The morality of begging for trade with Saudi and Qatar

Cop27? Me neither. Barring a last-minute call to join Boris Johnson’s Sharm El Sheikh entourage, I’ll be minding my carbon footprint at home. But I’m sorry not to be reporting firsthand from a more controversial Middle Eastern gathering of the global elite: the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, or ‘Davos in the Desert’.

A ticket to Cop27 is a virtue signal in itself. But attendance at last week’s FII, an annual showcase for progressive sovereign spending within Mohammed bin Salman’s otherwise medieval Saudi state, is a moral conundrum. Just as the UK relies on Qatar for liquefied natural gas supplies while our dignitaries queue to cite the emirate’s human rights record as reason not to go to the World Cup there, so we beg the Saudis to buy gilts and British-made arms but we don’t want to be seen cosying up to the regime that butchered Jamal Khashoggi.

The US – with a starry line-up led by Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, the billionaire investment guru Ray Dalio and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner – seemed to have no trouble burying its scruples in the desert sand; the Chinese delegation, one assumes, had none to bury.