Paul Keating recognises the reality of Britain’s post-Brexit standing

Painful as it is, there is much truth in what the former prime minister of Australia, Paul Keating, says about the reality of Britain’s post-Brexit place in the world.

Viewed from the vantage point of east Asia, and the geopolitical imperatives that region imposes on any Australian government, the UK is at best a friendly, useful power with considerable links – and, of course, the two countries share a language as well as a head of state. But those links have gradually weakened over the decades. There was a time when the Australian pound was part of the sterling area, and citizens enjoyed British “cuisine”, drove Hillmans and Morrises, sang “God Save the Queen”, and laughed at Tony Hancock and Morecambe and Wise.

Today, Australia is a far more diverse nation – though the union jack sits stubbornly next to the southern cross in the national flag, and the Ashes have an outsized importance. It still has Queen Elizabeth as its head of state, but seemingly only because Australians can’t agree on who, or what, to replace her with.

So far as real power is concerned, it is precisely as Keating states – Britain “does not add up to a row of beans when it comes to east Asia”. According to Keating, the British foreign secretary, Liz Truss, is out of her depth down under: “Remarks by the British foreign secretary Liz Truss that China could engage in military aggression in the Pacific, encouraged by Russia’s contingent moves against Ukraine, are nothing short of demented… Not simply irrational, demented.”

Readers may recall that Keating has enjoyed uneasy relations with Britain, and vice versa, for some time. He committed the gross faux pas (according to the more excitable elements of the British media) of putting his arm round the Queen, albeit almost imperceptibly, to guide her towards guests when she was on a state visit long ago. Keating also made an outspoken attack on Britain’s record during the Second World War – an act of heresy – during a parliamentary debate, declaring that he wasn't going to suffer the usual “cultural cringe” to “a country which decided not to defend the Malayan peninsula, not to worry about Singapore, and not to give us our troops back to keep ourselves free of Japanese domination”.

Keating has returned to his theme now: “Britain took its main battle fleet out of east Asia in 1904 and finally packed it in with its ‘East of Suez’ policy in the 1970s. And it has never been back.” He didn’t quite say “good riddance”, but you sense the old republican campaigner is thinking it.

While the UK has long since been overtaken in trading importance for Australia by Japan, Germany, and, latterly, China, global tensions have pushed these old allies back together again – symbolised in the Aukus treaty, with its hugely lucrative contract for the UK to supply Australia with nuclear submarines in place of France. It builds on the long-standing traditional links, the Anglosphere “five eyes” intelligence convention, the 2017 Australia-UK Defence and Security Cooperation treaty, and the new UK-Australia free trade agreement (not yet in force).

Together these represent a modest re-emergence of the UK on the world stage. So, too, does the UK’s independent defence and security policy, along with its position in regard to Ukraine – which is markedly more supportive than that of the EU as a whole, and in particular of Germany. The downside, of course, is that although the British are taking a tougher stance than they could have taken within the EU, it carries far less economic clout with the Russians – and, short of a war that neither America nor Nato wants to fight, economic weapons are all the west has left to deter Russian aggression.

Perhaps for historical reasons, the Russians do seem to think the British more significant than they are (evidenced by espionage activity and the Skripal affair), but the reality is that Britain cannot pursue a truly independent foreign policy towards Russia.

Much the same goes for China – which differs from Russia in that it possesses genuine industrial and technological prowess. In the end, despite all the goodwill, there isn’t much that the depleted armed forces of the UK can do to project British power in the world, either on its own behalf or on that of its friends and allies. It was, indeed, this realisation that pushed Britain’s leaders for half a century – from the 1960s to the conclusion of our EU membership – that Britain’s destiny lay in Europe.

As for Australia in east Asia, geography dictates that a western-European medium-sized power of diminished means – but proud traditions – has its best chance of maintaining its influence and protecting its interests through linking up with its closest neighbours. It’s not yet obvious that this has changed, even if a bottle of South Australian merlot will be somewhat cheaper in the supermarkets quite soon.