This is intended as a supplement to my blogpost on the concept of 'Global Britain' last week. If you have not read that post yet, please read it before reading this post.
I had thought that I had examined the components of 'Global Britain' very thoroughly in my blogpost last week. However, I had only taken apart the engine, and named the parts, without ascertaining the secret of its inner workings. As with so many other ther ideological constructs, the appeal of this concept lies in its unexamined amnesias and illogicalities.
The proponents of 'Global Britain', which now seem to include all the major political parties (bar the SNP and Plaid Cymru, as Labour has, in a fit of embarassment, left behind its Corbynite foreign policy) seem to assume that we are still an imperial power and that the rest of the world will still take notice of our every pronouncement. This assumption absolutely depends on a convenient amnesia about the actual history of empire. We can. therefore, engage in moralistic denunciations of Chinese policies while conveniently forgetting that the Chinese still remember our catastrophic interventions in their history as the activities of drug pushers, thugs and thieves. This is not to claim that there is nothing to denounce in Chinese politics and society, but that from the perspective of many Chinese, our denunciations may seem hypocritical. To the outside world, it must often appear that we behave as if we still had the prerogatives of impeial power without bearing any of the burden of the past of repression, exploitation and violence. The controversy over statues has resounded with the sound of many chickens coming home to roost. It is often asserted that 'values' are part of the appeal of 'Global Britain.' The rest of the world must be scratching its head.
As I explained in my blogpost on 'Global Britain' last week, an important component of the meaning and appeal of 'Global Britain' is the very open nature of our economy, particularly the fact that our financial institutions have been connected, for a long time, to a system of global flows of finance. Crucial to this has been our system of 'light touch' regulation, and our availability to those who wanted to move their money quickly, without questions being asked. This has been the case since the advent of the 'Eurodollar' market in the 1960s. (For details, see Susan Strange, 'Casino capitalism' (1985), and Nicholas Shaxson, 'Treasure islands' (2013). )We have made the decision to welcome the Russian 'oligarchs': nobody forced us to do so. However, having made the decision that we would continue to turn a blind eye to criminal activity because it was profitable to the City of London, it is no wonder that the Kremlin regarded us as a 'soft touch.' The accumulating political and social tensions in the United Kingdom over many years, but particularly over the past decade, must have marked us as a vulnerable target for the Kremlin's 'asymmetric' warfare. (The Kremlin's willingness to engage in such 'asymmetric' conflict is a measure of Russia's marked economic and military weakness, not its strength). The Brexit earthquake merely confirmed this perception. Similarly, our extraordinary readiness to cede control of crucial parts of our infrastructure and strategic industries to foreign (including Chinese) ownership must have indicated that we were extremely 'relaxed' about issues of national economic resilience and national economic security. Again, this was our choice, and nobody else's.
If we have decided to change our foreign and national security policies in these areas, this decision also has enormous implications for our economic policies. It means a greater degree of central strategic direction and long-term intervention which we have tried in the past (think of Macmillan's founding of the National Economic Development Council in 1962 and Wilson's creation of the Department of Economic Affairs in 1964) but has never succeeded. It would mean facing down the Treasury. Perhaps all this is on Cummings' agenda to 're-invent' the British state. If so, someone has yet to tell the Conservatiive Party.
As far as foreign policy, the events of the past week or so reinforce the 'cold turkey' of our uncomfortable 'rehab' from the seductive Brexit drug: we are in a sea full of sharks, and have sailed away from our friends. (China may decide that economic sanctions may hurt itself more than its antagonists, as a recent contributor to the 'International Politics and Society' has asserted, but this does not alter our own very precarious position). Again, leaving the EU was our choice: nobody (not even the Kremlin) coerced us into doing so. Contrary to the slogan, we were always in control ; but it may be slowly dawning on us that our errors are all, and uniquely, our own. We have decided that our future is on our own, and that nothing, not 'Global Britain', the 'Anglosphere', or the 'special relationship' or anything else is going to save us. Meanwhile, despite all predictions to the contrary, the 'broken' and 'sclerotic' EU has (yet again) confounded the 'gloomsters' and reached agreement on a post-pandemic financial settlement. As the veteran journalist John Palmer has emphasised in articles for the 'Social Europe Journal' and the Federal Trust, the EU's deliberations were helped by the UK's absence and its aversion to spending money. It is also noteworthy that the EU is the only serious international organisation which seriously proposes curtailing the power of the so-called 'social media' plutocrats. If the UK government desires to stop Russian abuse of 'social media', it might think about 'taking back control' by picking up the phone to Brussels.