If there was one
positive thing that I had hoped might come out of Brexit, it was that Anglo-British
nationalists would finally be forced to face up the fact that the UK’s place
and status in the world aren’t as they have believed to date. Perhaps it will still happen; but at the
moment it almost seems as if the whole process is having quite the opposite
effect. They seem to be just doubling
down on their fantasy view of how the world is.
This week, we’ve
had the Defence Secretary telling
us that, post-Brexit, the UK could build new military bases in the
Far East and the Caribbean, becoming once again a global power. There is, of course, nothing about membership
of the EU which prevents the UK from building such bases now; the link with
Brexit is tenuous to say the least. The
prime obstacle to building and maintaining such bases is the same reason given for
closing such bases in the 1960s and 1970s – the disproportionate cost in
relation to the perceived benefits. The
attempt to pretend that the UK was still a global power was a drag on the
economy. That cost issue hasn’t gone
away; and the non-existent Brexit dividend has already been spent at least
twice over. Still, there’s always that magic tree in the garden of number 10.
What military
forces would be deployed to such bases?
We discovered last week that there are no
proper warships available to send as far as the Black Sea, let alone
Singapore. Still, for a country that is building
aircraft carriers without aircraft, and hiring ferry
companies with no ships, there is, I suppose, a certain consistency
in building military bases with no military presence. And paying for those imaginary forces with
imaginary money looks almost coherent in that context.
The most
delusional part of all this is the statement that these new bases will enable
the UK to “play the role on the world
stage that the world expects us to play”, because, apparently, Australia,
Canada, New Zealand, Caribbean states and nations across Africa will be looking
to the UK for “the moral leadership, the
military leadership and the global leadership”. Really?
Comedy leadership, maybe; showing others how to engage in serious
self-harm, definitely. But only an Anglo-British
exceptionalist could really believe that those former colonies are all waiting
with bated breath for the UK to resume the ‘leadership’ which it showed them in
the past. Just what does it take for
reality to sink in?
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2 comments:
I wondet r how Mr Williamson thinks his bases in the Carribean would fit in with the Monroe Doctrine and those in the Far East with a Chinese equivalent.In the Western Hemisphere the Royal Navy would be under the control of the USA and in Far East they simply would not be allowed in.
Mr Williamson's head seems to have slipped even further up his own arse over recent weeks. A working grasp of reality was never his strong suit but the boy is getting even flakier with each passing day as the heat of a failing Brexit seems to boil what remains of his brain. Might be a Tory party leader/Prime Minister at this rate !
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