A whole foreign policy position built on myths and legends is always destined to come unstuck

“Captain Blackadder: You see, Baldrick, in order to prevent war in Europe, two superblocs developed: us, the French and the Russians on one side, and the Germans and Austro-Hungary on the other. The idea was to have two vast opposing armies, each acting as the other’s deterrent. That way there could never be a war.

Private Baldrick: But, this is a sort of a war, isn’t it, sir?

Captain Blackadder: Yes, that’s right. You see, there was a tiny flaw in the plan.

Private Baldrick: What was that, sir?

Captain Blackadder: It was bollocks.”

Blackadder Goes Forth, BBC

Back in the day when Labour were going to win an election, Starmer was going to be Prime Minister and the entire operation was spinning what turned out to be gigantic whoppers about who they were, what they were like and what they would and wouldn’t do, one particular line used to really wind me up.

Frustratingly, like so many of these lines, this one persisted into Government and is trotted out to this day. In essence it goes like this: Around the world until the grown ups of Labour arrived Britain as a country was viewed as a laughing stock because of the Tories and Brexit.

David Lammy, a politician who really should be more careful throwing around accusations of being a laughing stock, used to wax lyrical about restoring Britain’s global standing by reconnecting with allies, emphasising a shift from a post-Brexit isolation under the Conservatives to being a “dependable ally” and “diplomatic entrepreneur,” aiming for a “Britain Reconnected” that’s seen as sensible, values-driven, and influential again, especially with Europe.

There was one tiny flaw in this argument. See the Blackadder quote at the top.

Working for a Conservative Foreign Secretary I not only didn’t think that was true, I could see with my own eyes it wasn’t true. Britain wasn’t isolated, was considered a dependable ally, specifically over our strong support for Ukraine, and there was very little evidence that we were due some form of ‘restoration’. The Americans coined a new phrase at the time; that UK was ‘the partner of first resort”

The European member states were certainly sore about Brexit but they’d got pragmatic and over Ukraine they instinctively understood that when we’d said we were leaving the EU but not leaving Europe, we’d meant it. They saw that, they recognised it, and they mentioned it.

The problem with Labour’s whole ‘we have to restore Britian’s tarnished and embarrassing reputation’ was that they then had to do things that proved they had. Trade deals they claimed only they could secure, until you look at the small print and see why we didn’t. And one might well argue that giving away sovereign territory to a Chinese ally and a country with very little historic claim only to pay through the nose for the privilege is not a way to show seriousness on the world stage. I don’t know about laughing, but that fiasco can make me cry.

But that’s what happens when you make foreign policy based on flawed assumptions and downright falsehoods.

A quick detour.  One of the most egregious falsehoods peddled got Lib Dem Daisy Cooper a resounding round of applause on Question Time recently and was almost entirely a rewriting of history, with timelines adjusted to suit.

Brexit did not cause the small boats problem.

To suggest it did is to ignore facts and is a superb example of the ‘Post hoc ergo propter hoc’ fallacy. I’ve heard it from Labour too and whatever ones views on Brexit, it is simply not true. My first TV report for the BBC was in 2001 and was based on interviews with the Dover coastguard about a spate of people crossing the channel in small inflatable boats. It was lorries before it was boats. Brexit had very little to do with any of it. And being in the EU wasn’t a solution that leaving opened the flood gates.

Starmer, slippery as ever, has not of course called for Britain to rejoin the EU but is pushing for as close as he can get. The problem with this is even as he hosted European allies in Downing Street on assisting Ukraine, the very topic that had already forged new post Brexit ties, Trump has pretty much excluded all of them from any say in the process. Even the Ukrainians.

The first land war in Europe in 80 years has had a profound economic impact on the UK, quite apart from the devastation it’s had on Ukraine, but it will end with European countries having to handle all the consequences, but no say in how it’s done.

Having spent those 80 years being the defence guarantor of Europe America has had enough of that role, and we were all really slow to see Trump meant what he’d actually said in his first Presidency. European countries ignored their own defence on the assumption that if they spent on their society, the defence tab would always be ‘covered by the Yanks’

To be tabloidesque for a moment it really is quite odd given how the whole relationship was forged, that it’s the Germans who seem most upset the Americans are walking away from the defence of Europe.

However I’m glad if Starmer has, as he suggested this week, found, with European allies, a solution to turning Russian assets into cash to spend on Ukraine. Support for Ukraine is still very high amongst the British public, and to see Putin look like he may get away with it, does, I’m sorry, stick in the craw.

One of the first government documents I ever read – and at first it’s like being forced to go through thirty ‘terms and conditions’ a day. You learn quickly how to spot what you need and ignore the rest – contained the amount of Russian frozen assets sitting untouchable in UK banks. It was a huge figure. What, I asked, are we doing about getting access to those funds?

Well that took me down the rabbit-hole.

Freezing you see is relatively easy, seizing is anything but. “What’s to stop you?” people would ask, so I asked the same. Turned out quite a few people wanted to stop you. Not least some of our closest allies, and top of the list was the United States. And this was before Trump won again.

Countries around the world with assets banked in London are not keen on the precedent of any country but particularly the UK seizing money that isn’t theirs, on the  pretext that that country has over stepped the mark in some way. There are very serious concerns that such a ‘theft’, and I’ve heard it described in such terms, would spread like a contagion, in tit-for-tat judgements on foreign policy positions.

Yes, I know, Putin invaded a neighbour and has visited unspeakable horrors on the population, but there seemed no room for ‘exceptionality’.

It Starmer has unlocked that I’ll applaud it but I note America is still not in favour of asset seizure and if European allies are attempting to do it to pay for Ukraine to stay in the fight that  will require purchasing weapons from  – the Americans. And Labour will continue to over promise and not deliver on our own defence spending.

Trump – and as Sir John Redwood points out this morning he’s saying the quiet stuff out loud now – isn’t interested in peace in Ukraine, for Ukraine, or for the Russians, he just thinks it’s a problem in our backyard that he wants to get over without our help, but then leave the consequences to us (and to an extent he has a point) so he can focus on what really is on the top of his foreign policy agenda, China.

China is where the US game is at, both threat and opportunity.

Labour’s foreign policy position is seemingly to bend any way it can to please and appease China. The spying case may have slipped out of the news, but in the New Year Labour will give them their super embassy in London having delayed the decision long enough to let the spying case slip out of the news but just in time for Starmer to go to Beijing.

One of the things I heard a lot about the process of government from inside Government was ‘you have to deal with the world as it is, not how you wish it was’

Starmer is often accused, not just by Conservatives, of spending too much focus on foreign affairs and not enough on our myriad domestic issues.

The problem is he prefers a world of wishes to how things actually are, and worse, he expects you to go along with it.