Britain has no friends, no money, and no grasp on reality

Telegraph

12-03-2025

Britain stands alone in a brutish world. Our small, impoverished yet special nation has spent too long lying to itself. The horrifying reality is that we have no real friends, just interests and beliefs. If we want to ensure the security, liberty and prosperity of the British people, and as Lord Palmerston put it, be 'the champion of justice and right', we will have to do it ourselves. Nobody, least of all the greater or lesser powers, has our back, or any interest in fair play.
Donald Trump's America is putting itself first, reshaping the world, trashing allies and waging idiotic trade wars. Europe, mired in decadence and welfarism, is interested primarily in our military know-how, nuclear umbrella and, as always, our fisheries. Russia is a fascistic empire whose advances must be halted. China is a hostile civilisation. India doesn't really care. International institutions and courts serve as useful idiots for proto-Marxists keen to destroy the West.
We comfort ourselves with tales of how we can serve as a bridge between Europe and the US, or build a coalition of the willing in Ukraine. It's inspirational stuff, but it would be madness to cling to the certainties of the past. It's time for a total reset of our assumptions, of our understanding of history, of our modus operandi, of our international role.
We must reconstruct our economy, military and society for an era of trade wars, diplomatic blackmail, banditry, spheres of influence and power politics. We must embrace a neo-Gaullism with British characteristics, centred around a renewed love of country, a turbocharged, technologically advanced capitalist economy, much larger and more modern Armed Forces, a fully independent nuclear deterrent and a focus on resilience.
We need to be able to operate our own military without having to rely on parts from unreliable providers, to withstand embargoes or sanctions or cyber-attacks or pipelines being blown up or star wars. We must learn from how Trump treats Ukraine, or how Biden treated Israel, suspending arms sales. We must be able to project power and defend trade routes worldwide. We must retain as much free trade as possible, and slash tariffs further on friendly nations, but make sure that we can always get hold of essential goods and commodities.
We can no longer be naive, and assume that mercantilists who leverage trade for warfare are in fact followers of Milton Friedman or David Ricardo. In many cases, we will have to produce more military equipment in Britain, requiring reindustrialisation and greater steel manufacturing; in others, ensure a diversity of trading partners, buying weapons from Israel and Poland as well as the US, or food from Argentina rather than Spain.
The Atlanticists and the pro-Europeans alike are wrong. We should be friendly to the US and EU, but beholden to neither. America saved Britain during World War I; it rescued us from totalitarianism in World War II; it destroyed Soviet tyranny in the Cold War. It earned the eternal gratitude of mankind.
But those of us who love America must acknowledge how the US ruthlessly exploited its participation in the wars to demolish Britain's financial, maritime and geopolitical power. It treats its allies as vassals, rather than equals. In Stalin's War, Sean McMeekin recounts how Roosevelt suggested to Stalin in 1943 that India be taken away from Britain. It was best 'not to discuss the question of India with Mr Churchill', the US president said, arguing that America and Russia should remake India 'from the bottom, somewhat on the Soviet line'. Stalin couldn't believe his luck, or the way Roosevelt spoke of the greatest Englishman of all time.
John Maynard Keynes was sidelined at Bretton Woods. The 1947 sterling crisis was precipitated by America. The US betrayed us over Suez. Ronald Reagan disappointed on the Falklands, and invaded Grenada, a Commonwealth member, without properly informing Lady Thatcher. The IRA spent decades fundraising in the US while murdering in Britain. The UK sacrificed much in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11 for no return; the ' special relationship ' started to feel abusive. Barack Obama and Joe Biden disliked the UK, and removed Churchill's bust from the Oval Office. Obama took the EU's side over Brexit. Trump is an Anglophile, and may offer us a trade deal, but has no interest in our perspective.
Yet while America is now explicit in its leveraging of power for transactional purposes, Europe isn't the answer. The EU is an imperialist technocracy with an obsession with Hegelian dialectics and a hatred for traitor-nations that have thrown off the shackles of the acquis communautaire.
Membership of the EU crippled Britain: our parliamentary tradition, common law and what Hayek called our true individualism, the source of much of our exceptionalism, were eroded; our ties with the Commonwealth largely severed. The French (via agricultural subsidies and the containment of Germany) and the Germans (via a Germanic euro and the single market in goods) got far more out of the EU than we did; the European services sector was never liberalised, discriminating against Britain's comparative advantage. The EU treated us abominably when we left, seizing partial control of Northern Ireland.
We were regarded as enemies during Covid. In December 2020, France shut its borders to Britain, imposing a blockade that could have led to shortages of food and vaccines; the excuse was the Kent variant. In March 2021, Ursula von der Leyen threatened to block vaccine exports to the UK and to cancel private contracts. We remain too dependent on the EU, and on the Calais-Dover bottleneck. Any military help we offer Europe must come as a quid pro quo for easier trade.
The Government should immediately launch a Year Zero review of all policies, on the postulate that we cannot rely on anyone. We need to decouple from China when it comes to high-tech. We must scrap net zero, and produce more of our own energy. Faster productivity growth is required, necessitating a bonfire of regulations, a smaller state and reduced tax. We need to pull out of the ECHR and UN conventions to restrict migration and forge a cohesive civic nationalism.
Our early 21st-century settlement was predicated on an imaginary utopia in which we expected fair dealing from friends. In today's dog-eat-dog world, we must stand up for ourselves.