Airstrip One

Sean Gabb's masterpiece

That prominent British Libertarian Sean Gabb has written a commentary which can be summed up in the following steps:

1) Bureaucrats are the class enemy
2) They must be smashed

It's a lot better than that of course, but you get the drift.

He has some interesting things to say about the culture of the Foreign Office:

Turning to foreign policy, we should work towards isolationism. At first, we might need an understanding with Russia to disappoint what ambitions the European Union still had. We might also find ourselves in dispute with the Americans because of our rejection of all New World Order treaties. But these would not be long term problems. I suggested above that we should abolish the Foreign Office. This is partly because it is a citadel of the Enemy Class with much status at home and abroad, and because those in it have not noticeably advanced any national interest that I can think of during the past hundred years. Setting up a new Foreign Department, with new structures and new personnel, might deprive us of some useful experience, but would give us a more selfish and therefore rational set of relationships with the rest of the world.

He also calls for withdrawing from the European Union, setting Scotland off as an independent country and giving Northern Ireland back to the "Unionist ascendency". Typically moderate stuff, then.

And from the Left

Going to the oposite extreme the New Statesman the magazine that every left winger subscribes to (and fewer read) has a number of pieces on foreign policy, including an interview with the BOSS man, Peter Hain, trying to make out that he really has not sold out. It's sad in a trendy dad type of way. John Pilger is going on about depleted uranium and Iraqi children (they don't mix well). India is in fashion with New Labour, it seems like the old certainties of non-proliferation are crumbling (I really should write an article on the dead end of non-proliferation). There's a good piece on the intentions of the British left in Africa. Its all rather spoilt by a "why I hate the Yanks" essay. BORING