A Small Country Nobody Pays Any Attention To...

We're in that hinterland between Summer and Autumn at the moment.  The heat has gone, but the sun still puts in appearances.  The leaves are still green and still on the trees, but the wind is getting stronger and colder.  We're trapped between a glorious sunny past and a potentially chill future, yearning for the former whilst trying to deny the inevitability of the latter.  A bit like David Cameron, it seems.  Certainly, his response to the alleged comments of one of Russia's President Putin's political advisors that Britain was 'a small country that nobody listens to anymore' with regard to Syria, seem to indicate that he's still unwilling to let go of that warm imperial summer of our past.  He pompously reeled off all of those great British achievements - including all the usual ones about winning two World Wars single handed - he seems to think entitles the UK to a place at the top table when it comes to world affairs.

The trouble is that all of these supposed achievements lie firmly in the past.  I could be wrong, but the Second World War was about the most recent event he could muster.  Which is precisely what the Russian guy - if he indeed did utter the words attributed to him - was getting at: Britain's best years lie in the past and it is likely to stay that way as long he we persist in living in that past.  Actually, we're not even doing that.  We're actually living a fantasy version of that past where we're always the good guys, the Empire was a beneficent force for good which, despite being based on military conquest, cultural hegemony and economic exploitation, was in reality a mechanism for spreading democracy and civilised values around the world.  We - and by 'we' I mean our political leaders and rampant right-wing press - really need to start accepting that those days are long, long past and that the UK can't base its role in the world on the basis of an historical fantasy.  We need to find a new role, based on current realities.  When he lost that Commons vote on military action against Syria, Cameron told the House 'I get it'.  The trouble is that, as his recent comments show, he doesn't really 'get' it.  In fact, he doesn't 'get' anything and until he does, the UK is doomed to be an international irrelevance.