President Trump is not getting universal support for this action in America, but there will be voices inside the very system fighting to survive in Iran, telling its Western opponents, ‘if you want change, act now.’
China is a threat. It is trying to subvert the international system. Our best chance to avoid both dependency and war is to stand up for ourselves now, minimise our dependency and strengthen our alliances.
If you are desperate to hear the defining judgement of any party leader in twenty four hours on unfolding world affairs, I suspect it’s largely so you can enthusiastically condone or condemn the response for political purposes, and not much more.
Labour have also negotiated the Chagos deal in secret from the get go, and refused to provide answers to our questions. But we know, not from our own government, but from the Prime Minister of Mauritius that Labour kept giving them more concessions at every step.
The legal advice given to the Government has been filtered through the lens of the new Attorney General and the Prime Minister, both lawyers steeped in human rights work. Philippe Sands KC, who has been close to the PM for over 20 years, had been legal counsel to Mauritius since 2010.
I think we should all agree personal and political patronage is ether ok, or we agree it is not. There is no half way house where one party is ok doing it and another isn’t.
We must retrieve the torch and advocate for ‘Peace Through Strength.’ Providing a compelling answer surrounding its past success and explaining the ramifications on people’s lives if we get this wrong will bring people towards our side.
In the desperate search for economic growth – and given how lousy the growth forecasts in the Budget were, it is desperate – Labour will give the Chinese some things they’ve wanted for a very long time, and Conservatives were wise to avoid.
There are important lessons to why Trump got elected, again, and Conservatives should not fall for any whining outrage but focus on what they can learn and how they should face some things he might do as President.
What Labour doesn’t seem to understand is that actions in respect to one overseas territory will have consequences for others.
For the UK, ties to Somaliland run deeper than contemporary geopolitics and has proven itself to be, while far from perfect, a freer, fairer, and more stable arrangement than Somalia.
In the last Parliament many persuaded the Conservative Government not only that we needed a more robust approach to China but we needed a more coherent one too. With the advent of a Labour Government, we appear to have given up on that entirely.
My guess is that she is too smart to allow the worst case scenario to happen. To do that, however, she is going to have to move swiftly from focusing on winning the confidence of Conservative MPs and party members to winning the confidence of the markets.
The longer the Government pauses, the clearer the conclusion becomes, this is a negotiation conducted in opacity, defended in haste, and now reconsidered under pressure from allies, Parliament, and its own unresolved paper trail.