In a trauma of a press release that landed on Whitehall's doormat with the subtlety of a camel through a cat flap, Saudi Arabia has announced a temporary cessation of its decades-long hobby: buying every shiny, noisy death-bringer the British defence industry can weld together. The honourable gentlemen of BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, and their chorus of sub-contractors now face the grim prospect of having to innovate or, heavens forfend, downsize. One imagines the boardrooms of London echoing with the sound of monocles clattering into fine dining plates.
Riyadh, it seems, has finally discovered that even an infinite sea of oil can develop a coast, a fact that has eluded Western financiers for half a century. Their finance minister, a man who has presumably been tasked with converting his nation's lavish spending habits into a spreadsheet that doesn't resemble a Jackson Pollock painting, has declared a 'new era of fiscal responsibility.' Cue the collective shudder from the desks of every defence lobbyist from Mayfair to the Clyde.
But let us pause to contextualise this tragedy. For decades, the United Kingdom has been Saudi Arabia's favourite arms bazaar, a relationship sanctified by mutual interests and a breathtaking lack of moral inquiry. We sold them Typhoon jets, we sold them bombs, we sold them the very tools with which to reshape the Yemeni landscape. And in return, they bought our parliamentary silence, our oil, and the occasional weekend in Knightsbridge for our retired generals. It was a neat, if morally bankrupt, arrangement.
Now, the music has stopped. The Saudi entertainment budget, once vast enough to finance a small moon base, has been slashed. The Crown Prince, a man whose reading habits apparently include only his own press releases, has decided to invest in 'Vision 2030' – a plan to wean his kingdom off oil. Which, for British arms dealers, is a bit like having a favourite pub suddenly announce it's becoming a vegan yoga studio.
The consequences, as ever, will be borne by the least culpable. The engineers in Bristol, the assembly line workers in Lancashire, they will face the 'unavoidable restructuring' that accompanies a sudden drop in morally dubious demand. Meanwhile, the executives will console themselves with bonuses and, one imagines, a slightly less extravagant Christmas party.
But let us not weep for the defence industry. It is, after all, an industry built on the premise of human ingenuity applied to the most destructive ends. Its decline, forced by a temporary bout of fiscal sanity in the desert, should be greeted not with grief but with a gentle, mocking laugh. For there are few things more delicious than watching a systems of high-profit violence suffer the indignity of market contraction.
Yet the satirist must temper his glee. This is not a triumph of ethics but of economics. The Saudis are not moralising; they are economising. They have simply discovered that even autocrats must balance books, especially when the price of crude begins to twitch. The arms trade, like a pond creature, will adapt. It will find new markets, new conflicts, new clients whose bank accounts are sufficiently unburdened by conscience. Perhaps we will sell more weapons to nations with fewer deserts and more rainforests. The cycle of death, after all, abhors a vacuum.
So let us raise a glass of something sub-par and duty-free to the end of an era. To the strange, symbiotic relationship between a constitutional monarchy and an absolute monarchy, between a sceptred isle and a kingdom of sand. It was a dance of exquisite cynicism, but the band is now playing a slower tune. Enjoy the silence, for it won't last. The arms dealers, like the sharks they resemble, will soon find new waters to bloody.
