Foreign Secretary David Miliband will set out Britain's position in the world acording to a report on the front page of Today's Guardian.
He is due to
set out the clearest exposition yet of Labour's recast foreign policy when he will argue that mistakes made in Iraq and Afghanistan must not cloud the moral imperative to intervene - sometimes militarily - to help spread democracy throughout the worldaccording to political editor Patrick Wintour.
Interesting enough in the comment section of the Independent this morning,Mary Dejevsky writes on Britain's declining role on the diplomatic stage.
In the good old days
There was a time, long after the sun had set on the Empire, when the British still strutted the world stage. If they had the grace not actually to monopolise the very topmost jobs, they commanded respect as the policy-makers, drafters and negotiators who helped the world go round.but today
the absence of senior Britons from international gatherings is becoming conspicuous. At the Munich security conference last weekend – perhaps Europe's premier defence gathering – it was noted that this was the first time in 40-plus years that no Briton spoke from the platform.
The replacement of Tony Blair with Gordon Brown may well have marked the decline of Britain's inflated role in the world.Maybe Miliband's new direction will alter Britain's place in the world.
Patrick Wintour suggests that he will
· encouraging economic openness as a means of tackling corruption and increasing transparency, including in China;
· a new round of provincial elections in Iraq, to help to bind in former insurgents who want proof of their local influence, and the chance to join the Iraqi security force;
· organisations like the UN or Nato should consider offering "security guarantees" to new but fragile governments, conditional on them abiding by democratic rules;
· support for "civilian surges" for democracy led by "literate, better-educated people able to access information and communicate with others".
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