I have a German Aunty, I also have a Danish Grandfather and a Dutch Cousin, and before you ask… no I am not a member of the Royal Family; they are of course, my international relations.
International relations has become an increasingly popular subject since the formation of the current Government - often referred to as the “coalition Government”, which is slightly odd as the previous Government was never referred to as the “majority Government”.
David Cameron appears to be quite bad at international relations; in recent months he’s upset Israel, the USA and Pakistan – quite why he insists on upsetting countries that harbour nuclear weapons is anyone’s guess.
In addition, when he wasn’t angering countries with nuclear weapons, he was angering certain quarters of the British public by claiming that Iran, a country without nuclear weapons, did have nuclear weapons – things can obviously get confusing and quite why such an error occurred is nuclear… sorry I meant unclear… as I said… things can get confusing.
The Prime Minister clearly views foreign affairs to be of high importance and as a safety precaution; he has requested that Boris Johnson remains on British soil – not because he’s highly gaffe prone and may cause offence to the people of whichever country he visits; I simply mean that he’s so adulterous that it’s highly probable that he would have an affair with a foreign lady. Whilst Boris is a massive advocate of the congestion charge, he sensibly doesn’t apply to his bedroom – as it would end up costing him a fortune.
Whilst the Conservatives are take a great active interest in foreign affairs, almost paradoxically; many of them are noted Eurosceptics – which must be like Jeremy Clarkson teaching a class about responsible driving or Brian Blessed lecturing people on how to be discrete.
I think such scepticism in terms of the EU derives a lot from the expansion of it May 2005; where the EU increased from having 15 member countries to 25 member countries, the ten countries joining being Estonia, Malta, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Dopey, Sleepy and Happy.
The right-wing media made a huge fuss about the large volume of people who would flock to the UK as soon as the new countries were inducted into the EU. The fuss was so large that anyone would have thought the UK was about to sink under the sheer weight of the new immigrants – at which point it would probably have been quite useful if some of them were dwarfs.
Whilst the EU does have its drawbacks, it was notable that during the three Leadership Debates this year; that one of the two things that all the three major party leaders agreed on was that it was important for the UK to remain part of the EU – the other thing they all managed to agree on was that they all agreed with Nick.
Yet despite all this, the anti EU lobby is alive and well and is led by UKIP, whom have Nigel Farrage as one of their senior figures – despite him having a French pronunciation to his name. In fairness to Nigel Farrage, I’m guessing that the manner in which his name is pronounced is rather a small issue to him, given that earlier this year he was involved in a severe airplane crash that nearly killed – whether this was a failed suicide mission against the European parliament remains to be seen.
But fortunately the Government is taking a more serous approach to foreign affairs than the jokers that are UKIP, who with their monotonous ill-informed drone about how the EU is harming our economy and heritage, should probably adopt a slogan of “we talk, UKIP”.
As a sign of the significance that the current Government places on foreign affairs, they have made William Hague the Foreign Secretary. Hague is an important Political heavyweight, hence his honorific title of First Secretary State – a title formerly held by John Prescott, who was very much a “Political heavyweight” in a totally different sense.
Hague has been the unfortunate victim of a smear campaign regarding an alleged homosexual relationship with his former aide Christopher Myers, something Hague has robustly denied – presumably pointing to the fact that he’s from Yorkshire and he used to drink 14 pints of bitter a day as evidence that he’s a heterosexual.
The manner in which Hague has been the cornerstone of the Conservative front bench since David Cameron’s election as party leader, led to Cameron quickly coming out in support of Hague saying he was “100% behind William Hague”… meanwhile… Christopher Myers was claiming that he was anywhere but “100% behind William Hague”…
