“Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” - Lord Palmerston, 1848

The United Kingdom has long been, is and should continue to be a great power in perception and means if it wishes to remain as secure, prosperous and able to project values as it currently does. Liberals must commit fully to this objective as a cornerstone of their foreign policy; recognising that this status comes with a cost but delivers an extremely high return for Britain in terms of investments protected and security assured. The price tag of withdrawal from the world would be too high to bear - it would cripple British business and investment, weaken our allies and ultimately begs the question of what we should replace that status with.

But any Liberal foreign policy must take account of the words of Lord Palmerston and the realities of globalisation. In the first instance, we should work to distance ourselves from the United States and build new relationships elsewhere. The planned withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014 will open the door, hopefully, to reviving talk of a “special relationship” with India that disappeared after the Prime Ministers’ 2010 visit. Britain should use her burgeoning aid budget to help India build strong domestic governance - investing in programmes to give all of India’s citizens ID, or helping to train Indian civil servants and judges, or e-government programmes - would help India grow more strongly and build up good relationships that can be capitalised on in future. We should be hard-nosed about this; getting what we need will result in breaking bread with unfavourable regimes. Politics is about dealing with the world we have, not the world we want, and we must be relentless in pressing for our national interest. If we do not, we will pay a high price.

Secondly, we need to understand that globalised markets have transformed international relations and will continue to do so. States that do not co-operate in building cross-border institutions to regulate these markets will be crushed with breathtaking ease by those same markets. The lesson we must learn from the financial crisis is that this is no time to be timid about engagement in the EU, the UN or other international organisations. We must remain in the EU, a strong voice for reform and liberalism. We must work to make the UN more transparent and more muscular. We must seek to turn the Bretton Woods institutions into transparent, global bodies. This will mean engaging with the tensions between subsidiarity and globalisation - but so be it. Liberals are first and foremost iconoclasts, aimed at breaking up vested interests and opening up institutions to the gaze of the public.

Britain has a vested interest in a world committed to free trade, in a world committed to stable regulatory agreements across borders on corporate governance and activities, on a world where security is predicated on the collective action of the Security Council with Britain as a permanent member. Liberals must remain committed to a vision of Britain’s national interest as being unfixed to any one other state, but only to our own interests - which, as a great power, muddy into those of the international society. 

I would like to see Liberal Democrats proclaim Britain’s status as a great power, understanding that it is a complex title and using this as a means to oppose measures to weaken the British Council, Diplomatic Service and World Service. We will not get the investment and trade we want with a decimated diplomatic corps; we will not build long-term relationships without cultural projection. If we want to build a manufacturing Britain, then we need an assertive Britain on the world stage.