Little Britain: no big deal?

The Russians hit some nerves this week when dismissing Britain at the G20 summit as “a small island no one pays any attention to”. But did they have a point?

Like a great, angry puffer fish, David Cameron blew hard about British sport and music, and did a reasonable Hugh Grant in Love Actually impersonation as he spoke of the fourth biggest military budget on the planet and fighting fascism in World War Two.

Yet some argue it was David Cameron who downgraded Britain as soon as he took office. In July 2010 on a visit to Washington he drew angry rebukes for describing Britain as America’s junior partner in fighting the Nazis. When challenged about it at the time he insisted: “Would you like me to pretend it is an equal partnership? Of course it isn’t, we are the junior partner but we can be an effective junior partner.”

In the wake of his Commons defeat on Syria, David Cameron went to St Petersburg insisting nothing much had changed regarding Britain’s place in the world. But that’s a shaky claim whatever side of the argument you take on military action. There was no private meeting with Barack Obama. Britain seems out of the loop.

The president was busy with his new best friends the French and David Cameron was on the sidelines, according to his former Defence Secretary Liam Fox. Of course it isn’t just those coalition MPs who failed to vote for their own side who are responsible for this: Ed Miliband played a crucial role and it could yet go either way for him.

Power vs principle

The Labour leader has yet to make clear his actual position. He’s been very shy of the media this week and no wonder. Few believe he meant to rule out military action when he led his MPs against the vote. But that is what has happened.

New evidence came out this week in America and Britain that sarin gas was used in Syria and while Barack Obama “floods the zone” with the argument for US intervention, British politicians insist there is no point going back to parliament. There’s a deep scepticism about military action in the general public, they say, and MPs reflected that.

That may be true but is political survival trumping principle? David Cameron won’t risk another defeat or he’ll face calls to resign. Ed Miliband can’t deliver a united party and would reopen the scars of Iraq.

Special relationship?

Both men will be thanking their lucky stars that America is making clear there’s no point in going to the UN Security Council for a resolution authorising force in Syria. Now they’ve said the British public is sceptical they would have to vote against it: not just sitting out military action but standing against our closest ally. The movie version of that might have been attractive, but in the real world – what a diplomatic mess.

Of course they will all deny it. Labour and the Conservatives will insist our relationship is still special. The US Secretary of State John Kerry will hug Britain close this week and say what old friends we all are. They will find another issue like Israeli/Palestinian peace talks on which to cooperate.

But on Syria, Washington will be sharing less and communicating less. And you might decide that you rather like that. You might say Britain should either be closer to Europe or stand on its own. You might wonder how we benefit from the responsibility of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. And you might conclude having the fourth most expensive armed forces in the world isn’t something for Prime Ministers to brag about and being a small island nobody bothers wouldn’t be all that bad. No mainstream politician is saying that yet. It hasn’t passed the focus groups. But let’s not pretend that nothing has changed.

This blog was first published in the Sunday Mirror on 8 September 2013

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