PM announces plans to send British
troops to Somalia and spend £100 million in Africa.
NEW YORK — Brexit might mean Brexit,
but Britain still wants to be a player on the world stage.
That, at least, was the message
Theresa May wanted the world to hear as she addressed the United Nations
General Assembly in New York Tuesday.
In
her first major foreign policy speech as prime minister, the Conservative
leader sketched out her plan to preserve British influence in the world,
including a potentially transformative post-Brexit U.K. pivot from Brussels to
the U.N.
The
PM also set out a new “May doctrine” of pre-emptive international action to
tackle the twin challenges of terrorism and mass migration which, she warned,
would continue to challenge the political order in Europe and the U.S. if more
was not done.
In
a clear warning to other world leaders, May said voters’ concerns over the
“unprecedented” mass movements of people could not be ignored.
In
her first major foreign policy move, the U.K. premier announced plans to send
hundreds of British troops to Somalia and spend £100 million in Africa to help
stem the flow of migrants into Europe and tackle al-Shabaab.
May
told world leaders that 30 U.K. military training teams, each up to 30 strong,
would be sent on rolling missions to Somalia. A new U.K. headquarters in
Mogadishu would also be established to help train the country’s armed forces in
the fight against Islamic terrorism.
She
said the move was part of wider U.K. efforts to tackle at source the cause of
mass migration, including a 10 percent increase in international aid money to
£660 million in 2016-2017 to be spent on humanitarian assistance.
Throughout
May’s flying visit to the U.S., Downing Street aides were clear that one of the
main targets of the trip was to reject the growing sense outside the U.K. that
Britain has turned in on itself by opting to leave the European Union, giving
in to Trump-style populism.
Earlier
Tuesday, President Barack Obama used his final address to the U.N. while in
office to attack the “crude populism … which seeks to restore what they believe
was a better, simpler age free of outside contamination.”
May
addressed the allegation directly in the opening of her speech Tuesday.
“My
pledge to this United Nations is simple,” she said. “The U.K. will be a
confident, strong and dependable partner internationally — true to the
universal values that we share together.”
She
added: “The United Kingdom has always been an outward-facing, global partner at
the heart of international efforts to secure peace and prosperity for all our
people.
“And
that is how we will remain. For when the British people voted to leave the EU,
they did not vote to turn inwards or walk away from any of our partners in the
world.
“Faced
with challenges like migration, a desire for greater control of their country,
and a mounting sense that globalization is leaving working people behind, they
demanded a politics that is more in touch with their concerns; and bold action
to address them.”
May
said the action required to tackle migration needed to be “more global, not
less” and pledged not to “turn away from our United Nations” but “turn towards
it.” Britain, she insisted, would help the U.N. “forge a bold new
multilateralism.”
The
prime minister said the U.N. was key to tackling mass migration and terror, but
needed to act far earlier. In an implicit attack on the inaction of world
leaders up until now, May said tackling migration at the source was the only
way to defeat the growing “isolationism and xenophobia” surfacing in Europe and
the U.S.
A
No. 10 official said the speech was the first concrete exposition of May’s
foreign policy.
“I
think what you are seeing is the prime minister setting out the importance of
delivering those root causes, reflecting that actually the country’s foreign
policy should be about how best do you serve British interests, how do you best
serve people at home, whether that’s security or prosperity.”
The
source summed up May’s new foreign policy approach: “The more we do earlier on
overseas the better we can protect people at home.”
Speaking
to U.S. National Public Radio for the station’s “Morning Edition” on Wednesday,
May defended the Brexit vote and voters’ right to demand controls on free
movement.
She
said: “I think what people were voting for was a feeling of more control in a
number of areas over their own lives, more control, for example by the British
government over who could come into the United Kingdom.
“You
have those controls here in America, an ability to decide who can come over and
work in America, for example, so I think people wanted to see more control for
the British government, and that was one of the issues.”
The
PM said leaving the EU provided opportunities for the U.K. to become “a global
leader in free trade.” She added that there was a “real interest” in the U.S.
and elsewhere in establishing new trade deals but suggested these could not be
agreed before the U.K. had formally left.
May
was also forced to defend Boris Johnson. She said: “I think Boris is making an
excellent job as foreign secretary.
“He
is with me here in the United Nations meeting a number of his opposite numbers
and participating in some important talks such as talks about how we are going
to deal with [the Islamic State] in Syria, a terrorist threat that, of course,
we and the United States are working together as part of the Coalition in Syria
and Iraq against.
“And
Boris is forging his role as foreign secretary and taking the message that I’m
taking across the world, which is that we want to work across the world here in
the United Nations and bilaterally both to forge new trade relationships but
also crucially to work together with other countries to deal with the key challenges
we all face such as terrorism and migration.”
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