An island of lotus-eaters

Only Britain soldiers on.

Paris. Berlin. Rome. Stockholm. Moscow. Washington DC. The rules-based international order has collapsed. Only Britain soldiers on. The fires of populism burn in every major capital. America and China pursue ruthless realpolitik without regard for international law. But shivering commuters can take comfort. One plucky little island is willing to pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any enemy, betray any friend to assure the survival and the success of the rules-based international order. The deck may be stacked, the dealer may be crooked, the other players may be counting cards, but as decent Englishmen we will dutifully throw our car keys on the table and go all in on doing the right thing. 

Other, less law-abiding, countries might have rethought the Chagos islands deal. Some rogue states might, shockingly, have not even bothered to enter into negotiations over territory it had held for 200 years with a country that it invented in the 1960s. Not us. When an agreement giving Mauritius the islands, and billions of pounds, was rejected because of a change in leadership between one of the two incestuous criminal families that govern the archipelago, Britain didn’t back down. When the wicked big American bully tried to stuff our lunch money back into our pockets, we firmly started pulling it out again. £18 billion? We paid it glady. For what profiteth a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose the rules-based international order? 

For years, British exceptionalism had been denounced and derided

No less a moral titan than Alistair Campbell observed that Britain was now a tiny beacon of light in a normless, populist void. “Right across Europe, this is like, really big at the moment”, solemnly intoned our modern day Sir Edward Grey. Shaking his great, noble head, he wondered if the EU was still a “European Union we would want to be in”.

For years, British exceptionalism had been denounced and derided, Churchill’s statue and memory defaced, and Little Englanders sneered at. When the gospel of open markets and open borders was proclaimed in America and the EU, the British establishment was ready to slip off the surly bonds of national feeling. Social democrats wanted us to imitate Sweden and Germany. Dinner party bores wondered why we couldn’t be more like France and Italy, and live the good life. Glassy-eyed libertarians yearned to follow in dynamic American footsteps. 

But now that America is sweeping DEI out of its administration into the trashcan of history, now that populist movements are taking power across Europe, and borders everywhere are being hardened, Britain’s elites have suddenly developed a taste for Churchillian fantasy. As Trump imposed tariffs, faced off with China, and stepped away from international agreements, Starmer, heroically refusing to read the room, offered up the Chagos Islands to a government in bed with the Chinese over howls of American outrage, citing the need to obey international law. Even as the EU pushes ahead with plans to deport illegal migrants, Britain’s government is opening more migrant hotels and creating a pathway to citizenship for those coming illegally. 

Instead of responding to reality, our leaders are engaged in a delusional project: internationalism in one country. Like disappointed Bolsheviks, as dreams of world revolution fade, all those hopes flock desperately homewards — and there is no sacrifice too great for their sake. 

There are a number of things going on here. For one, neoliberal internationalism has always been paradoxically inwards looking. The diversity of human nature, belief and culture could be ignored in the drive to make us inhabitants of the same global village. Cheap transportation and communication rendered places, and people, interchangeable units of production and consumption. This great global marketplace was one in which geography and history mattered little, and where abstract ideas were everything. It was the playground of idealistic tech bosses, NGO executives and human rights lawyers. It is a world that more and more people are violently rejecting, or have been brutally ejected from. 

Yet in Britain, where we are leaders in budget airlines and online shopping, we are clinging on to this dying world with all our strength. Public services can collapse under the weight of immigrant demand, house prices and wage stagnation can condemn entire generations to a lifetime of isolation and precarity, but somehow, we sustain the illusions of yesterday.

Part of the problem is the curse of the departed Empire. Unlike other European countries, which either never had empires, or lost them violently, Britain emerged from WWII victorious, its empire intact, yet lacking either the means or the will to hold it together. In one sense the transition from empire to nation can be framed as a quiet triumph — widespread war and bloodshed were largely avoided, communism was seen off in Malaysia, the half-illusion of commonwealth continued, and cast a veil of respectability over our worldwide retreat. Social, scientific and economic progress continued domestically. 

But the British elite never made the psychological or social transition away from empire. Fantasies of power and glory could be lived out vicariously through English-speaking America, or personally for those willing to cross the Atlantic. Rather than adopting the medium sized ambitions of protectionist French and German national self-interest, British businesses dream of growing big enough to get an American buy-out. Tony Blair embodied a widespread elite sentiment in his desperation to cling to America’s shadow. In the same way, whilst most European countries have a deeply pragmatic attitude to the EU, Brits have treated membership as a referendum on the character of the country. For remainers, belonging to the EU bore little relationship to the clamouring for national advantage that defines it for other powers — instead if offered a source of post-national identity, and a grander platform for personal ambition.

Anyone looking for an example of this mindset need look no further than Jonathan Powell, Starmer’s national security adviser, and the man who negotiated the handover of the Chagos Islands. The son of an Air Vice-Marshal, a public school boy and an Oxford history graduate, he is no post-colonial radical, but rather a pillar of the British establishment. His background as a journalist and globe-trotting diplomat reflect a typical hunger for the world stage. Just as naturally, his role on that world stage is very simple — to surrender British power in a fashion that maintains the fine, comfortable illusions of the rules-based international order. He combines an enthusiasm for the EU, where his service during the fall of communism may have convinced him of the inevitability of liberal triumph, with a love of America. He went from a role in the DC embassy to acting as a chief of staff to Blair, where he was a key liaison with Clinton and a strong supporter of the War on Terror. He took a break to work for an American bank, before returning to whisper in the ear of David Cameron. 

… today’s phony empires, born of pride and sentiment, see the national interest ignored or traded away

Sliding as easily between Europe and America as he does between centre left and right, Powell is a “nice chap” who sat at the centre of Blair’s casualised sofa government. Error and failure seem never to touch him. He has been involved in every British capitulation from the handover of Hong Kong, to the Good Friday agreements, and is now back, cheerfully disposing of another remnant of faded British power. All of these humiliations become diplomatic triumphs in his hands. No enemy is so ruthless that a firm handshake and a piece of paper (promising them what they’ve already taken) can’t smooth things over. He famously suggested that Britain and America could come to a negotiated settlement with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. What would be catastrophic career-ending errors in judgement for anyone else, such as his role in the death of David Kelly, and his accidental exposure of MI6 espionage in Russia in a BBC documentary, have not stopped him from failing ever upwards.

Whilst actual empire involved realistic compromises between global ambitions and national interests, today’s phony empires, born of pride and sentiment, see the national interest ignored or traded away. Elements of our culture that were once sources of strength and creativity have become fatal flaws. The utopian universalism of radical religious and political sentiment, which can be traced from John Ball, to the levellers, to William Wilberforce, has been unmoored from any sense of reality. Respect for rules, both formal and informal, once a pillar of Britain’s ability to impose order and stability at home and abroad, has become a perverse worship of abstraction, and a source of contemporary disorder and lawlessness. Murderers and rapists go free early, because of the vagaries of sentencing guidelines. Illegal immigrants, even violent criminals, escape their deserved deportation because of wild overinterpretations of human rights. Terminally incapable of standing up for itself, or its citizens at home, we should hardly be surprised that Britain sacrifices its interests abroad as well. 

The situation cannot continue. The tides of a changing world lap greedily against our shores. Reform, the only voice for a voiceless, ignored mass of British people, now leads in the polls for the first time. Other liberal national elites, as in France and Germany, have had the sense to at least moderate their policies. Some, as in Denmark, have had the sense to entirely head populists off at the pass by taking the strongest possible measures. Only in Britain do they continue to act as if nothing had changed, as if the sun could never set on globalisation. We have become an island of lotus-eaters, collectively crying out “Our island home is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.” What can one say? We’re in for a very rude awakening.