Foreign Affairs

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by saying this is the first debate in which I have taken part to which my good friend the Foreign Secretary has been replying. He is a man of great wisdom—he put me into the House of Lords. There can be nothing greater in the wisdom field than that.

Although this is in title a debate on foreign affairs, I want to speak mainly about Russia. Before doing so, since Gaza has come up, I fully associate myself with the speeches of my noble friends Lord Polak and Lady Altmann, who are exactly in the right direction.

My noble friend Lady Eaton treated us to a bit of history earlier, and I would like to treat us to some history as well—that of post-war Britain. Those who are very boring, like me, and watch BBC Four at 10 pm on a Sunday night, may have seen that, last Sunday, they replayed the broadcast that Hugh Gaitskell made after the invasion of Suez. He berated the British Government for breaking international law. I mention that in passing, since of late we have heard a lot about the breaking of international law. I certainly do not condone what Russia did, but I ask that we maybe understand the context in which it happened.

At the end of the Second World War, Stalin was anxious—in fact, more than anxious—that Russia should be surrounded by a cordon sanitaire, and that was the whole purpose of Yalta. We sometimes forget that we went to war for the freedom of Poland, and we ended up agreeing to the borders of Poland agreed in the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact. That was never settled until Willy Brandt was Chancellor of Germany, at which point it was settled along the lines of the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact.

There have been lots of changes in borders, and I ask the House to consider that what we are currently facing are a lot of frozen conflicts around the Russian border of the former Soviet Union. This is where the problem arises—and why, just as the United States gets absolutely paranoid about Cuba, the Russians get rather paranoid about their riparian borders. If we are to avoid a long-term conflict in which issue after issue is brought up, we have to have some sort of new Helsinki. There has got to be a conference in Europe in which we negotiate and come to a new set of agreements.

We know, because it has now been comprehensively leaked, that there was almost an agreement between Ukraine and Moscow about Moscow having neutrality in Ukraine, but the agreement was sunk. What we have now is a hopeless war, and it will go on and on, and the Russians will, almost certainly, not be beaten. It will become another frozen conflict like Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and like what is now rapidly coming up on the rails in Moldova, what could break out in the Suwalki strip between the coast and through Lithuania and what could break out on the borders of Latvia and Estonia with the Russian cities that were created there.

I say to the Foreign Secretary that the long-term consequences of this must be that the shooting will have to stop. It cannot carry on for ever, and, if it is going to stop, we must have a series of new arrangements. This afternoon, just before I came here, I was looking at a German newscast which reported that 65% of Germans believe the shipment of arms to Ukraine is now “excessive”, and 75% oppose the export of Taurus missiles to Ukraine. Do not get this wrong: the fear of many people in Europe is a drift towards war. The job of the Foreign Office—which I served in for a very short time, but I know its mentality—is to encourage peace, not to build up to war.

Ukraine

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Friday 26th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by welcoming my noble friend Lord Camoys to our Benches. I am sure he will make a long and distinguished career in this House, and we will benefit much from his wisdom. I certainly agree with the last few words of the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, and that is what I want to concentrate on.

First, however, I will just make it clear that I have spent nearly my whole life in foreign policy in one way or another, from a junior position in the Foreign Office in the 1960s, through 25 years in the European Parliament, and then another 15 years doing things for its former Members’ association. Those various jobs took me to all the countries of Europe on many occasions; I was trying to work out how many times I have been to Ukraine—it is probably eight or nine times —and I have also been to Russia a number of times. Having said that, incidentally, I also led the first delegation of the European Parliament to the North Atlantic Assembly, which was quite an interesting event, to put it mildly.

I start by saying, to bowdlerise the words of LP Hartley: “Russia is a foreign country: they do things differently there”. I was in Ukraine several times between the end of the last century and about 2016. During that time, I got to know, first, ex-President Kuchma, who was the last of the old guard, and then of course we had the orange revolution and all that flowed out of it. We have to look at why Russia did what it did, because it was not something that just happened. The fact of the matter is—I saw it through years of being there—that there was massive provocation from the Government in Kyiv. I served for eight years as one of this House’s representatives in the Council of Europe. There I was on its legal affairs committee which dealt with Ukraine, believe it or not, and I was chair for a time of the committee for the enforcement of judgments of the European court.

One of the constant issues was the way in which the Government in Kyiv were trying to outlaw the Russian language. This was a regular and running sore. I remember going to Crimea, where I was surrounded by politicians from the local parliament in Simferopol telling me they did not want to be in Ukraine. We are talking about 2012 or 2014, in the middle of the last decade, not just before the invasion. I got the same message when I went to Donetsk, to Luhansk and to Mariupol. They felt that the Russian language was being outlawed, and that it was ridiculous. I recall talking to one or two families who said to me, “The only language we know at home is Russian. Do you expect us to talk to our children in Ukrainian? Our schools teach in Russian. They’ve taught in Russian throughout history”.

The other group, of course, was the Hungarians. The Hungarian schools were forbidden to teach in Hungarian, and that is one of the reasons we have the problems with Mr Viktor Orbán today. Yes, he is certainly a Putin supporter, but he is also very angry with Ukraine, and this was going on for years.

While I was on the Council of Europe, I was also for a time the vice-president of the Venice Commission, which looks at rule of law issues in Europe. On several occasions we had before the Venice Commission the Ukrainian Government’s desire to outlaw Russian in Ukraine. It was a regular feeling, and it was backed by the West; it was backed by the EU and by everybody in the western embassies in Kyiv. The Russians illegally invaded Ukraine because, basically, they lost their temper. It would not happen in a democracy because there would not be a Putin with quite the power that he had to do what he did.

I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, who mentioned talking to Russians just before the invasion and that they all said it could not happen. I had the same experience talking to Russians. I talked to the Russian ambassador in Britain after it happened. He put a brave face on it, but I swear he did not know it was going to happen until the morning that it actually happened, when he got a call from the Foreign Ministry in Moscow telling him what was going to happen. It was a very well concealed secret.

My final point is this. We have to find a way of getting ourselves out of what is effectively a frozen dispute. That is where we are. It is not going to move that far; “General Winter” is not going to be beaten. Our only answer, it appears, as our great Minister for the Armed Forces, James Heappey, said, is an army of

“half a million men and women under arms … Where do we get our second echelon from?”.

No existing policies spell out how the UK could mobilise a force big enough to take on Russia. Frankly, if that is His Majesty’s Government’s aim, I despair.

Ukraine: Reconstruction

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

I am aware of the steps that other jurisdictions are taking. I am not going to make policy on the hoof here and suggest that we are now going to impose windfall taxes, et cetera. There could be a general political point I could make towards the Lib Dems on windfall taxes generally and domestically, but I will refrain because of the seriousness of the subject. It is important that actions are co-ordinated and that as other jurisdictions, the US and the EU, take steps we reflect on what they are and see how they can best be reflected in our systems and structures.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that one of the messages coming out of this is that this is not a safe place to put money and that countries such as Switzerland and Singapore are probably rubbing their hands with glee? Has he looked at the excellent publication, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, and seen the terrible mess that the Allies got themselves into throughout the 1920s by chasing Germany and the consequences that eventually followed?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, on my noble friend’s second question, financial systems and capital markets have developed very differently and progressively since the era he talks of. On the first question, I disagree with him profoundly. The message, which is clear from this House and this Government, is shared by many in this House and beyond. It is that Russia is conducting an illegal war and that for those who conduct illegal wars there will be consequences, including financial sanctions.

Ukraine: Ceasefire

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Monday 15th May 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Balfe]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to assist the realisation of a ceasefire followed by negotiations in the conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)]

My Lords, on today’s visit of His Excellency President Zelensky, the UK remains steadfast in its support for Ukraine’s brave defence against Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion. Ukraine and its partners seek a just and lasting peace for Ukraine, which affirms its territorial integrity and sovereignty and provides stability for the global community. However, if Russia is serious about advancing the prospects for peace, it must immediately cease attacks against Ukraine, withdraw its forces from the entirety of the country, and commit to meaningful negotiations.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, this war has now been going on for a year, and it is getting worse. We have started to see incidents within the Russian Federation’s borders. Unless someone makes some effort soon to get peace talks going, we are going to head into a tragedy. Is it not the job of His Majesty’s Government, as a member of the P5, to start taking the initiative for peace, instead of constantly fanning war?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I refute my noble friend’s assertion. We do not fan war. The aggressor is Russia. As my noble friend knows, Russia is also a P5 member. It is about time Russia stood up to its responsibility as a P5 member. We want peace; the Ukrainians want peace. Does Russia want peace? We want the answer.

United Nations World Water Development Report

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

The noble Lord makes the point about ODA cuts on most occasions when we debate. He is absolutely right to and, like him, I would very much like to see a return to the 0.7% spending—but that is something over which I am afraid I have no control. I do not think it is the case that water has been disproportionately cut. It may well be that the noble Lord is not aware of some of the programmes that directly overlap with this agenda but would not necessarily be described as water projects—not least, a whole new range of nature-based solutions that the Government are focusing on.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister recognise that the expansion of population has not been marked by an expansion of water availability? One way in which that could be tackled is by putting more money into desalination programmes of the United Nations and other agencies to try to get more water processed from salinated water to drinkable water.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My noble friend makes an important point. There are lots of ways in which we can alleviate that problem. I add to his suggestion that the most important focus is to concentrate on the environmental link between water shortage and environmental degradation. To put that in context, the Congo Basin provides around two-thirds of Africa’s rain, so if we allow it to continue to be cut down at the rate it is currently being cut down—half a million hectares a year—one only needs to imagine the humanitarian crisis that would follow.

Georgia: Imprisonment of Mikhail Saakashvili

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

The noble and right reverend Lord’s earlier comments are absolutely noted in relation to the influence in particular of Bidzina Ivanishvili, to whom I think he was referring. We understand that he is a private citizen. He does not have any formal or legal role in the Government of Georgia, but we are aware of reports of his links to Russia. We have raised that with the Government of Georgia, who have assured us of their determination to adhere to international sanctions against Russia. As everyone must, we will remain vigilant as we collaborate with our Georgian partners and regularly review our sanctions designations.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, when I was a member of the Venice Commission, it was quite clear that the normal courtesies of democracy had broken down in Georgia, so it is no good going around just blaming other people. Can the Minister assure us that the UK Government will put to the Georgian Government the need to conduct their parliamentary affairs in line with what is normally accepted as western democratic standards—in other words, not boycotting Parliament but exchanging power in a civilised manner?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, we will absolutely continue to press for progress on reforms in line with Georgia’s EU and NATO ambitions. I understand that further discussions will take place in the very near future and we continue to encourage all parties within the Georgian system to interact constructively to enact those reforms required to achieve their shared Euro-Atlantic goals and the will of the Georgian people. The Foreign Secretary met the Georgian Foreign Minister on 26 January, raising those same concerns about developments that are clearly damaging Georgia’s international reputation, its reform credentials and its EU and NATO aspirations.

Ukraine: Tactical Nuclear Weapons

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble and right reverend Lord on securing this debate. I will probably disappoint most noble Lords, because I am much nearer to the noble Lords, Lord Skidelsky and Lord Campbell-Savours, than to many of the things that have been said this afternoon. I have not been in Ukraine for some years—six, to be exact—but I was there in the 1990s and the early years of this century. I got to know ex-President Kuchma quite well and had several discussions with him about the evolution of Ukraine.

My first point is this: be careful what you wish for. How on earth have we got into such a position with Russia? It is a tragedy. We are using huge amounts of western military equipment to destroy Ukraine—not Russia. It is all being fired around Ukraine and ruining the country.

Secondly, everybody, including most Russians, accepts that the invasion was a massive misjudgment. The intelligence given to the Russian leadership was seriously defective and the amount of corruption in the Russian military seriously underestimated. The Russians are now facing an impossible situation, because they probably cannot pull back—they cannot leave and cannot stay.

We also need to remember that, as happens in many countries—and indeed happened in Britain in the Second World War—when you get the country on a war footing, people tend to rally behind the Government. My friends in Russia tell me that one of the biggest difficulties they have now is that it is very difficult to criticise the Government internally, because there is a general feeling of patriotism, particularly among the elderly: “We have to back our Government; we are all under attack”.

I think we have difficulties here. We conspired to make the Minsk agreements fail; there is no doubt about that. We did not put the effort in and, if noble Lords look through Hansard, they will see that I have made that point on several occasions over the years.

We talk about taking Russia to court, but who is going to take it there? Russia has a veto in the Security Council. Do noble Lords think that the Security Council is going to set up a body that works? Do they think that the Russians are going to pay if people tell them to? No, they are not. If we confiscate Russian assets in the West, the likely outcome will be a selling-off of US treasuries by countries that will say, “Are we going to be next? Is our money safe?” The answer is no. If they can do this to Russia, they can do it to China. We could actually precipitate a very difficult world financial crisis, and we need to be very careful about that.

Finally, we have somehow to get negotiations going—and only we can do that. While we are prepared to put unlimited amounts of military hardware into Ukraine for the Ukrainians to use against the Russians, they will do so, because it is very difficult also for them to step back. Their population is as much behind Zelensky as the Russian population is, overall, behind Putin. So the only way we are going to move things forward is by having backing from Macron and a decisive peace initiative to try to get both sides to the table—the Russians on the grounds that they cannot win, and the Ukrainians on the grounds that they cannot win without us and we are not willing to support an eternal war.

Russia in Georgia

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, first, I recognise the noble and right reverend Lord’s important work in support of Georgia over a number of years, not least since 2008. He raises some important issues of concern, and I will of course take them away. He spoke about sharing them with the important authorities on the ground; we do work very closely with others, including the EU. If there is more detail I can share with him, I will certainly do so.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I served for six years on the Venice Commission, where we had many problems with Georgia. Will the Minister use all his influence to encourage the Georgian parties to work together? Part of the fundamental problem in Georgia has been the inability of the political parties within its Parliament to co-operate on even the most basic things, such as the election of speakers and chairmen of committees.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

I assure my noble friend that I am all for cross-party co-operation when it comes to good governance in our Parliaments. Despite our different perspectives and challenges, I think your Lordships’ House and the other place reflect that genuine desire to ensure good governance in Parliament. Of course, I take on board what my noble friend said. It is important that all parties work in the common interests of Georgia and ensure that the current occupation and annexation of these breakaway republics is addressed centrally, because this is a violation of its sovereign territory.

Food Insecurity in Developing Countries due to Blockade of Ukrainian Ports

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for initiating this debate. He is always well worth listening to and has deep concern for not only this issue but many others that I also have concern for.

I welcome the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham to our ranks. I am sure we will hear much more from him. On the basis of his maiden speech, I certainly hope so, because I think we will all benefit from his wisdom.

I wish to add a bit of free thinking to this debate, as is my wont. I always used to preface speeches to schools by saying, “Nothing I say should be taken to represent in any way the party that I supposedly belong to”—and I said that while in both of the parties that I was a member of. Frankly, we are engaged in a huge amount of hypocrisy. We have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, about room in the Budget for £30 billion in tax cuts. We have heard about the need for Britain to economise, and that we have to cut £5 billion from our aid budget. We have also heard of the need for us to stand up to dictators and send £4 billion-worth of military equipment to Ukraine. This is the economics of the madhouse.

In my view, we have to start by understanding the world that we are currently living in—and I am not sure we do. It has changed a lot. It is fine to talk about the veto in the United Nations; the United States used it for 40 years to defend itself over Chile, Nicaragua and invading the British territory of Grenada. The UN Security Council has been a valuable organisation purely because it is a place where people can sit down and talk. It has never actually managed much but it has achieved a certain level of understanding, and part of that understanding is that we can all make contributions.

I shall talk about one very obvious contribution: there is a great shortage of grain in the world, but if you look at the amount of grain that we stuff into animals so that we can have a steak for our lunch, you realise that we could have a bit of rebalancing. You do not have to become a mad vegan to realise that the extent of food poverty is prompted by some of the practices that we in the West defend in the name of freedom but which actually lead to people going hungry in much of the world.

We have great difficulty in understanding the Russians. The Russian mind is quite different from ours. They are not a western European nation. They are a Christian nation but they have an odd way of looking at the world, part of which is not dissimilar from that of the United States: first, they believe that they are God’s given people; secondly, they believe that they have the right to do things that smaller countries would not even contemplate; and, thirdly, we have to face the fact that the Russian people are very largely behind Putin, and we should not imagine that they are not.

I welcome the talks that are taking place between President Erdoğan, President Putin, the leader of Iran and the Secretary-General of the United Nations. All that I would point out is that those talks contain only one European voice from our side, and that is the Secretary-General, who is of course Portuguese. We have abandoned the field of diplomacy to an alarming extent. President Macron tried to keep the dialogue open, but he has more or less had to give up in the face of everything.

Looking at the situation, I see that we have been extraordinarily provocative. We did not try to get the Minsk agreements enforced; we let them bobble on, unenforced for years, and failed to realise the anger that was building up in Russia where it was seen as hypocrisy. Then the West—as a great generic term—decided that they would destabilise Ukraine by getting rid of the Yanukovych Government. That Government were no better than the Kuchma Government or the Poroshenko Government, but they did happen to represent both ends of the country. The moment they were overthrown, the Russians effectively gave up on any hope of getting any sense. We may not like it, but they regard Ukraine as being their near abroad with the same ferocity that the Americans regard Canada or Mexico as being their near abroad, and there is a limit they will not go beyond. That is the problem that we face at the moment.

The second problem we face is that, if we are successful in the sanctions, we will point Russia away from Europe. Maybe people have not fully understood that there are already two major gas pipelines running from Russia into China. There is a huge demand for resources in China, India and Pakistan. Russia can supply those resources; it has, in the Russian part of the Arctic, a huge amount of mineral wealth that it can and will deploy. If the British and other Governments persist in such foolishness as trying to destroy the Arctic Council, in the end they will find that there is a new Arctic council. Russia, which controls the greater part of the Arctic, will join with China, which, God help us, has been admitted to the Arctic Council on the basis that it is a near-Arctic country. Remember that China, that near-Arctic country, is slightly further away from the Arctic than we are from north Africa, but nonetheless it is there.

If we do not sit down and try to work out what the problems are, we face the danger of getting ourselves into a position where we are compounding our problems for the future. There will be no gas in Russia to come back to Germany; it will all be going to China and to the south, and to those emerging countries where an emerging middle class is demanding the standards that our middle class command.

Let me wind up this chamber of horrors by saying that we have to get ourselves into a position where we are talking to other European countries. It is quite possible—I think of the Scandinavian countries—to have good and principled foreign policy without doing what we are doing now. The Ukrainians will fight as long as we pump equipment in there; as long as we send arms to Ukraine, they will fire them. But one day we will go one stage too far and supply something that is just a bit too technologically advanced, and someone in Ukraine will just pop it over the border into Russia, and things will escalate from there.

While we cannot do much about it, I ask the Minister to use his influence to try to dial down the tension and stop the arms going into Ukraine, because while they go in there they will be used to destroy the country. The people of Ukraine are the losers in this, not the winners; they are going to inherit a devastated state, which will be of no value to anyone and be a lasting rebuttal of our policies. I ask us to stand back and cool down. I hope we will not have to come back here in the middle of August because things have gone desperately wrong and the war has escalated to an end that we would not wish.

Ukraine

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his comments. There is always a risk that people adjust to appalling things, and things which are entirely abnormal become normal. Before coming to the Chamber, I had a meeting with a group of extraordinary members of the Ukrainian Parliament, representing different political parties. Perhaps the noble Lord met the same formidable group, and so will know what I mean. This was exactly the point that was made to me: even for people in Ukraine, the sound of sirens, which would have put the fear of God into anyone when it first began, is becoming normal; people are gradually becoming used to them.

This is a risk, and there is no point pretending that it is not, but our job—not just as a Government but for all of us here, with our various platforms, and for anyone following this debate—is to do everything we can to keep this issue as live as possible in people’s minds. What is happening today is no less serious than it was a month ago, when this is all we were talking about. The noble Lord makes a very important point. We cannot dictate what occupies people’s attention, but we can do everything we can to raise this issue at every opportunity. The fact that we speak more or less with one voice in this place, as they do in the other place, helps. I take the noble Lord’s point very strongly.

In the meantime, in the UK, as with all such issues, particularly a dynamic situation such as this, we need to approach the problem with as open a mind as possible and look for more opportunities to provide more support to Ukraine. As the MPs I met said, they need a strong Ukraine and a weak Russia. There are a number of ways in which we have contributed already to tipping the balance.

But, of course, we can do an awful lot more, and we look for those opportunities wherever they are. We heard more about accelerating sanctions from the Foreign Secretary today, and we will need to hear more going forward—not just from the UK. We need to accelerate the process of unhooking the West from energy dependence on Russia. Since the conflict began, vast sums of money have continued to flow into Russia, and everyone acknowledges that that has to stop. I do not pretend that it is easy, but we have to be single-minded in our pursuit of that independence.

We need to be very clear—I can confidently reassure noble Lords that the UK has been from the start and will continue to be—that, whatever the nature of any settlement on this issue, it has to respect the sovereignty of, and be led by, Ukraine. It also has to acknowledge and reflect Ukraine’s right to determine its own future—it is not for the UK to be prescriptive in any way. But our starting point is of course to drive towards Russia simply leaving Ukraine alone, which is all that Ukraine is asking for at this point. We should not make the kinds of concessions that I think some are beginning to wonder whether we should pursue.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I will follow up what the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, said. If we do not dial down this conflict, it could get completely out of hand and lead to an all-out war, which of course we could not win. I urge the Minister to try to get a common front among NATO members to make it clear to the Russians that Article 5 will be applied and vigorously defended for NATO members. Earlier this week, threats to Lithuania were made in the Duma by just a few Russian MPs. We have to start drawing lines because, at the moment, we are just waging a proxy war to destroy the Ukraine—all of the missiles that we are sending are actually blasting the Ukraine to pieces. So, unless we can dial down, we will not get anywhere.

Finally, President Macron, Chancellor Scholz and Prime Minister Draghi are in Kyiv. Of course, if we were in the European Union, we would be part of that central influencing body; we are not, but we ought to get behind them and try to make some form of move towards dialling down this conflict work.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I apologise for the length of my previous answer—I have not fully mastered the protocols of this format, and I thought that I was meant to be giving a more substantial answer. I thank the noble Lord for his comments. We want to be as aligned as possible with our allies; this is not about politics, Brexit or any of the other issues that have preoccupied us so much for the last few years. We need alignment, and we work very closely with our friends in Europe. We do not need to be in the European Union to be aligned on these issues—we have the necessary discussions in good faith and on a regular basis.

I simply echo an earlier comment: there is a very real sense that if we, our friends and allies or Ukraine were to concede so much as an inch to Russia, it would then almost inevitably seek to take further inches and end up with the full mile. Clearly, no one wants escalation into full-scale global war—you would have to be insane to crave such a scenario—but it is precisely by not appeasing the kind of figure that currently rules in Russia that the risk of further escalation of this conflict can be prevented or at least minimised. So we are on the right track.