The government’s year-long foreign policy has come to this. The UK’s focus will shift focus towards Indo-Pacific countries, described as ‘the world’s growth engine’. This, Boris Johnson asserted in parliament today, will guarantee our future economic prospects. And – at the same time – justify Brexit.

We will also, according to Johnson, have to ‘relearn the art’ of competing against countries with ‘opposing values’. Which speechwriter I wonder thought up that apparently clever phrase, ‘re-learning the art’? To be cynical, we’ve managed it pretty well to-date with Saudi Arabia. And China’s values haven’t been ours for a good few years.

(I will leave aside for now the government’s plans to increase the cap on the number of nuclear warheads to 260.  It had been due to drop to 180 under previous plans.)

This is all simply nonsense, grandiloquent nonsense. Keir Starmer, wary of Brexit-constituency MPs among his backbenchers, appears not so far to have called it out. I trust he will – we need a clear distinction to be made between the government’s damn-the-consequences hard Brexit and the close relationship with the EU which a soft Brexit would have allowed.

This EU hatred is absurd and deeply damaging.

‘Shifting focus’ is Brexit speak, an attempt to cover the disaster of turning our backs on Europe, our own backyard, which was and is and remains our best guarantee of future prosperity. Our focus has to be on Europe and the Far East. Quite apart from neglecting the vast opportunities which lie close at home this new ‘strategy’ overlooks the much higher risk in trade with the Far East. Brexit was in part predicated on a trade deal with China… that isn’t likely to happen. And stretched supply lines are fine – if you shored up your supply lines close to home.

A further consideration – will any Far Eastern country give us a better deal negotiating on our own than we’d get negotiating with Europe? There’s this false notion that the EU is somehow laggard in this area.  There will be much analysis of this switch in our national priorities over the coming days – at least, I trust there will be. But let’s call it out now for what it is – nonsense.

I note also that the government wants the UK to become a ‘science and tech superpower’ by the end of the decade. As I do. Other countries will be pursuing the same goal. We have remarkable levels of cooperation across Europe at the moment, which are currently under serious threat. Do we really think we can go it alone?

I heard this morning our Foreign Secretary asserting that we are still held in the highest regard around the world… and that may be, despite the current government’s best efforts to undermine that reputation. We will re-instate, Johnson tells us, the 0.7% of GDP assigned to foreign aid ‘when the fiscal situation allows’ – as if this was some kind of policy success. 

There’s much more to be said. But will it be? Media and parliament are sadly emasculated. Who will challenge?