Friday 5th May

I always loved History, or what we were told was History at school – from a very British perspective.  And one period of history we seemed to spend a long time on was ‘Gunboat Diplomacy’.  This was of course a misnomer, there was no diplomacy at all, we (the British) simply sailed ships to foreign countries, mostly in the Far East and threatened to blow them to smithereens unless  they gave in to our demands.  They say that War is the failure of Diplomacy, but often there is no real attempt at Diplomacy, it is simply a calculation that we are stronger than them so “Bang-Bang, You’re Dead.’  But this is no game.  As we saw in Iraq, even with vastly superior weapons America and the Allies (to our eternal shame a leading one was Britain) still sustained quite a few casualties.  There was no attempt at Diplomacy, simply overblown bravado from Saddam and bullying threats from us.  There never was any room for compromise.  Why would we want that, we wanted Saddam removed and our (or America’s) greedy mitts on all that oil.

And now we are leaving the EU.  And rather than talk, rather than negotiate, rather than see where we can agree and go from there; we have a Prime Minister accusing Europe of ganging up on us, of trying to stop our Brexit, of not being fair to us.  And in quite alarming language too.  But of course she isn’t talking to Juncker or Donald Tusk or anyone in Europe – she is trying to appeal to those voters who chose Brexit, trying to scare them into backing her, portraying the EU as an external threat – and only our very own Boadicea will save us from the raving lunatics over the channel.

This is gunboat diplomacy, conducted through a megaphone on a rolling deck as Admiral May rolls out the cannon and prepares for a broadside.  Which is no way to conduct a very complex and difficult negotiation.  She has managed to get off to a very bad start and it isn’t going to get any easier.  But this is nothing about Brexit, or getting the best deal for Britain – this is simply about winning the election.  At any cost.  Bang Bang – You’re Dead…