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Debate on the Address

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Symons. It makes me feel enormously conscious of the fact that her sparky vitality has her looking forward, and my antiquity has me largely looking backwards. I hope I may be forgiven for reverting as far back as the speech that I made in the debate in this House three days after the savagery of 9/11. I spelt out then four conditions that had to be fulfilled if United States military action against any target which was thought to be responsible could be justified. First, it would have to be founded not on response, but on self-defence clearly stated and established. Secondly, they would need to have robust evidence of the responsibility of any target for the 9/11 brutality. Thirdly, maintenance of the long-term unity of international support would be essential to success. Fourthly, and this is contemporary—the most important proposition in the context of today’s debate—any action would have to be accompanied by a renewed commitment to tackle even-handedly the Middle Eastern conflict between Israel and its Palestinian neighbours. Today, it is clear that not one of those four conditions has been fulfilled. On the contrary, no attempt was made to suggest that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. Instead, the attempt was made to establish the existence of the entirely unconnected threat of weapons of mass destruction, laced withthe entirely different objective, although often undeclared, of regime change. Unsurprisingly, all this was contrary to the instincts of foreign policy and expertise of most Governments on both sides of the Atlantic. Even so the Prime Minister—depending upon very fragile and heavily amplified factual evidence and anxiously tenuous threads of legal advice squeezed out of an increasingly lonely Attorney-General—went ahead with war. What have been the results? For Iraq, there has been the hugely destructive collapse of state and society. It is now the disruptive epicentre of an already disrupted region. For the misconceived and misguided war on terrorism, predictably, terrorist attacks have escalated around the world. For the wider world, the mutual confidence of NATO partners in each other has been gravely damaged. So too, although fortunately to a lesser extent, has the capacity and will of European Union member states to formulate and pursue concerted and constructive foreign policies. Saddest of all perhaps, for the United States, the initial worldwide reservoir of sympathy and good will has almost entirely drained away. So too, alas—for the United Kingdom—has much of the long-standing respect for the wisdom of this nation’s policy towards the Middle East which once prevailed almost throughout the region. To put it bluntly, we have witnessed the collapse of British foreign policy—worse even than, as my noble friend Lord Howell said, its consignment to limbo. The need now is for nothing short of the re-creation of British foreign policy. For that to be possible, one crucial lesson has to be relearned. In a frightening, shrinking world of resurgent superpowers—China, India, Russia, and perhaps even Persia, if I may use the old-fashioned word—and of course the United States, it is almost impossible to identify a single problem for which British foreign policy on its own can be expected to produce any kind of answer. Most often, we are likely to be sharing fundamental interests with our partners and neighbours in the European Union. Acting alone, not one of us is likely to have much impact upon global diplomacy. As Iraq has clearly demonstrated, a Europe divided is all too likely to emerge as a Europe disregarded—Europe without influence, Britain without influence. So far from damaging the fundamental, long-standing transatlantic partnership, it would be in the interests of the United States as much as those of the rest of the world for Europe—embracing, of course, our own country—to make a more coherent and positive contribution to global peace and security.We need the ““coherent partnership”” of which the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, spoke and which he encouragingly detected in the gracious Speech. I have one last point of some importance. It will not be possible to design and implement a foreign policy of the kind and the strength that this country needs and deserves without restoring and supporting the confidence, the standing and the resources of a vigorous and independent Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service under the leadership, if possible, of a strong and confident Foreign Secretary. For me, it is sad that a service that was widely respected around the world—from Bombay to Berlin, from Beijing to I forget where, but in all parts of the globe—has lost a great deal of that respect. We need to do a great deal to put that right. I close on a rather sombre note. Harold Macmillan, in a book about his predecessors entitled The Past Masters, quotes, rather remarkably, from Neville Chamberlain’s diary, as follows: "““I wrote a letter to Mussolini in friendly terms and this was followed by a very cordial reply from him. I did not show my letter to the Foreign Secretary, for I had the feeling that he would object to it””." Macmillan goes on to point out that Eden’s subsequent resignation led to his replacement by the, "““charming, urbane and essentially pliable Lord Halifax””," so that ““Chamberlain was able””, says Macmillan, "““to take effective control of foreign policy””." I conclude by posing the uncomfortable question whether a very strong-willed, misguided and underadvised Prime Minister is capable of inflicting greater damage when he is trying to make peace than when he succeeds in making war.