Make Britain relevant again – British foreign policy group

April 15 Make Britain relevant again

It is a British peculiarity that we like to remember that we are no longer the great power that we were in the past, while continuing to speak of our foreign policy in a way that presupposes that we have a responsibility for all everywhere. As if, if not the world police officer, at least a kind of international brain confidence. David Milibands Better World, Better Britain and William Hagues Active Foreign Policy and Activist were followed by the Coalition of Global Britain and Keir Starmers by Bruris Johnsons, Britain Global and Keir Starmers of the Willing – British (of course).

We have no reason to be defeatist. To quote a Minister of previous Foreign Affairs (Douglas Hurd), we always striking our weight in many areas, science and technology to our armed forces (exhausted as they are) and intelligence services, from our great museums to the Premier League. We are among the privileged heirs of the English language, which benefits us both in the multilateral world only in trade, education, soft power and beyond. Our professional services are in such demand worldwide that some of the largest potential markets are doing their best to protect their own British competition professionals. To all these forms of precious and soft power, we must certainly add the preservation of economic force as one of the most important: whatever your policy, it is difficult to disagree by emphasizing growth.

But in today, the new geopolitics – and of course Geoeconomic – ERA, we have to throw a strategic overview of where we want to go. To use business language, our market positioning. We are not an imperial power. We also cannot be Greece of Rome Americas: even if Trump II turns out to be a parenthesis, this role has been abolished for good and vacancy will not be readily in four years. We also do not have the luxury of going through several years of domestic upheavals in order to join a European Union which, in our absence, has evolved in a protectionist direction which is much less well for technology and innovative services which will constitute so much of our comparative advantage in the world of Tomorrows.

Like fish that cannot see water, we have grown up with hypotheses, it is difficult to shake. Throughout my time as a diplomat, our muscular memory of foreign policy has evolved to watch the United States for security first and see almost all the rest of the international importance through the prism of compromises in the EU. Reflexes like this are difficult to change. Like the imperialist reflex that preceded it: we are always programmed to make the lower nations conference on how to behave while being surprised when JD Vance (rightly or wrongly) does the same for us.

However, we could like the different world, we are where we are and we have to adjust ourselves accordingly. As a second level power with a lot of trade (literally and metaphorically) with the world, we must develop a more agile and flexible set of reflexes, in order to be one of the most at the demand of worlds. We must be ready to work with (almost) everyone: the United States, the EU, India and, yes, China too. We must be open to opportunities while still being alive – and especially with a firm eye on our fundamental interests as well as on the consequences of the second order of our choices. And if we want to be a rapidly growing scale of the 21st century, we should make common ground with the best of them, including our CPTPP partners, which already represents more than 15% of world trade and offers us great potential in the fields of our comparative force for the 21st century. The work, which had not always been as enthusiastic about the group, was absolutely last December to celebrate our full accession to the treaty.

The new world we are in the calls for clarity of the place where our real interests are, both in security and prosperity. We must abandon the remains of imperial thought, including the grandiose idea that we are intended to be the head of the West. Today, talk about leading without winner is the language of the press release, not a serious foreign policy. With market disorders and conflicts on our continent, we cannot predict where our foreign foreign and commercial policies will have to turn in the years to come, but we will be able to start developing a new agile approach in the future. It will be difficult to shake the old reflexes, but there is no better time to start than now.