‘Global Britain’? What on earth does Boris Johnson mean by that?
HMS Queen Elizabeth (Shutterstock)
If Boris Johnson has a single catchphrase, it is “Global Britain”. As catchphrases go, though, it is not very catchy. So far, indeed, it has failed to catch on. This is hardly surprising. Nobody has the faintest idea what it means. Even ministers are evasive. So, Boris: what is it? Is “Global Britain” just a politician’s pudding without a theme, as Churchill might have said?
In an article for the Times to promote the Government’s Integrated Review of security, defence, development and foreign policy, the Prime Minister makes his most coherent stab so far at defining Global Britain. TheArticle will be publishing expert analysis of this important document by our Defence and Security Editor, Alexander Woolfson, and by General Sir Robert Fry. In the meantime, however, readers might be interested to know what the PM has to say on our behalf about how he sees Britain’s present and future role.
It is, incidentally, quite wrong that this piece is behind a paywall, thereby giving the Times a valuable exclusive. If the PM had chosen an open-access platform (such as TheArticle), or at least published his article simultaneously on gov.uk, it would not be inaccessible to the great majority of the public. Such mutual backscratching between ministers and organs of the Establishment is a bad look for an administration that prides itself on “levelling up”.
The PM kicks off with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine as a symbol of Global Britain: developed here by British scientists, now manufactured and distributed all over the world. He is right to highlight the fact that this vaccine, unlike any others, is being dispensed at cost, and that the British taxpayer is spending large sums “to put jabs in the arms of other populations”. The reason, he says, is “blindingly obvious — the principle of enlightened self-interest that [also] underlies the Integrated Review”. If we are to get our lives back, the whole world needs protection against Covid.
This is the theme that runs through Boris Johnson’s argument. Whether it is protection against pandemics, climate change or more straightforwardly man-made threats, Global Britain must play its part. There is a nod towards the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow this autumn, plus a reminder that Britain was “the first major Western country to commit to the goal of net zero by 2050”. Goals are of course easy to “commit to”, especially when they are far in the future, but high energy costs are damaging and regressive. Yet it is true that the UK burnt practically no coal last year, at a time when many other countries, from Germany to China, are still doing so on a huge scale. And it is true that green technologies, like other digital industries, are creating jobs. The question is: will our creaking educational system equip our children and grandchildren to do these jobs, or will they, too, be exported?
As the man who got Brexit done, Boris Johnson dismisses the Remoaner canard that Global Britain is an exercise in imperial nostalgia. “The object of Global Britain is not to swagger or strike attitudes on the world stage. It is to use the full spectrum of our abilities, now amplified by record spending on both defence and science, to engage with and help the rest of the world.” Once again, the emphasis is on serving British interests, in particular economic interests, by helping the process of globalisation to get back on track after the “sauve qui peut squabbling that has disfigured the last 12 months”. Johnson is a sincere globalist: those who accuse him of populism or nationalism seldom acknowledge that he is a cultural cosmopolitan and a consistent free trader. He is proud of Britain’s record as the fifth biggest exporter of goods and services in the world.
As a British national with Turkish ancestry who was born in New York and raised in Brussels, it is hardly surprising that he gives an honourable mention to British expats — and not just because they tend to vote Tory if they vote at all. This “vast diaspora of people, perhaps five or six million, living abroad” makes the UK “already in many ways more global than our comparators”. (Note the diplomatic word “comparator”, substituted for “competitor” — even though the Integrated Review is actually entitled Global Britain in a Competitive Age.) He is right and it needs saying at a time when many expats are suffering from the consequences of the pandemic, of post-Brexit bureaucracy imposed by the EU, or of punitive measures by authoritarian regimes. There is no mention of Hong Kong, but hundreds of thousands of people there also belong to this British diaspora.
In his peroration — the prime ministerial prose becomes ever more oratorical — Johnson draws attention to “a third invisible diaspora, far more important and more fruitful even than people or goods, and that is the vast dispersal of British ideas and British values”. They range “from habeas corpus and parliamentary democracy to freedom of speech and gender equality”. He borrows a biblical metaphor: these ideas and values are seeds, which “put forward great roots and branches”, but sometimes “fall on stony ground”. Here, finally, he hints at the fact that “these values are not uncontested” and are “far from universal”. Though he never says so here, both China and Russia (to mention only our most powerful adversaries) are engaged in military, economic and ideological counter-offensives against these ideas and values. He doesn’t want to sound jingoistic, but his bottom line is telling: “the world needs Global Britain more than ever and, to be truly prosperous and successful, Britain needs to be global.”
These claims are also not uncontested. Does the world need us “more than ever”? More than when the Royal Navy swept away the slave trade and policed the oceans? There is, perhaps, a hint of hyperbole here. But he is right that British prestige (“soft power” in diplomat-speak) is still a considerable force — but only if we are seen to stand up and, if necessary, fight for what we believe to be right. That is why British soldiers, sailors and statesmen, from Nelson and Wellington to Churchill and Thatcher, were once so universally admired. For Global Britain to become more than just a catchphrase, Boris Johnson will have to prove by his actions as well as his words that he is a fighter. We need not only the Oxford vaccine, but HMS Queen Elizabeth too. For if we don’t use our hard-won prestige, we shall assuredly lose it.
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