This week David Cameron welcomed Chinese Premiere Wen Jiabao to London, a week after the release of artist Ai Weiwei and days after the release of prominent political dissident Hu Jia. While it’s open to debate, it’s reasonable to assume that both releases were at least in part a reaction to British pressure – though largely from civil society rather than the government. What is for certain is that the visit of premier Wen once again highlights the changing power balance in global politics. That Nick Clegg flew to Brazil last week, only his second major foreign trip since taking office (he went to New York for the Millennium Development Goal Summit in 2010), highlights the increased strategic priority the UK is putting on the so-called ‘BRIC’ nations. The term BRICs – a simple acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, and China – was coined by Goldman Sachs in an investor briefing note back in the early 2000s. In essence it refers to the big emerging economies judged by GDP, population, and to a lesser extent diplomatic and military clout. Some analysts capitalise the S in BRICs in order to add South Africa to the group but other nations including Mexico and South Korea have more claim to BRIC status.
For the UK BRIC relations are difficult. Premier Wen’s three day visit to the UK is a strong sign that Sino-British relations, at least commercially, are taken seriously in Beijing. But in reality both China and Brazil, at best, see the UK as an important decision maker in the wider EU (a key market for emerging export led BRIC economies) and a global power still punching above its weight diplomatically. With India, the relationship and the leverage Britain has is much greater due to our economic, political and cultural history with the region. Russia’s economy and its interlinkages with Europe also allow the UK more parity with Moscow. But in general Britain is going to find itself increasingly as the weaker partner in bilateral relations with the world’s emerging powers.
It’s interesting that above all other issues, Douglas Alexander has focused his part of the Labour party policy review on the BRICs. Six policy groups will look at a wide range of issues from the global economy to the future of multilateral agencies such as the UN through the prism of the rise of emerging BRIC powers. This process will hopefully give Labour a clear narrative with which to talk about not just the BRICS but the economically and politically emerging world in general. The current government has looked woeful on such issues. Indeed prior to Libya the sum-total of the coalition government’s foreign policy can effectively be described as ‘keep quiet, and keep selling.’ In his first year Cameron took a gaggle of business leaders to China and India while the chancellor declared Britain ‘open for business.’ Any sense of this policy having an ‘ethical dimension’ was lost among the myriad sales pitches meted out to anyone who would listen. The role of the Labour party should surely be to create a more encompassing approach, to make sure that the promotion of human rights and labour rights are as much part of the BRIC approach as fostering tight economic ties, important as that is. Labour should also be talking about creating firm and equal partnerships with emerging economies while also promoting a progressive rather than protectionist approach to the role of the BRICs on the international stage. At present the BRICs and the other key emerging economies have a negligible presence on all of the key multilateral agencies such as the UN Security Council, the G8, the IMF and World Bank, and the WTO. The rise of the informal but ever more powerful G20 is a sign of things to come, with emerging economies like Brazil, China and India simply becoming frustrated or bored with global institutions which don’t adequately represent them. Labour could have gone some way to burnishing its credentials here by publicly coming out against the IMF leadership stitch-up where once again more viable and representative candidates from emerging economies have been gazumped by Europe’s preferred contender Christine Lagarde, a fiscal conservative and close confidante of George Osborne.
The relationship with the BRICs also relates to the bigger question on British foreign policy. How exactly does Britain want to be seen globally in an age when we have lost most of the comparative advantages which served us so well over the last 100 years? Do we really want to become an Italy or a Sweden or do we want to continue to have an impact on the world? If the coalition government has its way, Britain will be little more than a diplomatic Del Boy, buying and selling but having little impact on the way the world is shaped. Labour in contrast, should remain the truly internationalist party it was in government by defining Britain’s place in the world. The alternative option is to buy in to the parochial Tory vision of a scared, suspicious and inward looking Britain not willing to invest in the world unless there’s an economic incentive.
Britain needs investment, badly, and Britain’s economy is in a parlous state. But making Britain a European version of Singapore is not sustainable. The rhetoric used by the government may impress some but it also turns a lot of voters off. Especially those who believe Britain means something in the world. We need to balance economic necessities with real imagination and ambition on the world stage – hopefully the Labour foreign policy review will be step in that direction.