In London, Boris Johnson is taking hit after hit in the aftermath of the collapse of the NATO project in Afghanistan. The Evening Standard, in an unsigned editorial posted yesterday, made clear that the big test for Boris Johnson is the upcoming COP26 conference. “If ever there was a test of the Government’s pledge to ‘do more on the international stage,’ this will be it,” the Standard declared.
Leading up to that point, the Standard noted that Johnson had claimed that “Getting Brexit done will enable us to do more on the international stage.” So, the question is how well is the government doing in delivering on this promise?
While on the one side, the Afghanistan “debacle is largely made in Washington,” the crisis in the UK is intense. The editorial noted: “`Global Britain’ — instead of a credible foreign policy; Cutting the aid budget; A Foreign Secretary who was on holiday as Afghanistan was falling.; Relations with the EU in the deep freeze; And little to show from the UK’s presidency of the G7. If this is the UK doing `more’ on the international stage, what would doing ‘less’ amount to?”
