Jeremy Corbyn has a truly humane and decent approach to international relations and that showed through this morning in his Defence and Foreign Policy address at Chatham House. With an emphasis on conflict prevention, conciliation and justice, he certainly outlined a vision of how Britain could behave differently in the world, and begin to make a real difference.
But there are some areas which still require rethinking, for without further policy change taking place, a Labour-led Britain, trying to pursue a different role in the world, would eventually hit a brick wall. One is, of course, the question of nuclear weapons.
It was good to hear Corbyn say that a Labour government would adopt a ‘no-first use’ nuclear policy – although how that will work when Trident is assigned to NATO which apparently imposes a first use policy, it’s hard to say.
On being questioned about Trident replacement from the audience, Corbyn pointed out that it had been approved by parliament and that a Labour government would include it in a Strategic Defence Review. In other words, Labour retains its pro-Trident policy. That’s no surprise because we all know the issue has been ‘parked’ – off the agenda in the Labour Party - primarily due to opposition from a couple of trade unions. The Trident review that had been undertaken within the Labour Party has never seen the light of day.
When the ‘parking’ became clear at last year’s Labour Party conference, where Labour’s pro-Trident policy was reaffirmed, quite a bit was made by the leadership about commitment to multilateral initiatives on nuclear disarmament, including the proposed UN initiative for a global treaty to ban nuclear weapons. In Corbyn’s speech today, he spoke of Labour’s commitment to the NPT and to nuclear reductions. There was no mention of the ongoing UN negotiations on a ban treaty, even though precisely this type of approach was praised by Corbyn in other areas.
To some this may seem like angels on the head of a pin, but actually this is significant. The UK government opposes the ban treaty and is boycotting the negotiations even though it is precisely based on the multilateral approach that they always claim to support. Their stated reason is that they support the NPT and a ‘step by step’ approach. This is the joint position of the P5 (UK and other nuclear weapons states on the UN security council). So it looks like Labour has opted to support the status quo – against a ban treaty based on multilateral negotiations and for the NPT, through which nothing happens. Indeed, it is frustration with the NPT to produce anything that has led the international community to start work on a ban treaty.
Hopefully I am reading too much into the non-mention of the global ban. After all, Labour’s shadow minister for peace and disarmament, Fabian Hamilton, attended the first round of UN negotiations as an observer with a brief to advise Corbyn on whether to support the Ban Treaty or not.
It is profoundly to be hoped that Labour will do so. It is hard to see how a new approach to international relations will really cut much ice if Britain continues to obstruct a multilateral disarmament initiative which is backed by the overwhelming majority of states globally.