William Hague travels this week to Brazil; the UK foreign secretary wants to curry favour and, more importantly, greater trade with Latin America’s rising powers. “Britain is coming back,” he says. “We are turning around decades of British withdrawal in Latin America.”
What a shame, then, that next door in Argentina much of British diplomacy has literally slipped back into the semaphore age – at least when it comes to the Falklands/Malvinas issue.
The British delegation that set off for the European Union summit in Brussels today was in no doubt that it faced a rough ride. The British are being accused of worsening the crisis, by adopting a hardline negotiating position. This is regarded as a little unfair in London. As a senior member of the British delegation puts it – “You can blame Britain for lots of things. But we didn’t invent the euro.”
Photo: Jean-Paul Pelissier/Reuters
Welcome back to the FT’s live coverage of the eurozone debt crisis and its global fallout. By John Aglionby, Tom Burgis and Esther Bintliff on the news desk in London with contributions from correspondents around the world.
Pressure is once again mounting on eurozone leaders to find a convincing solution to the sovereign debt crisis. Today:
Mario Draghi, the head of the European Central Bank made a key speech to the European Parliament, hinting at greater ECB action if governments moved towards a “fiscal compact”
22.32: Tony Barber, the FT’s Europe editor in London, has been analysing the landmark speech by French president Nicolas Sarkozy and offers these insights:
by William Wallis, Africa editor
David Cameron’s relatively liberal stand on gay rights is causing a predictable backlash in Africa. The reacton is not just fuelled by a clash of sexual mores – although Mr Cameron threatening to make British aid conditional on the relaxation of laws against homosexuality, as he did at the recent Commonwealth summit, was guaranteed to raise hackles on a continent where homosexuality is mostly taboo.
H Rap Brown of the Black Panthers made the famous remark that “violence is as American as cherry pie”. For those who are baffled by the looting in London and elsewhere, I would add – “and riots are as English as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding”.
The historically-minded could cite the Gordon riots of the eighteenth century. But you really don’t need to go all that way back. There were riots in Notting Hill and Brixton in London in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as Toxteth in Liverpool, Handsworth in Birmingham, Moss Side in Manchester. Then were the Poll Tax riots in London towards the end of the Thatcher era. And just recently we had the student riots in London.
George Osborne. Image by PA.
George Osborne has a history degree, so perhaps the UK chancellor felt the hand of history on his shoulder, when he made an apparently casual remark to the FT in an interview last week. What Osborne said was:
“I think we have to accept that greater eurozone integration is necessary to make the single currency work and that is very much in our national interest. We should be prepared to let that happen.”
On one level, this is no more than common-sense. But it is also a reversal of centuries of British policy, which has always opposed the idea of a single, unified power arising on the other side of the Channel. A classic statement of this doctrine was made by Sir Edward Grey, the foreign secretary in 1914, when he explained to the House of Commons why Britain was entering the first world war. The goal, he said was “to prevent the whole of the west of Europe opposite from us falling under the domination of a single power.”
Greece bailout, Cameron, US/China relations
In this week’s podcast: Have European leaders done enough to save Greece and the eurozone? UK prime minister David Cameron struggles to keep a lid on the News of the World phone hacking scandal; And, has Obama’s meeting with the Dali Lama endangered US/China relations?
Presented by Gideon Rachman with Peter Spiegel in the studio in London, Elizabeth Rigby in Westminster and Jamil Anderlini in Beijing – interviewed by Serena Tarling.
Produced by LJ Filotrani
The unseemly row that has broken out between Britain’s prime minister and the country’s defence chiefs points to a much deeper problem. British foreign policy is in a state of confusion, as comfortable old certainties crumble away.
I was so shocked by the rise of the Scottish National Party in last week’s elections that I have had to retreat to the Andes to get some perspective on the situation. I am writing this from an internet cafe in Cusco, once the Inca capital, in Peru. Perhaps, it is the high altitude or the benefit of distance, but I feel I am now seeing the situation in Scotland with new clarity. My view is that, even though the SNP now control the Scottish parliament and have promised a referendum on independence, Scotland will choose to remain part of the UK.
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