King’s Speech

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to see the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, in the Minister of State’s position. I have long admired his robust style and over the last few years I have often said to myself, “What a good Tory speech that was. I wish we’d said that”. I suspect that has killed off both our chances of further promotion.

In the late 1970s I exercised in Germany as a volunteer soldier in the magnificent 51st (Highland) Division, waiting for the Soviets to invade. That never happened because, thanks to Ronnie Reagan and Margaret Thatcher bringing in cruise missiles and then negotiating disarmament from a position of strength, they brought down the wall and destroyed the Soviet Union.

We thought things were dangerous then but, in my 55 years involved in politics, this is the most dangerous time I ever recall. Back then we had mutually assured destruction and neither side wanted to press the nuclear button, but can we say the same thing now with the mad Islamists running around? Would they think it worth while to nuke Israel even if their half their country was destroyed in retaliation? I simply do not know. Or take Kim Jong-un in North Korea: we have ignored him since he is 5,500 miles away but, now that he along with Iran is supplying weapons to Putin, he is aiding and abetting genocide and war in our own back yard.

Of course, the threat from China is far greater than from Russia. The Chinese do not intend a war with the West because they think we will surrender before then. They aim to defeat us in three ways: first, with military superiority so the US will not dare to get into a long and bloody war with them; secondly, they expect to destroy us economically, so we in the West must reduce our serious dependency on Chinese goods, especially products essential to our survival; and, thirdly, they are destroying us politically. Our universities have prostrated themselves at the feet of Chinese money, letting the PRC intimidate Chinese students here, and they have taken over a host of United Nations and other international organisations. When we add together military, economic and political superiority, we can say that China poses the greatest threat to our western liberal and democratic order that the world has ever seen.

The last of the countries in this dangerous quartet is Russia. Ukraine is fighting a war against Russia that we in the rest of Europe no longer have to fight. It is therefore vital that Russia is defeated, because if Russia wins or gets some fake, stalemate peace, Moldova will be next, followed by the Baltic states.

The war against Ukraine started in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea and we in the West did absolutely nothing about it. There were vacuous noises from Obama, Germany bought even more gas and Putin got a green light for further aggression. Now we are hard pushed to give Ukraine all the weapons it needs for victory—but it could have been worse. In 2016 only five NATO countries out of 31 spent 2% on more on defence, with eight of them spending under 1%, including the wealthiest countries in Europe. Then in 2016 President Trump called NATO “obsolete” and asked why America should pay to defend us. Like it or not, he was right. His comments rightly scared most NATO countries, so last year 23 paid more than 2%, but eight were still down at 1%. Now Trump has said that it is not America’s job to defend Europe from Russia—and I am afraid he is right again. However, only the USA can save Europe from Russia, and we need to beg him to change his mind to get continued US support until Europe is in a position to defend itself—if he is elected.

I have only one question for the Minister, and this was touched on earlier at Questions. Russia is firing missiles from inside Russia that kill civilians and destroy infrastructure in Ukraine, but we permit Ukraine to fire back only missiles that do not hit Russian missile sites but destroy more of Ukraine’s own infrastructure. Why in the name of God are we tying our hands like that? If it is the case that the last Government also had the same policy, it was equally silly and lily-livered. Let the Ukrainians destroy Russian sites with whatever missiles we give them.

I am worried about the situation in the United States. The extreme-left media there—like the New York Times and CNN—have all conspired with the Democrats over the last four years to cover up Biden’s mental decline. So long as Biden was ahead in the polls, they all pretended that he was fully compos mentis. Now we will have six more months of a President who we are told is awake only between 10 in the morning and four in the afternoon, and that is not good for the peace of the world.

On the Middle East, I stand four-square behind Israel in its attempt to eradicate the evil Hamas terrorist organisation. I deplore those who were marching in our streets on 8 October, one day after the attack, celebrating the massacre of Israelis and calling for an intifada revolution. That was a full three weeks before Israel launched its ground assault. My only question for the Minister is this: I understand that the Foreign Secretary is calling for an immediate ceasefire and the release of hostages. I worry, perhaps wrongly, about the order of that. Will he confirm today that it is Labour Party policy that we get the release of the hostages and then an immediate ceasefire? That is my view, and I hope it is the Government’s view too.