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Opinion: Despite reassurances from the UK’s presumptive Minister for Asia and the Pacific, a hard-left UK Labour Party and the risk of resurgent Corbynism will pose an existential threat to AUKUS and Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine ambitions, writes Liam Garman.
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In a recent interview with The Australian Financial Review, the UK’s Minister for Asia and the Pacific in-waiting Catherine West sought to quell Australia’s concerns over where a Starmer Labour government might leave the AUKUS trilateral security dialogue. To West’s credit, an Australian herself who moved to the United Kingdom, she told the masthead that the AUKUS agreement would continue to go from “strength to strength” and that the United Kingdom would seek to deepen military dialogue with Australia.
West’s optimism, however, doesn’t reflect Labour’s deeply held anti-AUKUS sentiment. During the party’s Annual Conference in 2021, 70 per cent of party delegates voted against the tripartite security alliance saying that the policy “undermines world peace”.
The emergency motion didn’t mince its words: “Conference believes that in contradiction to Tory PM Johnson’s statement that ‘this will promote stability in the Indo-Pacific region’, in fact, this is a dangerous move which will undermine world peace.”
Of course, the would-be prime minister and now independent candidate for Islington North Jeremy Corbyn added his name to the chorus of protesters whipping votes against the alliance.
If that wasn’t enough, Labour’s Australia bashing during their annual conference continued. Lisa Nandy, Labour’s then foreign affairs spokesperson, happily said that Australia “shouldn’t be welcome to have a seat at the [G7] table” if it didn’t strengthen its climate pledges. Call me old fashioned, but isolating your ally on the world stage and cutting it off from decision making doesn’t seem like a friendly thing to do.
But of course, with the British Labour Party having friends like Hamas and Hezbollah, who needs enemies?
It’s clear that Corbynist ideology still permeates Labour’s backbenches. Labour’s Socialist Campaign Group has continued to be actively driving party policy, including encouraging votes against AUKUS. It has also continued its relations with the pro-Russian Stop the War Coalition.
Following Russia’s illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine in 2022, 11 Labour MPs signed an anti-NATO statement from the Coalition saying that support for Ukraine was “sabre rattling”, and that the United Kingdom must address “Russia’s security concerns”.
If you’ve been worried about Farage’s comments on Russia, Labour’s Socialist Campaign Group will keep you up at night.
As 250 new members of Parliament are preparing to join the Labour caucus in one of the largest majorities in modern British history, Sir Keir Starmer’s headaches are just beginning. In just the last few months, the party has had to suspend prospective MPs over anti-semitism, Russophilia and this election’s vogue controversy: election gambling.
While he will have to look behind him to stave off resurgent Corbynism, it’s unclear how his front bench will perform.
At the negotiating table with the Australian government will be David Lammy, current shadow secretary of state for foreign, commonwealth and development affairs, who famously believed that the UK Conservatives were worse than the Nazis, voted against airstrikes on ISIS and who earned £200,000 working second jobs while serving in Parliament.
Though, don’t let his appalling grasp of history fool you, Lammy does deserve some credit. While his colleagues have actively undermined Australian-British relations, in a 2023 piece for the out-and-out socialist Fabian Society, Lammy lamented Australia’s treatment at the hands of China and went as far as to call for deeper alliances with Australia and Japan.
It’s true, there’s no guarantees in life except death and taxes. Though, with the voting record of the UK Labour Party, it might be time for Australia to start looking at Plan B.
