A golden opportunity for UK to think globally

It’s vital the new man at No 10 repairs relations with Washington damaged by Mrs May’s disdain

To judge by Jeremy Hunt’s hapless performance as Foreign Secretary in recent days, it is hard to escape the conclusion that, with his failure to win the Tory party leadership, the nation has had a very lucky escape.

It is not just that, as the minister with primary responsibility for the Iran brief, Mr Hunt has completely misjudged the ayatollahs’ mindset, with the result that they have hijacked a British-registered oil tanker operating in international waters. He then compounded his error by promoting the utterly fatuous notion of creating a “European Maritime Mission” to afford better protection to shipping operating in the Gulf area.

Mr Hunt, in common with other senior ministers in Theresa May’s outgoing government, clearly prefers the idea of establishing a Europeancentric naval force in the Gulf over the Trump administration’s invitation to

join its own effort, Operation Sentinel. It has even been suggested that, had Mrs May accepted the offer Washington made last week to protect British shipping, we would not have suffered the national humiliation of witnessing the British-flagged tanker Stena Impero being boarded and hijacked by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. One more reason why Mrs May’s removal from Downing Street today cannot come soon enough.

The prime motivation behind the May/hunt approach has been to avoid upsetting the Iranians at all costs. To do so would risk placing the nuclear deal with Iran, which is already under pressure following Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw last year, in even greater jeopardy. Cooperating with Washington, therefore, on enhanced protection for Gulf shipping might give the impression that Britain supports the Trump administration’s view that the agreement is “the worst deal ever”.

The result is that, thanks to the Government’s muddled thinking, we now have a British oil tanker languishing in the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. In any other political circumstance, there would be calls for those responsible for creating this mess to resign.

Mr Hunt would be under intense pressure to explain his actions, as would Penny Mordaunt, the Defence Secretary, who professes to love her job above all else but who has been largely anonymous during the present crisis. Both of them will be lucky to survive the changes Boris Johnson is planning for his new ministerial team.

It would certainly be foolhardy in the extreme to expect a motley crew of French, German, Italian and other European contributors to join the Royal Navy in conducting escort duties through the Strait of Hormuz when the logical option would be to join forces with the powerful aircraft carrier battle group the US Navy has operating in the area.

And repairing relations with Washington should be one of Mr Johnson’s top priorities if he is really serious about reversing the precipitous decline Britain’s standing on the world stage has suffered under Mrs May’s premiership.

The outgoing Prime Minister’s supporters will argue that, with Brexit occupying so much of her time, it was inevitable that other pressing global security issues, from Iran to Russia, would take a back seat.

But, as we have seen from the leaked diplomatic correspondence of Sir Kim Darroch, hitherto our man in Washington, the May government’s priority has been to avoid confrontation at all costs, even if it means appeasing despicable regimes such as Tehran under the ayatollahs.

One of the major challenges facing Mr Johnson, therefore, is to undertake a radical reset of Britain’s global outlook, one in which the transatlantic alliance is treated with respect, rather than the disdain that has characterised the May premiership.

And, with the right team behind him, Mr Johnson has the opportunity to reinvigorate Britain’s global brand.

For example, a paper published today by the Policy Exchange think tank, with the backing of former foreign secretary William Hague, sets out a radical and ambitious eight-point doctrine for reviving British influence post-brexit. Called Making Global Britain Work, it advocates a wholesale restructuring of Britain’s foreign policy establishment, with responsibility for foreign aid being returned to its traditional domain in the Foreign Office. It also calls on a future government to spend 3 per cent of GDP on defence, a move that would go some way to repairing the glaring deficiencies in the strength of our Armed Forces, clearly evident during the recent crisis in the Gulf.

Mr Johnson, who in private acknowledges that more needs to be done to strengthen the Services, will likely be receptive to these and other ideas that help to reassert Britain’s standing as a major world power, rather than one that lurks in the shadows of its European partners.

Now that Mr Johnson has emerged triumphant from the Tory party’s tortuous election process, he has a golden opportunity to make Britain a force to be reckoned with on the world stage rather than, as has recently been the case with Iran, treated with derision.

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