Brexit: UK International Relations

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the report and the work of the new committee. I welcome, too, its reiteration of the UK’s commitment to the preservation and strengthening of the liberal global order, to the UN and the international institutions of the UN family, and to the extensive framework of international law, including the global human rights regime, in which the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, is so actively engaged.

International law, courts and institutions of course constrain national sovereignty. Successive UK Governments have accepted the trade-off that treaties and international norms share sovereignty and build an open international order. Now it appears that we have a US Administration who reject many of the constraints of global institutions and international law. That puts Britain in opposition to the current thrust of US foreign policy and I very much hope, as we all do, that the Prime Minister will be robust in warning President Trump of the dangers of his approach.

Although British Conservatives support global law and institutions, they reject the constraints of the strongest and most effective regional order. They uphold global human rights but passionately reject the invasion of British sovereignty by the European human rights regime. There are uncomfortable parallels between what drives the Trump Administration’s antagonism to the UN and the British right’s antagonism to the EU.

I was struck by the warnings in paragraphs 183 to 199 on the potentially negative impact of Brexit on the UK’s influence within the UN and the limitations of the Commonwealth as a potential alternative framework. The EU has evolved into one of the most effective groups within the UN and has thus been a valuable asset to the British global influence. We are now abandoning that diplomatic framework.

Since we are also debating the UK’s international relations in the light of Brexit, I have looked for declarations by senior Ministers on British foreign policy in recent months. There has been remarkably little beyond empty repetitions that by becoming a much less European Britain we will somehow become a more global Britain, which is a bit like saying “Brexit means Brexit”. Boris Johnson’s Chatham House speech on 2 December, however, promised that it was,

“the first in a series of speeches setting out our foreign policy strategy”.

However, it was not very strategic. It spent more time discussing the fate of the African elephant than the future pattern of co-operation on international issues with our European neighbours, and indeed more time on the resonance of Harry Potter novels for children in south Asia. There was much discussion of the British involvement in Afghanistan over the past 200 years, but no reference to the centrality to British foreign policy, since before the English state became the United Kingdom, of relations with France, the Netherlands, Spain and Scandinavia. The most he would say was that Britain would be a “flying buttress” to the European church—whatever that may mean, and I suspect he does not know himself.

However, Mr Johnson repeated the old Tony Blair line that Britain is,

“a bridge between Europe and America”,

and that we are,

“at the centre of a network of relationships and alliances that span the world”,

in which,

“people around the world are looking for a lead from Britain”.

Mr Johnson wrote a book on Winston Churchill, which had mixed reviews, and he should know that Churchill’s concept of the UK at the centre of a network of relationships depended on our retaining a key role in the European circle as well as in the transatlantic relationship and in what Churchill called “the British Commonwealth and Empire”. Cut the European dimension out of Winston Churchill’s “three circles” concept, and our position in the world is sharply diminished.

The only substantial speech by Mr Johnson that I can find since then was given at a conference in Delhi on 21 January. He made no mention in it of the Commonwealth, in the capital of what had been the jewel in the crown of the British Empire, probably because he had been told by his staff that the Indian Government are not enthusiastic about returning to a subordinate role in a British-led network. There was much in the speech on Scotch whisky exports and about the “pesky” tariffs that India imposes to limit them, but how nevertheless India and the UK stand together in their commitment to free trade. “Pesky” is a term that I last came across when I was a boy reading comics, and it is interesting that that is the language that our Foreign Secretary still uses. He continued,

“we have just decided to restore our military presence east of Suez with a £3 billion commitment over ten years and a naval support facility in Bahrain. We have a commitment to the whole world … And as our naval strength increases in the next ten years”—

the noble Lord, Lord West, will be very glad—

“including two new aircraft carriers, we will be able to make a bigger contribution. In the Indian Ocean, we have a joint UK-US facility on Diego Garcia—an asset that is vital for our operations in the region”.

It is exactly 50 years since Harold Wilson’s Labour Government announced the UK’s withdrawal from east of Suez on the grounds that it no longer made any sense to continue to defend an empire that had now been given its freedom. Boris Johnson is too young to remember that: he was only three at the time. We maintained our presence across the Indian Ocean then with a fleet that included between 35 and 40 frigates, against the 16 we have now, as well as bases in Aden and Singapore. The Foreign Secretary claimed that Diego Garcia is a vital UK, as well as US, facility. Perhaps the Minister can remind us how many UK military personnel we have there—the last time that I was told, I think there were two; perhaps there are now four—and whether any British military assets are based there. This image of the world is not about taking back control, it is about taking Britain back to the 1960s, boys’ comics included.

Now we have the PM going to the USA to tell President Trump, according to the media this morning, that “together we can lead the world”—a phrase straight out of Daniel Hannan’s book on how the Anglo-Saxons invented freedom and the modern world. Is Theresa May going to attempt the same subordinate relationship as Tony Blair pursued with George W Bush? Does she share the same illusion that Anglo-Saxon Americans love Britain above all others, and that clinging to American coat tails gives us global status superior to the international roles of Germany and France?

Independence from Europe; dependence on the United States. Commitment to a liberal international order, but dependence on a Republican Administration who are against many of the assumptions of that international order. That is not a coherent strategy for a post-Brexit foreign policy.