Our era has more in common with the 1930s and 1940s than any other period of recent history: it is the second age of dictators of modern times. As in the first age of dictators, this generation of despots act with ever-increasing impunity. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, invading Ukraine. Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, ethnically cleansing Nagorno-Karabakh. The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, committing genocide against Uyghurs. Iran sponsoring proxy wars.
Keir Starmer’s and John Healey’s Christmas trip to a Nato base in Estonia to visit British troops, and the soundbites that followed, demonstrate how the defence of the realm has moved back up the political agenda. It is a good moment to reflect on Labour’s pedigree when it comes to defence and foreign policy, and the party’s performance over the past two years in the face of tyranny.
History, ideology, values and the founding principles of Labour’s foreign policy – the right to self-determination, the right to self-defence and the centrality of multilateral security guarantees – make it the natural anti-dictatorship party. It is the party that created, under Ernest Bevin, the architecture of postwar collective security. It should be the leading voice in European politics highlighting the axis of dictatorships – Russia, Azerbaijan, China, Iran, North Korea – that threatens the free world.
In the most pressing case, Ukraine, Labour should be the leading advocate for full Nato membership to bring the country under article 5 of its treaty, which stipulates that an attack on one armed ally is regarded as an attack on all. Instead, it has played second fiddle and catchup as the Conservative government has grandstanded its support for Ukraine. The reality is that the Tories have failed Ukraine and therefore compromised UK national security.
Boris Johnson played his game of fantasy Churchill to the hilt. He is more popular in Kyiv than at home. His trip to the Ukrainian capital soon after the full-scale invasion sent a message around the world and to the people of Ukraine: you are not alone. The equipment, money, intelligence cooperation and training that then flowed to Ukraine made a difference. Lots of people in Kyiv still talk of their friend Boris in glowing terms.
The UK’s military assistance programme was part of a consensus between Labour and the Conservatives on getting behind the Ukrainians against Russian aggression, but not joining the fight to actually defeat the invading army. Even this level of consensus on support did not exist in 2014, when neither party came to the aid of Ukraine, despite security guarantees given by the worthless piece of paper that the Budapest memorandum on security assurances was shown to be. The consensus of 2022-23 still holds and there is little political friction on this issue. There should be.
Anti-appeasement is in the DNA of the Labour party. During the Falklands debate, Michael Foot – one of the authors of Guilty Men, the greatest anti-appeasement book ever written – spoke in parliament, and gave Margaret Thatcher no choice but to dispatch the taskforce. The Blair wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq were all fought against dictatorships – and in Iraq and Afghanistan, for all the myriad of failings and terrible human costs, dictatorships were removed, albeit not permanently in Afghanistan.
It is a proud record and one that Labour, the party that dismantled the British empire, gave Britain an independent nuclear deterrent and helped found Nato, should embrace. If the basis of the consensus between UK political elites is to give Ukraine just enough to not be defeated but not enough to win, then there should not be a consensus on this issue in this country. Especially not one that includes the party of Bevin and Foot.
There should instead be a fierce debate about whether the UK has done enough. Labour should be the party that is forcing the pace of assistance for Ukraine: forcing the issue of accelerated Nato membership, forcing the argument for air power to be delivered to Ukraine, critiquing the assistance that has been delivered to date. The UK ranks poorly among its partners in the Joint Expeditionary Force (the Nordic and Baltic states plus the UK and the Netherlands) in terms of proportion of GDP given to Ukraine.
Labour should be exposing the relationship between the Conservatives and Russian oligarchs, focusing on the funding of the Brexit campaign by Russian money, attacking the weakness of the UK’s sanctions policy against Russian businesses, assets and defence contractors, and pushing for supply chain analysis of the component parts of Russian weapons that kill Ukrainian civilians every day.
The failure of Tory foreign policy is of course broader than Ukraine. The abject failure to deter, challenge or even meaningfully critique Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh, another dictatorship acting with impunity, is a case that deserves much greater attention from the opposition.Was it BP’s stake in the Azeri energy sector that ensured inaction as 120,000 people were displaced from the contested territory? Some people have certainly suggested that may be the case.
Labour should stake out its claim to be the party of national security and the defence of the realm. It makes strategic sense. It makes economic sense. It makes political sense. It takes more than a photo op in fatigues to claim this issue; it takes a policy shift as dramatic as the independence of the Bank of England, and in this instance that means full support for Nato membership for Ukraine and making the skies of Ukraine safe. That would be put clear red, blue and yellow water between the two parties.
Brian Brivati is visiting professor at Kingston School of Art, and the author of Losing Afghanistan: The Fall of Kabul and the End of Western Intervention
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