In a world dominated by national self-interest, britain still has a global role | thearticle

Donald Trump is in the doghouse again. This time, it is for his resumption of the “America First” rhetoric that won him the 2016 presidential election. In particular, he has promised an

immediate halt to immigration and a renewed focus on building his wall on the Mexican border. Frustrated by the fact that on the main battleground, Covid-19, state governors are stealing the

show, the President has opened up several other fronts: talking tough on China, defunding the World Health Organisation and denouncing the Democrats and the media. Anyone would think the

man was running for re-election. Leaving aside the ugly connotations of “America First”, notorious as the slogan of isolationists before Pearl Harbor, the only surprising thing about Trump’s

tactics is that anybody is surprised. His intemperate language about foreigners taking American jobs turned out to mean that immigration was “suspended”. US borders will be closed only to

permanent, not temporary, migrants. Issue of the famous green cards will be “paused” for 60 days. As usual, Trump’s bark is worse than his bite. With much less fanfare, EU members have been

pursuing a “Europe First” policy on borders and migration. For some, the pandemic is merely a pretext. Coronavirus has raised the border anxiety that drove the so-called Migration Crisis of

2015 to even more paranoid levels. That “crisis” has long been normalised: the liberal dream of open borders, whether in Europe or elsewhere, is over. Terrorism was the wake-up call,

alerting the world to the risks of unrestricted migration, but it took a pandemic to get global leaders to take action to respond to public opinion. Just as border anxiety has never been

higher, so too is confidence in the ability of the nation state, rather than international organisations, to deal with global threats to health. Accountability to the public and readiness to

take responsibility are characteristics of democratic national leadership that simply don’t exist at a continental or global level. For Britain, all this implies that the post-pandemic

world will place a premium on self-reliance. At Tuesday’s Downing Street press conference, Matt Hancock was asked whether he had chosen to participate in an EU procurement scheme for PPE.

Somewhat bitterly, the Health Secretary replied that yes, he had indeed signed up for the scheme, but so far not a single piece of equipment had been delivered. Evidently Britain can expect

no help from that quarter. Nor would Boris Johnson be wise to place too much credence on any assurances he may have received from President Trump in their phone conversation this week. The

Trump Administration has been friendlier than its predecessor, but that is not saying much. American policy is driven by infinitely more powerful forces than residual Anglophone solidarity.

Some may conclude that we are back to where we were in 1962, when the then US Secretary of State Dean Acheson declared: “Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role.”

However, that is not the case. The post-pandemic world will indeed be more nationalist and less globalist, more Hobbesian and less Kantian; but this does not mean that the British will be

less influential. On the contrary: in soft power, the UK is second to none. We are already seeing British scientists taking a lead in the search for a Covid-19 vaccine, with the first human

trials beginning at the Jenner Institute in Oxford this week and a parallel project at Imperial College also making progress. Both are backed by the Government, but what really matters is

the intellectual firepower deployed by two of the top universities in the world. Another test will come if and when a successful vaccine has to be manufactured on a huge scale. Here,

however, state investment will matter. Professor Sarah Gilbert, pictured above, who is leading the Oxford team, says proudly of their brainchild: “It’s not just for this country: we need to

make a vaccine for the world.” This is where the best of British traditions comes into its own. No other nation has made a greater contribution to the improvement of the human condition.

Britannia has not ruled the waves for at least a century, but we can still offer the world something it badly needs: scientific, cultural and moral leadership.