The UK is not using diplomacy to restore our trade and commerce
By johnredwood on April 4, 2026
When I saw Yvette Cooper working in Opposition in the Commons I saw one of the brightest and most serious of Labour MPs. She has a first class degree from Oxford and an MSc from LSE, so she was a high academic achiever.
I have now watched with alarm as she fails in two of the great offices of state. As Home Secretary given the prime task of smashing the gangs she looked helpless or unwilling to do what needed doing to carry out the wishes of the public. Those of us who gave her good advice based on the failure of the previous government to do more than get illegal migration down a bit looked on in disbelief. She tore up the things the previous government did in its later days that could have made a big difference and then wondered why small boat crossings soared. She allowed an interventionist Prime Minister and Attorney General to set up two tier justice, and let slip action to control anti social behaviour, protesting with menaces and damage, and a wave of shoplifting with violence.
This week saw her act out a farce as Foreign Secretary. She chaired a meeting of 40 countries not including Iran, Israel, the US or the neighbouring Gulf states to Iran to discuss how to open the Straits of Hormuz and the wider trade routes of the Gulf and Red Sea to commercial shipping. This is a crucial matter affecting the lives and livelihoods of all of us and most of the people in the rest of the world. She told us the answer to get the Straits open is de escalation of the war without telling us how she proposes to achieve this. She told Iran they could not levy fees on ships for safe passage as they now seem to want to do.
She did not come up with a peace plan or a single proposal that might be accepted by the warring forces, including the Houthis, Hezbollah, Israel, Iran and the US. She did not tell us when she is going to talk to any of these interested parties or what she is going to say. She did not seek to involve herself or her 39 countries at the meeting in the behind the scenes exchanges of messages between the US and Iran that we are told are happening.
Does she know who is charge of Iran now? Does she have any direct communications with powerful representatives of the Iranian government? What is she proposing the US and Israel should offer Iran to get Iran and her proxies to stop attacking western shipping?
If her idea was merely to draw up a list of countries that might support a peace if the war protagonists negotiate one, how will that help? If she wants to conjure a naval force to help police possible peace who will join that? What risks might it have to run? Is the Royal Navy going to be in a position to spare any ships for such a task when she and her Defence colleague were unable to get a single ship on time to the Middle East or to assist Cyprus?
It is sad to see a great country represented in this way, reducing us to irrelevance and doing nothing positive to create a safer world. Is there no sense of urgency in the UK government over the need to restore normal shipping in the Gulf and Red Sea areas? Given their policy is to make us depend on more and more imports of oil, gas, chemicals and anything to do with oil and gas this is a bad dereliction of duty.
Every day is April Fool’s day with this government
By johnredwood on April 1, 2026
How could I write an April fool madder than current reality? We are living through a year of April Fool's days.
There is the idea that we leave our own oil and gas in the ground so we can import more from abroad. That means paying tax away to foreign governments instead of having it for ourselves. It means we export the jobs. It means more world CO 2. A treble folly.
How about givjng Chagos away? That means paying lots of money to use something we currently own. It means letting another country damage the marine environment there that we have been protecting. Even more bizarrely it means giving the new owners money for the gift. It means helping a friend of China own a military base we and the US need to keep open the sea lanes. Another treble folly.
How about a growth strategy based on taxing jobs and businesses more? The National Insurance tax on ,jobs has led to rising unemployment, and the big increase in business rates has closed more shops, hospitality businesses and pubs. The farms tax and subsidies to switch out of growing food has led to decline of our farms. Another treble folly.
How about smashing the gangs who bring in foreign illegal migrants? They tried doing this by repealing the Conservative law that said an illegal cannot claim asylum once here, and by cancelling the Rwanda scheme to have somewhere to send illegal migrants to. They gave large sums to France to stop the boats, only to find the French did not allow their police to go into shallow water to physically stop the boats departing. Another treble folly.
How about encouraging more people on benefits to have more children, and granting more sicknotes for life so more people can stay on benefits indefinitely? They said they wanted to control the benefits bill and get more people into work, then adopted policies which do the opposite.
Their own Adviser Lord Walker asked it they are becoming the Benefits party, not the Labour party. Only in an April Fools world can a government keep on adding to the numbers and the payments to people on benefits without running out of people and companies to tax to pay for it.