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Kemi Badenoch’s foreign policy speech delivered at the Policy Exchange think tank on 25 February was a mishmash of half-truths, evasions, cliches, double standards, false choices and opportunism.
The first recourse of any politician wanting to be taken seriously as a foreign policy “statesman” is to present a false choice between hard-headed “realism” and allegedly wishy-washy, liberal “progressivism”. I’ve lost count of the number of times over the years that this canard has been rolled out, and proven to be false.
A good example is from 2005, when I had a head-to-head encounter with the UK’s then Ambassador to Moscow, Sir Tony Brenton, who publicly dressed me down at the Foreign Office’s annual Heads of Mission Conference, for having the temerity to suggest that we should take Russia’s human rights record seriously, as an indicator of how Putin might behave on the world stage.
Brenton scorned me as a sandal-wearing, bleeding-heart liberal and argued that, in the post 9/11 world, we could not afford to be picky about who we cooperated with over terrorism. We can all see how well that played out.
Counter-terrorism experts in the Foreign Office used to put forward similar arguments, when it came to working with repressive regimes in the Middle East and North Africa: the same countries that are now a prime source of refugees and migrants desperately seeking safe haven in our country.
These are, of course, also the very same refugees who Badenoch says are destabilizing our societies and should be kicked out of our country. Where to? If they are returned to the countries where they fear for their lives, they will just flee again.
Kemi Badenoch Calls for Trump’s ‘Foreign Interference’ in UK-Mauritius Chagos Islands Deal
The Conservative leader’s spokesman backed a “foreign power” intervening in the UK’s sovereign interests
If other countries follow Badenoch’s suit in declaring that they will also no longer abide by international refugee conventions, then they are hardly going to accept our rejects. What if the countries of the world currently hosting the most refugees – Iran, Turkey, Colombia, Uganda and Germany – all decide to kick them out too? Where are all these people to go? Are we just going to let asylum seekers drown in the ocean?
International Law
Badenoch argues we cannot afford to let sentimental attitudes about international law, “virtue signalling” or “slogans” like “ethical foreign policy” get in the way of our national interests. She derides the International Criminal Court and says we should not suspend arms licenses to allies on “spurious political grounds.”
These remarks are obviously aimed at the government’s decision to back the ICC’s indictment of Prime Minister Netanyahu for war crimes and curtail some arms shipments to Israel.
Does she seriously believe that Israel’s indiscriminate slaughter in Gaza, and failure to put forward any serious strategy for long-term governance of that territory is conducive to sustainable peace in the Middle East? That Palestinians can just be bombed out of existence? That they will meekly accept their fate, without any further resistance? That there will be no blowback towards the West if we collude in this policy? That the number of deaths in Gaza is just a “spurious” concern.
Kemi Badenoch Refuses to Reject Donald Trump’s ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ Plan for Gaza
A spokesman for the Conservative leader would not reiterate the party’s previous support for a two state solution for Israel and Palestine
Does she really believe that other countries around the world won’t see through the double standards if we turn a blind eye to abuses when they are committed by “our allies”, such as Israel, whilst simultaneously arguing we all need to take a tougher stance towards Russia?
She correctly cites the West’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and failure to confront the dictator Assad in Syria, as examples of weak policy. But this exposes the incoherence of her “realist” philosophy. We abandoned the people in Syria and Afghanistan who were fighting precisely for the values of human rights, freedoms and international law that she now derides. The true realist might not have cared about them at all.
She says, “we cannot win a war against an opponent willing to break all the rules while we insist on playing by the most gentle of Queensbury rules.” Does she really believe that there would be such strong popular British support for Ukraine, if the Ukrainian army used the same brutal tactics as the Russians? She pitches herself as a strong champion of Ukraine. But, the very essence of that conflict is about upholding the international world order, defending the principle that might does not mean right, and that international laws matter.
The whole point about principles is that you shouldn’t just abandon them when they no longer seem convenient. If we regard international laws and treaties as things from which we can pick and mix, what is to stop other countries from doing the same? Badenoch scoffs at “soft power” – but one of the strongest aspects of Britain’s soft power is our reputation for being a country which can be trusted, and which respects the rule of law.
Culture War ‘Vice Signalling’
Badenoch, channeling her inner JD Vance, also cannot resist throwing in gratuitous dog whistle references to hot button cultural issues, such as the “use of pronouns”, arguments over who is a woman, or debate about Britain’s past, even though these have nothing to do with today’s actual foreign policy challenges. She says we cannot “waste effort” on such “trivia” and that “we no longer have time for such fripperies.” Fine, why doesn’t she stop dredging such issues up at every opportunity?
She says young people should not be taught to dislike our country. Perhaps our young people would feel more vested in our country if they could afford to buy homes, hadn’t had opportunities snatched away from them by her party’s ill-advised embrace of Brexit, and felt more confident about the future of the planet.
Perhaps they would be less cynical, if they had more faith in our political system, if there was less naked cronyism in politics, of the type which flourished during fourteen years of Tory governm