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Queen’s Speech

My Lords, I shall avoid the temptation in these unfocused debates of embarking on a Cook’s tour around the world in eight minutes. I shall try instead to focus on certain events of the past few weeks and draw perhaps some general conclusions from them. My starting point is 8 and 9 November 1989 and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I recall—this is a corrective to those who like to forecast the future—speaking six months beforehand to a German woman MP whom I know well. She told me that Germany would never be reunified in her lifetime. Well, she is still alive and Germany is reunified and we have seen the most remarkable positive results since. My own judgment is that historians will see the overall effects of 1989 as more significant than those of 9/11. The fall of the wall ended the post-war division of Europe. Perhaps we have not yet caught up with those changes in the political structures needed to support it, but they have had a most marked effect. It was the end of the Soviet Union, the end of the Soviet empire and almost the end of Soviet ideology. Proud nations that had the untidy, post-war interruption of being under Soviet rule were able to choose their own future. The country that I know best, where I was en poste in the 1960s, is Hungary. Its self-identity is that of the spearhead of the West against the East, of a proud country which has survived for 1,000 years with its own language in a Slav sea and which did not choose communism—it was where the Red Army had reached at the end of the war. Hungary now is able to flourish and we rejoiced with it and those other countries as the dam burst and it was able to resume not just business as usual but business on a better basis, being absorbed into the system of western alliances. There were therefore profound changes, so that not only parts of the Soviet empire but parts of the Soviet Union joined the European Union: the Baltic states are now part of it and of NATO. We think less of the effects of the fall of the Berlin Wall on the third world. I attended a lecture earlier this week by former President FW de Klerk, who argued that, because the communist menace appeared less strong to the Afrikaner minority in apartheid South Africa, they were able to make changes and concessions that might otherwise not have been possible. On the other hand, the fall of the wall has had some adverse effects for Africa. Pre-1989, there was superpower competition for votes of African states in the General Assembly of the UN. That competition has gone and, to some extent, Africa has become marginalised. I was delighted that my noble friend was able to indicate that the commitment to providing 0.7 per cent of GNI in development aid remains valid and strong for this Government. However, there came a time when I recall even Richard Dowden, one of the few eminent commentators on Africa in this country, saying that perhaps our only reason for being there was moral. Well, as we say in this Parliament, since then an amendment has been moved. Others have mentioned the competition for resources with China. We saw the recent offer of $6 billion of credit from the People’s Republic of China to Africa, a reflection of China’s willingness to move from its own region in the search for resources and, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, of the way in which economic power has moved from west to east. It is probably also true not only that the West has suffered an economic decline as against the East but also that, over the past weeks, we have seen some signs of a political decline. There have been a number of adverse changes over that period. Let us think, for example, of Afghanistan. There were clear signs of public opinion in this country moving against our commitment to that war; there was uncertainty as to who the enemy is and how one measures success in the Afghan war. Perhaps one needs, as the noble Lord said, a sense of history, of the bloody nose that this country received in the 1840s in the First Afghan War. One needs also to read again one’s Kipling about the Great Game in the 1880s. One needs perhaps to revisit the bleeding wound that President Gorbachev’s Soviet Union got in its latter days. One needs to look at the old adage: one cannot buy the Afghans; one can only rent them. Indeed, one sees various press commentaries now that state that we are indeed bribing certain forces because of the fragmentation and turbulence of that country. I am ready to accept the Prime Minister’s assertion that it is in our interests to help the other countries that may serve as nests for al-Qaeda activity—for example, Somalia and Yemen. It is some indication of the increasing linkage between domestic and foreign policy that the training camps in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan and in Afghanistan train people who will appear on our streets. I am prepared to accept that, however corrupt and fragmented that country is and whatever void exists at a national level, it is in our interests to bolster as best we can the Afghan regime. I accept that the likely effect on Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country, of a withdrawal and the boost that any precipitate withdrawal would give to worldwide jihadists are very important considerations. Therefore, I was pleased by what the Prime Minister said in his Lord Mayor’s banquet speech, which showed a realistic appraisal of the need not only to satisfy public opinion in this country but also to have a clearer strategy. What he outlined there, I very much applaud. In the Middle East, we hoped that the new Obama Administration would adopt a more nuanced and balanced role. I was in Egypt just before the Cairo speech, when there were great expectations. Alas, those expectations have been somewhat dimmed as a result of the recent retreat by the Obama Administration on settlements. It is surely clear that there can be no peace between the Palestinians and Israelis without a two-state solution and that there cannot be a two-state solution while the areas occupied by the Israelis are criss-crossed by all these settlements and Bantustans. It looks as if Prime Minister Netanyahu has won a short-term tactical victory. Alas, the longer-term consequences may be sadder for Israel—and I yield to no one in my admiration for Israel, its proud democracy and rule of law and the fact that it faces an existential threat from Iran as well as the fact that the 1 million Palestinians living in Israel certainly do not want to be absorbed into a Palestinian Authority, as they show very clearly. But the consequences of that retreat on the settlements against pressure from Prime Minister Netanyahu have been not only the projected resignation of President Abbas but new pressures for a Palestinian state and anger in the Arab world. The Arab peace initiative of 2002, which may need a clearer road map attached to it, has now been pushed aside and the politics of hope in Israel and Palestine, as the events of the past few weeks show, have yielded to the politics of management of a crisis to prevent it from getting worse. On the European Union and the speech given by Mr Cameron, clearly the background was unfortunate. For example, there was the withdrawal from the mainstream centre-right family. Anyone who understands the European Union understands the importance of the political families and the need to be part of one’s natural family if one is to pull one’s weight, rather than creating some mishmash of funny groups with little or no attachment to core Europe. There was also, alas, from the shadow Foreign Minister the attack on Mr Blair’s prospects of becoming the president of the new grouping. There can be many cogent arguments against Mr Blair, but I think that there was consternation on the continent about the Opposition in this country seeking to stab in the back our own prime candidate, with the likely result that a Benelux federalist will have the position instead of a Briton who shares our views—an Atlanticist and someone who would walk tall, a general and not a secretary. That is the perverse effect of what the Opposition have done. Furthermore, the pledges that have been made on a sovereignty Bill, the referendum and opt-outs tell one more about the internal party management than about realistic prospects. There is unlikely to be any serious prospect for further institutional change over at least the next decade. If one wished, for example, to add to one of the accession treaties something in relation to one of the several opt-outs being suggested, can one imagine the horror that it would cause on the continent? It would be totally contrary to the declared policy of seeking to encourage expansion to Croatia and the Balkan countries. Is one going to sacrifice Croatia and Iceland on the altar of trying to get our view on these opt-outs? We know, realistically, that the opt-outs depend on the support of all the other countries, which will not be coming. It is tilting at windmills and chasing dragons and is not worth a row of beans. The real tragedy is that, just to appease the Europhobes, any possible Conservative Government would feel the need to throw them fish from time to time, as they will ask for more, which can only make our position worse in relation to our partners. That said, those pledges mean very little. Any attempt to demand their fulfilment could only make worse our position on the continent. I end on a more positive note. There was no attempt in Mr Cameron’s speech to rewrite the ESDP, which is one of the great and increasing success stories of the European Union. Perhaps that was the result of the lecturing of Mr Hague when he recently went to Washington. There was also no mention of the Commonwealth. I yield to no one in being a proponent of the Commonwealth; I have chaired the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association for four years. I do not want to make the party point about how the Conservative Government in 1986 almost destroyed the Commonwealth over South Africa. I was at Marlborough House at that time and I remember it well—and the tirade in the Conservative press against the developing Commonwealth. No, I do not make that point. But this is clearly a pipe dream. Those who go to CHOGM in Trinidad and Tobago next week will not find any appetite for this new grouping, which is not really a pro-Commonwealth suggestion but a desperate attempt to find an alternative to the only realistic position on the European Union. That said, I find much to commend in Mr Cameron’s speech, which will be seen historically as a rejection of not only the referendum but other referendums and a major recognition of where our future lies. Historians will see it as a major step, though a step only, on the road to reality.