Nick Dearden - What is ‘global Britain’? A financier and arms merchant to brutal dictators
Now we know what “global Britain” means.
Optimists have clung to Theresa May’s phrase in the hope that Brexit might avoid
falling into insularity and isolation; that a hint of liberal England might
survive Brexit. But with May in Saudi Arabia, Philip Hammond trying to build empire 2.0 in India, and trade
secretary Liam Fox visiting Gulf tyrants and a Philippines president busy
wiping out his own citizens, we can rid ourselves of such illusions.
History repeats itself
first as tragedy then as farce, said Marx. Certainly there is something
ridiculous about May, Fox and foreign secretary Boris Johnsonscampering
around the world as if the last 150 years hadn’t happened, dreaming of a
military presence east of Suez while clearly desperate for a deal with any
human-rights-abusing dictator that will meet them. But it is no less
frightening for that. A ruling elite tortured by its inability to rule the
world, which believes such a role is its birthright, can still make dangerous
decisions.
“Global Britain”, the
international component of Brexit, is just such a decision. It is a strategy
that the hard right has dreamed of for decades. We will be the financier and
arms merchant to dictators. We will be the trading centre for financial
products too dangerous for European standards. We will be the premier
investment hub for the emerging super rich of the developing world, where
everything can be bought for a good enough price. Britain is for sale, and we
don’t much care who is buying.
For the rest of the
world, “global Britain” has already had significance. In January, May flew from
the court of Donald Trump, where he was signing his draconian Muslim ban, to
Turkey, where thousands of President Erdoğan’s opponents languish in jail
awaiting trials – and flogged £100m of arms. Trump used May as a symbolic weapon against
the EU, Erdoğan basked in the legitimacy she brought.
Senior ministers have
already undertaken an astonishing number of visits to the Gulf, paying homage
to the oil barons who promise to keep the London markets afloat. Johnson might
think of them as exotic local rulers, but they hold all the cards. Saudi holds
Yemen in the modern equivalent of a medieval siege, where a devastating famine
will starve its opponents into submission at the cost of tens of thousands of
lives. But May, Fox and Johnson have other matters to discuss.
On Tuesday, Fox was in
the Philippines, greeting a president, Rodrigo Duterte, who apparently compares himself to Hitler and brags of mass
murder, who derides the United Nations and is killing thousands of his citizens
under the guise of a war on drugs. None of this would have been mentioned, of
course... read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/05/global-britain-brexit-financier-arms-merchant-brutal-dictatorsSee more posts on Duterte
