With Party's Stock Rising, Is Britain in for Foreign Policy Shakeup?
Clegg, seen by many as an outsider, is running on platform of dramatic cuts in the size of government, scrapping the nation’s massive new nuclear weapons scheme, and perhaps just as importantly, an independent British foreign policy.
Openly dismissing the “special relationship” with the US as outmoded, Clegg is campaigning for an end to the days of UK foreign policy being “joined at the hip” with America’s, condemning the Iraq War as an example of “Tony Blair and Gordon Brown doing America’s bidding.”
AntiWar.com
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Not all politicians are in bed with Washington and Tel Aviv
ReplyDeleteWhat’s this? A senior Western politician questioning American and Israeli criminality? No wonder the political and media elites don’t like him and the public do. He speaks unspoken truths:
Nick Clegg, the party leader dominating the British election campaign, has refused to rule out a push to be foreign secretary in a coalition government.
And in unusually strong language for a prominent British politician, the Liberal Democrat leader also urged greater independence from US foreign policy and a more demanding European attitude towards Israel yesterday.
Mr Clegg said Britain should no longer be “joined at the hip with our American friends”, arguing that Britain’s involvement in the Iraq invasion “was a war about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown doing America’s bidding”.
He said Israel had used disproportionate force in Gaza and kept Palestinians in poverty so Europe should use its “economic muscle”, including arms embargoes, to change the Israeli government’s policies.
“I think, as a European, as a British politician, we can’t only leave it to the US to exert influence in the Middle East,” he said.
Mr Clegg’s tough comments on foreign policy will receive unprecedented attention because of his strong performance in last week’s first-ever British televised leadership debate, which led to the greatest turnaround recorded by polls in the middle of a British election campaign.
http://antonyloewenstein.com/
Of course this politician's party has no chance of forming a government, and so he's making a lot of appealing statements. If, as some people expect, the UK has a hung parliament and Clegg's party becomes part of an alliance to form a working majority, I expect that these words will be forgotten. Should any formerly enthusiastic supporters call Clegg out on this, I expect him to tell them that his hands are tied by his Labour or Conservative partner in government.
ReplyDeleteCynical old me.