Queen’s Speech

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to see that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has lost none of his fighting spirit in spite of the last few weeks.

For a generation, our foreign policy has been stuck on a road to nowhere—except Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, where all roads and good intentions seem to end. What is our policy? We disapprove of a regime, we want to show our displeasure, so we bomb and blast away, and then we go back to sleep with our consciences. It was supposed to make the streets of London safe for our own people. Yet a generation after the invasion of Iraq, we have not made the streets of London safe for our own people, and neither are the streets of Iraq safe, or anywhere else, come to that.

We are told that we are spreading parliamentary democracy. How we might spread democracy on the point of a bayonet is an interesting question, but it is one that remains unanswered, because we have so obviously failed. What we have done is pursue a policy of regime change, even though Tony Blair assured us that regime change is illegal. We got rid of Saddam Hussein, despite the fact that he had already destroyed his weapons of mass destruction. We also got rid of Muammur Gaddafi, even though he, too, with our support and encouragement, had destroyed his weapons of mass destruction. Your Lordships will remember: one was dragged from a hole in the ground and hanged, and the other was dragged from a sewer pipe and shot in the head. So it is not much of a surprise that Kim Jong-un seems rather disinclined to listen to our suggestion that it is now his turn to rid himself of his weapons of mass destruction. In his place, I would not either.

But we are not alone in these failures. The poor old EU’s foreign policy is falling apart. China and Russia seem to see the EU as easy pickings. America ignores it. Our relations with Turkey are a complete catastrophe, even though it is far more important strategically than Syria. I am not suggesting that there are easy answers, but we do not even seem to want to ask the right questions.

What has gone wrong? Thirty years ago, the Cold War ended with scarcely a shot being fired, as the Iron Curtain was torn down. Then, we were a beacon of hope. Today, ask around the world, “What does Britain stand for?” They no longer know. We do not seem to know, either. Our voice is so uncertain, it is almost not heard. We pride ourselves on our values—of course we do—but what values, precisely? Despite the claims made earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, we can scarcely claim that it is all about exporting liberal democracy. Our foreign policy has been neither liberal, nor has it shown anything very much to do with democracy. As we have heard time and again in this debate, we do not seem to have a strategy.

Hands up, I might be wrong about some of this. But if I am right about any of it, we really need to stop and think before simply stumbling on. We no longer run the world, but we can help build a better world—something we have not got close to these past two decades.

This is not a criticism of individuals; my noble friend Lord Ahmad is a very fine and totally tireless Foreign Minister, and in that he follows in the formidable footsteps of his predecessor, my noble friend Lady Anelay of St Johns. It is not a failure of individuals; this is a systemic failure, and it is deeply rooted.

I hope that your Lordships will forgive this dark analysis; I am an eternal optimist, and Britain has already moved on. Brexit means change, as the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, alluded to in his powerful speech this afternoon. Let us therefore embrace that change. Let us have a new national conversation and build a new foundation for our foreign policy. We have so many tools at our disposal: our language, our culture, our educational system, the Commonwealth, our alliances, our many, many friends—smart power, to which my noble friend Lord Howell, who sadly is not in his place, so often wisely refers.

Identify more clearly British interests, extend British influence and adapt our alliances. Threaten no one who does not threaten us. That might not be a bad start. Perhaps it is a good note to finish on.