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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.
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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.
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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 government, and more transparency in the funding of political parties.
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Badenoch wants us to face facts. A good place to start might be to acknowledge the former Conservative Government’s role in gutting the UK’s armed forces, so that it’s questionable whether we even have the manpower, let alone the equipment, to contribute to any effective peacekeeping force in Ukraine.
“It is time to speak the truth: the world has changed,” Badenoch says. But she cannot bring herself to mention the role Donald Trump is playing in upending the current world order, undermining the transatlantic relationship and raising questions about the future of NATO, the bedrock of our security since World War Two.
She has nothing to say about the US voting with Russia, Belarus, North Korea and Cuba in favour of a resolution on Ukraine at the Security Council, which fails to mention Russia’s role in invading Ukraine. Is that what her realist foreign policy looks like? Skating over inconvenient truths?
She says that our national interest “means a strong military and a strong economy”. But she has nothing to say about our broken trading relationship with the EU, which has imposed massive burdens on British business and weakened our economy. Badenoch trots out trite references to “sovereignty” but doesn’t explain how the UK’s newfound “sovereignty” from the EU has improved our national security.
In fact, she has nothing to say about the EU at all, though cooperation with European partners is even more important than ever now that our security relationship with the US is in doubt.
The Lack of Realism
Even if you take Badenoch’s words at face value, they tell you nothing about how her foreign policy vision would work in practice.
Would a realist Tory government still stand up for democracy activists in Hong Kong, for repressed Uighurs in Xinjiang Province, or for the independence of Taiwan? Or would they prefer to make expedient trade deals with China?
What does a realist’s peace plan for the Middle East look like? How does a “realist” approach the conflict in Sudan, where there are no good guys, only bad guys killing each other? Perhaps we needn’t care about Sudan at all. But do we care if the ongoing conflict destabilizes neighbouring countries, and leads to new outflows of refugees?
While advocating for us to raise more money for our national defence by cutting development aid and welfare, she dodges the hard questions about which aspects of our aid she opposes, or which parts of the welfare budget she would cut. The money we give to sustain Ukraine’s economy? The money we give to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees supports countries hosting refugees and displaced persons in their region. The NHS? Pensions? Perhaps we could free up more money by lavishing less money on our Monarchy and reducing the size of the House of Lords.
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Words in foreign policy are cheap. Actual decisions are hard. Those who advocate for “realism” in foreign policy are usually empty poseurs trying to sound grown-up. Realism is nothing more than a cover for a policy of convenience – doing whatever we want, how we want, with who we want, principles and values be damned. Realism is the easy part. Idealism is the hard stuff.
David Lammy’s “progressive realism” is certainly open to the same accusation that it is a convenient cover-all for any kind of foreign policy that suits us at the time. But at least it attempts to maintain a link between our interests and our values, and doesn’t imply that they actively contradict each other.
Badenoch’s speech does not set out a credible vision or provide a useful framework for taking real foreign policy choices. It’s a series of platitudes and slogans cobbled together and as vacuous and unconvincing as Badenoch’s leadership of the Tory party has been so far.