Who's to say it wasn't the Belgians who are responsible for Khashoggi's disappearance? Let's not jump to conclusions

Who would have thought it would be Donald Trump to introduce a soft liberal attitude towards Islamic extremism? But we should give him credit for having the grace to change his mind. Because now he’s been presented with evidence the Saudis killed someone mildly critical of their regime, instead of making the usual speech about “never backing down before these evil murderers” and banning all Muslims from entering America, he’s modified his response to, “Oh well, I expect they couldn’t help it.”

Despite there being alleged tapes suggesting Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Trump has stayed as friendly as ever with the Saudi prince, and if he was shown film of the Saudis executing Khashoggi, he’d probably say, “Well, let’s not jump to conclusions. We haven’t seen what he did to irritate them.”

After the disappearance, his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, was filmed laughing with the Saudi king, so the Trump regime seems to have adopted a pacifist “kindliness” approach towards violent forms of Islam.

From now on, instead of being critical towards jihadists, which may trigger off their anger issues, he’ll invite them for a weekend at the White House and get all his staff to give them a hug. He’ll take them to meet Melania for a chat about fashion, where she might discuss the latest designs in suicide vests, then sell them a couple of fighter jets to show they’re not judging them in any way, and wean them off their reported support for Isis through the power of love and positive thinking.

When asked if he was “giving the Saudis cover”, Trump said, “Saudi Arabia has been a very important ally of ours in the Middle East. Together we are stopping Iran.” And you can see what he means, because you can’t afford to get upset with dictatorships that kill their opponents when you need them in your moral battle against regimes so awful that they kill their opponents.

Trump went on to explain: “When I went there, they committed to purchase $450bn worth of things.”

It might cause less confusion if the price list was published, so we knew how many things a regime had to buy before it was allowed to do a particular amount of torture and murder.

It seems for $450bn worth of things, the Saudis are allowed (allegedly) to kill opponents and invade Yemen. Maybe for $50m worth of things you can blow up the odd bus, and if you’re Somalia, you can buy £20 worth of things which entitles you to shout “Wanker!” at your opponent out of a bus.

When he was asked for his response to the facts known so far about Khashoggi, Pompeo helped to clarify the issue by saying, “I don’t want to talk about the facts.” How refreshing, because people have had just about enough of facts. How many legal investigations are held up by facts?

Most trials would be over in 10 minutes if it wasn’t for do-gooders insisting on working out what happened.

Luckily the British government is getting less bothered with old-fashioned facts as well. After the poisoning in Salisbury, anyone who said, “Hang on a minute, let’s not blame the Russians until we know all the facts” was ridiculed, and ministers laughed, “How much evidence do you need?”

But now they’ve decided that just because a critic of the Saudi regime went into a Saudi consulate full of high-ranking Saudis and never came out again, it’s much too early to blame the Saudis.

After all, who’s to say it wasn’t the Belgians?

Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, made another statement about the Middle East, entirely unconnected to Saudi Arabia, when he said he was appalled at the suffering taking place in Yemen at the moment due to the famine.

The famine is one of those unlucky things that just happens, like a tsunami, something that no one can prevent. There are different theories as to the cause, with some saying it’s a result of the ports in Yemen getting bombed to destruction by the Saudis, who have installed blockades so no food, medicine or oil can reach the place. But on the other hand, maybe it’s just the warm weather we’ve been having. It’s the same with cucumbers: some years they come up lovely, and the year someone rains shells on them from a fleet of Tornado fighter jets, you don’t get any. It’s all part of the joy of gardening.

Hunt seemed very emotional as he was telling us how appalled he was, and you can understand why. He sees the awful images of starvation, and like all of us, he feels helpless. Because in his humble job of foreign secretary, in a government that sells £4.7bn worth of arms a year to the country doing the bombing, what can he possibly do to help?

Despite all this, the current Saudi monarch, King Salman, is described as a reformer. Maybe this is because last year, official executions went down from 154 to 146. So if anything the rate of reform is too quick. If they carry on like that, in 20 years they won’t be executing anyone at all and the place will be like a hippy commune in Devon.

Also, women can drive now, though they still have to get permission from men to travel or to study. So things are moving quickly, and in 10 or 15 years, women might be allowed, without their husband’s permission, to sit in one of those cars that rock up and down outside Asda when you put 20p in a slot.

By the year 2500 there could even be a Saudi version of Strictly Come Dancing, with each dancer at an opposite end of the desert.

So when a dictatorship is making that much effort to be nice, it wouldn’t help to rock the boat by being rude to them, or cutting down on their number of things.