Melanie Phillips, in the Times, cites a new Policy Exchange report written by the former diplomat Sir John Jenkins:
Successive governments, he says, have allowed themselves to be persuaded, by those who seek to challenge or undermine the national interest, that ever more concessions are necessary to avoid a collapse in negotiations, confidence, reputation, prosperity or stability. He calls this a modern form of Danegeld, the tribute paid by Anglo-Saxon kings to the Vikings who were ravaging 10th and 11th-century England.
Jenkins produces numerous examples to paint a picture of a Britain that tries to buy off trouble instead of standing firm on what it needs to defend.
On Diego Garcia, the government proposes to give away UK sovereignty to Mauritius because of its eagerness to do the bidding of an international court bent upon a spurious process of “decolonisation”. As a result, Britain will pay “Danegeld” for the privilege of renting back something it already owns.
Demands for reparations over slavery and colonialism are supported by senior politicians and the Church of England, despite being a “cynical and mercenary shakedown of a guilt-ridden West by professional grievance entrepreneurs”. In similar vein, overseas aid continues to be paid to countries that no longer need or deserve it — if they ever did — in response to moral blackmail for Britain’s supposed historic crimes.
For nearly half a century, the Iranian regime has been attacking Britain and the West through clandestine violence which has now escalated into an urgent security threat. Yet successive British governments have refused to take significant action against Tehran. The reason, says Jenkins, has been the willingness of the British to deceive themselves. They’ve persisted in the mistaken belief that there are individuals in the regime with whom they can do business. And they have an equally misplaced sense of historical guilt over British meddling in Iranian affairs in the 1950s.
At home, Islamists who pose a danger to the British state manipulate concessions from terrified ministers, which merely ramp up the ability of these extremists to make even more demands….
Multiculturalism has produced cultural fragmentation. Worship of international law has undermined the ability to tackle illegal immigration. Universities and schools no longer transmit the national culture. Whitehall’s once unmatched administrative prowess has disintegrated.
The outcome has been a web of self-destructive or false beliefs — that being white is the original sin; talking to terrorists is the answer to terrorism; Israel is the fundamental source of instability in the Middle East; and net zero is unchallengeable, even though other countries couldn’t care less about climate change while Britain’s sky-high energy prices have extensively eroded its industrial base.
Well, he has a point.
The report – “Danegeld and Danegeldism: The Modern British State’s Curious Taste for Self-Abasement” – is here.
Underlying the habitual willingness to offer concessions lies a fundamental failure of political will, with recent Governments preferring moral posturing, deference to international law and the preservation of dialogue for its own sake over the pursuit of national interest.
Leave a Reply