Ok… This is where I’m going to piss off a lot of right wingers… Russia is not our friend. Don’t get me wrong, I know NATO has a lot to answer for in creating the situation we are currently in. The western elites have long been war mongers and have moved to surround and isolate Russia. However, international politics is rarely good V’s evil. It’s 50 shades of grey without the fun stuff.

Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and several other nations and proxies have coalesced into an informal anti-western alliance. There is certainly an argument to be made that this is directly the result of western economic imperialism and foreign policy. Regardless of the reasons, it has happened. It cannot be undone. The reason it cannot be undone is democracy. All of these countries either have pseudo democratic processes or are openly authoritarian. They control every aspect of their political decision making and plan 5, 10, 20 years into the future safe in the knowledge that they will never have to contend with a genuine election. On the other hand, they do not have the security of making those sort of plans in regard to relations with the west. Even if a government came to power in the UK that wanted to normalise relations with them, there is no guarantee that government would remain in power 5 years down the line. This constant uncertainty in relations makes these countries very weary of doing deals with the west. Relations have now soured to such a degree that these nations have already made their decision to combat western influence and interference.

China has made a decision that it will take Taiwan, one way or another. Taiwan is responsible for providing western nations with around 90% of the advanced microprocessors vital to our military industrial complex. Russia has decided that it will pursue an aggressive expansionist policy to roll NATO back from its boarders. Iran has committed itself to expanding its influence in the Middle East, risking western oil supplies. These nations all hold contempt for the west for various reasons. It would be folly to believe we can just kiss and make up.

The UK needs to expand our infrastructure in the North Sea and rapidly become self sufficient in microprocessors if we are to be assured of our national security. Buying cheap oil and gas would ease the economic burden on the British people in the short term, but the long term ramifications would be that we neglect our own economic potential in the fossil fuel and petrochemical sectors, whilst making our supply chain extremely vulnerable. We must not sacrifice our long term energy independence and security for short term economic benefit.