Make way for the globe-trotting trader

Weary of European bickering and enamoured of nationalism, British foreign policy is on the move

It is coming as fast and blurry-edged as the storms blowing through London this month, but it is equally real: British foreign policy is changing direction, after the series of Chequers meetings and conversations between the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary in recent months.

The new emphasis will be rather less European and rather more national, with particular emphasis on winning global markets and expanding British influence. In the Foreign Office, it is being sold as a reassertion of national and political self-confidence, though in the most civilised way. Outside on the street, the Conservative right are humming victory marches and proclaiming the return of national self-interest as the governing principle of foreign policy.

The Government-sponsored "Britain in the World'' conference on 29 March in London is intended to be the moment at which the new emphasis suddenly comes into focus. Opposition politicians will join Douglas Hurd, John Major and many others for a serious think-in about British interests. This is then meant to lead to a drum-banging exercise for what might be called a policy of British Gaullism.

For mainstream Tories the political attractions are obvious. Promoting Britain as a world trader and global entrepreneur is both a welcome diversion from the hopelessness and tedium of the European civil war and a relief from the barrenness of domestic politics, where the Government seems bereft of fresh policy ideas.

Major is acutely aware of the possibilities of what was, originally, a Hurd wheeze. And it has the further advantage of being rather more soundly based than much governmental boasting - economically, the country is in better shape than for many years.

For Tory Eurosceptics, though, the policy-shift has stronger echoes still. They are afire with the heady romanticism of Britain returning to being a small, fit, globe-trotting trader, escaping the constricting embrace of European federalism. All political movements are grounded in poetic fantasy, and that of the Tory nationalists is suffused with images of Elizabethan England - Drake's drum, cheeky privateers, merchant adventurers in brine-stained furs.

This vision has been expressed with the greatest clarity by Jonathan Aitken, the Chief Secretary. But it has also, most colourfully, captured the heart of Norman Lamont, who has been putting considerable energy into selling it. Now we all know what we must think of Norman these days. He is Bad Norman, Sulky Norman, Norman-not-to-be-spoken-of-in-respectable- households. And yet, just at the moment of his political eclipse, Norman's speeches suggesting that Britain can cold-shoulder the EU for sound economic reasons and pursue a new nationalism, are echoing and reverberating through many members of the Tory administration he scorns. Funny game, politics. Hardly anyone would follow Lamont the whole way towards quitting the Union. But many would agree that an unsentimental view of British interests suggests that we must turn our attention elsewhere.

It is here that dissident and mainstream Tories start to converge. And the figures partly bear out the Eurosceptic case that exports to new markets are becoming progressively more important. Throughout the Eighties, our exports to the EC as a proportion of the total rose - from 46 per cent in 1980 to 57 per cent in 1991. But since then the EU proportion has been falling steadily, and is back to 53 per cent. And we all know where the fast-growing new world markets are.

It is also true that export promotion beyond Europe has been taken more seriously by the Government in recent years. It is, indeed, one of the few unsung successes. Michael Heseltine's remodelling of the DTI is winning plaudits among exporters and colleagues. One senior member of Cabinet credits him with reconnecting government to business and "repairing a defect of the Thatcher years". Richard Needham, the trade minister, has put in an extraordinary 337,000 air miles and nearly 40 trade visits, most with business executives abroad, since taking the job three years ago.

The Foreign Office has been spending more on trade promotion too; of its operating costs, 22 per cent now goes on commercial work, slightly more than on conventional political diplomacy: agreeable consulates in places like Venice, Turin and Genoa have been closed to find more more for export-promotion in Asia. When ministers from overseas governments are in London for bilateral meetings, British ministers routinely lobby them for the latest contracts.

Does it work? British companies are reticent about trying to apportion praise but the rising export figures and the keenness of large and small companies to join trade visits suggests that it does.

These are the bare facts that underpin the tilt devised by Number 10 and the Foreign Office. But what else might the new "national interest" emphasis mean in practice?

It must mean still more money for export promotion and a wide range of training. The sale of privatisation know-how is a priority, as is military training - for instance, for the former ANC in South Africa. The withdrawal of troops from Northern Ireland and the promise of no further cuts means that British forces will be more available for UN and other work abroad.

There will be more scholarships for bright overseas students - numbers are back up to the pre-1979 figure, when the first Thatcher government removed the general subsidy. Education is already reckoned to net Britain £9bn a year; plans afoot include a big push on English language teaching and a British university in Thailand. On the cultural side, the BBC World Service will get help with going digital and its World Television Service will be aggressively marketed by the Government.

The political strategy behind all this seems clear and pretty shrewd. There is a nationalistic mood about in the land and a weariness with the EU, neatly summed up by the pro-Canadian reaction of many MPs in the fishing dispute. There is a yearning for good news - and here are some ideas for the next Tory manifesto.

So far, so good. But any further - bad. Taken seriously, all the cod- Elizabethan British nationalism that sets some eyes alight quickly curdles into a dangerous fantasy. The world has changed rather a lot since English galleons buffeted through the seaspray to plunder Spanish ports and barter with the Third World natives of Long Island.

We live in a world where we need allies when we negotiate, and stability to prosper. The United States, as recent events have reminded us, is not an entirely reliable friend. Our exports to the EU remain hugely important, but there is a real chance of France and Germany going for an inter-governmental union of a kind that we can't to be in and we can't afford to be out of.

These things are the unchanging, uncomfortable, unromantic truths behind any sane foreign policy. We can cheer ourselves up at the London conference. We have a right to. But on the morning after, we will wake up to the same world and the same dilemmas as before.