Rules-based International Order

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, on her excellent speech, which was extremely well argued and well constructed. I did not entirely agree with everything; I think that the role of Iranian-backed terrorism must also be taken into account in the Middle East.

I want to start my speech by quoting from another speech that is now almost 25 years old:

“Globalisation has transformed our economies and our working practices. But globalisation is not just economic. It is also a political and security phenomenon. We live in a world where isolationism has ceased to have a reason to exist. By necessity we have to co-operate with each other across nations … We are all internationalists now, whether we like it or not … We cannot ignore new political ideas in other counties if we want to innovate. We cannot turn our backs on conflicts and the violation of human rights within other countries if we want still to be secure … We are witnessing the beginnings of a new doctrine of international community. By this I mean the explicit recognition that today more than ever before we are mutually dependent, that national interest is to a significant extent governed by international collaboration and that we need a clear and coherent debate as to the direction this doctrine takes us”.


That was Tony Blair, in Chicago in 1999, almost 25 years ago. What a mess we are now in. I still believe that what Blair set out in that speech, which I played a very small part in drafting—very small, I assure noble Lords—is the objective to which our policy should be aimed. However, it has obvious weaknesses given what has happened since. Interestingly, Blair did not mention China at all 25 years ago. On Russia, just to show the change of mood, he said:

“We simply cannot stand back and watch that great nation teeter on the brink of ruin. If it slides into the abyss, it will affect all of us … We must not let our current differences set us on a route towards … mutual hostility and suspicion”.


Tony was an optimist about Russia and Putin, which has proved to be bitterly disappointing.

We thought then of the United States as a hegemonic power and that we Europeans should be its constant loyal friends and partners. Now we have Trump to reckon with and we no longer live, as the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, said, in a unipolar world.

Britain is in a much weaker position to exercise any global influence. We are no longer at the centre of the councils of the European Union. Our economic strength, which is the basis of foreign policy strength, has been gravely weakened and, as a result, we halved our overseas aid budget—which, at 0.7%, was one of Labour’s proudest achievements previously—and we are struggling to meet our defence target.

If we want to be influential, we have first to prioritise economic growth here and have a successful economy, and to establish a new, more positive relationship with the EU—that is fundamental. Our top priority has to be to deal with the United States, not to moralise towards Trump but to make sure that we keep the Americans in Europe. That is fundamental to our security. To do that, we will have to become a leader in European rearmament, which will be necessary in the next decade.

A lot of numbers games are played on defence spending. Trump is said to want us to spend 5% of GDP. We are presently spending 2.3% with an objective of 2.5%. Interestingly, from a historical perspective, at the time of Suez we were spending 7% and at the time of our withdrawal east of Suez in the late 1960s we were spending more than 4% of GDP, so we are at a very low level. The point that I see as fundamental is that we will have to have European rearmament—I know that it is a word that people do not like—if we are to convince the Americans to back NATO and be a source of security in Europe against a revanchist Russia. We have to press for a European rearmament that is collectively planned and delivered, probably with the creation of a single market in defence, because that is the only way it will be affordable. If every member state does its own thing, we will waste a lot of money, as we presently do, on defence.

The defence budget has to go up, and I fear to more than 2.5%. That will involve difficult decisions. Some of it can be done through innovative financial means, as we have seen with the latest Ukraine package, but it also raises profound questions for tax and spend and public spending in the five to 10 years ahead. We have to establish a national consensus that we need to spend more on defence, to keep NATO as fundamental to our security, and to be willing somehow, collectively, with all-party agreement, to pay for it.