Let me say at the beginning that I am not a fan of Keir Starmer’s administration. It has all too often been clumsy and muddled, and it needs a course in communication skills. However, it has understood and accepted one absolutely basic fact of contemporary British life that both the Conservatives and Reform UK refuse to acknowledge.
The United Kingdom exists on a small archipelago off the north-western edge of the European continent. It has a large but fragile economy which, for historical reasons, is highly trade dependent. Exports and imports make up some 62 per cent of the UK’s GDP – compare the United States, 27 per cent; France, 31 per cent; Japan, 43 per cent; Germany, 50 per cent. So, it needs the outside world.
But the influence it can exert on world affairs has declined steadily since the Second World War, largely because its power and prosperity depended on the Empire and Commonwealth. The Empire has long since melted away and the Commonwealth, whatever it is or does, is not a source of wealth or diplomatic influence.
The UK’s armed forces are highly effective but small. They cannot act alone. In a world where Russian aggression in increasing, the UK cannot act without partners. And our traditional partner, the United States, can no longer be relied upon. The UK does, it is true, have nuclear weapons and thus a seat on the United Nations Security Council. But we cannot use nuclear weapons without American agreement – and anyway who would actually use them?
The UK does have a certain amount of ‘soft’ power, but that too is declining. Certainly, people come to the UK for its culture and its history. But Brexit disrupted the Erasmus programme which used to involve 15,000 students annually. And fewer foreign students come to the UK now, because of increased fees and visa restrictions.
The sum of all this is that the UK is no longer a world power. It has neither the political nor the economic muscle necessary to (as Trump would say) play at the big table.
I think Starmer recognises this, but he is reluctant to say so explicitly, because it is a very difficult message to convey to the British people. Many – even most – do not want to hear it. Having done just a little research, I was staggered to see how often the tabloids refer to Queen Victoria and Winston Churchill. Yet those days are long, long gone. Even when Douglas Hurd said that the UK could ‘punch above its weight’ back in the early 1990s, it was a frankly dodgy statement. But thirty years later after Brexit, after Afghanistan, and with Trump slapping tariffs on anything that moves, it’s transparent nonsense.
The idea that the UK can exercise global power is a myth. But it’s a myth that the populist wing of British politics has adopted and trades on daily. It was there in the Brexit campaign, in the stated belief that ‘They need us more than we need them’. We have seen since that the reverse was true. Even today, the Conservative website claims that Brexit was ‘a demand for sovereignty, a belief that, freed from Brussels, Britain could shape its own destiny.’ Well, perhaps, but even faced with the EU, the UK’s economic and political leverage is limited. It’s going to be a very small destiny.
The Tories are also criticising Starmer’s deal to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, calling it ‘surrender’. Trump, who liked the deal originally, is now calling it ‘stupid’, and Nigel Farage is encouraging him. But look at it from a different point of view. Why on earth would a nation based on an archipelago off the north-west edge of Europe want to keep hold of an even smaller archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean? It’s nonsense – unless you still believe that the UK has an Imperial presence to maintain, and Imperial destiny to pursue.
And just this week, Starmer has gone to China to talk to Xi Jinping. The Tories are calling it ‘capitulation’. Why? What good would not going do? If the UK Prime Minister refused to visit, would the Chinese start quaking in their boots? Would they suddenly change their policy on Taiwan? Or on Hong Kong? The Chinese state is not a liberal democracy. It aggressively pursues its own interests. But nothing that the UK does is going to change that. So why would you ignore the world’s second biggest economy and our third biggest trading partner. It doesn’t make sense. Or rather, it only makes sense if you believe that the UK still exercises global influence.
So, let’s just accept reality. The UK needs to trade, and it needs to maintain its security in an increasingly unpredictable and hostile world. But it’s not big enough and not powerful enough to do either alone. It needs partners, it needs allies, it needs friends. It needs to accept that sovereignty can be shared with others for mutual benefit.
We may be an island; we are no longer an empire nor a world power. We need to live with our new reality.
