Tue 19 Dec ‘17 15.27 GMTLast modified on Tue 19 Dec ‘17 17.26 GMT
View more sharing options
Shares
525
Brexit is set to cause a loss of UK influence on a par with the 1970s, requiring a national assessment of how the UK’s future standing can be recovered once Brexitis complete, Sir John Sawers, the former head of MI6, has warned.
Speaking to the foreign affairs select committee, Sawers said: “We can see the trend of the coming years and we do not want to go through a repeat of the 1970s where the UK went progressively downhill compared to our national partners. We will need to turn it around. I am not sure how we are going to do it.”
In the age of Brexit, we need to rediscover the politics of ideas
Claudia Wood
Read more
Calling for an urgent reprioritisation of resources post-Brexit, he said: “We have to recognise a pretty stark reality faces us at the end of this process, and we have to rebuild from that.”
Accused by the Conservative MP Nusrat Ghani of providing only “gloom and doom” about Brexit, Sawers hit back, saying: “We have to acknowledge that Brexit is damaging our economy at the moment. Immediately after Brexit we suffered a 15% devaluation in our currency – we devalued all the assets in the UK by 15%. We are going through a Brexit inflation at the moment which means that people’s pay rises are not enough to keep up with real-terms incomes and, having 18 months ago been at the top of the G7 table of GDP growth performance, we are now at the bottom, so we are undoubtedly going through a bit of a dive. At the end of this process we will need to work out how to rebuild our economy and our influence in the world.”
Quick guide
What are Brexit options now? Four scenarios Show
He added: “For the last 25 years our foreign policy has been closely tied up with working closely with our international partners, especially France and Germany.” At the same time, he said, the US had become a less reliable partner, “making the international system less effective than in the past” .
He said Brexit meant the UK would suffer “a double loss” at the UN since it would not be able to shape the influential common EU policy in New York or be able to rely on EU support at the general assembly.
Guardian Today: the headlines, the analysis, the debate - sent direct to you
Read more
Sawers called for more funding for security services after Brexit, saying: “It will be vital that we sustain, in many ways enhance, our investments in diplomacy, defence, intelligence – very high investments are made already – if we want to have an influence in the world of the sort we have had over the last 30 or 40 years.”
The defeat has been seen as a symbol of a wider loss of UK influence at the UN in the wake of Brexit.
Sawers, a former UK ambassador to the UN, said he was surprised by the British defeat, adding that the distraction of the UK political class by Brexit may have contributed. Referring to the prime minister, he said: “She is not able to play the same international role in the world as the French president has in the past six months. That is just a reality.”
Another former UK ambassador to the UN, Lord Hannay, said some had spotted the UK’s decline in influence like a shark spots blood in the water. He added: “The trepidation index, when people mind if they trample on our toes, has gone down.” He said it was vital campaigns to win elections such at the one for the ICJ were begun as long as a year before the poll started, adding that efforts by the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, to win the poll had come too late.
He warned that in future automatic EU solidarity over issues such as the Falklands might not be forthcoming. The EU surprised Argentina by imposing sanctions following the Falklands invasion. Hannay said: “The EU solidarity issue is now in play and I am afraid we will lose it.”
The only hope that remains is that the EU will be destroyed before the Bilderberg Group eradicate the European people and the world population, the animals and the nature...: www.globalresearch.ca/…/13808 + Europes wind power suicide pact killing 40000 a year stopthesethings.com/…/europes-wind-po… + Germany’s ‘Green’ Energy Myth Busted: Landscapes Trashed, Countless Birds & Bats Slaughtered …More
Dr Stuart Reiss I guess that we have different views then. I agree on the Russian genius (every nation has its gifts and its time) but having read Trial, Tribulation and Triumph I am concerned that she has not really rid herself of the toxins left over from Communism. While I believe it is right that every person have their say in any government what I have observed over the years is that most …More
Dr Stuart Reiss I guess that we have different views then. I agree on the Russian genius (every nation has its gifts and its time) but having read Trial, Tribulation and Triumph I am concerned that she has not really rid herself of the toxins left over from Communism. While I believe it is right that every person have their say in any government what I have observed over the years is that most ordinary citizens don't vote and the dominant classes expect them not to. With Brexit there was an element of a protest vote. The whole thing was so close that one wonders whether it will not divide Britain further in the future. We shall see what comes of it.
The EU Must Be Destroyed Taking part in the forum of anti-immigrant parties in Europe in Prague, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, said that the EU ” leads the continent to its death ” and must be “destroyed from the inside”. According to her, the “Union of European Nations” must replace “this terrible European Union”. katehon.com/article/eu-must-be-destroyed Europe’s Wind Power …More
The EU Must Be Destroyed Taking part in the forum of anti-immigrant parties in Europe in Prague, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, said that the EU ” leads the continent to its death ” and must be “destroyed from the inside”. According to her, the “Union of European Nations” must replace “this terrible European Union”. katehon.com/article/eu-must-be-destroyed Europe’s Wind Power Suicide Pact Killing 40,000 a Year: stopthesethings.com/…/europes-wind-po… The EU Does Not Preserve Peace In Europe – Instead It Has Brought Us Closer To War: www.telegraph.co.uk/…/the-eu-does-not… Two Divisions Of Radical Islamists Are Formed In Germany: katehon.com/article/two-divisions-r… Half Of Dangerous Islamists In Germany No Longer Considered A Threat: Report www.thelocal.de/20171218/half-of-dangero…
Dr Stuart Reiss Only time will tell. Yet if it is true that the Russians were in favour of it then that is surely an argument in favour of staying within Europe? I come from an anti-EU family but I have come to see that, despite its secularism etc., there is some good in the EU. One cannot make it better from the outside and Britain's Commonwealth might not be as co-operative as it was in the past.
