Beyond Britannia by Simon McDonald

Book Review

The Master of Christ’s College, Simon McDonald, has written a book about the future of British foreign policy. He is a droll man, who attracted a great deal of attention in May when he declared the U.K to be ‘finished’ in an interview with the New Statesman. Many people on my ‘side’ found this diagnosis to be provocative but it was largely correct; the problem, as we shall see in this review, is that the Master of Christ’s ignores how such a diagnosis can be taken up by his enemies as much as his friends, as a summons for reinvention rather than a commandment of fate to be placidly accepted. The Master of Christ’s aims, in his book, to marshal an argument for why any sort of reinvention of British power, except along deflationist lines, is impossible. This is a deliberate failure of imagination which I shall show to be superstitious. 

The book begins with an almost obsessive genealogy of Boris Johnson, detailed through anecdotes from various foreign diplomats and The Queen; “Blonde hair and big frame are characteristic of the inhabitants of Kalfat” an unnamed Turkish envoy tells us; right, yep, errr. It is a jarring start for a book which claims to be about structural constraints on politics to begin with a single individual; and a single event, Brexit, is located as the moment where ‘everything changed’. The Master of Christ’s has clearly been influenced by Johnson’s charisma, he cannot stop talking about him and large paragraphs devoted to him crop up throughout the text. After this eccentric opening, the book follows a clear structure; the first part of the book deals with British history the early-middle section contains the kernel of the Master of Christ’s thesis about Britain’s failure to recognise its reduced role; the middle of the book abruptly careers into a series of ‘global challenges’ and the final section details Britain’s “strengths” and suggests a few policies Britain ought to adopt. The failure of the author’s thesis is made clear by the lack of a clean transition between section one and section two; it is not made clear why Britain ought to share, as priorities, these global challenges, in light of what has been established about our limitations. 

In the first section, the Master of Christ’s has written:

“To note a decline is to invite accusations of ‘declinism’, of believing that the UK is defined by irreversible decline.”

This, is, essentially the crux of the disagreement between those whom the author would call imperial nostalgists and those who sympathise with the thesis of his book. It is admitted, in this book, that British power has declined from the eminence it enjoyed in the early 20th century, the cause of this decline, is quietly but explicitly identified in the fact that “The Second World War was a victory from which the U.K could not recover.” This is also the opinion of Peter Hitchens, Corelli Barnett and Maurice Cowling.  There are a number of centre-right commentators (the Master of Christ’s identifies Conservative M.P Bob Seely; we might add Niall Ferguson, Andrew Roberts and George L. Bernstein to the list) who question the reality of British decline. These commentators almost universally share the Master of Christ’s belief that the aim of British policy is to shore up the American-led, liberal world order. If, however, you believe (and the Master of Christ’s identification of the Second World War as a tragedy for this country supports such a belief) that the reason Britain has declined is because of this order, then your quarrel is very different. Nobody doubts Britain has declined; rather, the cause of decline is located in the policy choices of British governments and the party line of the FCO. The balkanisation of the British Empire, for example, was not something that happened overnight or inexorably. It was a policy choice by British governments which prioritised spending on the NHS and alignment with the United States over a Portuguese-style retrenchment. 

There is a tendency, when confronted with this critique, where sceptics of British power revert to circular arguments. British power has declined, therefore we cannot do [policy x], where x stands for anything with positive utility exclusively shared by Britain, because x is good and decline is bad. To give a concrete example, one of the most far-sighted and intelligent of Boris Johnson’s many far-sighted and intelligent decisions was the establishment of a U.K Space Agency. There will, of course, be reasonable debates about the benefits of space exploitation as there is about any speculative technology. All that must be believed to accept my argument, is that a number of experts and the governments of other countries believe exploiting the resources of space is going to be decisive for national prosperity in the 21st century. The decision was not criticised on any technical grounds, it was simply dismissed as ‘Imperial fantasies’ because it ‘failed to recognise we aren’t a world power anymore’. 

Here, it is hopefully recognised, the sober-minded assessment of constraints has been conflated with an idea that constraints are unsurpassable; that British decline in some areas must dictate the surrender of ambition in all others.  There is a creditable suspicion among many, that this unfounded leap in the logic of pessimism is driven by moral and aesthetic considerations; many people among the British elite believe that it is good, in itself, to be a minor and unimportant country; some of them do not even believe that this is good but that it is bad and a sort of karmic punishment for Britain’s erstwhile hegemony. The late Dr. Kissinger had many good lines and one of his best is ‘Superpowers don’t retire’. The idea that any country can opt-out of having national interests is as much a product of British exceptionalism as the invented fantasies of Brexiteers. No country has wilfully accepted second-tier status without a deterioration in living standards often accompanied by revolution at home. This pattern is exacerbated and not mitigated by the interdependence of global economies. The nature of history means that this often plays out over hundreds of years, after losing its Empire, 19th century Spain entered a spiral of military usurpations, economic chaos and social revolution before achieving stability in the 1940s. Denmark, a comparatively more peaceful example, saw half of its territory annexed and its junior constitutional partner absorbed into another state. The novel Lykke Per by Henrik Pontoppidan describes the despair of young Danes at living in a society ruled by ageing Stakeholders, content with living in a twee make-believe world of Hans Christian Andersen tales, where every effort to join the new century was shot down as presumptuous in the light of Denmark’s vanished glories.  Britain has already seen a sustained fall in its share of global wealth over the past eighty years and the domestic consequences are slowly becoming apparent for all to see. 

The critics of the Master of Christ’s are also ‘declinists’, they are declinists who wish to avert further decline by focusing our foreign and defence policy on increased independence of action and the gradual transcendence of limitations. They believe that Britain’s decline was the result of policy choices and might’ve been mitigated. As with any counterfactual history, one can continually push back the timeline to find precedents for inevitability and yet further ‘What ifs?’ to debunk them, the salient point is that the timeline can also be carried forward into the present; and opportunities for advantage clearly identified.  Many of these ‘right-declinists’ would be happy adopting the foreign policy of Singapore, or El Salvador: complete indifference to the ‘international community’, minimal to no foreign aid, no more commenting on issues like ‘Ukraine’ than elections in the Philippines. This is a marked contrast with the Master of Christ’s, who, having identified the limitations of British power maintains, alongside the Brexiteers he tries to distance himself from, that the proper end of British foreign policy is solving ‘global challenges’. His approach to these challenges helps to identify the hypocrisy of his position. 

For example, the Master of Christ’s has written that “The war Ukrainians are fighting… is the best for British interests in my lifetime…It is in the U.K’s strategic interests to supply Ukrainians for as long as they are willing to fight…” This is a man who has earlier informed us that Britain is a medium-sized power with no real threats to its domestic security, so why concern ourselves at all with Ukraine? Surely, they will get on just as well without a poxy little medium power like ourselves? He continues  “A Russian victory would be disastrous for British interests… A Ukrainian victory would lead to renewed efforts to solve the frozen conflicts in other parts of the Soviet Union…” What this means is that a Ukrainian victory would see Ukraine join the European Union and become a closed market to British goods, despite the expense the British taxpayer has borne on Ukraine’s behalf and the goodwill of Ukrainians towards Britain. If we are at all serious about ‘acknowledging Britain’s constraints’, surely the first port of call should be avoiding such unprofitable adventures? Or perhaps, in a spasm of Imperial nostalgia, we might insist that British policy in Ukraine be conducted on a unilateral basis rather than on the behalf of a vague Western coalition. The Master of Christ’s is unable to explore the full ramifications of his critique because he takes for granted that Britain’s ‘role’ is simply to act as a mercenary for a world-order indifferent to our interests; like Lord Palmerstone, whom he uses to epitomise ‘British exceptionalism’, he does not believe British interests change with circumstances like Brexit, they are ‘eternal and perpetual’ viz. the perpetual aggrandisement of the eternal rules-based international order. 

This book is not exclusively about foreign policy, it is something of a summary of the author’s politics writ large and as such contains an argument against Brexit. The treatment of Brexit in the book is another good illustration of the contradictions we have identified in its recommendations and so it is worthwhile to dwell on them. He describes one (among many) of the illusions held by Brexiteers being that “...brexit would take place in a benign environment” This is an admission that the E.U, after Brexit, became Britain’s geopolitical rival and British foreign policy ought to have adjusted to frustrating the E.U by actions such as supporting its rivals and Eurosceptic parties within Europe. It is evidence of the Master of Christ’s intelligence that he proposes that  “The UK could have joined the awkward squad [of ‘authoritarian countries’ like Hungary and err. Poland] , snarling up business… until the key principles and maybe even the conclusions of the forthcoming exit negotiation had been agreed… it would’ve been ugly.” That’s more like it! Yet, alas, impossible. For how would Britain even have ‘exit negotiations’ except by a referendum; and once the result thereof became clear the British public and Europeans would want us out of such counsels as quickly as possible. It would be better, rather, for Britain to now adopt a subversive policy towards the European Union, mirroring the European Union’s own policy towards Britain. It is, nonetheless, an admission that the Master of Christ’s understands that Britain can work against the rules-based order for its own benefit. That one of the major ‘constraints’ on British power is a matter of choice and not necessity. One can join a global ‘awkward squad’ as well. 

The other ‘global challenges’ identified in the middle section are China, ‘Planet’ and Artificial Intelligence. None of them are worth extraordinary detailed comment, the Master of Christ’s repeats the oft-repeated claim China models its relations with the world along the lines of the old tributary system. There is little evidence offered in this, or many other, outings of the claim. There are less signs of China dictating the moral attitudes of its partners than of the United States doing the same with regards to niche racial and sexual policies. The chapter on Artificial Intelligence divides experts into, not E/Acc or E.A but “the red corner” and “the blue corner” disagreeing over the extent to which A.I will replace humans; both of these corners are assumed to be pro-regulation and the possibility of ‘global policymakers’ regulating LLMs is taken for granted. On the whole, it seemed redundant as part of this book. One did not bother to read the chapter in which the Master of Christ’s detailed his views on such portentous a theme as ‘Planet’; they may have been very sensible.

It is more fun to read the final section, where the Master of Christ’s sets out Britain’s strengths. The man who coined the term ‘soft power’, Joseph Nye, referred thereby to cultural production and clout in international organisations like the U.N. The Master of Christ’s locates Britain’s soft power in neither of these things but rather in a series of internal British institutions, the connection between these institutions and British influence abroad is only occasionally made clear.  He writes that the British civil service is among “the most admired” in the world. So, why do British civil servants fly to Singapore to learn how to govern and not the other way round? The international league tables proffered in support of this claim tell us less than the practical spirit of emulation; and even if it were true, how would this actually be used to, say, secure E.U cooperation over the Falklands? Many Germans ‘admired’ the civil service of Czarist Russia; it did not prevent a war.  What the Master of Christ’s rather seems to be suggesting is that it would be a very, very bad idea for any future British government to think of reforming the civil service because he likes things as they are. A similar doozy is present in the section devoted to British media. “Three British newspapers are among the world’s most trusted sources The Economist, The Financial Times and The Guardian.” No they are not. This is simply untrue. If the Master of Christ’s submitted some objective ranking of ‘trustworthiness’ to back up his bland assertions one could quibble further but he does not. We can assume, therefore, that  he takes the only objective measure for a newspaper’s trustworthiness to be its readership, in which case, he will acknowledge that the Mail Online is far more important to British soft power than provincial papers like The Guardian. 

The most egregious failure of argument comes from the treatment of the British legal system. The Master of Christ’s takes Britain’s role as a leading provider of legal services to mean that fairly recent aberrations, like the Supreme Court along with British membership of the ECHR are somehow essential to British standing abroad. He writes that “a key to London’s reputation is how judges are trained, selected and promoted”; true enough but how would any of this be impacted by leaving the ECHR or ditching the Supreme Court? Commercial law is not immigration law or constitutional law. Britain’s role as the world’s silk, where it derives from any piece of legislation rather than deeply embedded cultural practice, comes from area-specific things like our famously strict libel laws, the ease with which our lawyers can gain admission to the East Caribbean bar and membership of things like UNICITRAL. It is of no real concern to plaintiffs in commercial cases whether they are judged by the old Law Lords or the Blair-era ‘Supreme Court’ with a fake claim to independence from Parliament but who are selected in the same, opaque, way. A Kazakh steel magnate who wants to recover funds stolen by a former partner is not going to care about Britain’s policies on refugees or the correct interpretation of Parliamentary sovereignty. If the Master of Christ’s is really concerned about London’s reputation as a legal forum, he should perhaps devote more attention to the politically-motivated attacks on law firms and private investigators for representing Russian clients.

In the course of the discussion on the British judiciary we have another blazing contradiction of the author’s thesis. He writes that if we withdrew from the ECHR “The U.K would be in the company of Russia and Belarus” but I thought the Master of Christ’s was a believer in acknowledging constraints? What if these are the countries with whom we must keep company now. What’s the matter? Does the thought of breaking bread with those dirty, nasty foreign gopniks not appeal to the Master of Christ’s College Cambridge? Surely, it would better serve his thesis if he showed us how our membership of these organisations helps us to achieve our goals in a ‘soft power’ way. This endeavour is never attempted because it is futile. Membership of the ECHR is utterly meaningless to British ‘standing in the world’.  A withdrawal from the ECHR will not affect the quality of legal training in the U.K nor will it alter the frameworks which make us attractive for international arbitration. It will simply remove the ability of British judges to make subjective moral judgements about policies they can never be held accountable for and are rarely materially impacted by owing to their lucrative commercial careers.

The next ‘strength’ is Universities. Yawn. Dominic Cummings. An educational superpower. Yada yada yada. This is a commonplace sentiment and it has commonplace answers. It is not worth the trouble pointing out the dubious correlation between a British education and any sympathy with British goals. The most prominent international graduate of a British university, Saif Gadaffi, was probably fairly well disposed to us before the rules-based international order demanded that his hand be cut off by UK-backed rebels.  If the Master of Christ’s seriously believes that British universities are an important ‘jewel in the soft power crown’ he ought to campaign vociferously against the outdated egalitarian bigotries against academic selection to both maintain and raise their high standards. For some reason, despite being a grammar school boy, I doubt he will adopt such an enlightened line in the future. The next ‘strength’ is called ‘Old institutions’ and this is just self-satisfied propaganda, we are told, of Chuck Guelph “He is conspicuously good and flawed man…” I’m sorry? Am I reading Ephraim Hardcastle here? Were we not told that the author was known for telling uncomfortable truths and puncturing nativist delusions? It is simply beneath him. 

The recommendations made by the Master of Christ’s include that Britain give up its nuclear deterrent, give up its seat at the U.N security council and that all European countries ought to surrender their foreign policy to the E.U’s own diplomatic service which will get a seat at the same body. John Mearsheimer has some faults but he is valuable in describing how foreign policy is an inherently uncertain endeavour. States must, by necessity, plan to endure forever, countries have no expiration dates and so the consequences of failure can reverberate for hundreds of years; at the same time, in the contest between states, nobody can ever be certain of what any other actor might do, how secure their regime is and what their long-term goals are. You are combining an infinite time scale with a high degree of randomness; and this means it is very hard to make valuable predictions about the future. The shortcomings are perhaps best illustrated with the idea European countries do not need a foreign policy independent of the EEAS. Any country agreeing to such an idea would have to be 100% certain that they would never, at any future point, leave the E.U, because if they did, the consequences of giving up all independent diplomatic representation for however many years would lead to a long-term deterioration of their influence. Per Mearsheimer, it does not need to be likely that any member state will leave the E.U, the fact it is possible makes it rational to avoid such a course of action. The same logic is easily applied to a British nuclear deterrent: is it really, completely impossible to imagine a situation where a state or non-state actor might threaten Britain with nuclear attack? If not, why give up our defence? 

The time-scale of world politics is at an almost perfect opposition with the time-scale of the British civil service; it is within this tradition that the Master of Christ’s makes his recommendations. The British civil service is trained to implement whatever the elected government tells it to do, at the same time, it draws up long term plans based on its technical expertise which outlive these governments. The result of these two priorities clashing is that certain, purely political, assumptions are taken to be objective factors in deciding the best policy for the nation’s future. Mundane examples of these include the assumption that state pensioners will continue to enjoy entitlements or that HS2 needs to happen because of exponential population growth. The only defence the Master of Christ’s gives for the assertion that Britain will never actually use its nuclear deterrent (and so the deterrent is worthless) is the fact that “it is the policy of every British government never to use nuclear weapons”; it is more likely, in the event where Britain was threatened by a nuclear power, that this policy would simply change and so it is not a very good way of predicting human behaviour. In a much earlier review of Jeremy Heywood’s biography, I wrote that most Britons would be happy to be ruled by the civil service so long as the civil servants actually bothered to rule. The problem is, they don’t. To call these people a deep state is too complimentary. 

What is to be done? If the Master of Christ’s gives us unsatisfactory marching orders, whither to look for the future of British power? It is acceptable to settle for what has already been described as an ambition on the right, to simply disengage from all foreign entanglements and focus on improving things at home. Yet, the prestige of a nation depends on making itself known abroad and any reformation at home will be unconvincing if it is accompanied by a perception of global irrelevance. A more ambitious programme would involve alignment with the BRICs, accord with Russia, disbanding the Commonwealth in favour of a purely military alliance with Australia and humanitarian intervention in areas historically connected to Britain with a view to long-term economic development. However, all of these options are ultimately too short-termist. I am not, ultimately, an imperial nostalgist: I am a globalist but in a way that term is seldom used these days, as believing a global state is inevitable; the currently existing global institutions have proven themselves unable to handle the combination of ecological disaster in the third world and the collapse of first world fertility rates. Our preference is for a Megali Idea, in which Britain will join with both Europe and the former states of America to create a new sort of polity capable of securing our common culture.

We began reading this book with a glittering reputation for candour before us which, alas, is not justified by the contents. The book strikes me as hastily written, abounding with grammatical mistakes (starting sentences with conjunctions is a particular habit of the Master of Christ’s) and low on detail. It contains a few, faintly interesting pieces of historical trivia and diplomatic gossip which might place it on the level of David Mitchell’s pop histories but when it comes to practical recommendations it places an embarrassing emphasis on bland assertion and cliche. Whatever vehemence for truth-telling embraced with regard to the Brexiteers is easily outweighed by a complete credulity towards items of British exceptionalism dear to the author’s heart.  It is apparent the author would’ve been much happier writing a memoir of ‘British diplomacy and politics 2016-22’ to which his talent for exaggeration, story-telling and partisanship would be better suited. Civil service memoirs are more interesting than those of politicians and I have enjoyed those I have read; I have rarely enjoyed civil servants in prescriptive policy mode and this is because they do not, in fact, do much policymaking.