GORDON BROWN'S LORD MAYOR'S SPEECH: 'SAVING THE WORLD' OR 'SAVING HIMSELF'?

"My Lord Mayor, my late Lord Mayor, your grace, my Lord Chancellor, your excellencies, my Lords, Aldermen, Sheriffs, Chief Commoner, ladies and gentlemen....

And the great questions of the day call not for hard power or soft power - but the power of people working together. Because none too can be resolved by national politicians pronouncing from on high while failing to listen to the citizens they serve; but only by great social movements which create the conditions for common action around the world.

So tonight I want to talk about the problems we face. But - much more than that - I want to talk about why I am an unremitting optimist, about Britain’s future and the world’s and about why I believe this generation, if we make the right choices, can create an unprecedented century of progress....

In the Nineteenth century Palmerston talked of a British national interest best served by the strength of those permanent interests - but not by permanent allies.

In a very different century, I see our national interest best served in a new way - by the strength of our permanent values and interests - and by our strong alliances.

Of course there are those who believe that multilateral co-operation and the defence of our national interests are mutually incompatible; and that a strong partnership with Europe weakens our capacity to pursue our national goals.

This view has always been short-sighted. Indeed, in a world where the historic challenges we face are so profoundly global, this view has never been more dangerous and threatening to the security and prosperity of our country....

The world has acted together to stop a recession becoming a depression. And I believe that while we are only half way through dealing with the causes of the crisis, we also have reason to be confident, because in the next two decades, the world economy will double in size, creating twice as many opportunities for business, for jobs, for exports. And as this new economy moves forward, I want Britain to be right at its centre-making the most of the unprecedented opportunities....

Britain must continue to lead the renewal of a grand global bargain between nuclear weapon and non-nuclear weapon states. A fair and balanced deal in which non nuclear weapons states must accept clear responsibilities to end proliferation by renouncing nuclear weapons in return for the right to access civil nuclear power; and in which nuclear armed nations must accept the responsibility to work together on a credible roadmap to nuclear disarmament towards a world without nuclear weapons.

Never again should any nation be able to deceive the international community, and conceal with impunity its pursuit of proliferation. We face critical test cases in Iran and North Korea, with attention focused most recently on Iran. In September the truth about their secret facility at Qom was revealed. And on 1 October we again offered Tehran engagement and negotiation.

Over the last six weeks that offer has been comprehensively rejected. So it is now not only right but necessary for the world to apply concerted pressure to the Iranian regime. President Obama set an end of the year deadline for Iran to react. If Iran does not reconsider, then the United Nations, the EU and individual countries must impose tougher sanctions....

More has been planned and enacted with greater success in this one year to disable al Qaeda than in any year since the original invasion in 2001. Today 28,000 Pakistan security forces are inside South Waziristan again narrowing the scope for al Qaeda to operate. And our security services report to me that there is now an opportunity to inflict significant and long-lasting damage to al Qaeda....

It is because of the nature of the threat, and because around three quarters of the most serious plots the security services are now tracking in Britain have links to Pakistan, that it does not make sense to confine our defence against terrorism solely to actions inside the UK.

Al Qaeda rely on a permissive environment in the tribal areas of Pakistan and - if they can re-establish one - in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has links to the Afghan and Pakistan Taleban. We must deny terrorists the room to operate which the Taleban regime allowed the 9/11 attackers. So that is why I say the Afghan campaign is being prosecuted not from choice, but out of necessity.

So vigilance in defence of national security will never be sacrificed to expediency. Necessary resolution will never succumb to appeasement. The greater international good will never be subordinated to the mood of the passing moment. That is why 43 governments around the world now understand the importance of defeating al Qaeda and of preventing them ever again being able to flourish in Afghanistan. America with 60,000 and Britain with 9,000 are the largest troop contributors, but the rest of the international coalition has increased its numbers from 16,000 in January 2007 to over 27,000 today and I am confident that they will be prepared to do more.

But this coalition does not intend to become an occupying army: it is building the capacity of Afghanistan to deal themselves with terrorism and violent extremism, what we mean by ‘Afghanisation’....

Following the inauguration this week of President Karzai, I have urged him to set out the contract between the new government and its people, including early action on corruption. And I welcome today’s announcement that the new government in Afghanistan will dedicate the next five years to fighting corruption. I have pledged full UK support in this effort.

The international community will meet to agree plans for the support we will provide to Afghanistan during this next phase. I have offered London as a venue in the New Year. I want that conference to chart a comprehensive political framework within which the military strategy can be accomplished. A strong political framework should embrace internal political reform to ensure representative government that works for all Afghan citizens, at the national level in Kabul and in the provinces and districts. It should identify a process for transferring district by district to full Afghan control and if at all possible set a timetable for transferring districts starting in 2010.

For it is only when the Afghans are themselves able to defend the security of their people and deny the territory of Afghanistan as a base for terrorists that our strategy of Afghanisation will have succeeded and our troops can come home.

So tonight I want to leave you with a clear summary of Britain’s case, and that of the coalition as a whole. We are in Afghanistan because we judge that if the Taleban regained power al Qaeda and other terrorist groups would once more have an environment in which they could operate. We are there because action in Afghanistan is not an alternative to action in Pakistan, but an inseparable support to it. As I have shown, the world has succeeded in closing down much of the space in which al Qaeda can operate, and we must not allow this process to be reversed by retreat or irresolution....

In meeting each of the four challenges I have talked about tonight, Britain’s future is a future shared with our international partners....

When Britain is bold, when Britain is engaged, when Britain is confident and outward-looking, we have shown time and again that Britain has a power and an energy that far exceeds the limits of our geography, our population, and our means....

And that is why I say our foreign policy must be hard-headed, patriotic and internationlist: a foreign policy that recognises and exploits Britain’s unique strengths and defends Britain’s national interests strongly not by retreating into isolation, but by advancing in international co-operation....

So we will stand with countries that share our values and vision. We will engage with those who disagree with us but who are ready for dialogue. And we will isolate those who are motivated by the will to destroy the structures and principles on which a just global society must depend".
Prime Minster's Speech on Foreign Policy, 16 November 2009, in www.number10.gov.uk

"Prime ministers nearing the end of their terms and sinking in the polls tend to have wretched luck. The UK’s Gordon Brown bucked this trend briefly, basking in adulation only a year ago as the man who staved off financial meltdown through a courageous and widely copied plan to recapitalise the banking system.

All the more extraordinary then that Mr Brown is proving so shaky in the area considered his great strength. It is a bit as if a competitor on the TV quiz programme Mastermind keeps on making a hash of his special subject....

So why did he bung in a transactions tax, seemingly without preparing the ground within the G20? This looks very much like a collision between his intention to seize the high ground of debate and his quest for a banker-bashing headline. In the end, he got neither, squandering probably his last chance to shine on the G20 stage – the only sort of forum in which this tightly wound politician seems comfortable....

There is, of course, a debate to be had on how to raise revenue, and maybe on how to tax excess bank profits as rent. That should not be mixed up with the already difficult debate on how to regulate the banking system. Mr Brown pulled out different weapons from his arsenal of economics mastery and produced a damp squib".

"Brown's damp squib," Leader, The Financial Times, 9 November 2009, in www.ft.com

Having once (in a Freudian slip of wonderfully amusing proportions) claimed to have 'saved the world' (rather than merely the world's banks), Gordon Brown was on his old stamping ground as it were in his speech on Monday at the Lord Mayor's Banquet.
By tradition this speech is supposed to deal with foreign policy, and, Brown did in fact concentrate on that. That being the case, how does the speech read? As a mixture of sense and nonsense. In short a speech by a once clever politician who is on the run politically and who has only a very short amount of time to endeavor to avoid the political equivalent of being the Captain of the Titanic. With the iceberg being scheduled to appear in Brown's case, by no later than June of next year. As for the parts of the speech which are 'sensible', those that standout in particular are his defence of the Allied effort in Afghanistan; his warnings to the regime in Persia about the shortness of time to negotiate the nuclear proliferation issue; and, his overall defence of the United Kingdom's world role.

As for the parts of the speech which are nonsensical, or worse, they are mostly a mixture of cliches which everyone is ultra-familiar, which does not stop Brown from repeating them, again and again (such as: "We will stand with countries that share our values and our vision. We will engage those who disagree with us, but who are ready for dialogue...." Et cetera, et cetera.). And, some straight-hearted if rather crude, Tory bashing. AKA, the Tory Party as being throwbacks to the 'splendid isolation' spirit of the Victorian Era. Considering the fact that prior to his tenure at Number 10, Brown was notorious for being: a) rather anti-European, as that term relates to joining the Eurozone, and, other measures of greater economic integration within the EU; b) completely uninterested in his counter-parts on the continent. Indeed, Brown spend most of his time at Number 11 Downing Street, being seen as the ultimate Atlanticist. With the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, spending his summer holidays every year on the other side of the Atlantic, making friends with the Democratic Party pays legal, on the Eastern seaboard of the United States. Summer or other contacts with his fellow EU Finance Ministers being noticeable by its absence. In short, it is difficult for me at any rate to take seriously, Brown's efforts to label the Tory Party, especially its leadership (meaning David Cameron and George Osborne), as being dye in the wool isolationists or even dye in the wool anti-Europeanists (however much that descriptin might fit sections of their party). However, the piece de resistence as far as 'nonsense' goes in Brown's speech is his proposal to host "a conference to chart a comprehensive political framework in within which military action can be accomplished," in connection with the Afghan War. Why Bog knows, there should be either a 'confernce' to map out the intricacies of military and developmental strategy for Afghanistan, and, why such a conference should be held in London, is totally beyond me. And, I would imagine most others as well. My suspicion is that it will have the same likelihood of approval as the Prime Minster's recent attempt to get approval by his confreres for the Tobin Tax. Meaning of course that the proposal is nothing more than another damp squib. The same goes for the conjuring trick being employed by it seems everyone these days, to wit: the need for an 'exit strategy'. A meaningless string of words insofar as by definition an 'exit strategy', if it means something other than a hurried withdrawal prior to a debacle, will only follow from an Allied / Western victory, both at the local & national level. To conclude we can say of Mr. Brown's performance: Sic Transit Gloria Brown...