🇬🇧 🇫🇷 Did Britain learn the wrong lesson from Suez? Seventy years ago, the Suez crisis brutally exposed the reality that Britain 🇬🇧 and France 🇫🇷 could no longer act as great powers alone. But Britain and France drew very different lessons from the humiliation. Britain turned towards America and France turned towards Europe. 🇩🇪 German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer told the French PM: “France and England will never be powers comparable to the US and the Soviet Union. Nor will Germany. There remains to them only one way of playing a decisive role in the world; that is to unite to make Europe.” And then came the devastating observation: “England is not ripe for it.” Seventy years later, that question has returned. Meanwhile Trump has transformed the transatlantic relationship and Putin’s war has transformed European security. Ukraine 🇺🇦 has demonstrated why Europe needs the ability to defend itself and Brexit has left Britain outside the European institutions where many of the decisions affecting our own continent are made. @andyburnham now wants Britain to have a new conversation about Europe and it cannot just be about trade. It is about security, defence, economic resilience and whether Britain has more influence acting with its European neighbours or perpetually trying to be America’s junior partner. Perhaps the lesson of Suez wasn’t that Britain needed America more and in fact it was that Britain, France and their European neighbours needed each other. Seventy years later, it really is time to exorcise the ghost of Suez. Britain’s future and Europe’s future are inseparable. 🇬🇧🇪🇺

It wasn't Brexit. It wasn't the Mini-Budget. It was Blair/Brown and their toxic legacy.