"The name's Hague. William Hague."
William Hague’s recent remarks in an FT interview, and in a speech to the Royal United Services Institute give us some idea of the purposes and shape of Conservative foreign policy, in the aftermath of a Tory election win. In short, it is exactly the same sort of interventionist twaddle spouted by New Labour, overlaid with the same veneer of humanitarian concern that Blair liked to bathe in.
In my mind, therefore, the correct response to the great challenge of Britain accounting for a smaller proportion of the world’s economic activity is not to retreat into our shell with ever few embassies and consulates and armed forces whose power cannot be projected in the world; it is to make our efforts in international affairs more ingenious, more productive, better organised and unashamedly devoted to making the most of advantages we already possess.
The economic opportunity of our own citizens requires our engagement with world affairs to be enhanced and more effective, but the clinching argument is that so does their future security. We should always be optimists about human nature and we should always try to overcome great difficulties in foreign affairs with peaceful diplomacy. But even while maintaining such innate optimism, it is necessary to recognise that the world may well become more dangerous in the decades to come. We face the increased prevalence of state failure in countries vulnerable to terrorist networks, private armies and organised crime and the increasingly transnational dimension of terrorism which has brought rapidly multiplying threats to our own national security and that of our allies: coupled with these factors is the changing character of conflict from conventional to irregular warfare which makes it harder for states to assert and protect themselves. Chronic poverty in the developing world leaves many countries open to these dangerous trends.
And on top of all of this come two central challenges which are particularly momentous in the danger they represent because once they are allowed to take root they cannot be uprooted at least for generations to come.
One of these is the onset of climate change, manifesting itself in foreign affairs as environmental degradation and an increased risk of conflict.
The second such force is the spread of nuclear science, bringing not only the benefit of civil nuclear energy but the growing risk of the spread of nuclear weapons and the shattering of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, a fundamental cornerstone of human security for more than forty years. If Iran’s nuclear programme leads to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East then the world’s most unstable region will increasingly be populated with the world’s most destructive weapons.
The imminence and scale of such threats to British and indeed global security will have a major bearing on our approach to foreign policy. In addition, however, they add to the need for Britain to work harder to exert her influence rather than to accept a decline in it. (Source)
All the recent talk about whether or not British troops have been given the equipment they need reflects a fundamental problem in British politics: all of the main parties accept Britain’s intervention in Afghanistan, and, to a lesser extent, Iraq. William Hague’s speech gives every indication that a Tory government will continue, and risk expanding, Britain’s military presence abroad.
Some of the rhetoric Hague escapes with is simply shameless. For thirteen years, Gordon Brown’s regulation-slashing approach has been remarked upon across the Press, in all sorts of articles about the Masters of the Universe / Square Mile, about PPP-PFI, about non-dom status etc. But a future Labour government will be a repository of trade union power, of “70s-style” attitudes opposed to modernisation.
Oh would that it were so! Perhaps William Hague has missed this Labour government’s propaganda war against every union that declares a strike? Public sector workers are threatening the recovery. Teachers are putting their students at risk. The railway workers are making a nuisance of themselves to commuters. And so on; a litany of clichés employed against men and women struggling to pay the bills.
Hague, unsurprisingly, also repeats the meme about Britain’s credit rating being a worry, citing the ‘recent’ Fitch warning about the loss of the triple-A rating. I say ‘recent’ because Fitch has been carping about this since last year, so a new press release about it is hardly serious news. What makes this interesting is that Hague is all about the deficit reduction…and yet continuously talks up “Britain’s role” abroad.
With what equipment, in this Tory-led deficit-free utopia? Spitballs and paper aeroplanes?
Far better, surely, that Britain does step back from foreign engagements. Getting rid of the new naval carriers and the nuclear deterrent are the first steps, but cutting back the armed forces drastically should be a high priority all across the board, not just with the latest toys.
Contra the moralising about what equipment the troops did and didn’t get in Afghanistan or Iraq, it isn’t spending issues which have caused problems. Ask the Americans, who have spent nearly US $1 trillion, compared to the piffling billions of the United Kingdom. It is being there in the first place, when the government was warned of the consequences, creating conditions that exacerbated ‘terrorism’ until now it threatens nearby states.
It’s not the contradiction of a pushy but low-spending Britain, or the silly Tory rhetoric about Labour and the unions that makes the clearest impression however. It’s the interpretation of economic performance as merely a gateway to Britain being able to punch its weight in ‘world affairs’, rather than both economic performance and that weight in world affairs being tools to securing jobs, homes, healthcare and education at home.
One of the most challenging of these forces is the shrinking of the British economy relative to the rest of the world. To some extent this is inevitable: the economic rise of such nations as China, India and Brazil necessarily reduces the share of world output of more established, slower growing industrial economies, but it will be the tragic legacy of the current Labour government that it will have accelerated and intensified the reduction in our relative economic weight with all that means for the clout we carry in world affairs. According to a report in December by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, the UK will drop out of the world’s top ten economies by 2015, falling behind not only China, Brazil, Russia and India but also our neighbours France and Italy. Furthermore, in taking Britain downwards not only in relative economic size but also in every league table of competitiveness, and dramatically so in every league table of the attractiveness of our tax and regulatory system to the rest of the world, the Brown government has done serious damage to the perception of Britain as a home for enterprise, wealth creation, new ideas and opportunity. While Tony Blair happily strode the world on the back of the British economic reputation burnished under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, those who come after Gordon Brown will have to work harder to lift this country up after the thirteen years that he has spent diminishing its economic status.
President Obama recently argued that “Our prosperity provides a foundation for our power. It pays for our military. It underwrites our diplomacy. It taps the potential of our people, and allows investment in new industry…Over the past several years…we failed to appreciate the connection between our national security and our economy.” He was right. And his argument which indeed I made in my speech last July, applies to this country too, and it makes the restoration of our economic fortunes under a new government, with lower deficits, simpler taxes and the opening up of Britain as the natural home for international business the indispensable foundation stone of the construction of effective foreign policy.
In essence, this is high politics at its worst – talk of leaders and prestige, of power and the military rather than jobs and homes. Interestingly, Hague insinuates a future Tory government is prepared to invest in the military, to build new industries…but what about investment in higher education and research for the same purposes?
At the Times Higher Education debate back in February, Tory David Willetts was all about the euphemistic “rebalancing” of higher education, with more focus on students, and no reversals of Labour’s cuts to the teaching block grants, capital budgets or research. Hence Labour won the vote, at the end of the day, on which party had the best policy.
So we return to a bonfire of regulations and taxes, to encourage private investment to come to the UK, to shoulder the burden which the Tory state wants to shed. But of course there’s no talk of retreating public services, and when there is, it’ll be blamed not on Tory economic orthodoxy but on the failures of the Labour government. Which, in this hypothetical, future rhetorical encounter, will no doubt have been ‘in hock to the unions’.
But hey, don’t worry! Though people may want for their basic needs, our army will still be free to kill johnny foreigner when he doesn’t do as ordered.
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