The risk for any politician writing a book is that the day after it hits the presses, the world changes in a radical way that makes the text look either irrelevant, or very, very ill-informed. Hindsight can be a harsh judge.
So at one level, with the launch of the Second Edition of my book Change Everything, I was pleased to see that the first edition from October 2023 needed no editing of the substantive text to still deliver its message two years later in the hands of the exciting new imprint Wilton Square. At another level, sadly that relevance is because I was not optimistic about the state of the world in 2023, or how the immediate future was likely to turn out.
Trump’s chaotic impact
Superficially, a lot has changed in the world, most notably in geopolitics with the election of Donald Trump, who has gleefully set a course of breaking down the rule of law at home, while flinging petulant tweets (and some high explosive) at the world, often without discernible direction or sense. If there is a logic, it seems to be a desire to add to the chaos.
There can be no doubt that over the next couple of days, Sir Keir Starmer and his team will be holding their breath and hoping to escape the kind of abuse President Zelenskyy suffered in the White House. Which raises the very significant question of why Britain rolled out the red carpet in the first place, and what further damage it will do, given the British people’s very clear view of President Trump, to Sir Keir’s own battered domestic standing.
Why doesn’t the government seem to understand that no announcement of Blackrock investment or AI tech bro boosterism is going to make up for that? And how can it possibly be that so many MPs believe in a ‘special relationship’ with the US when the public has a very clear-eyed view that there is no such thing.
The UK in a changing world
But this state of chaos was the outcome I was expecting in 2023. As I wrote then: “American hegemony is clearly crumbling, economically, militarily and in terms of will. Washington once strode the world proclaiming itself a force for democracy and peace, and – particularly after the Taliban’s return in Afghanistan – it is acutely plain that this will not be the case in the future.”
This could be, as I said in 2023, good news, the reduction of the world stage of “a flailing, ineffective hegemon, with a huge amount of firepower but little idea how to use it, no consistency in its policy and a long track record of failing to keep its promises”.
I offered (in Chapter 11) a prescription for the UK to find a place in this changing world, a secure, defensible, positive place that it has failed to find in the decades since the end of Empire, successively seeking to follow in the US coat-tails (leading to military disasters, most notably in Iraq and Afghanistan), then to settle into our own continent (becoming, briefly, a ‘hokey-cokey’ member of the EU, one foot in and one foot out).
21st-century non-aligned movement
That prescription I repeat today, that the UK should work towards being identified as a ‘steward state’, one that works with others – yes big states and of course the European Union, but smaller states too – in a cooperative, equal network of relationships that defend human rights and the rule of law, to tackle the climate crisis, nature emergency and plastic and chemical pollution disasters.
Leadership can be found in many corners of the world – from Fiji on climate adaptation to Costa Rica on protecting biodiversity, Bhutan on human wellbeing to Vanuatu on plastics pollution. Those who are most affected by the damage done by the Global South and decades of treating the planet as a mine and a dumping ground can have real moral weight and impact in the world. But they often lack the diplomatic resources and bureaucratic capacity to build the coalitions: that is where the UK could be a force for good, and its own security as part of a new-style 21st-century non-aligned movement.
When it comes to human rights and the rule of law, the Scandinavians are the standout leaders; working with them we could boost their efforts, defending the smaller and less powerful against those nations that would throw their weight around, not just Ukraine against Russia, as important as that is. By ‘defend’ I don’t mean militarily (although military assistance for Kyiv under direct attack from Moscow is an essential), but rather seeking to build coalitions that have force of numbers (and UN general assembly votes).
Change Everything
I said in 2023: “That means taking human rights seriously, not just using them as a stick to beat those with whom we disagree anyway but against ‘friends and allies’ as well as rivals, without fear or favour.” See our arms-sale driven relationship with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States as an example of what not to do.
This approach means seeing security holistically; diplomacy, official development assistance and cracking down on corruption are as much a part of that as defence spending, something Sir Keir Starmer’s government, with its robbing Peter to pay Paul approach to cutting aid to fund defence has entirely failed to grasp. And it means understanding that a more secure world has to be the foundation of national security. We have no impregnable drawbridge to secure against global events, geopolitical or environmental.
Instead, our prime minister – increasingly alongside other European leaders – has all too often looked like the fawning poor cousin trying to stay in favour with the capricious and cruel Uncle Sam. That has consequences, not just globally – although the rest of the world is certainly watching and wincing at the body language and the words – but also domestically.
As commentators are noting more and more often, apparently pragmatic accommodation to President Trump is changing the face of global, and domestic politics, accepting the politics of performance over the delivery of truth and effective policy. In nations in which trust in politics is already at record lows, that is deeply dangerous.
The Second Edition of Change Everything is out now.
