A Lammy in wolf's clothing
AT the Labour Party conference in the last week of September, David Lammy, recently appointed foreign secretary, wanted everyone to know that under his watch Britain was back.
So keen was he to make sure this message struck home that he said “Britain is back” 10 times in the space of his rather spare, 1,800 word speech, which included the rhetorically sparkling line: “Britain is back. Britain is back. My friends, Britain is back.”
In truth, there is nothing much unusual about this. Every foreign secretary and prime minister in memory has tried to claim either that “Britain is back” or is already a massively important player on the world stage. This is so detached from reality that it should be too embarrassing to say.
In fact, Britain is in the process of a long, self-inflicted decline from Great Power status, which we could most recently claim in 1942 at …
The rest of this article features in our September 2024 print issue, available to subscribers.
