Is Brown’s futile junket just an excuse to pay homage to Saudis?

Gordon Brown flies to Jeddah tomorrow to rescue the world from soaring oil prices and the following press pack have already labelled it 'mission impossible'.

Brown's allies are worried that by going to the oil crisis summit hosted by the Saudis he is on a hopeless exercise that can only produce negative headlines. The Saudis have already told Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, that they will pump record amounts of oil onto the global markets to reduce global oil prices.

Oil prices have already started to fall from the record highs on the world markets in advance of the summit of oil producers even before Brown's 'mercy mission' to save the world economies. But the Saudis are adamant that the record prices for oil are being caused by a 'speculative bubble' rather than a lack of supply. That means what goes down, may go up again when Brown flies back on Sunday.

Those around Brown say he believes he can make a difference. He enjoyed knocking heads together to reach an agreement on debt reduction for the Third World, particularly African countries, in advance of the Gleneagles G8 and it gave him a taste for the world stage. His critics in the Labour Party say he is trying to emulate Tony Blair as a global player and should focus attention on his myriad domestic problems.

The trouble is that he may emerge from this weekend's summit looking more ineffectual than ever as oil producers will not be in the mood to be lectured by the PM on the need to cooperate or face challenges in the future from alternative forms of power like wind turbines and nuclear power stations.

That much, Brown knows, which begs the question - why is he going? The Westminster lobby media pack are already writing it off as a waste of time even before they have boarded the Prime Minister's plane.

He may claim some credit for reducing oil prices, but Brown is going to have a hard job convincing the Westminster sceptics that he played a decisive role. Could it be more to do with paying homage to the Saudi Royal Family, as successive Prime Ministers before him have done, than a plea for cheaper oil?

Last October he rolled out the red carpet for King Abdullah. The state visit went ahead after the Blair Government controversially quashed the fraud investigation into alleged kick-backs to a Saudi prince for arms sales to the West's most important Arab state in the Middle East. The Saudis duly responded by signing a massive multi-billion pound deal for Typhoon Eurofighter aircraft.

THE MOLE: OIL PRICES

LAST UPDATED 9:17 AM, JUNE 20, 2008