Queen’s Speech

Lord Ricketts Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ricketts (CB)]

My Lords, wars simplify and clarify. They oblige every country involved to make choices about what its essential interests are and how to protect them. Speaking of clarity, it must be increasingly clear, even to President Putin, that he has made a massive strategic error in launching the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II. The myth of Russian military prowess has exploded. Putin’s only hope now is to avoid total humiliation and find some outcome that his propaganda machine can present as justifying his gamble. The President and people of the other combatant, Ukraine, have been magnificent. However this ends, renewed, pro-western Ukrainian nationalism will be a big factor in European politics from this time on.

I want to concentrate on the choices that western countries face as they step up to this Russian barbarism. President Biden has made an important policy shift by putting America back into leadership in deterring Russia and supporting democracy in Europe. Finland and Sweden formally applied today to join NATO. I have known that organisation since joining the UK delegation to NATO in 1978 and it has never felt more united or more purposeful. When I was the permanent representative to NATO in the early 2000s, Sweden and Finland were by far the most effective partner nations—serious defence nations but proud of their neutrality and non-alignment. However, faced with Putin’s war, each has made a profound decision based on an impressive national debate and decided to join.

Germany too has made an amazing shift in its security policy, greater than anything I can remember in the last 40 years. It will take that country time to change its pacifist culture and to re-equip the Bundeswehr, but its recognition of the need to shoulder hard-power responsibilities shows a real capacity to adapt and is a major change in the European security landscape.

Germany and other EU countries are also facing up to the disastrous policy of dependence on Russian oil and gas. Weaning themselves off that will be a long and expensive operation, but it will remove Russia’s biggest leverage over its western neighbours. The EU too has moved a long way in the last three months in stepping up to the security responsibilities to go with its economic power.

How do I think Britain is performing in reassessing our vital national interests in the new circumstances? The answer, frankly, is mixed. I give full credit to the national security response. The clear warnings from the intelligence community and our leading role in NATO and in arming Ukraine’s military—all this has been surefooted. In other areas, though, our response has been much less impressive. The Government insist on treating women and children fleeing Ukraine as potential security threats requiring the full panoply of visa controls, rather than welcoming them as refugees as Poland and Hungary have.

Putin’s war should be the perfect opportunity to put behind us the rows with the EU in the interests of a truly united western response to this massive European security threat. I gather that the discussions between the EU and the UK on sanctions against Russia have been positive and constructive; the Government have not said much about them but it is good to know that they are going on. We should push out that bridgehead to wider aspects of the crisis, including energy policy and a joint campaign to bring other countries beyond Europe to accept that their interests are at stake as well and that they too should be supporting western sanctions.

In my view, though, Ministers still seem to wear ideological blinkers that make it impossible for them ever to acknowledge that the EU does anything positive or constructive. The EU does not even seem to figure in the Foreign Secretary’s “network of liberty”, from reading her Guildhall speech; nor does it figure as a partner in our new international development strategy. I think we are in the process of missing the key opportunity to build closer working relations with the EU on international policy.

Perhaps the Minister will surprise me and tell the House that indeed we are planning to work more closely with the EU on these issues in future—but what would make that impossible would be for the Government to pursue their plan to have powers to disable part of the Northern Ireland protocol. Seen from the perspective of a major war in Europe, both the substance and timing of that are massively ill judged. If pursued, it will confirm the view in European capitals that Britain is not to be trusted. It will therefore ensure that this country has no influence in shaping the EU’s political, economic and security priorities.

I make this appeal to the Government: like Germany, Finland and Sweden, let us be bold and recognise that Putin’s war has clarified where our vital interests lie. Let us back down from the brink of a major breach with the EU and work together with EU countries for peace and stability in Europe.