What is publicly known about the foreign funding of Islamist extremist activities in the UK almost certainly does not represent the full extent of what has happened in recent years… Given that there is a clear lack of information and understanding about this subject, both among policy makers and the public, the government should start to address this issue by launching an official and public inquiry into the subject.”

May has been suppressing a government report on funding of extremism for over a year – likely because it reveals Saudi culpability. She could begin by making those findings public…

Theresa May’s spokesman has issued a public slap down of Boris Johnson after he was caught on tape by the Guardian criticising Saudi Arabia. It’s a shame that the Guardian and the BBC think calling out a warmongering human rights abusing dictatorship is a “gaffe“. Now Downing Street has shot him down for telling the truth: “Those are the Foreign Secretary’s views. They’re not the government’s views”. Which is about a brutal a dressing down as a Number 10 spokesman can give. As Iain Martin points out, criticising the Saudis for fighting brutal proxy wars should not be remotely controversial. Boris was never likely to go native like Hammond did at the FCO, fair play to him for telling the truth even if Theresa May wants to butter up the world’s wrong uns. The government castigated Corbyn for his Castro guff. Slapping down Boris today is the height of hypocrisy from Number 10…

What on earth is going on with Crispin Blunt? The Foreign Affairs select committee chairman lost the plot last week, demanding private investigators find out who exposed his determination to water down criticism of the Saudis. The ‘super-committee’ on Saudi arms then descended into farce and released competing reports, with notoriously Arabist Blunt’s report arguing we should go much softer. Very odd behaviour.

This morning the Foreign Affairs committee’s report on Libya is now being called into question. Guardian journalist Patrick Kingsley has debunked one of the report’s most important and bizarre claims – that Gaddafi wasn’t a major threat to civilians in Benghazi. The committee cited a report from Amnesty International, however it appears no such Amnesty report exists. Confusing. Embarrassing for Blunt and the Foreign Affairs committee – that’s two very public humiliations in the space of 24 hours…