The UK should turn to Saudi Arabia for new trade and investment opportunities after Brexit and not a backward-looking Commonwealth, Saudi ministers said on the second day of a controversial visit to the UK by the country’s crown prince.

As the UK and Saudi Arabia set out a broad ambition to strike nearly $100m of commercial deals over the next decade, the powerful Saudi energy minister, Kalid A al-Falih, told a business conference in London: “I would like to think that Saudis can be the pivotal link to a new partnership sphere for the UK that is perhaps not positioned in the past, as is the Commonwealth, but forward-looking, looking at the demographics of the Middle East, Africa, and Islamic world to which Saudi Arabia is central.”

The UK should regard the kingdom as the dominant force in the Gulf and “your gateway to Africa, one of the next frontiers”, he said.

Al-Falih’s pitch, emphasising that both the UK and Saudi Arabia were at “inflection points”, underlines the extent to which the Saudis sense the UK will need to step up its search for new trade partners after Brexit to replace lost EU markets.

UK and Saudi entities on Thursday signed more than 18 economic agreements worth more than £1.5bn, covering education, pharmaceuticals and banking.

Before heading to Chequers for a private dinner with the prime minister, the 32-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, held a round of meetings mainly at the Saudi embassy in Mayfair. Seen as the dominant figure in Middle East politics possibly for decades to come, Bin Salman held court to the chief executives of major British banks, the chancellor of the exchequer, Phillip Hammond, and a select group of MPs. The crown prince emphasised the role education and women’s empowerment will play in Vision 2030, his plan to transform and modernise his country. He also went to Lambeth Palace to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.

Backed by a PR advertising blitz, the crown prince and an entourage of senior ministers have been touting the kingdom’s determination to modernise both economically and socially, as well as wean itself off its dependence on oil as its sole revenue generator.

But he faces an uphill battle to convince opposition politicians in the UK that his reforms are not cosmetic, or that his foreign policy gambles in Lebanon, Qatar and Yemen are not reckless. There has been little attempt by Saudi officials accompanying the crown prince to argue that greater freedoms for women will also lead to wider political freedoms, at least in the near term. 

Following his meeting with Bin Salman, Welby expressed his distress about the humanitarian situation in Yemen, according to a Lambeth House statement. The Saudis insist they have ended their blockade of the country’s ports, and are now contributing to a UN aid programme.

Welby also “shared his concern about limits placed on Christian worship in the kingdom and highlighted the importance for leaders of all faiths to support freedom of religion”, the statement said.

No details of the meeting with Hammond were briefed but the Saudi energy minister confirmed the sale of Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company, will not go ahead this year. The Saudi state plans to borrow about $31bn this year to bridge an expected budget deficit of $52bn and fund growth plans after its economy shrank last year, mainly due to low oil prices.

Dr Hoda al-Helaissi, a member of Saudi Arabia’s Shura Council and one of the most senior women in Saudi public life, emphasised the intense social and economic pressure on the government to undertake reforms. “Saudi households can no longer live comfortably on one salary, forcing women out into the labour market,” she said. By 2030, she predicted, a further 1.3 million women would join the labour market, making women 30% of the workforce.

“We are moving away from a tribal society to a family based around the nuclear family,” al-Helaissi said in an address at the Rusi thinktank. “We are dealing with a generation that is very well connected to outside world through social media, travel and education. It is a generation that knows what it wants and where it wants to go. It is a generation that is directly and indirectly putting pressure on the government because its expectations are high”.

Source: The Guardian

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