Sure we disapprove, just not that much...

Mr Trump has said he doesn’t approve of a nation who sends an 18 man hit squad to another country to murder one of its citizens in its own embassy. But, he points out, the US has just signed a $110 billion arms deal with the Saudis, and to turn his back on that could cost half a million American jobs. So... they’re not going to do jack. Likewise, we have extremely lucrative arms deals with the Saudis too, small beer compared with the US deal, granted, but the principle still applies. Then there’s the oil...

What would it take for Trump, or the British government for that matter, to stop doing business with any particular country? Not murdering a journalist, certainly. Deliberately bombing a bus load of children? Apparently not. The Saudis did that a couple of weeks ago. Carpet bombing an entire city? They haven’t done that yet, but seriously, I don’t think even that would be enough for us to turn our backs on them.

Way back in the 70s, a growing number of workers at Lucas Aerospace voiced their disquiet at what they were being asked to do, namely manufacture weapons of war. They started a “Socially Useful Work” initiative, and made many suggestions for how they could maintain Lucas’s profits without needing to make killing machines. The project died a death, as we might imagine, but the idea hasn’t gone away. Right now we could be going all-out with renewable energy schemes, rather than buying oil from whoever and fracking. There are 12,000 wind turbines in the UK, only a small fraction of what countries like Germany have. Building wind turbines is labour intensive; expanding our building programme could create thousands of jobs. Then there’s recycling. If we started doing that properly, instead of simply paying lip service to the idea, again, thousands of jobs would be created, and even better, as with renewable energy schemes, profits would soon be seen on the balance sheet.

The trouble is we continue to depend on fossil fuels to a terrifying extent, therefore we have to be nice to the producers, however horrible they are. If we could reduce our demand, we could tell the Saudis and other awful regimes where to go, without worrying about the consequences. Let’s go people!