Foreign policy

What a curious creature this National Security Strategy is. For some reason, I expected something more than a 39-page document in the same mushy pea colour scheme as the coalition agreement. But that is what we've got – and it doesn't really tell us much. The centrepiece of the document comes on page 27 (reproduced below), with a neat, three-tier guide to the security risks facing this country. At the highest priority level are atrocities such as "chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack by terrorists," and "hostile attacks upon UK cyberspace". Further down, there are mentions for "organised crime" and "disruption to oil or gas supplies," among others. But, before we get there, there is – as Nicholas Watt notes – a good deal of waffle.

Anyone who thought the new intake of Tory MPs were a bunch of automatons should take a look at the House of Commons order paper today. MPs have been asked to sign away 60 percent more of British taxpayers’ money to Brussels, in defiance of British public opinion. For years, they have done so without qualms. But the Conservatives, who were so rightly outraged at the way Labour whipped through the Lisbon Treaty, are challenging this. In an age of austerity, when we’re cutting child benefit and asking if Britain can afford to be a world-class military power, why should MPs sign off a 60 percent increase in the amount of money transferred from British taxpayers to the EU authorities?

Liam Fox is sombre rather than sombrero. A man to reckon with, you’d have thought - determined to fight dangerous cuts to Britain’s over-extended defence budget and an apostle of the Tory right. Which makes yesterday’s leak all the more extraordinary. The question is not who leaked this incendiary letter, but why Fox wrote it. The night before an important National Security Council meeting, and Fox has an important point to convey. Why not ring the Prime Minister? Go round to No.10 for chat? He is the Secretary of State, but he has to communicate matters of confidence and competence between himself and the PM with such formality, and in such impassioned language. The idea that Fox wrote it to leak it is preposterous.

David Miliband is a tease. The speech he just gave was one of his best: it was self-deprecating, had gravitas, humour, and he spoke down to the Tories, telling William Hague what statesmanship was about. A monstrous conceit, CoffeeHousers may argue, but a Labour leader needs a bit of that; to make out that he's the real leader-in-waiting, up against lightweights. There was his trademark little bit of grit in the speech: he praised the troops, the Afghan mission and criticised Cameron for reducing British diplomacy to trade missions (Con Coughlin made the same point in a Spectator cover piece recently). My point: that this was a measurably better speech than the one his little brother made on Saturday. And I'll bet it's better than the speech Red Ed will make tomorrow.

At least this government is honest. ‘There will be,’ Europe Minister David Lidington says, ‘no referendum on the transfer of competence or power from the UK to the EU during this Parliament’. The government will ensure that there are no more EU power transfer treaties; but, as Douglas Carswell, Tim Montgomerie, and Bill Cash all note, the Lisbon Treaty is self-ratifying. The EU has already picked the coalition’s lock and garnered new powers for itself – notably the extension of the EU arrest warrant. The EU could be an economic superblock with the muscle to influence the globe strategically and culturally. But its current political operation is unnecessary and deplorably un-democratic.

Up until today, the Hague-Myers story was confined to scurrilous rumour on Guido’s blog and the occasional cautious article in the Telegraph or the Mail; the rest of the media were uninterested. But, as James notes, Hague’s two extraordinarily frank statements, particularly yesterday’s impassioned denial to ‘set the record straight’, have forced the issue into the mainstream political debate. The personal always becomes political. What of William Hague’s judgement? John Redwood condemns Hague’s ‘poor judgement’ in personal matters before going on to cast aspersions on his policy judgements, particularly those relating to the EU.

The European Union’s creeping barrage continues. Brussels has appointed the urbane looking Joao Vale de Almeida as ambassador to Washington; Vale de Almeida hopes that Henry Kissinger will call him if the old campaigner wants to talk to Europe. It is perverse that Britain is saving money by closing embassies and downscaling around the globe whilst also paying its share to install Senor Vale de Almeida in the swanky environs of the Beltway. In this era of devolution, cost-cutting decentralisation, the European Union is beginning to behave like a state, and an opulent one at that. In the past fortnight it has once again suggested that it should raise taxes.