Great Britain: Between Decline and Risk

The May 2024 election will make history in Britain and beyond. According to statisticians, such a resounding defeat for the English Conservatives has not been recorded since the 1980s. But the truth is, it was a different century, and it was a different world: The United Kingdom was firmly embedded in the European Union, every movement of which was significantly influenced by it.

Today’s defeat of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak comes in a smaller perimeter and is therefore even more serious. The Conservative Party’s fourth prime minister to enter Downing Street in five years is not only one step away from being eviscerated after voting in the elections to be held in the coming months, but, given the ongoing electoral dynamics, he seems destined to give his party a scenario that many – among his allies – consider a nightmare: a party defeated on the left by the Labour Party and cut off on the right by Reform Britain, the English version of Trumpian America First.

A humiliating picture for a party that has led the country into deadlock. It was Global Britain that was expected to be the one to assert itself internationally after leaving the EU. We will play “a leading role in promoting peace and prosperity across the planet,” Prime Minister Theresa May has promised. It was 2016. However, the outcome of Brexit has been worse than the most pessimistic analysts dared to predict. Domestically, political instability has been accompanied by a decline in the standard of living of British subjects, the appeal of the “Made in England” lifestyle, real estate values, and even food variety. All destinations are penalized for breaking with old members of the Brussels club.

But internationally, Britain’s decline is even more egregious. Without going back a century – when London was the superpower of the day, controlling a vast territory stretching from Canada to Egypt, from South Africa to Indo-Pakistan, from Australia to New Zealand – it is enough to note the real weight of the British government in the current scenario. Isolated in Europe, timid toward China, silent on the Gaza war. The former superpower finds itself powerless in regions it once dominated, starting with the Middle East, including Palestine.

In this case, more so than Brexit, the last two adventures in the sector have undermined Britain’s entire credibility. When London wanted to be a “coach” with Bush Jr.’s America in the “preventive war” launched by Washington “to export democracy” to Iraq. And when, just a few years later, it offered itself as a sharecropper leader to Sarkozy’s France while extorting, protecting, and leading another hapless democratic mission in Gaddafi’s Libya. On Bush’s side at the time was the unrestrained Labour Party leader Blair; shoulder to shoulder with the head of the Elysee Palace was David Cameron celebrating “free Libya” in windy Benghazi.

However, despite the setbacks, they sometimes return to the island across La Manche. For a moment regretting the tragic outcome of the Libyan affair, Cameron has returned to the front line in recent weeks. As Sunak’s foreign minister, he has a renewed focus on another high-risk context – the war in Ukraine. To help resolve the conflict? No, to add fuel to the fire. That is, to tell Zelensky to use Western weapons on Russian territory as well. Given the progress on the field, it is also possible for the British diplomatic chief to break one of the last taboos, even at the risk of taking escalation with Moscow to the point of no return.

All in all, nothing new. As US analysts have confirmed in recent weeks, based on new sources, it was Boris Johnson (who replaced May, who in turn replaced Cameron) who derailed the agreement that Russian and Ukrainian negotiators reached in Istanbul, thanks to Erdogan’s mediation after the first weeks of the war.

Is London in decline playing the gambling card to make its voice heard? This seems obvious, but there is something bigger and more ancient than that. Concerning the mood of the British ruling class towards Russia. The animosity that accompanied relations during the Tsarist era, when the dispute centered on the Great Game in Asia. This continued under the Soviet Union, quickly elevated to a threat by Churchill as soon as the alliance against Nazism was made. This continued in post-communist Russia.

A chosen comfort zone in every sense by all of Putin’s opponents – disgraced oligarchs, former spies, Chechen leaders – London lives the essence of its foreign policy with an anti-Russian function. For this reason, it is worth granting important recognition from Washington (a role in the AUKUS alliance to the detriment of a less obedient France), but not an exemption from vassal status. This puts pressure on the British mentality, as well as on combating international disdain for a solution that is not very consistent with “Western principles and values,” whereby immigrants are sent by the authorities to faraway Rwanda, where Paul Kagame ruled with an iron fist for thirty years.

Monarchy, with its choreographed and sentimental overtones, is a timeless tale that, for better or worse, has or centuries accompanied the world that has drawn reasons for strength and reasons for weakness from its isolation. Today, the fairy tale presents itself in the most difficult places. The illness of the king, the still more agonizing illness of the princess, the banishment of scoundrels, the limitation of the courtiers. The happy ending is on hold. But other results loom on the horizon. The fable of the coachman’s fly risks being followed by another, very ancient one, also written by Phaedrus or perhaps by Aesop: the fable of the frog and the bull. And what remains of the United Kingdom is breaststroked by the string of independence referendums for Scotland and Northern Ireland looming on the horizon.