Boris Johnson’s government has cast its gaze eastward. The UK prime minister plans to turn back the clock by dispatching the Royal Navy’s flagship east of the Suez Canal to former outposts of empire in the Gulf and east Asia. The country, he says, is set to recover its maritime prowess. The aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth will cross the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean to uphold free navigation in the South China Sea.
Mr Johnson had promised to publish a new foreign and defence strategy before the UK’s final separation from the EU at the end of December. This has been postponed in favour of an announcement of a big increase in defence spending. The prime minister lives in the first Elizabethan age. If anyone imagined Brexit would diminish the UK, his “global Britain” vision is proof otherwise. For European power, we must now read world power.
The exceptionalism belongs to the Rule Britannia school of foreign policy. It’s all about flag waving,…