That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:
“Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament”.
My Lords, it is a great honour to open this debate on Her Majesty’s gracious Speech. I am equally delighted to be joined by my noble friends Lady Goldie, Lady Sugg and Lord Callanan. He has the unenviable task of closing what I am sure will be an expert and wide-ranging debate.
Over the course of the next two days we will consider in detail this Government’s approach to foreign affairs, defence, international trade and our relationship with Europe—all matters on which your Lordships’ House is highly qualified to comment and advise. The common thread running through the strategic purpose of all these departments of state is, of course, their outward-looking international focus. As a consequence, they share a responsibility not only to protect our people and promote our prosperity but to project our influence on the world stage as a pragmatic champion of our shared values and a steadfast defender of our interests. All these topics were eloquently covered by my noble friend Lady Anelay, my predecessor in this role and a former Minister of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union, in her Motion for a humble Address, and by my noble friend Lord Dobbs in his seconding of the Motion. As ever, both delivered their speeches with wit and wisdom in equal measure.
In today’s shifting global landscape, with the rules-based international system coming under challenge from an aggressive Russia and a rising China, from trade tensions and terrorists and from intractable conflicts and climate change, global Britain is needed more than ever. In addition to these challenges, there are also a great many opportunities to be seized beyond our immediate horizon. Sometimes they are the flipside of the same coin: you just have to look at the vast economic potential associated with innovating to tackle climate change.
In anticipation of our departure from the European Union, our international departments have been making the necessary preparations to ensure that the United Kingdom is ready to meet these challenges and seize these opportunities from day one. I will set out some of the ways in which we are doing just this. I turn first to my own department, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Our efforts are focused on strengthening our partnerships, reaffirming our commitment to the rules-based international system and championing our values. To strengthen our partnerships, we have undertaken the biggest uplift in our diplomatic network in a generation —work started under the leadership of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister when he was Foreign Secretary. By the end of next year we will have boosted our staff numbers by more than 1,000 globally and upgraded or opened 14 new posts, making us the third-largest diplomatic service in the world after the US and China.
Our departure from the EU gives us the opportunity to reimagine our relationships with our European partners, both bilaterally and with the EU as a whole, so that we can maintain and strengthen our security, trade and personal ties with our closest friends and allies. The injection of more than 500 new staff across our European network has given this work new impetus. We also have the opportunity to broaden our horizons beyond Europe, deepening our trading ties with the world’s growth markets, from Asia through to Latin America. To give one example, the total GDP of the 10 ASEAN nations has grown almost sixfold in less than 20 years to nearly $3 trillion, offering huge scope for UK companies. That is why we have established a dedicated mission to ASEAN in Jakarta, which will work closely with our new regional trade commissioner, based in Singapore. In Latin America, Africa and Asia, our £1.2 billion prosperity fund is supporting innovation and skills to boost incomes and attract foreign investment, bringing benefits to local people and international companies alike.
I am glad that noble Lords appreciate that priority. We will have the freedom to champion free, fair, rules-based international trade and to open up new markets for UK businesses through an ambitious trade negotiation programme. We will be able to strike new free trade agreements and help UK businesses to expand overseas while giving consumers here more choice in both goods and services.
Among other things, we will legislate to provide continuity for businesses and consumers by enabling continued access to the £1.3 trillion of global procurement opportunities each year, and we will create a new independent body, the trade remedies authority, to protect UK manufacturers against unfair trade practices. Supporting UK businesses to export to other countries is a key priority, and our export strategy is designed to help the UK climb the ranks of trading nations by increasing exports as a percentage of GDP. Last year, exports increased by 3% and now stand at more than £650 billion. The export strategy aims to build on that by encouraging firms to expand into new markets, increasing the information available to help them do so, connecting them to new opportunities and helping to provide the finance they need to succeed.
Additionally, we plan to create a network of free ports across the UK which will boost growth, create jobs and ensure that towns and cities feel the full benefit of life outside the European Union. We have already established a Freeports Advisory Panel and will release further details on how ports and airports across the UK can bid for free-port authority status. We are committed to maintaining the UK’s position as the number one destination in Europe for foreign direct investment, with stock levels reaching $1.9 trillion last year, creating tens of thousands of jobs for UK workers.
I turn, finally, to our exit from the European Union. This Government believe that we must respect the referendum result and leave the European Union on 31 October. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister is clear that he wants to leave with a deal, and we are working with energy and determination towards that very goal. Intensive negotiations are progressing. Just last week, the Prime Minister had a detailed discussion with the Taoiseach, and they agreed that they could see a pathway to a possible deal. There have been constructive negotiations with the European Commission over the weekend, and my right honourable friend the Brexit Secretary is once again today attending the General Affairs Council in Brussels.
Sorry, after Brexit—and after breakfast. If you stand here for 20 minutes, you start thinking about breakfast. I am sure that noble Lords are listening with great diligence. I will repeat that line because it is important. We will support trade and investment in least-developed countries by maintaining duty-free access after Brexit and by hosting the Africa investment summit in January. We will play our part in the fight against climate change by legislating for net-zero emissions by 2050, developing the world’s largest offshore wind capacity and helping 47 million people around the world to cope with the effects of climate change.
With our bold policy agenda across foreign affairs, international development, defence and international trade, we believe that we are equipped. We are ready to broaden our horizons. We are ready to support our friends. We are ready to continue to strengthen our work with our allies, as well as to stand up for what is right while enhancing our own prosperity here at home.
I heard from behind me: “Does he believe all that?”
My Lords, I am delighted that this two-day debate rightly places our relationship with the EU in the wider context of defence and foreign affairs, because our relationship with our near neighbours, trading partners and close friends lies at the heart of our wider global defence, security, commercial and diplomatic relations. Indeed, how we see ourselves and our place in the world, including our obligations and responsibilities as well as our interests, should guide how the Government plan to withdraw from the EU, supposedly in 16 days’ time, and how we construct our future relationship with this vital 27-country bloc.
I choose my words carefully: I speak of obligations because of our history and I speak of our responsibilities because of our economic and defence strengths, our democracy and the rule of law. Historically, we have been seen in both bad and good lights. In acknowledging both, we should be proud of our role in the creation of international institutions and conventions, from NATO and the ILO, and from post-war reconstruction and support for emerging democracies, to rules-based trade and the promotion of human rights.
Relationships can be altruistic and promote solidarity while also benefiting our own interests. This is clearly the case in security, in trade and in promoting peace and increased redistribution. For all of those, the EU has been a major locus of activity. It was born of the need to secure European peace, aligned to increasing trade and embedding democracy. After we joined, we helped to harness the democratic impulse in former dictatorships, including in Spain, Portugal and Greece, followed by those emerging from the Soviet yoke. That is why so many of us wept on the morning of 24 June 2016.
Yet, at that moment, we still hoped that those same impulses—for a peaceful continent, for greater fairness and for economic and democratic growth—would steer the UK’s negotiations with the EU. How disappointed we have been. That is because there was, sotto voce at the start, the desire to break free from European standards voiced as “setting our own rules”. What that actually meant, and which is now clear under this Prime Minister, was the ending of the level playing field, which has done so much to harness the competitive and entrepreneurial instinct without jeopardising worker, consumer or environmental rights and standards.
My Lords, the Minister’s opening speech displayed a spirit of faith-based optimism worthy of Boris Johnson himself. In the hard light of the real world, after three and a half years of internal arguments within the Conservative Party and the right-wing media, Brexit negotiations are being crammed into the narrow gap between the end of the Conservative Party conference and the parliamentary deadline of 19 October. So far, we know only that any agreement reached would leave the UK in a looser relationship with the EU than Theresa May had proposed, and that in future Britain would be looking for other preferred international partners than the member states of the European Union.
I will focus on the pledges in the Queen’s Speech that the Government will continue to,
“play a leading role in global affairs … be at the forefront of efforts to solve the most complex international security issues … champion global free trade and work alongside international partners”,
to which I add the Leader of the House’s declaration yesterday that the UK will be,
“a strong and reliable neighbour”;—[Official Report, 14/10/19; col. 19.]
I am not sure to whom.
There is a central contradiction at the heart of the Government’s rhetoric about our place in the world after we leave the EU. Yes, the Prime Minister refers from time to time to “our European friends”, but the mood music—which our continental neighbours hear loud and clear—is of hostility, in particular to Germany and France: that we are escaping from a new German empire; that British Europhiles are traitorously plotting with the French Government, or even the Belgians; and that we can be free only if we cut the multilateral ties we have negotiated with them for half a century. Last week Jacob Rees-Mogg again referred to the EU as the German empire—I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, who is intervening from a sitting position—displaying as weak a grasp of European history as his recent book displayed of English history.
The noble Lord just referred to people referring to the EU as an empire. What was his reaction to Mr Verhofstadt saying to the Liberal Democrat party conference that the EU was indeed an “empire”, and to one of his aides being revealed in a BBC documentary as having said that the UK was now its “colony”?
I do not recollect anyone saying that the UK was now its colony; I look forward to receiving chapter and verse. The European Union is a confederation of countries in which Britain, from the time that we joined, has played a major part, alongside its other major players. That is what we believe and that is what we wish Britain to continue to do.
Once we have escaped from our neighbours, the Prime Minister promises that we will rediscover ourselves as a more global Britain. But no one has defined what the phrase “global Britain” might mean. A lengthy Commons inquiry concluded last year that it had entirely failed to discover a plausible definition, including from the Foreign Office or from outsiders.
Seventy years ago, Winston Churchill, on whom the Prime Minister apparently models himself, redefined the foundation for Britain’s place in the world as resting on three pillars: our special relationship with the United States, our position in Europe and our role in what was then the Commonwealth and Empire. Ten years later, Harold Macmillan realised that we could maintain the special relationship with the United States only by embedding ourselves in the developing institutions of European co-operation and applied, with American pressure behind him, to join the European Economic Community. The right-wing lobby within the Conservative Party that bitterly opposed this shift was then called the League of Empire Loyalists—the European Research Group is its lineal descendant.
Macmillan recognised that the end of Empire would leave the Commonwealth a useful association but not a strategic partner. Harold Wilson, as his successor, withdrew British forces from their expensive deployments and bases east of Suez.
The noble Lord has made a profound mistake. He knows that I sympathise with him on many things, but the League of Empire Loyalists was never a member or part of the Conservative Party. It disrupted Conservative conferences, including one that I was at in 1956. I know a bit about it and he is wrong.
I apologise to the noble Lord. I am glad to hear that they were at Conservative Party conferences, but at that point on the outside rather than on the inside. I withdraw that point.
Lord Carrington, as Margaret Thatcher’s first Foreign Secretary when she became Prime Minister, played a leading role in developing European foreign policy co-operation, as did his successors, Geoffrey Howe and Douglas Hurd. British foreign policy over the past 45 years has been shaped through European co-operation—above all, through working with our French and German partners, from the creation of the Group of Seven as a forum for concerting European influence in transatlantic relations to the close co-ordination of the three Governments’ positions in the nuclear negotiations with Iran, which reached an agreement that President Trump has now torn up.
British influence in the world has been amplified because we spoke as a leading member of a European caucus of nearly 30 states, working together with the UN, in other multilateral organisations and in negotiations over regional conflicts. A British foreign policy without European co-operation at its heart is like a polo: it has a hole in its centre. Leaving the European Union takes away Churchill’s European pillar and takes it away at a time when the special relationship with the USA looks to be in more doubt than at any point since its creation in World War II, with an American President who is entirely transactional and has no truck with myths about the Anglosphere or the special virtues of the English-speaking peoples.
The Commonwealth network remains an asset to the UK, but we should not exaggerate how far it enables us to punch above our weight. Yes, many Australians and New Zealanders feel a continuing affinity with Britain but there are limits to how far they will offer us trade or business concessions out of family sentiment. Liam Fox and other Eurosceptics expected India to welcome freer trade with Britain in return for supposed fond memories of the past benefits of British imperial rule, but the Indians’ interpretation of their national history, unsurprisingly, is different from ours. They will have noticed the recent neglect of the Indian role in World War I in how we commemorated the centenary of that conflict. There was not much evidence of British gratitude for the major Indian contribution, so there is little encouragement for Indian gratitude from the descendants of those who fought.
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We are also determined to increase our co-operation with our Commonwealth partners. Many noble Lords have that as a key area of interest. They will know that this unique organisation speaks for one in three of the world’s people. We are determined that their voices should be heard. As a body representing so many small island states and countries vulnerable to climate change, the Commonwealth has a vital role to play in promoting action on this very issue. We also believe that there is significant scope to tackle key issues such as modern slavery and to increase intra-Commonwealth trade and connectivity. Just last week my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Trade, Liz Truss, hosted a meeting of Commonwealth Trade Ministers at which precisely these issues were discussed. Members agreed to enhance co-operation on shared priorities such as e-commerce, fisheries subsidies and the reform of the World Trade Organization. For the remainder of our period as chair in office of the Commonwealth—and beyond—I assure noble Lords that the UK will continue to strive to promote the potential of the Commonwealth as a real force for global good.
These partnerships of course are not just about trade; it is important to state that they are also about working together internationally to build and maintain peace, stability and prosperity and defend the rules-based international system, which I know my noble friend Lady Anelay focused on in her contribution. This means building international alliances to counter unacceptable behaviour, as we did after the Salisbury incident—many noble Lords will remember that time. It means maintaining critical international agreements such as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, with which we are working with European partners to bring Iran back into compliance. It means engaging with all concerned to avoid further bloodshed in north-eastern Syria, and using our seat on the Security Council to drive action on pressing issues, as we are doing currently on the Rohingya crisis and the conflict in Yemen, to name but two. It also means supporting reform of the World Trade Organization as an essential arbiter of disputes and the champion of free trade.
Finally, and possibly most importantly, our vision for global Britain is about promoting our values: human rights—an issue that noble Lords know I personally focus on—equality, democracy and the rule of law. We want the United Kingdom to be a moral anchor in the world, a global force for good, championing causes that really matter and which transcend national boundaries. That is why, through our Department for International Development, we spend 0.7% of our gross national income on tackling poverty, ensuring that we spread opportunity around the globe. Indeed, development will sit at the heart of our international agenda as we leave the European Union and look ahead to our presidency of the G7, and deliver on our vision of a truly global Britain.
To meet the sustainable development goals by 2030, the United Nations estimates that an extra $2.5 trillion will be needed every year to drive poverty reduction in developing countries. If we are to play our part in overcoming this challenge, the United Kingdom must mobilise significant private sector investment. That is why my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development, Alok Sharma, announced the launch of a new International Development Infrastructure Commission in the summer, to provide expert advice on how to accelerate investment in low-carbon, sustainable infrastructure.
Educating girls is one of the best investments countries can make to reduce poverty and truly achieve sustainable development goals. That is why last month at the UN the Government announced a further £515 million—more than half a billion pounds—to help more than 12 million children, half of them girls, to get into school. Of course, children can benefit from schooling only when they are healthy, which is why we are turbocharging efforts to end the preventable deaths of mothers, newborn babies and children in the developing world by 2030, and leading the global response to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is vital for global health security.
Furthermore, as a force for good in the world, we are taking a leading role in defending media freedom, preventing sexual violence in conflict—which to me remains a personal and key priority as the Prime Minister’s special representative, and on which we are determined to maintain international momentum—and driving further action on important issues. Yes, that means—also importantly—prioritising climate change. At the UN climate summit in September, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister announced the doubling of UK investment in international climate finance to at least £11.6 billion over the next five years. That includes £1 billion to launch our new Ayrton Fund for climate innovation.
In July this year we held the world’s first international conference on media freedom. Next month, in November, we will host the PSVI international conference, which will bring together Heads of State, Foreign Ministers, the UN and civil society to bring justice and accountability to survivors of sexual violence in conflict. Next year, we look forward to hosting COP 26 in Glasgow, in partnership with Italy. These major international gatherings will all serve to raise global ambition on all these vital priority issues, and demonstrate the influence and convening power of the United Kingdom.
On defence too, we are meeting the threats of today while preparing for the challenges of tomorrow. Thousands of our brave men and women are at this very moment deployed in every part of the globe. I know we sometimes have different perspectives, but I am sure that I speak for every Member of your Lordships’ House when I pay tribute to our brave men and women for all they do. In recent months this has included: helping to secure the lasting defeat of Daesh in Iraq and Syria, although that remains something that we have to be live to; countering Boko Haram in Nigeria; providing vital hurricane relief in the Caribbean; protecting international trade in the Strait of Hormuz; and enforcing sanctions against North Korea—of course, while maintaining our continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent. These are just some of the initiatives and engagements that our brave men and women are involved in.
We are also getting ready to face the future in a number of ways; first, by investing. The recent spending round increased the defence pot by £2.2 billion. Our people are our greatest asset and with the budget rising to over £41 billion by 2021, we can invest in better accommodation, better childcare and better career pathways for our Armed Forces personnel.
We are also investing in world-class kit in every domain. On land we are working with BAE Systems to develop lighter ammunition, reducing the load our troops have to carry by as much as 26%. At sea—the noble Lord, Lord West, makes an opportune entrance—our future fleet is taking shape. I will pause at that point in case he wishes to say anything. We have 11 new warships in the pipeline. Last month my right honourable friend the Prime Minister announced that we will build five Type 31 frigates, which I am sure the noble Lord, Lord West, will appreciate. They will join our Type 26 global combat ships, our next-generation nuclear deterrent submarines, and our two new aircraft carriers, themselves armed with world-class Lightning F35 stealth fighters. That will be a truly global Navy capable of projecting power from anywhere in the world.
We are also investing in the future of our air power. We have signed a statement of intent with Italy to co-operate, alongside Sweden, on developing our next-generation Tempest fighter and our future combat air strategy. We are creating new technology to detect, track, identify and defeat rogue drones. Moving from air to space, 50 years after the launch of our first satellite, Skynet 1, we are developing Skynet 6 to give our forces unparalleled capacity to talk to each other in any hostile environment.
World-class defence requires a world-class defence industry. This thriving sector already supports more than 250,000 jobs across the United Kingdom, both directly and indirectly. In the aerospace and security sectors alone, our exports are worth nearly £20 billion a year. We want to match that success in the maritime sector. Type 31 signals a sea change—a dynamic and adaptable vessel primed for the international market, a ship designed with exportability in mind. But it is not enough for our yards to rely on Navy contracts. We need to get them match-fit for global competition. That is why the Ministry of Defence and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy are coming together and joining forces with industry to improve shipyard productivity, enhance skills and boost order books.
Finally on this subject, in defence as in foreign affairs, we are strengthening our global partnerships. HMS “Queen Elizabeth” is currently part of the Westlant 19 carrier strike group deployment off the US east coast, underscoring our commitment to our most powerful ally. Crucially, we are also steadfast in our commitment to NATO as the beating heart of UK defence. With Russia rising and the global threats growing, we are ensuring that the UK remains Europe’s leading defence player. We are doing that by exceeding NATO’s 2% GDP commitment and delivering the deterrent by offering high-readiness forces; by providing training in Afghanistan and Iraq; by supporting air patrols in Iceland and the Baltics; and by our enhanced forward presence in Poland and Estonia. We have nearly 1,000 personnel serving in the NATO command structure and contributing to alliance operations. In addition, we are leading the agile nine-nation Joint Expeditionary Force, which can complement and plug into NATO missions wherever it is called upon. In short, as we prepare to leave the EU, the UK’s defence is not only protecting our security but helping to boost our prosperity and drive our global leadership ambitions.
Turning to trade, our departure from the EU gives us a golden opportunity to set our own independent trade policy for the first time in nearly half a century.
The Government’s new proposal means that we can leave on 31 October without disruption and in a friendly way. It is a fair and reasonable compromise for all sides that respects the result of the referendum. If it is not possible to reach a deal, the Government have ramped up preparations for leaving without a deal. The Treasury has made available £8.3 billion to prepare for Brexit, including £2.1 billion in August to boost no-deal preparations. To reduce uncertainty for the more than 3 million EU nationals now living and working in the United Kingdom, we have made an unequivocal guarantee that they will have absolute legal certainty over their future status, whether or not we leave with a deal. We continue to encourage other EU member states to do as much as they can to protect UK nationals living within the European Union.
The challenges the world faces today may be unprecedented but the opportunities are plentiful. As the United Kingdom prepares to leave the European Union, we are prepared to address with determination, vigour and confidence our future aspirations and goals with hope and optimism. We are raising ambition around the globe to confront myriad challenges, from intolerance and inequality to climate change. This means that we are bolstering our support for persecuted Christians and broader religious freedoms around the world, by implementing the recommendations of the Bishop of Truro’s review of our work at the Foreign Office; spending more than £200 million to ensure that 1 million vulnerable girls across the Commonwealth receive 12 years of quality education by 2030; helping to reduce tropical deforestation in developing countries through mobilising $5 billion by 2020 in co-operation with both Germany and Norway; protecting more than 4 million square kilometres of British waters by 2020 through working with our overseas territories to establish a marine protection blue belt; supporting trade and investment in least-developed countries by maintaining duty-free access after breakfast—
The Prime Minister wants the extensive level playing field to go and to be replaced by a relationship based on the UK taking control of its own regulatory affairs and trade policy. That is shorthand for a deregulated, low tax, low standards economy—despite undermining our trade with 500 consumers across the 27, despite having to follow US rules rather than ones set here, despite pinning our hopes on a protectionist President and Congress suddenly opening up their markets to our exporters and despite putting faith in a President who will disregard the Kurds without a moment’s hesitation to shore up favours with a Turkish autocrat. What a pity that the Government did not listen to the wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, that while:
“Leavers have high hopes of a closer transatlantic relationship … the United States is hard-headed and self-interested”.
“the largest opportunity … with our closest ally and biggest trading partner—the United States”.
This extreme leaver plan is about lower food, consumer, hygiene, employment, environment and living standards.
Who will pay the price for this bargain basement approach? It will be working people, consumers, public services and future generations, while the whole country will pay for a no-deal exit with common foreign policy and security being perhaps the major casualties. Today we have heard again warnings from motor manufacturers of the bleak future that any no-deal exit would bring.
Challenges about Brexit go much wider. They are about the sort of country we want and the role we want to play in the wider world. Some big decisions face us. As the European Council meets there are choices for the Government and thence for Parliament and the people. If the Prime Minister does negotiate a deal, because of its importance to our nation Labour will insist on it being put to the people in a referendum. Voters need to hear and debate not just the divorce arrangements—the withdrawal agreement—but the vision for our future relationship with the EU, which is the political declaration, and decide whether that is the right way forward for the UK, and particularly for Northern Ireland. But should the PM fail to negotiate a deal, despite what the Minister has said, we, I believe with the support of this House and the Commons, will ensure that he obeys the law by seeking to extend the Article 50 period and not crash out in the way we have just been threatened with again. In fact, it is almost certain that, deal or no deal, or as looks more likely, a failure to agree by Thursday, an extension will be needed in any case. We hear that a withdrawal agreement Bill would comprise 100 pages or so to implement any Brexit deal. It must be completed ahead of treaty ratification, while the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 needs 21 sitting days before a treaty can be ratified—unless the Government are thinking of repealing that Act as well.
We are curious about the reintroduced Bills, which the Government did not dare to complete before Prorogation. They assured us that they were not needed before exit. The Bills cover immigration, fisheries, agriculture and trade. The Trade Bill is particularly important given the amendments made in your Lordships’ House, handing Parliament a role in approving post-Brexit trade agreements such as with the US. Without that change, Parliament will have almost no say in the ratification of trade agreements.
Given that the Government, as we have just heard, are prioritising new trade deals as their main aim, we need to be sure that Parliament will not be excluded from them. Will the Minister assure the House that the amendments made here will be retained in the new Bill, including the government amendments—particularly those to maintain standards in agriculture and other goods? Or is he assuming we will not need the Bill, so that the Government can again pause it if they do not want our rather difficult amendments? Would they not actually find a commitment to staying in this customs union helpful in persuading the Commons to support whatever deal they are fiddling with in Brussels?
Our future—economic, social, security and cultural—may well be determined over these coming days and weeks, so we need straight answers from a Government led, according to Sam Knight in the New Yorker, by,
“a British leader with a complicated relationship with the truth”.
The same author writes:
“Brexit has caused an intricate, wicked crisis in British politics”,
which is why we need a new way out of this dilemma and a new way of discussing our role in the wider world.
I have not ventured into defence, security or aid, nor the myriad global issues that will be covered by noble Lords over the next two days, and by my noble and newly bearded friend Lord Collins when he winds up tomorrow. Suffice it to say that Brexit can be handled only if we see it in this wider context and with a hard-headed appreciation of the future demands, responsibilities and opportunities for the UK. From watching the Government’s fumbling attempts at a deal there is little evidence that there is any hard-headed thinking at all.
Yesterday there was no compelling vision of Britain’s role in the world in the Queen’s Speech, nor anything to give me confidence that our future is safe in Mr Johnson’s hands, so I hope that Parliament will rein him in—for the sake of all our grandchildren.
When Boris Johnson was Foreign Secretary he promised, in a rambling speech, that the new global Britain would return our forces east of Suez. He spoke of British ships passing through the Malacca Strait to patrol the South China Sea, as if we still had a massive Navy which could intimidate the Chinese and partner the United States on the other side of the globe. He referred to Diego Garcia, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, as “a major British base”, although it is actually a major US base, with somewhere between 10 and 20 UK personnel to maintain a British presence, and he spoke of expanding our presence in the Persian Gulf, without explaining where we would find the ships or men or what would be the strategic rationale for doing so. It was wonderful stuff for a newspaper column, though perhaps best for something like the Boy’s Own Paper, if the older Members of this House remember that, but it was deeply irresponsible for a Foreign Secretary to conjure it up when he had not the faintest idea of how to put such a proposal into practice.
Certainly, we have a strategic relationship with the Sunni Arab monarchies. Half of our arms exports go to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, which makes us as dependent on them as they are on us, and we depend on flows of investment from those oil states to cover our persistent external deficit in trade and finance. I note that the owners of the Daily Telegraph, the newspaper that has vigorously demanded that we must take back control of our country from foreigners, are now hoping to sell the Ritz hotel to the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar or Abu Dhabi. Another bit of prime London property will thus slip out of British ownership and control.
If the Government are to fulfil their promise to place Britain,
“at the forefront of efforts to solve the most complex international security issues … alongside international partners”,
they would be actively engaged in multilateral diplomacy on the overlapping conflicts between Syria, Turkey, the Kurds, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Yemen. Instead, the Conservatives’ most experienced Middle East Minister, Alistair Burt, has had the Whip withdrawn and will be standing down at the forthcoming election. We are withdrawing from ongoing consultations with our European partners on Middle East issues, which is the opposite of demonstrating that we are a “strong and reliable neighbour”, so we are left to cope with the contradictions of American foreign policy towards the region—withdrawing forces from Iraq and sending extra forces to Saudi Arabia.
The Prime Minister’s determination to negotiate a looser future relationship with the EU than even Theresa May envisaged means that we will lack the mutual trust or the institutional links to maintain a partnership with our neighbours in foreign policy. We will therefore be dependent on the United States as our global partner, as the United States becomes a less reliable partner. The Government have only just realised that a US-UK trade agreement would not get through the US Congress if the British Government had been seen to be hostile to Irish interests. They are still in denial that their repeated promises of freer global trade have come up against the US Administration’s attack on the World Trade Organization and its developing trade conflicts with China and the EU. The White House has even picked on Scotch whisky exports as a target for higher tariffs on the European Union.
Boris Johnson’s global Britain looks like an empty phrase. We will have no close international partners to work with and no strong and reliable neighbours whom we trust in a world facing a global recession, rising trade conflicts, violence across two continents and the threat of climate change. If the hard Brexit we are negotiating leads Scotland and Northern Ireland to drift away, leaving England alone without one-third of the UK’s land mass and the vital Scottish base for its nuclear deterrent, we will find ourselves a little England, standing alone without friends or influence. Is that what Conservatives are willing to contemplate?