Such events are normally arranged weeks in advance, so it is unlikely that Sir John Major decided to make his speech about the decline of trust in British democracy on Thursday specifically to coincide with Boris Johnson and Liz Truss’s Ukraine-related diplomatic forays to Brussels, Warsaw and Moscow. The split-screen counterpoint between the two events was nevertheless very striking. In particular, it was revealing about the realities, and the fantasies, of this government’s international influence.
On the one hand, in Moscow, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, contemptuously derided his meeting with Ms Truss as a conversation of “the mute with the deaf”, containing “nothing secret, no trust. Just slogans…” On the other hand, in London, Sir John was simultaneously delivering a passionate warning that a loss of political trust at home leads umbilically to a loss of political reputation and influence abroad. The connection between the two could hardly have been more clearly illustrated.
The efforts by the UK prime minister and foreign secretary to play a role with others to prevent Russia from attacking Ukraine are welcome. Peace, freedom and stability in eastern Europe are profoundly in the interests of all European nations, including Britain. Our security rests upon it. It was also inevitable, in the wake of lawless acts like the state-sponsored killing in London of Alexander Litvinenko and of the Salisbury poisonings, that Mr Lavrov would adopt an aggressively condescending approach to Britain.
There was and is no justification for that. Yet at the same time, as Sir John observed, Britain has arrived late at the table. It was not the British prime minister who flew to Moscow and spent several hours talking to Vladimir Putin last week. It was the French president. As Sir John wistfully put it: “That would have been us in years gone by.” Perhaps it would have been, although postwar France has a long history of casting itself as a pragmatic interlocutor with Russia. The reality is that there are downsides as well as upsides to the wish of post-imperial powers to play mediating roles. The important point, however, is that Britain today is not remotely close to playing the influential role that its self-important “global Britain” rhetoric implies.
Sir John was on strongest ground in his forthright denunciation of the Johnson government’s carefree approach to truth, laws and standards in public life – and its indifference to the international consequences. He was explicit that No 10 has broken lockdown laws and then issued false and misleading denials. He was also unambiguous, during questions, that Mr Johnson should resign if he is found to have broken the law. This is potentially a hugely important issue that could become a fault line in the Tory party. No 10 has again briefed this week that Mr Johnson would not resign. But No 10 is wrong, and Sir John is right.
He is also right that lack of trust at home has consequences abroad. This is not well enough understood here, where there remains much complacency about the way Britain is seen. The combination of the Brexit vote and Mr Johnson’s election as prime minister shook international confidence – not just European confidence. This is still being compounded by the UK’s casual approach to the withdrawal agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol in particular. It would be shaken much further and more destructively if the Johnson government breaches the agreement and abandons the Northern Ireland deal.
Mistrust towards Britain is not caused by Brexit alone. It has a longer history. But it is encouraged by Mr Johnson himself, at home and abroad. Britain still often enjoys, sometimes in defiance of the facts, a good international reputation as a stable, fair and rational nation. It is a reputation worth nurturing and worth deserving. Mr Johnson is a real and present threat to that. According to Sir John, “our reputation is being shredded”. His speech is a reminder, and one that is needed, of just how much is currently at stake.
