Britannia ascendant – rejoice!
The crisis in the Middle East shows how jolly clever and jolly important we can be.
Orange Blob to Sir Keir: ‘nice work, keep it up’
Our very own Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, has even been given a new and important job as paper collector for the President of the United States of America and has shown himself lithe enough to scramble at the feet of the Great Man, able to both scoop up the papers and collate them, what a guy!
Not only does Britain come to the rescue when winds blow and papers scatter but we have even installed a highly trained professional fawner as His Majesty’s Ambassador in Washington. Lord Peter Mandelson main job is to whisper nice things in the ear of the Orange Blob. It’s something he is really good at as he has never encountered a rich patron he does not like, nor a mistake that cannot be smoothed over by his formidable spinning skills. Who is better qualified to massage the ego of the World’s Greatest Egoist?
And it doesn’t end there because the extraordinary triumph of Britain’s new era of diplomatic greatness means that every time a really bigly power demands that the UK jump, we can boldly ask: ‘how high?’
Under this new dispensation great things happen, China gets to build the biggest embassy ever and has wonderful access to vital UK communications infrastructure running below these vast premises. Britain stops whining about something called human rights and those nice Saudis bump up orders for some very shiny new weapons. This is what us diplomacy experts call a win-win situation.
There was a time when British ministers had to rely on obtaining an off-peak day return on the fast train to Brussels when they wanted to take a foreign policy initiative. That was back in the dark days when we were part of the European Union and a motley collection of foreigners were forever second guessing us. Thanks to Brexit, that nightmare is over. We are no longer incumbered by having a seat at the table of the single biggest regional power block of nations. Thus we are absolutely free to go it alone and, my-oh-my what a difference it makes. We can issue our very own little statements, we can beetle off to meet some of the world’s most ghastly rulers with no one to stop us and no one much minds or pays attention. So, that’s a huge result.
But what, you may ask, does all this mean for Britain’s standing in the world? Good question; best answered in the form much beloved by our very own Prime Minister.
‘Let me make it absolutely clear’, is his favourite opener, generally followed by an impressively long series of sentences, replete with sub-clauses and ending with the words ‘so there can be no doubt’. It is entirely possible that between the opening and conclusion of a typical Sir Keir response some very big words are used and key references made to many, many things. Only a seriously uninformed and unappreciative person would be vulgar enough to crudely ask what all this actually means.
But, hang on, I hear you say, it’s all very well being a Clever Dick but have you or have you not heard that His Majesty’s First Minister has tirelessly been on the dog and bone calling up some seriously important people in America, Iran, Israel, France, Germany and maybe even Australia (at times when trunk call charges are lower). We know this, because he told us, that he has been straining every sinew to secure de-escalation in the Middle East.
Only a pedant would suggest that this has been to no affect. Why, he even got a call from the White House one hour before America bombers crashed into Iran targeting nuclear facilities. Not everyone got one of these calls.
The fact that His Majesty’s Foreign Secretary, alongside some other European ministers, were, at that very moment, engaged in talks with Iran aiming to de-escalate demonstrates the extraordinarily nuanced and frightfully clever peaks that British diplomacy has scaled. What looked like Mr. Lammy working alone in complete darkness has now been shown to be a masterstroke because not only were the Brits not alone, they were blindsided alongside the Iranians, demonstrating, for those who are not keeping up, that we are all in the same boat.
Meanwhile, in breaking news, the Orange Blob has announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel. Arguably this was not the product of Britain’s brave de-escalation policy. However diplomatic specialists will note that the imprint of the British footprint on this initiative was so great that the Orange Blob craftily chose not to mention it.
And, to be clear, ceasefires in the Middle East have a quite astonishing track record, mostly leading to other ceasefires as they falter and collapse in quick succession. So, yet another opportunity will arise to call for de-escalation.