We can huff and we can puff

Talking of post-colonial claptrap (see last blog) I have been wading through a torrent of it—namely, the government’s just-published ‘Global Britain in a Competitive Age,’ or if you will its ‘Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development, Foreign Policy and World Domination.’ Actually, I made the last bit up, but make no mistake Great Britain is back as the world leading purveyor of hollow clichés and vague commitments. And we know where we are too, which is somewhere in the Atlantic, indeed, to be more precise the North Atlantic since ‘The UK is the nearest neighbour to the Arctic region.’ (p64) Never mind Canada, Russia, the US or Greenland, or Norway or Iceland . .
 
This cobbled together document is merely a restatement of existing positions on most subjects, which is hardly surprising since it repeatedly refers to something called ‘the Prime Minister’s vision.’ As with Covid, the Prime Minister has no talent for prescience but merely stumbles into things until he’s forced to act. Now we’re being told that the UK is to make a tilt to the Far East and the Pacific, since somebody has discovered that’s where it’s all happening. Hallelujah! In relation to China we’ll certainly raise the temperature, when they see our new aircraft carrier sailing past (with or without aircraft). Putin too is on notice now that we are saying we’ll have 40% more nukes. Whether we’ll be able to fit them all on our new Trident submarines must be an open question. We’ll need an extra sub, surely? Or make that two!
 
I’m not entirely sure these documents serve any useful purpose. It does have an appendix which shows where pots of money may be spent, but such amounts will have been previously budgeted for, and as we know with the Overseas Aid Budget, cut from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5%, which will tell a great many countries where we stand. I suspect if it does anything, the so-called Review merely augurs the dawn of a new age of chest-puffery by a Prime Minister whose vision is no more than a comb-over (etc., etc.)