SNP's foreign policy submission can 'boost the case for independence'

That the UK Government finds itself behind schedule with the review has been put down to a combination of the ongoing pressures of the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit.

Whatever the reasons, the SNP has wasted no time in setting out its own thoughts on what it believes should be the review’s priorities and Scotland’s stance in that process.

“We cannot critique the UK Government for failing Scotland if we do not set out what we would do instead,” was how Alyn Smith, SNP foreign affairs spokesperson, summed up the thinking behind the party’s detailed submission which is scheduled for release on Tuesday.

Calling for a “foreign policy that properly represents the values and interests of Scotland,” the SNP submission insists that as part of its review, “HM Government must ensure that it builds consensus beyond the governing party in Westminster, beyond Whitehall and beyond London.”

This is a detailed document even though the SNP insist it serves as only a first step on which they will build when the review is finally published.

Among the SNP’s key proposals are a number for overhauling what it identifies as an outmoded Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). This would include developing a diplomatic strategy that will allow for greater public participation and the creation of formal mechanisms for devolved administrations like Scotland’s to allow the promotion of its identity and interests overseas.

By right says the SNP the devolved administrations must have “unfettered and unconditional access to diplomatic and consular services” such as embassy buildings that are not subject to concessions or negotiation.

It highlights too how the Covid-19 pandemic threw into sharp focus a spectacular lack of resources at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in providing the consular services needed when problems for our citizens arise overseas.

Hannah Bardell SNP MP, chair of the APPG on Deaths Abroad, Consular Service and Assistance, says that it’s vital that putting citizens first lies at the very heart of foreign and consular policy.

“We heard that UK foreign policy so often ignores the needs of individual citizens in favour of trade or broader international relations,” Bardell told the Sunday National.

“But citizens must be at the very heart of foreign policy, we mustn’t abandon them in their hour of need, that’s why a legal right to consular assistance is much needed and in our report we strongly recommend it,” she added. On a wider footing, the SNP’s submission paper insists that moves must be made to strengthen what it sees as an international rules-based order currently under threat and increasingly neglected by the UK Government. That commitment it says was made in the 2015 National Security Strategy but has since been undermined and the time has come to strengthen it.

Such calls will be music to the ears of those nations watching closely to see if a sovereign Scotland would be a reliable partner and sound ally in the event of independence “Setting out just what sort of good global citizen Scotland will be is a big, open and attractive vision which I believe people will want to be part of,” says Smith.

By its actions he says the UK “behind the bluster, is showing itself to be a state ill at ease with itself, unsure of its place in the world and veering wildly between imperial bluster and unconvincing British exceptionalism.”

SMITH’S views were echoed by Stewart McDonald, the SNP’s Spokesperson for Defence whose department was also key to drawing up the submission.

“We want to demonstrate that Scotland will be an open, law-abiding and reliable member of the international community, ready to work with our neighbours and allies to promote peace and stability in Northern Europe and beyond,” McDonald insists.

“We’ve been encouraged by the response to the ideas in this submission, because those who elected us expect that we will hold the UK Government to account in its claims that foreign policy and defence decisions are made in the interests of people in Scotland. I rather suspect they might not be able to do that,” McDonald said.

He pointed to what he described as the “failed gamble on President Trump cementing a future US/UK relationship outside the global mainstream as the perfect example of a country that has lost its way on foreign affairs, and now finds itself exposed and vulnerable.”

McDonald stressed the importance of finding a security model that works for everybody in Scotland and how the submission was only part of establishing that as the nation moved towards independence. Among the document’s proposals in practical terms is an insistence by the SNP that despite recent political changes, a priority for “HM Government must be the signing of a comprehensive defence and security agreement with the EU”. More broadly there should also be cooperation with states in the Northern European neighbourhood says the party, insisting that “HM Government should look to our Nordic neighbours and adopt similar cross-party defence agreements used to find common, long-term and durable solutions to their defence and security needs”.

MARITIME partnerships with NATO allies like Norway and Denmark in the North Atlantic and Norwegian seas should be enhanced, as should those with non-NATO allies like Sweden and Finland in the Baltic. In a more specific defence capacity the SNP’s proposals also stressed the importance of following the example of certain other countries in tackling threats posed in what this year’s Intelligence and Security Committee report described as “an era of hybrid warfare”. This refers to conflict that uses both covert and overt tactics using both military and non-military means including disinformation, political influence and cyber operations. In building a “total defence” along the lines used by other countries such as Finland, Sweden, Spain, Lithuania and Poland the appointment of an ambassador for “hybrid affairs” should be made to provide the coordination required to effectively counter such threats.

Diplomacy, defence and development, the three Ds on which the UK’s international reputation are built, are all dealt with in the SNP’s submission. Their proposals ranging from calls for “climate justice”, to the imposition of new human rights sanctions, to reiterating a firm stand against nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction and reaffirming the importance of, and commitment to, certain global treaties and agreements.

While insisting this submission is just a start, there is much to suggest from its content that what we are seeing here is effectively an early draft of what will form the basis of a more substantive document mapping out a defence and foreign policy blueprint for an independent Scotland. But first and foremost it is what it is, an SNP Submission to the Integrated Review.

As such, inevitably there will be those who will criticise it for being little more than a willing participation alongside a UK government with which Scotland should have no truck. But the demands of realpolitik here should be obvious. “I’m conscious some in the independence movement would say we should not engage, and I flatly disagree. It is precisely the engaging that builds the case for independence because in all likelihood the UK is not going to take our sensible, granular proposals on,” says Smith in response to such concerns.

“This then builds our credibility as a serious party with serious ambitions, both in the eyes of the international community but also in the eyes of Scots not yet persuaded of independence,” Smith added. As the details of the submission become public this week there will doubtless be more scrutiny of its contents. The SNP themselves are keen to stress that this is a work in progress, but are clearly convinced of being on the right path according to the party’s Foreign Affairs Spokesperson.

“Scotland and the SNP has a much sharper vision of our place in the world,” says Smith. “I think it is fair to say we are 20 years ahead in our thinking of the British political parties and this document underlines our serious credentials.”