Is William Hague living on a different planet?

By Emma Reynolds

Labour is behind in the polls at home. Well there’s a statement of the obvious. But let me state another obvious truth. The Prime Minister’s leadership on the international stage is widely recognised. Only a few weeks ago he was feted as a world statesman and he has been praised for forging the agreement at the G20 summit in London earlier this year.

That’s why my jaw dropped in disbelief this morning, as I belatedly watched William Hague’s speech on television. The shadow Foreign Secretary claimed that the Tories “reject the strategic shrinkage of Britain’s role” and accused Gordon Brown of diminishing our standing in the world. Although Hague is one of the House of Commons’ best performers, even his oratorical skills could not carry off this line with any credibility.

Have the G20 summits in London and Pittsburgh completely passed Hague by? Did he manage to miss the series of accolades given to Gordon Brown from a wide spectrum of international thinkers and statespeople?

The Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman recently described the Prime Minister as the man who may have “saved the world financial system”. Henry Kissinger stated that Gordon Brown’s “leadership has been essential to our ability to overcome the moment of danger”.

Has Hague not noticed our Government’s global leadership on climate change? Both the Prime Minister and our Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, will attend the Copenhagen Summit and are actively preparing the groundwork to ensure that the conclusions are concrete, meaningful and ambitious.

Has Hague really failed to see the damage that he and Cameron have inflicted on the Tories’ reputation in Europe as well as within the Jewish communities here and abroad? Given the column inches generated by the row over the Tories’ anti-semitic and homophobic bedfellows in the European Parliament, Hague didn’t even mention their Polish and Latvian friends. A bizarre omission.

The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, has the Tories banged to rights on this issue. Tory Chairman, Eric Pickles defended their alliance with the Latvian ‘For Fatherland and Freedom’ Party (whose members commemorates SS Legion veterans every year) on the basis that the Latvian Wafen-SS were conscripts and therefore had no choice. However as Jonathan Freedland points out, a substantial minority of the Latvian Wafen-SS were not conscripts but eager volunteers including veterans of pro-Nazi death squads.

We should be deeply concerned about the damage that the Tories would do to the UK’s international standing. To use Hague’s words against him, there is a real and palpable danger that a Conservative Government would “shrink” the UK’s strategic importance in the world.