From Trident to Europe, it seems we’re on a journey to isolationism – but it’s not what the public wantsWhat should be Britain’s role in the world in the 2020s and beyond? The question can’t be divorced in any meaningful way from the approaching general election. Few modern elections have been so clearly a search for national identity and meaning as the 2015 contest looks like being. But no election outcome will make much sense unless it simultaneously offers a new and consistent account of this nation’s place in the wider world.Foreign affairs rarely play a prominent role in general elections. Yet 2015 ought to be an exception: partly because of the British relationship with the European Union, about which this election outcome will be so decisive; partly because this will be the parliament that decides whether to renew Trident, the ultimate embodiment in many eyes of great-power status; and partly because of the objectively greater sense of international tension that has followed the standoff with Russia in Ukraine, the rise of Islamic State (Isis) and the uncertainty in Europe embodied in the Greek election result. Continue reading...
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