United Kingdom: Global Position

Debate between Lord Taylor of Goss Moor and Lord Leong

Thursday 13th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD)]

My Lords, I too welcome the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, and hope that he enjoys his time here. We are in rather difficult times, so we look forward to further contributions.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for making possible this important debate. It is more than important. It is an extraordinary debate. It would have been inconceivable, months or even weeks ago, for the House to be united in saying the things that it has said about our position in the world, and particularly the position of the United States. Matters are changing fast—as we speak, even. These are unprecedented times, in which America has joined the autocracies and dictatorships of the world in a belief that might is right, abandoning the rule of law, abandoning international free trade, abandoning liberal democracies, attacking its own allies and clearly adopting the same expansionism as that of Xi and Putin. It is as if the America First movement in the 1930s had seized power just when the Americans in practice came behind us to defeat Hitler when those America First politicians had argued for them to abandon Europe to Hitler. The wrong side has taken control. It is unimaginable that this Chamber would be united in these concerns, yet that is obviously so.

I will touch on the two big issues. The first is trade. It is absolutely evident that there is nothing about what Trump has said—and he is saying it more today—that suggests that this country can expect a genuinely good trade agreement with the United States. If he has one, it will be based entirely on self-interest and on us surrendering any measure of our interests to do a deal. We have to recognise that we need to work with all countries that believe in the rule of law, free trade and international institutions to build an alliance around trade. We cannot compromise our position by thinking that we can somehow sit on both sides of the Atlantic—that is just not an opportunity now available to us.

My second point is on defence. People have often misunderstood what NATO is about. The most important element that NATO provided was, effectively, an anti-proliferation treaty that said a member state could rely on America to defend it and therefore did not need the bomb. France has a few bombs—independently. Britain has a smaller few, which are not independent of America in any event; we cannot in practice use them without it.

The truth is that the offer to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Poland, the Baltics, Britain, Germany and France—all of those other democracies—was, “We will defend you and therefore you don’t need the bomb”. Even more importantly, not only do we need a defence alliance across Europe and other likeminded countries that has a nuclear deterrent—we are going to have to think about that now—but behind the nuclear deterrent was the promise that, if Russia or China used nuclear weapons at any point, the first response would be a non-nuclear one: an overwhelming shock and awe attack.

This was said to Russia when it threatened a nuclear attack at the start of the Ukraine war. Russia was told, “You will be taken out by a non-nuclear response”. But the only country in the world capable of providing that is America, and it is quite apparent that we cannot rely on it to do so; indeed, it is very unlikely that it would do so. Therefore, our defence now needs to work with our likeminded allies around the world to build a non-nuclear capability to respond to and stop these “might is right” countries, of which America now is one.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind all noble Lords that they must stick to their advisory speaking time of four minutes, because we have to finish the debate by 3.19 pm.