As our relationship with Saudi Arabia comes under scrutiny, Brexit means we will rely on them more

Remember Brexit? A few weeks ago, as Theresa May announced a snap election, it seemed to be the only political question that mattered. Certainly that’s how the Prime Minister saw it. It’s how the Liberal Democrats saw it too – the party merrily prepared to scoop up disgruntled Remainers in droves. Only Labour, apparently divided on the subject, didn’t want to talk about it. And we all assumed they would face electoral disaster as a result.

Six weeks and two terrorist atrocities later, Britain’s departure from the EU has all but disappeared from the election radar. To some degree that reflects the fact that there has been little of any substance that any of the parties can say about how Brexit negotiations will be conducted and what impact the country’s withdrawal will have. Labour’s striking manifesto pledges on a wide range of other issues had the space both to be heard and to capture the public’s imagination.

Following the suicide bombing in Manchester on 22 May, domestic security has inevitably become the election’s major talking point. After another shocking terror attack at the weekend, this time in London, it will remain the dominant theme until the polls open on Thursday. And even as we await further news about how this latest despicable plot unfolded, questions are being asked about how Britain might avoid future Islamist-inspired assaults.

Jeremy Corbyn has focused on the question of resources for the police and MI5, highlighting cuts that have seen the number of full-time police officers fall by around 19,000 between September 2010 and the same time last year. Cressida Dick, Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has indicated that she will ask government for more funds. Theresa May’s record as Home Secretary during the Coalition government is suddenly under the microscope as never before.

For her part, the Prime Minister tells us there is a need for communities to be less tolerant of extremism and terrorism – “as a society”, she told the Evening Standard, “we should be more willing to call it out”. It remains unclear who precisely she was referring to. Big tech firms – Google, Facebook and Twitter – have also come in for renewed criticism, amidst claims that they have not done enough to remove from the internet content which promotes or inspires terrorism. Speaking on Sunday, the Prime Minister said: “We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed. Yet that is precisely what the internet, and the big companies … provide.”

There’s something in all of it of course. The police may have become more efficient but cuts have been painful; MI5 has more staff than ever but is monitoring more potential jihadists that at any time. Likewise, while the major technology firms spend hundreds of millions of pounds tackling extremist material their efforts need to be ramped up further. And for all the tip-offs about people espousing radical views, plainly there are places in Britain where fanatics can find safe harbour.

As for foreign policy Jeremy Corbyn – and others – have argued strongly that Britain’s involvement in foreign wars has been counter-productive, both in the countries to which the fight has been taken, and at home. He has also been clear in the past that a Labour government would halt sales of arms to repressive regimes, including Saudi Arabia.

Now it gets interesting.

For most commentators, it is Wahhabism, the strict form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia, which is where the roots of Isis, al-Qaeda et al are to be found. While the Kingdom’s rulers are currently pointing the finger at neighbouring Qatar – cutting diplomatic ties over claims that the next hosts of the football World Cup are backing militant groups – there have been widespread reports that money from wealthy Saudis has regularly found its way into the hands of extremists, despite Riyadh’s official role in the fight against terror. At the very least, the Saudis have spent billions on promoting the Wahhabi theology abroad, including in the UK. This is the theology, of course, on which Saudi custom and law is based – women’s rights hugely limited; homosexual acts punishable by death; free speech non-existent.

And yet, and yet, and yet. The Saudis are our friends! More importantly, they are providers of oil – £900m worth in 2015. And in return they happily shovel up a reported 83 per cent of the UK’s arms exports; conveniently worth a little shy of £900m in 2015. It’s the kind of deal any future PM would bite off your hand for (which is kind of appropriate in the context of Saudi Arabia’s penchant for punishments involving limb removal).

After all, this is just the kind of bilateral trade arrangement we’ll need all the more of when we leave the EU – the kind of great deal the Leavers always banged on about to get British manufacturing booming again. Forget Europe, let’s just sell guns to a country which promotes a grim religious ideology made positively grotesque by individual adherents from Raqqa and Mosul to Manchester and London.

All of which brings us back to Brexit. Remember that?