Green Party peer Natalie Bennett argues that “the West” as a unit with shared values and principles is dead
The idea of “the West” as a geopolitical unit linking the US, Europe and other nations in a set of shared values and principles is clearly dead. But our government is pretending the corpse is in fine health.
This is dangerous: a denial of reality that will come into crunching collision with the world of 2026, and cause serious collateral damage to security and democracy.
“Reality-drought” was a phrase that came to mind as twice in less than 24 hours I heard Baroness Chapman of Darlington, who speaks for the government on foreign affairs in the House of Lords, address US actions in Venezuela and threats to Greenland.
In her account, Sir Keir Starmer has been “able to manage his relationship with President Trump very well” and the US is our “close partner and ally”. A partnership that is so close that, while the British Prime Minister tried to “establish the facts” on the US kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife, the White House took days to find time for a phone call.
In response to the crossbencher Lord Pannick, Baroness Chapman said: “Our position on the rule of law has not changed and will not change.” The KC noted how the Labour attorney-general as he was being sworn in had said: We will seek to promote international law and the rule of law in the international legal order”, but now the UK had nothing to say about the US action that so clearly breached international law. In fact ministers were turning somersaults with pike to avoid being drawn into commenting.
The US’s behaviour was a matter for it, government ministers said to every media outlet they could find. But of course the UK would say something different about President Putin and Kyiv, and there was REALLY no contradiction at all about that stance.
And when I asked if the West as a unit was dead, the minister’s response: “clearly not”. “Clearly” is a very odd term to be using in this context. An impartial observer, looking down from an alien spacecraft, would certainly be astonished – think perhaps their video feed had seen a multi-year glitch, that the minister was actually talking about the US of Obama and Biden, not President Trump Two.
From the Labour backbenches, Lord Cryer, former chair of the parliamentary Labour Party, made it clear what has very obviously changed: “Previous American Presidents have intervened; for instance, in Grenada and in Panama. The difference is that President Trump does not really mind letting people know that he does not give a monkey’s about world opinion or international law.”
The government stance matters for two crucial reasons. One, for the security of our nation. To continue to host five US military bases, and 15 property sites, on the basis of little more than a back-of-an-envelope agreement drawn up in 1973, with a 12 month-long termination clause, is clearly both a security and legal risk.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the seizure of the Bella 1/Marinera Russian-flagged oil tanker, that our forces supported the effort launched from UK soil puts us at the centre of an action in which we are very clearly not in control, with uncertain consequences.
And what if forces were to set out from those bases in the direction of Greenland?
Secondly, there’s the issue of domestic trust and faith in the government. We know that is already at all-time lows, and that can only do further harm in the age of global social media tycoons whose business model involves trying to pretend that you can create reality by stating your claims again and again.
That the government is now firmly repeating its claim that anyone questioning the US actions is a defender of President Maduro, or that the nature of his government is the only issue here, or that the US action will not have significant consequences for Ukraine, Taiwan and any other entity with a giant, threatening neighbour looming over it, further hammers on the already battered hope that anything they say reflects reality.
The government’s plan for the new year apparently involves trying to establish an “emotional link” with voters. But as in any relationship, if there is not a foundation of truth and trust. When reality intrudes on airy reassurances, the break up is likely to be very bitter indeed.
This is in a world in which a clear potential future is a division of the globe across three spheres of influence, with the “Donroe doctrine” the predominate force, applied chiefly to the Western hemisphere, leaving China and Russia to dominate wherever else they will and can.
Until the government is honest about that – within its own decisionmaking and with the voters – we are domestically and internationally in a world of pure fantasy.
Natalie Bennett is a Green Party peer and former leader of the Green Party of England and Wales.
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