Brexit: UK International Relations

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the committee for its excellent report, with which I find myself largely in agreement. I would like to say how much I appreciated the words of the noble Lord, Lord Jopling. I have known him a very long time in politics. He spoke with the wisdom I have always thought was central to his life.

I know I keep saying this in this House, but the truth remains that the world is totally interdependent. That is the first reality of existence; we cannot escape it. It is demonstrably there in security, of course, and the threat from terrorism. It is there in climate change, economics, trade, culture—in every dimension we can think of. There is not one major issue I can identify that faces us, our children and grandchildren that can possibly be solved on a national basis. They all require international co-operation. I have no doubt whatever that if history survives as a discipline, this generation of politicians will be judged by our successors on the success we make of international governance. That is how we will be seen.

There are different approaches to what practical arrangements make sense and what do not. We have decided that we want to come out of the European Union, which I think is very sad indeed. I cannot say how sad I find that, but it has happened. That will not mean that the realities to which I have just been speaking will go away. Therefore, we shall have to work very hard at other means of promoting international co-operation and other ways of meeting the challenges that face the whole of humanity. Of course, the UN will be an important part of this, and with a new Secretary-General with a very impressive pedigree, we will need to work hard with him on this. We will need to work with him, of course, on strengthening the UN administration itself.

There is one thing that has always troubled me: it is the ability of politicians of all persuasions to talk about the UN as though it were a separate entity. When things get difficult, we like to be able to pile the blame on the UN. The UN is not a separate institution: it is us and all of its members. We must never forget that. It is no stronger than the commitment of the members themselves. We have to make very certain that, if we believe that the UN is indispensable—as I think many of us do—we are ensuring its success. As a member of the Security Council, we obviously have particular responsibilities in this context.

There are some immediate issues that need to be addressed: the successful new arrangements for the election of the Secretary-General must become the culture for appointments right across the UN system. That is essential: we should be supporting the Secretary-General in that. We should also recognise that, in a renewed concentration and priority on peacekeeping, mediation, conflict resolution and the rest, we take very seriously the reports—they are more than reports; they are evidence—of UN operations in terms of their personnel having gone very far awry and wrong, not least in sexual abuse. That needs to be tackled as a priority, because it is undermining the credibility of the United Nations across much of the world.

We are entering a difficult phase. We have talked a lot this afternoon about the United States. I find that situation very challenging; in many ways I find it grim. Let us remember, however, that in the popular vote, the majority of the American people did not vote for Trump. Among a majority of the American people, there are people who share our values passionately. We must not give up and start playing to Trump, because we know that in the United States, there are people who again, in the future, can become champions of the kind of world in which we would like to live.