Hague's Second Speech

Hague restated support (this downloads a .wmv file) for Turkish entry to the EU which I liked. The rest of his time spent on the EU was a reiteration of the solid Conservative European policy which has been unchallenged in the party for some time. He was right to note, as I did a few months back, that Europe faces the dilemma of choosing the function it has fulfilled best, encouraging new countries towards liberal economics and sensible politics, or the function it treasures but has proved least productive with, political integration.

However, the rest of his speech, on the more interesting topic of broader foreign policy, was a statement of conventional wisdom. It contained nothing you wouldn't have heard in Gordon Brown's speech a week ago. This is partly a consequence of the broad consensus in mainstream politics around British foreign policy priorities if not detail but Hague needed to do more. His speech did not contain the 'new direction' he claimed it did and he needs to do more.