British politicians think they exercise a moderating force on strongmen. In practice, \u2018diplomacy\u2019 and \u2018pragmatism\u2019 only ease their path<\/p>\n
Why is Westminster, supposedly one of the world\u2019s great centres of democratic moderation, so welcoming to far-right foreign governments? For more than a century, since the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, authoritarians have often found allies, apologists or a deliberate absence of criticism in the Commons, despite our parliament\u2019s self-image as a historic enemy of fascism.<\/p>\n
One reason for this forgiving attitude is that foreign policy is a pragmatic business, and Britain has increasingly become a country that can\u2019t afford to make enemies. The Starmer government\u2019s determination to see no evil in the Trump administration can be partly explained in those terms.<\/p>\n
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n
Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" British politicians think they exercise a moderating force on strongmen. In practice, \u2018diplomacy\u2019 and \u2018pragmatism\u2019 only ease their path Why is Westminster, supposedly one of the world\u2019s great centres of democratic moderation, so welcoming to far-right foreign governments? For more than a century, since the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, authoritarians have often found allies, apologists … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}