Thread by @garvanwalshe

On the day when a rare public rebuke of the UK by a visiting US president leads @thetimes pro-government commentators are wheeling out the excuses. But the reality is that British foreign policy has got into a mess.

A thread about why - and how to get out of it -

1/ UK foreign policy is in serious trouble. It is being undermined by attempts to wriggle out of the Northern Ireland protocol that the UK doesn’t have the power to execute. This is storing up serious trouble down the road.

2/ The justification for UK policy is that it the protocol was conceded under duress, and that the UK should try and improve the situation when the balance of power changes.

3/ This isn’t a very good way to build trust but is the way of the world, and was the approach taken by the Irish Free State (which got the UK out of the Treaty Ports in 1938 became a Republic in 1949)

4/ But as the leaking of the démarche from the US shows, that balance of power has got even worse for the UK.

5/ As well as an EU irritated with what it sees as UK unreliability, intransigence and mad @Telegraph front pages featuring sausages (repliers: I don’t care who’s right here, the issue is the balance of power), the UK finds itself on the wrong side of the US.

6/ Some of this is bad luck. Biden seems to have a tin ear for British sensibilities. Quoting Yeats’s Easter 1916 at an RAF base is not the kind of thing that should have survived a reasonable speech drafting process.

7/ But the UK made also made a strategic mistake in getting too close to Trump, and is now paying the price. While the underlying institutional US-UK relationship remains strong and constructive, the amount of political friction is unusually high.

8/ One of the UK’s main foreign policy goals should therefore be to get the relationship with the US back on a sound footing (the other, which is not at odds with this, is developing a more constructive relationship with the EU).

9/ Unfortunately these are at odds with any attempt to revise the Northern Ireland protocol or unilaterally avoid it by extending “grace periods” when it is not implemented.

10/ The UK has to come to the realisation that it has few cards to play here. Its tough position on Russia and China is right, but it is also the minimum expected. The UK is not Turkey. It is supposed to be a central part of the Western alliance.

11/ It needs to understand that the sovereignty of all medium-sized countries is highly circumscribed. Leaving the EU increases the number of decisions the UK can make, but reduces its ability to shape the environment in which it makes them.

12/ After five years of chaotic relationships with the EU and US, the reality is, that as the smaller player, the UK needs to rebuild the trust of its larger allies.

13/ This means it needs to start pursuing a coherent foreign policy, across all areas of international action (an idea hinted at least by the title of the Integrated Review)

14/ But if the UK wants to play an important role in the rebuilding of the international order it needs to start acting like it believes in order.

15/It isn’t very useful, for example, to sign up to a new corporate tax minimum, only to ask for an exemption for our main industry the next day. The impression given is of a government that is all over the place.

16/ Nor does it make much sense to denounce the “pure legalism” of the EU. The EU is legalistic in enforcing its treaties with third countries, because it’s powerful enough to negotiate them in its favour.

17/ That is the reality to which the UK has to adjust. It needs to develop better ways to influence EU decision-making now that it has left (hint: inviting Orbán to No. 10 and alienating Ireland is not a good plan)

18/ It should be able to do so because this government faces few domestic constraints. It has a majority of 80 and an opposition adrift.

19/ Now is the time to take a few domestic hits to rebuild foreign policy credibility. This credit can be drawn on when the UK needs EU and US good will, as it might in a confrontation with the Scottish Independence movement.

ENDS