RIYADH (Middle East Eye) – Prominent left-wing members of the Labour Party have called on British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to challenge Saudi Arabia on its human rights record, as he prepares to visit the kingdom next month in a push for fresh investment.
Starmer is reportedly set to seek investment from sovereign wealth funds in the Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), linked to a series of human rights abuses - including the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
Labour MP Clive Lewis told the Guardian: “There should be a couple of data-x-items on the agenda. One will be their human rights record domestically. The second will be the issue of Yemen. Third will be oil production, and where they’re investing their sovereign wealth fund around the world.”
John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor, who now sits as an independent MP after being suspended from Labour for voting to scrap the two-child benefit cap, said: “Of course we want economic relations with a whole range of countries, but at the same time we have to be prime advocates across the world in standing up for human rights.
“Trips to pander to governments that have such a level of abuse of human rights, and particularly with regard to what’s happening in Yemen, we have to be extremely wary.”
Starmer’s position on Saudi Arabia has evolved considerably over the past decade. As an opposition MP in 2016, he voted in parliament to withdraw Britain’s military support to Saudi Arabia for its war on Yemen.
Then in 2020, while running to be leader of the Labour Party, Starmer called for a halt to arms sales to Saudi Arabia. “I want us to go further and review all arms sales, as well as halting the sales to Saudi Arabia that are creating the horrifying humanitarian suffering in Yemen,” he said.
For a while, as leader of the opposition, this approach continued.
Starmer accused then-Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson of going “cap in hand from dictator to dictator” for oil when he visited Saudi Arabia in 2022.
But the Labour leader was accused of retreating from this position earlier this year, when he said of arms sales to the oil-rich state: “We will do a review to look at the sales, look at the countries and the relationships we have.”
Now as prime minister, he is understood to be trying to bolster Britain’s diplomatic relations with Persian Gulf states and seek fresh investment from their sovereign wealth funds.
Last week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) launched a report that alleged that the PIF, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which is controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, “facilitated and benefited from human rights abuses”.
It also says the PIF has “facilitated serious human rights violations” linked to Mohammed bin Salman “through companies it owns and controls, such as the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi”.