Opinion:

Why the Tories need a foreign policy

 

Denis McShane MP

 

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Historically, the Tories have always been the party of international policy. They have made big mistakes like the isolationism at the beginning of the 20th century which drove the young Tory MP Winston Churchill into 20 years of Liberal membership. More recently, the appeasement of Milosevic in the Balkans in the 1990s led to a million asylum seekers leaving the former Yugoslavia.
         
But overall, Conservatives in historical terms have been the most coherent of political parties on global politics. They backed the creation of the UN, Nato, and of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), now the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Most significantly, the Tories under Edward Heath took us into Europe. Margaret Thatcher championed the Single European Act and John Major enacted the Maastricht Treaty – two important treaties which constituted the biggest sharing of power with other nations in British history.

 

Since 1997, however, the Tories have been unhappy on foreign policy. The move to a strong anti-European position seemed to be in line with many opinion polls and with the editorial line of important papers. But whatever grumbles the British have on the EU they do not want to see an anti-European party in power as Labour found to its cost in the 1980s and John Major, William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard discovered in 1997, 2001 and 2005 respectively.

 

David Cameron has taken the Tories into new territory by proposing repudiating membership of the European People’s Party – the federation of centre-right parties in Europe. This seems strange at a time when sister conservative parties from Sweden to Greece, from Poland to Ireland, and the big EU three – France, Germany and Italy – all have conservatives in power. Ambassadors in London note that when David Cameron comes along for a meeting he is always flanked by the unflinching anti-European Tory foreign policy spokesmen, William Hague and Mark Francois. Cameron and Hague sought to build an alliance with the Daily Mail and the Sun to impose a plebiscite to destroy the Lisbon Treaty. Yet Gordon Brown, often accused of dithering, had more courage than Tony Blair in insisting the Treaty would be ratified by Parliament, not by a plebiscite, and won the day.

 

It is clear that the next US president will seek to build a new Euro-Atlantic relationship with EU member states. Already President Bush is sending out signals that he welcomes a more coherent EU security policy. Washington sees EU defence activity as a positive addition to the security of the democratic world. Yet Conservative spokesmen like Liam Fox get over-excited at any mention of EU defence capability and vigorously denounce it at every opportunity.

William Hague talks about the Gulf and the importance of India and the Tory foreign spokesman in the Lords, the able veteran David Howell, insists, as he has for the past 20 years, that Asia and the Commonwealth are more important than the EU. But we export more to the Netherlands than to China and the Commonwealth’s failure to deal with President Mugabe and other authoritarian states shows the limits of its remit.

 

In the Commons, Hague’s knockabout comedy turns at the Despatch Box are a collector’s item but there is no discernible Tory foreign policy and few Tory MPs interested in the broader synergies of global politics.

 

On the Middle East, the Conservatives triangulate with formal support for Israel while the Conservative Muslim Forum criticises the Jewish state and says Iran should be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. Cameron has said the word “Islamism” should not be used to define the ideology of jihadi fundamentalism which flies in the face of every political analyst in the world. As Home Secretary, Michael Howard, who had David Cameron as a special adviser, allowed the top Islamist theologian-cum-ideologue Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi into the UK four times before 1997 to preach his gospel of Jew-hate and his endorsement of terrorist killings in the Middle East.

 

At the moment only specialists pay any attention to Tory foreign policy. But as the election nears, Cameron will have to take international policy seriously. It is difficult to see him doing this alongside keeping his present front bench foreign and defence team unchanged. He must also give greater consideration to his eurosceptism and his approach to Islamism.

 

Denis MacShane is Labour MP for Rotherham and worked in the FCO as PPS and Minister 1997-2005