Ukraine

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Spellar, to the House. I have known him for a long time. When I was in a different party, we used to go to the London Labour Party conference, where he would stride up to the platform and announce, “John Spellar, EETPU”, at which point there was sustained booing before he had said a single word. I am sure that the noble Lord will contribute vigorously to this House.

I am not part of the consensus here, as noble Lords might realise by now. We need to stop this war and start talking, preferably from our present position which is one of moderate strength. We do not want to talk in the aftermath of a downturn in American support when Putin thinks, quite rightly, that the whole game is over in his favour.

As for Storm Shadow, all it will do is prolong the war. They will be able to hit further into Russian territory, and the Russians will retaliate. As many Members will know, I have quite a few Russian friends. I had one here to tea yesterday. She tells me that morale in Russia is very high and the war economy is actually going very well. One of her relatives has taken advantage of the IKEA company withdrawing from Moscow to set up an IKEA lookalike in their city. So do not let us be under the impression that the Russians are going to collapse—they are not.

I draw attention to this week’s meeting in Kazan. The reason why the leaders of India, South Africa, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were in Kazan, not Samoa, is that Kazan matters to them and, frankly, Samoa does not. It is as simple as that. One of the most significant developments in Kazan is the bringing forward of the new international payments system that has been devised by a number of the BRICS countries. That could fundamentally shift the balance of power in the financial West, and one of the reasons is that if we want to freeze their assets and give away their money, then they are not going to put any more here. It is as simple as that. When countries like Abu Dhabi are willing to set up a banking system to challenge us with a lot of support, that is what will happen.

Something that has hardly been mentioned in this debate is the rest of Europe. There are severe reservations in Germany as to where this effort is going to lead and whether it is worth it; there is an election there next year, and that is going to be a major issue. The French are not that far on board, and Giorgia Meloni in Italy is most certainly looking for a way out.

So let us get real. I shall give one example. A few days ago, Cardinal Zuppi, the Vatican representative to the conflict, met Sergei Lavrov in Moscow and they discussed the conflict. The Vatican position is that there should be negotiations and that Russia must be included. A Ukrainian peace plan that does not include Russia is, frankly, not worth anything at all. Cardinal Parolin, the Secretary of State in the Vatican, has made it very clear that he is willing to act as a good envoy between the two sides.

We should be looking at things like that, because we are not going to win; Napoleon found that out, and Hitler found that out. I am sorry to say to those people who think we are that the Russian people are behind Putin, as are many in the third world, who see this as our little fight. I say to our Front Bench: try to get peace talks going. That is what is needed, because there is no such thing as victory in this case. What is victory? We do not know, because there is no such thing.