Foreign Affairs

The UK is a world leader. It’s time to embrace it.

Emily Barley / Defence, Foreign Affairs, Trade, UK Politics, Unionism / 0 comments

08/08/2018

National pride isn’t very fashionable anymore. People who drape themselves in the Union Flag, sing the national anthem and talk about how GREAT Britain is are sneered at as at best being deluded, harking back to a long-gone past, and at worst being some kind of fascist – as though patriotism is inevitably Nazism.

We’re told that after Brexit – and especially if there’s a no deal Brexit – the UK is going to be a little fish in a big pond. And the sharks are coming for us.

But if those of us who are proud of our country are supposedly deluded, what are the people who seem to have no concept of the privileged, wealthy and powerful position the UK occupies, relative to the rest of the world?

Let’s look at the facts.

In terms of our economy, we’re no minnow. The UK is the fifth largest economy in the world according to rankings by the UN, IMF and World Bank. Ours is bigger than the economies of countries including India, France, Canada, Russia and Australia.

When it comes to defence spending we’re up there with the big boys. Measured by overall size of military budget, the International Institute for Strategic Studies ranks the UK as the sixth biggest spender in the world, while the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute puts the UK at seventh in the world.

The Soft Power 30 index by Portland and The USC Center on Public Diplomacy ranks countries according to their influence, attractiveness and persuasive power. The 2018 index places the UK top, making it the world’s biggest soft power. The report identifies the UK’s underlying strengths in education, culture, digital, creative, finance and tech as the reason the UK is so popular around the world.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report – which assesses how countries perform in terms of infrastructure, education, market efficiency, financial markets, market size, tech and innovation – places the UK eighth overall.

The UK also has a permanent seat on the UK Security Council, has had its national dress adopted around the world (suit and tie), and has untold influence as the anchor member of the 53 country strong Commonwealth of Nations.

It’s not harking back to the British Empire to acknowledge that the UK is a strong and powerful nation. We should own the objective reality that we are a hard, soft and economic power, with more authority and influence than most countries in the world.

Instead of being shy, nervous or falsely modest, the UK needs to move forward with confidence. Not only for our own sakes, but because by reconciling ourselves to our status as a world leader, we can use that influence to do good.

Because Brexit is not just an opportunity for us to realise our full potential as an independent trading nation, but also an opportunity to spread the values and institutions that create the circumstances for prosperity: free trade, property rights, the rule of law, individual civil liberties and an independent judiciary. Built on these foundations prosperity is not a zero-sum game where as one country gets richer another gets poorer, but instead it is a recipe for everyone to improve their lot.

Time to ‘simmer down’ about leadership, says Steve Baker (and CfL)

Emily Barley / Foreign Affairs, Trade, UK Politics / 2 comments

09/07/2018

Speaking on the Daily Politics this morning Steve Baker, having recently resigned from his post as Undersecretary of State for Exiting the European Union, was clear that now is not the time to challenge Theresa May’s leadership of the Conservative Party.

His reasoning is sound: a leadership election would take three months. Three precious months that are needed for Brexit negotiations. And even then, as Baker points out, the parliamentary arithmetic would stay the same – and we definitely don’t want (and don’t have time for) a General Election.

As much as we are dissatisfied with May’s handling of the Brexit negotiations so far, this logic is inescapable. The moment has passed.

So what was the point in resigning? It was pretty obvious to anyone who saw Baker’s performance on the Daily Politics today – unleashed from the gag of government, he explained precisely why the deal agreed at Chequers is not what the country voted for two years ago.

His call to action was straightforward: “What we need to do is win an argument and persuade people”.

We worked side by side on the EU referendum campaign to get the result we wanted. Now it’s time for us to work together again to make sure the Brexit vision we voted for is the one that we get.

Israel, Palestine, so-called proportionality and cultural relativism

Neil Wilson / Foreign Affairs / 0 comments

18/05/2018

It was a struggle but I think I’ve managed to add to the fairly comprehensive list of reasons to reject Northern Ireland’s assimilation into an all-island state.

Who would want to be part of a country where a majority of the population appear to hold such a distorted, counter-factual, view of Israel?

This week Tánaiste Simon Coveney reacted to the ongoing disorder on the Gaza-Israel border in his now customarily aggressive manner by summoning the Israeli Ambassador to explain his country’s actions in shooting dead, what has now transpired to be, a whole bunch of terrorists.

He earlier tweeted about having been in Gaza recently and how “shocking and tragic” the whole thing was. In his statement he claimed that Israeli actions were “disproportionate” and that Israeli forces should “show restraint”. Coveney and Varadkar’s uniquely Irish brand of populism – which involves railing against a traditional enemy a day in the hope that you can appeal to the lowest common denominator – may only last as long as the electoral cycle. What it does do however is shine a light on social attitudes in the Republic.

Statements from the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade since the start of 2018 reveal a lot. Not surprisingly, a lot of Coveney’s time seems to be taken up with by Brexit and political developments in Northern Ireland. There have been two statements on Syria, one of which was pointing out how much money they had given away. There is one statement relating to the Democratic Republic of Congo, again about aid. There is a statement condemning a terrorist attack in Libya. There are three statements on Gaza and not a single one of them mentions terrorism.

If the numbers speak for themselves then, NI excepted, Israel is Ireland’s number one foreign policy concern. There is no mention of Myanmar, South Sudan, Somalia or anywhere else where there is conflict around the world. Why? Because no-one cares.

It would be remiss not to point out that Ireland is not the only country where this is the case. There are many in the UK who become utterly hysterical about Israel yet are incapable of offering any opinion about any other conflict at all. Yet they do not represent such a high proportion of the population that the government feels the needs to abandon common sense and the established rights of nation states to accommodate them.

You could argue that, for historical reasons, the Irish back what they see as the underdog. But there’s a kind of soft bigotry in the attitudes of those who attach themselves to the Palestinian cause when it comes to interpreting events like this week’s. There’s an expectation that irrationality – which extends to bomb throwing and attempts to infiltrate Sderot while fully armed – is part of the Palestinian psyche. This is the only way one could possibly explain the Israel-bashers’ apparent inability to notice any of the reams of evidence relating to a coordinated terrorist action. In some cases they’ve failed to mention Hamas at all.

Instead, we’re apparently to focus on Israel’s ‘proportionality’. This argument is unfathomable. The presence of large numbers of armed, violent militants attempting to get to a civilian population with kidnap and murder in mind would not be tolerated by any self-respecting nation. Given that there were thousands present and the only deaths so far publicly acknowledged are of members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad it seems that proportionality, as is always the case with the Israeli military, is an attribute well catered for. Either snipers took well aimed shots at recognised threats in accordance with recognised IDF rules of engagement, or everyone there was a terrorist. And nobody is claiming the latter.

People making this argument are effectively asking for Israel to be less good at protecting itself. They’re asking the IDF to kill fewer of the terrorists that threaten its people. That’s not how it works.

Cultural relativism explains the soft bigotry about Palestinians, which leads to a reluctance to call out terrorism for what it is. But it also explains the much harder and more virulent hatred of Israel – a democracy its critics, for reasons they are unable to explain, expect not to defend itself.

No deal only harms the Republic of Ireland

Neil Wilson / Foreign Affairs, Trade / 1 comment

14/05/2018

My knowledge of the Vauxhall constituency is typical of that of someone who only visits London infrequently. From what I understand, it is just across the big bridge from Westminster and is home to both that awful Communist-looking theatre complex on the South Bank and the much more appealing Imperial War Museum.

Its links to Northern Ireland are tenuous. It was surprising then that the General Council of the local Constituency Labour Party, to which every elected representative in the constituency belongs, recently voted to censure their MP over fairly brief, yet well-informed, comments she made concerning the Belfast Agreement.

What do the members of the Vauxhall Constituency Labour Party know about Northern Ireland? Certainly not as much as their MP.

If you thought the peculiar lack of self-awareness demonstrated in this case was a one-off and merely emblematic of the general state of internal Labour party politics then you would be sadly mistaken.

On the contrary, there is an increasing tendency amongst English remainers to consider themselves better informed than people who live here.

Take, for example, the self-righteous rage meted out to David Trimble on Wednesday. Having again made a reasonable argument – that border infrastructure was not necessary and that discussions about a return to violence were irresponsible – he was pilloried. One tweeter even went as far to label him an ‘ingrate’.

The Belfast Agreement – peace and blessings be upon it – has now been elevated to such a level that its original architects are not even trusted with its legacy. Even if they won a Nobel Peace Prize for it.

Trimble made his comments in the foreword to a report from Policy Exchange which argues that a free trade deal – the preferred relationship with the European Union of every serious Brexiteer – is the only relationship that will both respect the referendum result and deliver a seamless border. The logic is sound. Only the framework allowed by an FTA overcomes the core issue – trade.

Far from the increasingly insane rhetoric of continuity remain and the world’s most half-hearted nationalists to keep us in the EU via the Customs Union there lies actual facts.

Northern Ireland is very unlikely to suffer any economic impact from the imposition of any trade barrier along the border. If you listened to our media, and many of our politicians, you would assume that North-South trade is in some way significant or in any way important. That’s not the reality. An InterTrade Ireland report claims that Northern Ireland exports to the Republic would fall by 11% in the absence of a deal. That’s 11% of 5% of Northern Ireland’s total exports. It’s mostly milk.

The Beast from the East had a more noticeable economic impact than the immediate impact of Brexit ever could.
1.6% of the Republic’s exports come here, underscoring just how insignificant cross border trade is. 16% of Irish exports go to Great Britain though, with 80% of their exports travelling via British roads. No deal, which can only be brought about by the Irish veto, would damage their economy to the tune of 7.7%, according to one report. We would barely notice a thing.

In terms of priorities, protecting the three quarters of NI exports that go to the rest of the UK is far more important than any piffling single market or customs union. A huge Mexican-style border wall wouldn’t do anywhere near the amount of damage as the backstop solution which the Government stupidly agreed to.

So far, the Government has effectively allowed itself to be blindsided by Varadkar’s strategy, accustomed as they were to dealing with the far more cognisant Enda Kenny. The result has been a two-pronged assault from the EU and Ireland who have been allowed to overplay the border issue and tenuously link it to the Agreement. They’ve used it as a tool to make people ‘think again’ and either annex Northern Ireland or force the UK as a whole to stay in the Customs Union as a means of protecting Ireland’s economic interests.

Herein lies the reasons for the invective leveled at Trimble and Hoey. ‘Muh Good Friday Agreement’ is being used as an argument for remaining in the EU by stealth, by people who’ve never even set foot here and have only seen Northern Ireland through the very narrow lens of the mainland’s media. They don’t realise they’re dealing with a different issue altogether.

The message going out should be clear – the losses from a no deal hard border would belong to Ireland alone. Everyone knows how to avoid that happening.

Saudi Arabia is an apartheid state

Sara Scarlett / Foreign Affairs / 0 comments

26/03/2017

The label ‘Apartheid’ is bandied around frequently these days, sadly it hasn’t stuck to the one State who, in my humble opinion, not only deserves it but whose human rights atrocities are routinely ignored and glossed over by the International Community for the sake of not rocking the boat. Unlike other States, whose human rights atrocities are more fashionable as cause celebres, Saudi Arabia’s prolific human rights abuses are ignored for the sake of business as usual.

Apartheid is originally defined as a system of institutionalised racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa between 1948 and 1994. What Saudi Arabia practices is a system of institutionalised gender segregation and discrimination. Feminist psychologist Phyllis Chesler defines Gender Apartheid as ‘practices which condemn girls and women to a separate and subordinate sub-existence…’ These descriptions describe the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia accurately and I’m not the only Arab Woman who thinks so:

Gender Apartheid is the best word to describe the situation in Saudi Arabia. I don’t believe there is any other place in the world where gender decides everything a person does on a daily basis and to the minutest details. To the outside world this manifests in the ban on women driving and the compulsory Abaya. However, it goes much deeper than that in that gender discrimination is institutionalized in every sector of the Saudi government. The majority of government ministries are off limits to women, both as visitors and as employees.

Elham Manea:

Women in the Kingdom, a 2008 Human Rights Watch report maintains, are infringes on their basic human rights.

In other words, every adult Saudi woman, regardless of her economic or social status, must obtain permission from her male guardian to work, travel, study, seek medical treatment or marry. She is also deprived of making the most trivial decisions on behalf of her children. This system is supported by the imposition of complete sex segregation, which prevents women from participating meaningfully in public life.

I must stress that most Arab countries don’t enforce gender segregation on anywhere near the scale that Saudi Arabia does. In the majority of the Arab nations the headscarf is not a mandatory requirement and women are both welcome and encouraged to be part of civic life. Saudi Arabia is an outlier even amongst Gulf States, and the behaviour of Saudi tars all her immediate neighbours with the same brush. The other Gulf States have become more sensitive to Western criticism in recent years. Most have put a great deal of time, money and effort into upgrading their institutions and legal systems, though progress is painfully slow at times. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, remains deaf to both internal and external calls for reform.

Saudi Arabia practices the most overt, inhuman and unapologetic form of Apartheid on the face of the contemporary world. In comparison to Apartheid South Africa, the Saudi Kingdom has got off easy, with a fraction of the censure from the International Community very little of which has been official. It is time we started calling Saudi Arabia an Apartheid State and giving it the condemnation it deserves. I look forward to the intense reinvigoration of Anti-Apartheid movements with its ire directed at the Saudi State.

Sara is a journalist, art apprentice, and neo-decadent poet. Follow her on Twitter: @Sayde_Scarlett

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The views expressed in this article are that of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Conservatives for Liberty