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It isn't just the Minister acting as a salesman for BAE: The Royal Navy got in on the act, too. HMS Portland, one of the Navy's frigates, was on a three-day visit to Colombia last June. The papers released to me describe this as "defense cooperation." The Royal Navy itself put out a press release about the ship celebrating "Armed Forces Day while on a brief visit to the Colombian port of Cartagena" at the time. As well as British sailors taking part in the pomp and ceremony, and the HMS Portland crew playing a soccer game against the Colombian crew of the ARC Caldas, the warship was acting as a floating sales office for an arms-trade party.The documents say the ship was there for "defense and security exports." With help from the UK's government-run arms sales unit, called "UK Trade and Industry Defence & Security Organisation," Hugo Swire used the ship to push the proposed deal. In the papers released to me, The British Ambassador to Colombia, Lindsay Croisdale-Appleby says, "the visiting HMS Portland gave a spectacular setting for an evening reception for senior members of the Colombian navy and defense ministry." At the meeting, "The minister highlighted a proposal by BAE Systems to supply Ocean Patrol Vessels to the Colombian Navy."There is a long history of British ministers pushing arms sales. Most famously Mrs. Thatcher saw this as a key part of her job: Thatcher called it "Batting for Britain," and made great personal effort to promote the massive Al Yamamah arms deals with Saudi Arabia in the 1980s—a deal which also involved BAE Systems. However, from the 1990s onwards the huge problems of corruption in Al Yamamah and other arms deals encouraged government ministers to take a lower profile in promoting individual arms sales. The government has remained involved in arms trade promotion through the Defence Sales Organisation, renamed the Defence and Security Organisation. However, Ministers themselves have tended to have a more subtle approach to directly flogging weapons. During the Blair years, Labour was a bit tied up between Tony's love of doing business and Foreign Minister Robin Cook's "ethical foreign policy."It looks like that the newly confident Conservatives are abandoning any subtlety and going for a more direct approach.Follow Solomon Hughes on Twitter.Watch on VICE News: Cutting Through Hungary's Razor Wire Fence