Queen’s Speech

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, it is difficult to follow such a brilliant speech from the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, but it has brought home to me what a privilege it is to be a Member of this House and I thank him for it. Boris Johnson’s Queen’s Speech, because that is what it is, is important because it marks a fundamental change in the national strategy of this country. Unlike his predecessor Mrs May, he really has bought into the notion of global Britain and it is that which I would like to explore in my speech.

The idea of a national strategy was first advanced by Alan Milward in his history of how Britain came to accept EU membership in the early 1960s. He described how the post-war national strategy was seen to be failing after Suez. Macmillan then developed a strategy based on joining the European Community for two main reasons. The first was that a close attachment to Europe’s markets and being part of what eventually became the single market would provide a very competitive framework for business and a sound basis for investment by the rest of the world. Secondly, if we were to maintain the pretensions of being the closest ally of the United States, politically the key to British influence was that we would have to be at the same time part of the developing European unity, because without it Washington would not take London seriously. That national strategy, which has worked until now with some ups and downs, has delivered for the United Kingdom. The 2016 referendum result was therefore—as I remember the noble Lord, Lord Butler, describing it in the first debate we had after the referendum—a dagger to the heart of everything we thought we had been doing in this country for the previous half-century.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, that Mrs May had an opportunity to build a national consensus immediately after the referendum by taking us out of the European Union but keeping us in the Common Market. That could have been done, and would have won a lot of support and kept us in a very close relationship with our European friends. But that opportunity was not taken, and in the first year of her premiership we heard a lot of jargon. We had the Lancaster House speech and this constant reiteration that “Brexit means Brexit”, without explaining what Brexit meant.

However, I think that Mrs May, as she went deeper and deeper and got more experienced in European questions, basically wanted to save what she could from our membership of the European Union. Economically, she sought the closest possible alignment with the European single market, as long as we could escape from free movement. Politically, she emphasised a continuing wish to work closely with our EU partners on questions such as Russia, Iran, the Middle East and China.

Mr Johnson has opted for something quite different: a different concept of how Britain succeeds and a fundamentally different vision of Britain’s place in the world. I do not think this “global Britain” idea is based just on imperial nostalgia. In fact, I recommend to all your Lordships a brilliant article in this week’s New Statesman by Robert Saunders, a Queen Mary historian, titled “Myths from a Small Island”. He thinks that the Brexiteers, including Mr Johnson, have taken on board the myth of the Britain with the buccaneering spirit, the free-trading nation that can conquer the world, and that this lies behind so many of the statements of Jacob Rees-Mogg, Liam Fox and the Prime Minister himself. Quoting Liam Fox, he summed this up perfectly:

“A ‘small island perched on the edge of Europe’ had become ‘the world’s largest and most powerful trading nation’, not through its military or naval power, but through ‘a history steeped in innovation and endeavour’”.


This is what Dr Fox sees as our global future, as does Mr Johnson.

Dr Saunders points out how fatally flawed this vision is. First, when Britain dominated the world economically, it was because there were structural conditions that favoured it. We were the workshop of the world and generated enormous wealth that enabled us to have a Royal Navy that ruled the waves. That does not apply today. Secondly, it is very dangerous to perpetuate the myth that, by standing alone, Britain achieves its historical purpose and is at its best. We all buy too much into the Dunkirk myth. The truth is that what won the Second World War was the grand alliance with the United States and the power of the Red Army. Thirdly, Mr Johnson’s vision of the world relies so much on what we might describe as the power of positive thinking—the ability to brush aside the harsh realities—

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

What part does the noble Lord think the Battle of Britain played in the Second World War?

[Lord Liddle]

The Battle of Britain was clearly important in keeping Britain in the war and keeping the flame of democracy alive. But I said that what won the war was not the Battle of Britain but the alliance with the United States and the power of the Red Army, and I think that that is true.

The power of positive thinking is very important to Mr Johnson and it leads to a kind of hubris that will inevitably lead to nemesis. We see that in the Queen’s Speech because three elements of the government strategy do not add up. The first is that we will transform Britain’s economic performance through a programme of deregulation, as my noble friend Lady Hayter put it. He says that we will tear away the bureaucratic red tape and release talent, innovation and chutzpah. Let us hear more about how that will be done. The fact is that the most innovative parts of our economy—the digital economy and the pharmaceutical companies—are desperate to stay in the framework of the single market. They do not want to be liberated from it: they want to be part of a common regulatory zone. The more that the Government present this unappealing vision to our European partners of a Singapore on the Thames, the more difficult it will be to secure preferential access to the single market. We can already see that in the negotiations presently taking place in Brussels.

The second contradiction is that Mr Johnson believes that he can sustain political support for this programme of deregulation through what he calls one-nation policies—addressing the people’s priorities of health, education, social care, crime and so forth. He will have great difficulty in doing that because, as the IFS pointed out this week, the forecast for the public sector deficit this year is already some £50 billion. Such policies might be achieved by combining them with increases in taxation, but Mr Johnson wants to slash taxes as well. The one-nation approach that he puts forward is not at all sustainable or likely to last.

The third contradiction is that the Prime Minister strongly believes that Britain can play this world role as a soft superpower, detached from the European Union. But if we are to do that, we need to recognise the Brexit headwinds that we will face. Every serious piece of economic analysis has shown that the kind of deal that Mr Johnson envisages will result in a loss of potential of something of the order of 7.5% of GDP. On that basis, you cannot build many of my noble friend Lord West’s frigates or play a leading role in world institutions, and we will find that we cannot pursue a strong foreign policy. If we go down this “global Britain” road, we face a future of great insecurity and uncertainty, and I hope that we can stop this madness before we are locked into it.