In a much- and justly- derided statement on Twitter yesterday the UK delegation at the UN published a short video of UK Ambassador to UN General Assembly Archie Young calling for a further expansion of the UN Security Council.  

‘The UK is committed to implementing the Pact for the Future’ read the tweet; ‘That’s why we support expansion of non-permanent and permanent Security Council membership. This includes permanent African representation and permanent seats for Brazil, Germany, India and Japan.’

China and Russia are not going to be swayed on Council reform when their core interests are at stake

The suggestion is to add permanent seats for Africa, Brazil, India, Japan, and Germany, thereby doubling the number of permanent members. Attorney General Lord Hermer voiced support for the reform, arguing it would make the Council more representative of the global community. Currently, the Council has five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US) alongside ten non-permanent members who serve two-year terms.

The UN Security Council’s structure has often come up for debate among UN member nations, especially those without permanent seats and the attendant special authority to authorise military force, impose sanctions and pass binding resolutions. Balancing representation with decision-making efficiency has always been a core issue.

As now-famous international diplomacy journalist Max Tempers pointed out, ‘This is more FCDO-brained free-riding — they know this will be vetoed so it’s just to win brownie points with the aforementioned countries. They believe this is a high IQ manoeuvre.’

This is true. 

FCDO Civil Servants (Guilty Men) think this will strengthen relations with developing countries and challenge the expanding influence of China and Russia, who will be put in an uncomfortable position — given their long-standing opposition to expansion, they will have to block representation from nations they are seeking to influence.

This is, however, a very low IQ manoeuvre.

China and Russia are not going to be swayed on Council reform when their core interests are at stake. They recognise that soft power is completely fake. The Neorealists are right on this one; it isn’t just ineffective, it’s a total irrelevance.  Nations only recognise two realities; economics and force. Developing countries do not care about soft power; they are focused on practical support, so will remain drawn towards the huge amounts of financial and security assistance China and Russia offer. 

Plus, should China and Russia unexpectedly agree to Council expansion, it would backfire on Britain massively. Security Council reform has stalled for decades because a major expansion of permanent seats with vetoes would render the Council completely ineffective on critical issues.

FCDO Civil Servants (Guilty Men) see giving up meaningful hard power because they see it as a way to boost Britain’s ‘soft power’. Other nations are likely to see it for what it is; a unilateral concession. 

The Process is being followed; strengthened, even

Should this proceed, it will be a remarkable example of Starmerism. These reforms will result in no material benefit to the national interest & will in all likelihood make things worse. But that doesn’t matter because Starmerism is about process, not outcomes. 

As I’ve previously written in these most august pages, Starmerism is more than grey and ineffectual managerialism; it is ‘an attempt to reduce politics to a process which can then be controlled or managed’. In that piece I described Starmerism as ‘politics done by a former Director of Public Prosecutions.’ But one friend put it much better; ‘He is an institutionalist who governs by the default impulses of institutions.’

The consequences of the expansion of the Security Council are, to Starmerite ears, irrelevant; they simply hear that FCDO Civil Servants are saying this is a good idea, which is inherently good, and that it means more stakeholders will be consulted, which is also inherently good. The Process is being followed; strengthened, even.

Understanding that Starmerism is based in process and not outcomes is key to understanding many of his government’s decisions so far, in particular the cowardly, supine and treasonous decision to surrender the Chagos Islands. There was no material benefit to handing over those islands to a Chinese ally; it was simply that Mauritius had followed the lawfare route successfully enough that when it came against Starmer’s Labour – who were more interested whether processes had been followed than whether their outcomes were good for Britain – they finally found an opponent bovine, feeble and naïve enough to cave. 

The Conservatives, for all their faults, had enough rational personnel left who recognised the imbecility of what was being proposed, and David Cameron stopped FCDO Civil Servants (Guilty Men) from pursuing it further. Starmer, meanwhile, has promoted the man at the head of the negotiations — Jonathan Powell – as his national security adviser.

The Starmerist approach will be Britain’s biggest disaster on the world stage since Suez; but rather than being dealt a short, sharp shock about the realities of our own weakness by another power, we shall be weakened from within by yeas of preferment for soft power over hard, the deprioritisation of our national interest, a disinterest in our international position and a willingness to be duped.

Guilty Men is a British polemical book, written under the pseudonym “Cato” and published in July 1940 following the British forces’ unsuccessful efforts to prevent Nazi Germany’s occupation of Norway and France. The book criticizes fifteen public figures, condemning the policy of appeasement, their ineffective policies toward Germany and for neglecting to adequately prepare the British armed forces.

References to the Second World War should, wherever possible, be avoided in public life. As I’ve previously written, ‘the increasingly jejune use of our national myth leaves public debate short-changed.’ But the book’s slogan — ‘Let the guilty men retire’ — may be worth remembering.