Thread by @pmdfoster

Savage assessment of UK's plumetting standing in the world by former UK ambo to Egypt @JohnCassonUK via @patrickwintour

The "absence of any depth of strategic thinking", with the rot starting when Cameron lost Syria vote 1/

theguardian.com/politics/2019/…

@JohnCassonUK @patrickwintour I was in W'ton DC at the time, watching it unravel. @BarackObama treating UK with barely disguised contempt, but when Cameron came to visit, he got a ride to a basketball game in Air Force One, and No 10 wet their knickers with excitement while being used as election propaganda/2

@JohnCassonUK @patrickwintour @BarackObama It was grim stuff, so grim I even wrote a slim volume "Facing Facts" on UK's diminishing power for the Project for Study of the 21st Century by the amazing @pete_apps @ps21_central /3

amazon.com/Facing-Facts-B…

@JohnCassonUK @patrickwintour @BarackObama @pete_apps @ps21_central Alas, nothing has happened to disprove that thesis - indeed the paralysing, trivialising force of #brexit has made it worse, as @JohnCassonUK notes - for all the empty talk of 'Global Britain' which seems to amount Top Gear and the flogging the odd Rolls Royce to china. /4

@JohnCassonUK @patrickwintour @BarackObama @pete_apps @ps21_central All is NOT lost, of course.

Indeed IF #brexit happens it may yet catalyse a re-think.

Does UK become a bigger version of the Netherlands? Do we still aspire to the top table? Do we have the means? And what does it even mean? In era of Trump? And China as a rival ecosystem?/5

@JohnCassonUK @patrickwintour @BarackObama @pete_apps @ps21_central Not too late to start. The road ahead will consist of hard choices. That may yet focus the collective mind...or we'll make do with saving the elephants and sweeping the geostrategic bills under the doormat. ENDS