Imperial hangover

It hasn't been a good week for Britain or its largely discredited leader. Fifteen of its sailors are being held in Iran, bargaining chips in a bigger game about Iran's nuclear programme and other things. George Bush's famous last-ditch "surge" in Baghdad, stongly endorsed by the British, has simply caused insurgents to move elsewhere for a while: so while civilian killings in Baghdad fell in March, they were up 13% in Iraq as a whole, at 60 innocent lives a day. In addition to squeezing out a reluctant regret for the slave trade, Britain has also tried to regret the nearly 1,000 deaths in the Falkland Islands caused by Mrs Thatcher's war there against Argentina 25 years ago.

But what is Britain doing in any of these situations? Why is it still in Iraq, where its few troops are clearly not wanted by anyone except GWB? Why is a British warship snooping around in the waters between Iraq and Iran, supposedly searching for "smugglers" and falling for a simple ambush that has been used before in similar circumstances? What on earth is it doing holding on to a few windswept islands in the South Atlantic, to the point of sending an armada and conducting a war with Argentina to reclaim its "territory" in 1982?

In each case, it's because Britain sees itself still as an imperial power, a big player in the world, a nuclear power, a permanent member of the Security Council. A power not just entitled but duty-bound to go and interfere in other people's business: "send in a gunboat!" A country that has never rid itself of a 19th-century mindset when it ruled a third of the world.

In fact, Britain has long been a second-rank player. It has no business retaining independent nuclear weapons (to use against who?) or renewing its Trident nuclear submarines; it has no business occupying a permanent Security Council seat when countries like Germany, Japan, India and Brazil don't have one; its remaining colonies like the Falkland Islands (and several Caribbean countries — the Caymans, Turks and Caicos, Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Montserrat) should long ago have been divested and set up on their own two feet. Britain should be wholly engaged in Europe and the EU, not pretending to be an equal "ally" (i.e. field slave) of the United States.

And the irony is that the "New Labour" government of Tony Blair has been just as gung-ho about this neo-imperialism as Anthony Eden and Margaret Thatcher put together. And even more deceitful.