United States: Foreign Policy

Lord Soley Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, I always look forward to these debates because I learn so much from the contributions made, from experience, across the House—particularly today from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton, who made an interesting speech containing some interesting concepts, which will bear rereading.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, for introducing this debate in the way he did. I do not share his slightly doom-and-gloom approach. I recognise his attempt to use the historical perspective of the 1930s, but I would have thought that pre-1914 is more relevant. One great power, the United Kingdom, was in relative decline, and now another, the United States, is in relative decline—the emphasis being on relative not absolute decline, which are two very different concepts. But I accept that the position is changing. Of course, there is also our own decision to leave the European Union.

None of these things will necessarily mean that there will not be great collaboration between the key western democracies and countries. Following the Brexit referendum, we must stay close to Europe and get closer on defence and foreign policy. In my judgment—indeed, this is said within the European Union at the moment—there will be greater co-ordination of defence and foreign policy in the EU. The United Kingdom ought to support that. We have to work in tandem with that, and our relationship with both the EU and the US will be—to use that hackneyed term—a special relationship: it has to be really close. We must acknowledge that the United States will, in due course, have to relate more directly to the European Union and less via the United Kingdom. That is one of the political consequences of leaving the EU. It is not necessarily totally disastrous. Although we should have stayed, and I voted to stay, I do not take the view that we cannot make this work, as long as we see our relationship with the European Union as being a close one.

I also emphasise what has been my view for some time: that the European Union is at best two-speed and maybe even three-speed in its approach to emerging economic and political integration. Some countries in Europe will head ever closer towards economic union and the political union that necessarily goes with that—if you have closer economic union, you inevitably develop a political union—and we will be slightly outside that, in the second or third tier of that process. That is not necessarily a disaster. It is not the best place to be in, but we can make that work if we recognise that we have to be very close and have a good working relationship politically and on the economy, defence and foreign policy. That is why I share my noble friend Lord Robertson’s view that we have to put the Foreign Office at the forefront of our activities. We must also consider our soft power in all its aspects, including our help to developing countries, which my noble friend Lord Judd mentioned. All those things will continue to be part of Britain’s influence. But our language, culture and history make it clear that relationships with the EU and the US will not necessarily diminish. The relationship between the UK and the US is not all about the President and the Prime Minister; it is about the incredible, multilayered British and American contacts—family, business, politics, academia, science and technology—that keep us close. That has to be a key part of this.

The contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, on Iran was important and good. We need to focus more on the role of Islam. In my lifetime we got used to a political ideology dominating the world—communism, capitalism, Nazism, fascism, and so on. That has gone and is being replaced by a religious ideology, and, frankly, that has been the history of the world for several thousand years.

The disputes in Iran and the riots in the streets are in part about the problem Iran has in marrying political control—President Rouhani is struggling but he is trying to do a good job—with religion: according to both Shia and Sunni interpretations, there is no law above God’s law. Time precludes any further examination of that issue but we have to focus on it in the coming decades.

Finally, we also have to be aware of the role of nationalism, which I am afraid is growing in many countries in the world. That, combined with the growth of ideology, is a danger we have to face.