Conundrum of premature Cameron Egypt visit revealed

(Updated below 23rd February) There were those who felt that Prime Minister, David Cameron, had no business going to Egypt while the situation following the fall of President Mubarak remains evolutionary.

They have had their answer.

He did indeed have business there. Dirty  business. He was accompanied on his oddly premature visit by arms dealers.

Time to revive the anti-Iraq war posters whose simple message still resonates: ‘Not in my name’.

Update 23rd February – the Kuwait conundrum

Responding to widespread criticism today of his taking eight UK arms dealers to Egypt, David Cameron is quoted in the national press as saying that, in distinction to Libya and Bahrain where the Foreigh Office has already revoked export licences for arms deals, it was right to do business with allies like Kuwait.

One historical curiosity we consistently observe is that back in the run up to the first Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait, the world’s press, including the British press, reported that Kuwaitis welcomed the invading Iraqis because they wanted to be rid of what they saw as the exploitive ruling family of Kuwait, the Al Sabahs.

Once Stormin Normin et al were on the job and the allies were into the war – which, when it was all over, saw the infamous airborne ‘turkey shoot’ of jeep loads of defeated Iraqi troops – no one ever mentioned the disaffected Kuwaitis again.

The war was a great liberation of the invaded and the oppressed?

The truth is rather more awkward.

Kuwait has the semblance of democracy to a limited degree. But even within clear limitations, it is a shallow and tokenist democracy.

The Al Sabah rulers have dissolved parliament where they felt it challenged them too strongly or legislated too weakly – in its terms. They dissolved the Kuwaiti parliament as recently as 2009,  in a sequence of dissolutions including  1976-1981, 1986-1992, 2003, 2006, 2008 and 2009. In the 1970s and 1980s, the dissolutions were succeeded by long periods of autocratic rule and with censorship of the press.

There are further details of the democratic system of Kuwait here. One assumes that David Cameron must somehow be ignorant of the vulnerable basis of democracy in Kuwait when he is so enthusiastic about arming its rulers.

While Cameron made the Egyptian dash for cash from this most ambiguous of trades, the UK did nothing to prepare to get its nationals out of imminent danger in Libya.

The best it could do today was to try -  and fail – to get a couple of bangers airborne, and wait in embarrassment when the first could not leave the ground.

The state’s priorities o0uld not have been more clear.