King’s Speech

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, and the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. I do not think there will be any different response to my ideas from the new Front Bench than there was from the last Front Bench, but I keep trying because I believe they are right.

I shall talk mainly about NATO. I am pleased that my friend—I am not sure whether I am allowed to call him that—the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, is here. We have to remember that Article 5 of the NATO treaty, of which we often quote the first part, says that an attack on one is an attack on all. It then goes on to say nothing about what should be done. As a senior member of a southern European navy pointed out to me, as far as his country was concerned, nothing should be done, under Article 5, if there were an attack in eastern Europe. But, of course, Ukraine is not in NATO, and the first thing I would advise is that

“Ukraine’s irreversible path to full NATO membership”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/7/24; col. 369.]

to quote the Prime Minister, is exactly the wrong direction in which to proceed. The one thing we do not need is a lot of squabbling states carrying out their hatreds on NATO’s base. There is already far too much going on in eastern Europe with NATO members, but that can be contained. If we extend NATO membership to Ukraine, we will essentially extend it into a frozen conflict zone, because the next reality is that Russia is not going to leave Ukraine, either militarily or otherwise. The best you can hope for is a stalemate, and the only way out of a stalemate is a negotiation. You cannot bomb your way out of it.

I counsel the Government to look to a European initiative. Trump might be right: it may be about time that we looked after our own defence. In so doing, we would cease to be doing Washington’s demands all the time, because that is at the basis of this.

I note that we have said we will give £3 billion a year—pounds, not euros; I am too used to another Parliament—to Ukraine. I know politics is the language of priorities, and £3 billion is exactly the sum of money which is needed to end the two-child benefit lock, but the priorities of this Government are not children’s poverty; they are arming Ukraine and sending it lots of weapons that it can use to smash up other countries. This is not sensible, particularly if you are not going to win. The Russian Federation and its riparian states have got to learn to solve their problems and live together. You can rewrite your history and—my goodness—I have been there many times and seen how they have rewritten it to a ridiculous extent, but you cannot rewrite your geography. At the end of the day, these countries are next to each other and somehow they have to live together. If we cannot come to an agreement with the Russian Federation, we are in for a lot of trouble.

Talk of preparing for war in three years brings me on to my final point, which echoes the point made at the beginning of this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. Capitalism has failed the young: many of them are unemployed, they cannot buy houses and now we are promising body bags. That is the reality of it. We will not be fighting this war; young people—our grandchildren—will be fighting this war, and they will be dying for an unwinnable cause. So I ask the new Government to think a bit more carefully than the last Government and somehow extricate us from this mess.