LBC’s Election – Foreign Interest?

With Nick Drew and others, I’ll be joining Iain Dale on LBC tomorrow night from midnight through to 0600 on Friday to offer thoughts on the UK elections. My niche will be foreign thoughts/angles.

If any readers out there – especially people overseas – want to send in any observations and esp news angles upon which I might draw during the programme, please do so via mail@charlescrawford.biz or by posting a comment on this posting or another on the site.

The timezones mean that for most of the night we can get live views/comment from the USA and Far East with comments from the Middle East and Europe also appearing as the night wears on.

Random thoughts:

• Russia probably will be pleased if Labour are replaced by Conservatives. They’ll hope for a more serious, ‘realistic’ relationship (and maybe a new way to finesse the Litvinenko business)
• South Africa and other African capitals will be sorry to see Labour go, but also maybe not – all that self-congratulatory adoration of the anti-apartheid movement and ANC had started to become a tad … patronising?
• India will be glad to see Labour go. No manners, condescending.
• China may hope that a Conservative government will bang on rather less stridently about Climate Change
• Argentina will fear that a Conservative leader like David Cameron who emerged from the Conservative Research Department under Mrs Thatcher is unlikely to give them much joy on the Falklands
• The USA under Obama will not care much – Democrats find the British busybody role in international affairs annoying and vainglorious
• Ukraine and Turkey will hope that the Conservatives stick to the traditional UK view on EU enlargement, ie for it
• Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians and Croats will all suspect that the Conservatives plan to dust off the dark British plans cooked up at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 – which are of course still active
• Middle East capitals will expect little change, apart perhaps from a return to a more respectable diplomatic style
• and so on

Views in EU capitals will be mixed.

Paris and Berlin will claim to suspect that the Conservatives are unhelpful and out of touch, although if the Eurozone keeps wobbling they’ll be pressing for UK expertise (and money). Plus the next EU Budget row is looming – the small group of Givers will need to form a solid front against the large group of Getters.

Warsaw on the whole will be sorry to see Labour go (opening the UK’s labour market to Poles went a small way towards wiping the Yalta slate clean, plus Labour at least pretended to like ‘solidarity’). If Citizens Platform win the forthcoming Polish Presidential elections and run the country, the Conservative’s alliance in the EP with the Kaczynski party PiS will be rather awkward

Spain in its Leftist economic agony will fear a hawkish UK position on Gibraltar.

Brussels qua EU HQ will be nervous about a Conservative win – things are difficult enough for the Commission without a Big member state openly insisting on more power to EU capitals. But maybe that is the smart way to bet?

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