Dear Sir,
Julia Langdon’s article (16th October 2021) raises important points, but it is unreasonable to criticise the Prime Minister for having no discernible ideology without referencing the “whole of Government” strategies which have been publicly published and available in any number of Gov.UK websites. The Prime Minister has developed a system of ideas and ideals which are an ideology’s definition. At home there is fundamental commitment to the NHS, to an equitable welfare state designed to bring dignity for people during distress whilst preparing them to re-enter employment and emerge from modern poverty, whilst the Department of Levelling Up, Housing & Communities has a specific ideology to create hope across our country by creating a science-led economic recovery with ambitions for the UK to become a “science superpower” overall and create a high-exporting, advanced-manufacturing and technology-led economy to provide the greatest economic hope for our people overall than any preceding industrial strategy since 1945. This goes beyond the obvious North-South divide and reveals the greater divide between opportunity and its opposite wherever it be found across The Union in economically-depressed areas.
Overseas, there is a continuum that began with the Global Britain concept, defined the United Kingdom’s role in the Integrated Review of foreign, security & development policy as being a global “Force for Good” to uphold the rules-based international system (RBIS) in a contested and competitive world that threatens it, whilst its accompanying Defence Command Paper created a global maritime strategy, recognising that 90% of physical trade moves on the sea and that 97% of our internet is enabled by the undersea network of cables beneath it, and requiring the UK to balance its efforts to maintain global security and stability from the Euro-Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific. In June at the G7 the Prime Minister and the US President renewed the Atlantic Charter and the UK-USA Special Relationship, which created the world’s greatest period of prosperity after 1945 by creating today’s RBIS and is set to do again, whilst the UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement and the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) agreement becomes our second special relationship with specific emphasis on sharing science, technology and intelligence. Far from being without ideology, these indicate that a Grand Strategy for the United Kingdom has emerged, and the first that we have had since the end of the Cold War in 1989.
If Julia Langdon spoke to any number of Parliamentarians with a command of it, she would be uplifted to find a commitment to Eradicate Modern Slavery at Sea in the Department of Transport’s Maritime 2050 strategy, one to increase exporting from 30% of GDP to 35% in the Department of International Trade’s Export Strategy, another to increase Research & Development to 2.4% of GDP and, within No 10 itself, a commitment to Faith Communities, which suggests a “Whole of Society” ideology is emerging from a “Whole of Government” determination to make the United Kingdom the best place on earth to create a business, have a family, let not one successful export go unfinanced and bring national meaning to why our country has created more Nobel Prizes for science at one Cambridge College than a neighbouring European country whose capital begins with “P”. Parliamentarians who are suggesting to Julia Langdon otherwise might like to gently remember that, in very large measure, they owe their seats to their Prime Minister, and to his ability to touch our nation, who freely elected him, with the largest majority in Parliament, for any Conservative government, since 1987.
I have the honour to remain,
Yours sincerely,
With my best wishes,
Carl
