Author: johnredwood

UK foreign policy is not fit for purpose. The Uk does not wish to become part of an integrated European Union with government from Brussels. For too long UK government has pretended we are not being dragged into a federal government, whilst the UK has accepted the Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon centralising treaties. Let us hope the Prime Minister’s Bloomberg speech is a radical brak with the past, seeking a new relationship that gets us out of the common government.

Nor should   the UK   be involved in a series of wars to settle the future governments of the Middle East.

The Uk public is largely against both these major preoccupations of UK foreign policy under Blair, Brown and in part under the Coalition. The public wants a new relationship with the EU which allows trade and friendship, but gets us out of common government. The public did not want the Treaties of Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon, but was denied a vote on any of them. The public was not happy about the Iraq war, wants our troops out of Afghanistan as soon as possible, and is strongly against any involvement in Syria.

What is odd about UK foreign policy in recent decades is both its continuity under successive governments, and its perversity in going against the grain of history and commonsense of previous centuries. The two main preoccupations of UK foreign policy prior to 1990 were to avoid any single power dominating the continent of Europe, and to intervene in the rest of the world only in support of  UK interests, especially to keep commercial routes open and free trade flourishing. These two preoccupations have been turned on their head, by a policy which has allowed or furthered EU integration under a single emerging EU sovereign, and encouraging UK military intervention where there is little or no national and free trade interest. I wish to explore the question of UK foreign policy in a series of articles, looking at past and future policy directions.

The policy of not allowing a single power to dominate the continent was  pursued for four centuries. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries Spain was successfully opposed in conjunction with the Netherlands and other Protestant powers. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries France was prevented from military dominance, and in the twentieth century Germany was twice defeated by a grand coalition. The UK played a prominent role in each of these conflicts.

Whilst you can argue that the UK spent too much blood and treasure on preventing a single authority emerging In Europe, it does not make it a good idea to switch from such a policy to actively promoting the emergence of a single governing authority. As Europe continues with its relative decline (in population, in eocnomic and military power) the sensible response is to be relaxed about integrating moves some may wish to make on the continent, but to be clearly against forming part of any such single bloc. We should neither want to beat them nor join them.

The Energy Bill going through the Commons is the result of an energy policy in transition – or an energy policy where Conservatives want cheaper energy and the Lib Dem Secretary of State remains wedded to dearer and scarcer energy.

The problem with Mr Davey’s old fashioned approach to global warming is it means visiting on the UK especially expensive energy. Far from cutting total global business demand for energy and therefore cutting global emissions, UK dear energy just makes it likely more and more energy using business will go somewhere else. Mr Davey’s approach will not spare the planet more carbon dioxide, but will cost us jobs and prosperity.

Then there is the problem of fuel poverty. Lib Dems used to worry about this, yet their energy policy stokes it. Recent fuel bills have been doubly damaging to many. Not only has the price of our power gone up a lot as the renewables kick in on the electricity bills, but it has been so unseasonally cold that people have had to have the heating on for longer. It has been around 42 degrees F when I have been getting up in May, and parts of the country had frosts and even snow. If we have to pay global warming prices for power, it would be nice to have global warming temperatures to go with it, so we did not need so much heating.

Dear energy policies leave people colder than they wish, buring more power with much higher bills. That leaves them short of money to buy other things they need. We do not want an energy policy that sends energy using business offshore, nor one which leaves granny shivvering, afraid to turn on the heating. We need to exploit the shale gas beneath our feet, build more combined cycle gas power stations, and go for cheaper energy. Then we could also afford the energy saving investments at home and at work that would help us burn less.

        I am glad Mr Duncan Smith is refusing to accept EU jurisdiction over our welfare system. The UK has always been told in Treaty negotiations that welfare remains a national issue, so the EU interference in this area is unwelcome. I am urging him today to buttress the UK position on this matter by passing a short amendment to the 1972 European Communities Act to reaffirm that welfare is a national matter, and that we do not accept EU intervention or court judgements on it. The Uk Parliament can do for us vis a vis Bruseels what the German Constitutional Court does for Germany.

The UK, like Germany and France, has some great brands which it can sell worldwide. It needs more of them, with more marketing success, to drive growth and eliminate the balance of payments deficit.

People tend to think of the traditional manufactured products. Rolls Royce engines represent a successful brand, based on pioneering technology and reminding people that the UK did so much of the early work on the jet engine. Land Rover is currently in a sweet spot, with ballooning sales of its cars across the catalogue, from the basic rough terrain Land Rover to the luxurious large Range Rovers.

The UK now exports lot of cars. They are mainly made by foreign companies who bring their capital here because they like the workforce, access to the UK market, and the UK engineering and design traditions. They often design here. In the case of BMW they have produced an updated and enlarged version of the iconic 1960s Mini. Bentley and Rolls Royce cars are also UK based with continental inputs, drawing on great UK engineering traditions and brands.

Less well known are the many pharmaceutical products which UK scientists have brought to fruition. UK defence contractors have a good export record.

The UK’s greatest success lies in its export of services. The UK has a strong balance of payments surplus in services, driven by substantial earnings from banking, insurance, investment management, legal services, and management consultancy. These are the areas the UK loves to hate, with frequent attacks on those engaged in such work. Some still believe these earnings are not “real”, or cannot create wealth. Some object to the fees, charges and incomes they generate.

It is one of paradoxes of the modern world. Germany earns a good living by exporting cars. She does not get herself into a moral knot by arguing that cars are anti greeen, damaging the planet and should be stopped. Nor does she worry that most of the cars she sells can only be bought by rich people because they are expensive. The UK earns a good living by exporting services, only to spend her time condemning some of the leading companies and people involved.

Over the bank holiday week-end I took a couple of days off and went to France.
France has always to me been a paradox. Some of its most glorious years were under absolute Kings. The best architecture and culture of the past is Catholic and autocratic. The language and behaviour of more recent times is revolutionary, but a revolution which led at the turn of the nineteenth century to a tyranny and an unsuccessful attempt to dominate Europe by force of arms, rather than to a democracy on American lines. They nurtured Napoleon, where the US revolution created the Declaration of Independence, and a succession of great early elected Presidents. As a result there is always a kind of schizophrenia at the heart of French cities and in their approach to their varied and erratic past. There is no single story with the power of the UK’s gradual and occasionally turbulent road to universal suffrage, democratic rights and doughty independence (prior to 1972). There is no matching moral strength by the French revolution to compare to the American.

I was surprised at how much was on show of a more recent sad chapter in French history. The country which until Mr Hollande has done so much to cosy up to Germany and seek a joint control of the EU with them is still very conscious in Reims where I stayed of the two dreadful wars of the last century. Reims has a main road studded with posts to commemorate the progress of the advancing armies of liberation in 1945. The room where the German surrender was signed is understandably kept as a time capsule. The Resistance has their own museum. The blank plain glass of many of the upper nave windows of the cathedral is a reminder of the dangerous shelling of the First World War. It is not possible to be in Reims and to forget. The champagne makers tell visitors of how they blocked up parts of their fine cellars to prevent the German army pillaging all their best stock.

On the continent I understand the deep wish not to experience another western European war. This is a sentiment many of us share, though without that same immediate horror that comes from a past occupation still evident in the popular memory. It is still difficult to grasp why they think their new German friends might one day have any further warlike plans, or why being in the same currency as them helps in some way. The great news after 1945 is Germany did change profoundly for the better. With or without EU integration, Germany is not going to invade France again.

The other pleasant surprise was to see how friendly and understanding the French restauranteurs and shopkeepers are to their English guests, readily supplying any lack in British school french with their own well meant heavily accented English. In Reims they value the trade with the Brits, and have that special link thanks to the heroic efforts of our parents and grandparents in 1939-45.

The danger now for France is the damage the Euro project is doing to the economies of its members. Far from being a unifying project, bringing prosperity and harmony, it is becoming the opposite. It is fuelling disputes about to proceed from here. It is producing very different answers to its common troubles, with two Euros in circulation so far, the Cyprus Euro and the normal Euro, and worries over who else might face the Cyprus or the Greek treatment.

I am an optimist about Germany. I do not think the new Germany that arose from the ashes of 1945 has military ambitions. I do not think the countries of Europe need fear armed invasion. It is not just NATO and the overarching power of the USA that keeps the peace in western Europe. It is the fact that Germany is one of the many nations that is both democratic and peace loving. Germany has nothing to gain from war, nor do any of the other western states.

Nor is modern France an heir to the tradition of the Grand armee and Napoleon. The French may still be proud of their time as Europe’s most powerful and dangerous nation, but they have no wish nor intention to recreate those days. Their present armed forces are for expeditionary work for the UN and NATO, not a European land force for conquest.

So when people tell me we must hang tight to the EU to prevent future wars, I tell them they have misread the current situation. It is not the EU that gives us our current peace, but the change of approach by Europe’s most powerful and once most dangerous nations. The UK dropped her claims to France more than four hundred years ago.

Whenever I have negotiated in the EU for the UK, or more recently been at meetings seeking to hammer out agreements and understandings with MPs, Ministers and others from other European countries, I have been struck by how so many are secretly afraid of Germany, or reluctant to stand up to her. The UK should not be afraid of Germany, though there are times when the UK establishment seems a little cowed by Germany’s relative economic power. The UK, after all, will overtake Germany as the largest European economy in due course, if present population trends continue. Being Germany’s largest trading partner where they sell us so much more than we sell them should put us in the driving seat, as we are the customer more than the supplier.

The EU will be a better place if more negotiators relax about Germany and just regard her as one country amongst many. I am on Germany’s side when they say they should not be paying more of the EU bills. The quid pro quo for that, is Germany should not have a disproportionate say in how the EU evolves. It is high time the UK stood up for its view of what it wants – which is a relationship based on trade, not one shackled to the troubled currency and political union.

It was always agreed in the EU that welfare systems should be under national control.Even Labour, when giving away 138 vetoes over important policy areas, kept a red line around welfare. Decisions about how much to pay, and to whom, were to be made by national Parliaments and governments. The UK signed up to the free movement of workers, not to the free movement of benefit seekers.

I have been urging the UK government for some time to head off this threat. One way would be to make all benefits in the UK contribution based. If you either had to enjoy an education here, or have worked for five years paying UK taxes, before you qualified for any benefit, the EU would find it more difficult to intervene.

As the governemnt has chosen not to go that route, but to assert that the EU has no right to demand we pay benefits to more people than currently qualify, it might help to buttress its case.

The EU is foolish to choose to challenge the Uk over such a sensitive matter at this juncture, when many UK citizens are keen on a new relationship with the EU or want to leave the EU tomorrow without even negotiating a new deal.This bureaucratic interference sums up what so many of us dislike about the EU. They say they need to control our benefits systems to have a fair single market. Curious that. China and the USA trade with us quite happily, but we do not try to control their benefit systems, nor do they instruct us on how big our welfare bill should be.

I suggest the government might like to underwrite its strong view that welfare is none of the EU’s business by a simple short Bill. This Bill could be an amendment to the 1972 European Communities Act, stating categorically that welfare is a UK issue and instructing the UK courts that the UK government will neither appear in the ECJ nor accept its judgement on welfare matters. Welfare payments should be decided here.