Cameron’s Britain in long retreat from the international stage

The cancellation filled only a couple of paragraphs in the morning papers last week: “France’s foreign minister cancels London visit due to Ukraine talks”. Still, the brief words must have led to generations of long-dead British diplomats turning in their graves.

Laurent Fabius and the French defence minister, Jean-Yvew Le Drian, had been due to meet with British foreign secretary Philip Hammond and defence secretary Michael Fallon, but Fabius pulled out because his time was needed elsewhere dealing with the negotiations in Minsk over the Ukraine ceasefire.

Few actions could so cruelly highlight London’s irrelevance in the biggest security issue now facing Europe. In times past, the UK would have been in the lead in Minsk. Uncomfortable with the charge, the Foreign Office never tires of arguing that London has put steel into the spine of European Union sanctions against Moscow.

End of an era

For some, Britain’s ability to play on the global stage ended at 10.31pm on August 29th, 2013, when a shaken

David Cameron

rose to his feet minutes after MPs had delivered a humiliating defeat, by 332 votes to 220.

The prime minister had rushed a motion before the Commons, demanding authority to take part in “legal, proportionate” international military action against the Assad regime in Syria, designed to block any attempted use of chemical weapons.

Cameron came into office in 2010 with little knowledge of international affairs, but with the desire – typical of occupants of No 10 Downing Street – to play on the global stage.

Initially, he was prepared to lead. He ordered air-strikes alongside the French in Libya in 2011, which helped to lead to the overthrow of Muammar Gadafy. But the lack of follow- through has poisoned this legacy, and helped to create a failed state.

Since the Syrian vote, Cameron has been more cautious. Despite all of the British rhetoric, it has just three soldiers in Iraq’s Kurdish regions and just eight RAF Tornados deployed against Islamic State – only two of which are able to fly at any one time.

Some of the UK’s lower profile is explained by Germany’s more assertive role: the Russian-speaking chancellor was always a more obvious European Union “lead”, but, equally, Germany has also wanted the helm.

Meanwhile, relations between Moscow and London are poor. In the past, the Russians saw the British as important, if only for their links with Washington. Today, Vladimir Putin is contemptuous.

That contempt is best illustrated by the poisoning of former KGB officer, Alexander Litvinenko, in a London hotel in 2006 by Russian agents, who are suspected of putting polonium in his tea.

"That was brazen. They hoped they were not going to get caught, but they were not terribly upset if they were," a defence and security expert, Jonathan Eyal of the Royal United Services Institute, told The Irish Times.

Lacking leadership from No 10, the UK often appears no longer even to be looking for a role in international affairs, let alone driving the agenda.This trait that has become more pronounced since William Hague left the Foreign Office.

Belief in diplomacy

Hague was praised for having invested in the department and for having a belief in diplomacy, even if the mercantilist agenda – “selling cars and Burberry”, to quote one – is believed by many to deflect diplomats too much onto trade.

Nevertheless, Hague did offer beautifully phrased rhetoric and a sense of the grandeur of the office. His successor, Philip Hammond, has done little to impress since he took over.

Despite the legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan, however, the UK is not isolationist.

“MPs rebelled over Syria because they felt they were being pushed into a decision. The case wasn’t made,” says Thomas Raines of Chatham House, a foreign policy think-tank.

"Even ministers did not make it back for the vote. It was badly handled, but none of the main party leaders were fundamentally opposed to the idea of military action," Raines told The Irish Times.

British people are not isolationist, even if they are unwilling to pay the price of leadership. In a recent poll, Chatham House found that just one in five of the British public believe the country should accept that it is no longer a great power, the lowest figure ever recorded.

But caution is the public’s watchword, the think-tank says: “They are sceptical of intervention in support of uprisings overseas, think foreign policy should focus on protecting the UK at its borders, and remain unsupportive of development aid spending.”

Today, attention is already moving on to the next government, rather than the sins, or errors of the one coming to an end.

The challenges for the next one will be to have an agenda – and to match the UK’s ambitions with its treasure.