European Union (Amendment) Bill

Strictly speaking, the high representative would have to do that. In practice, he or she would make matters clear to his or her interlocutors. I do not expect the European Union to fall out over Zimbabwe, but let us take it as an example. If 26 member states took one position and the UK took another, the high representative would have to say, ““My hands are tied. I am the high representative for a common foreign policy and, as I've indicated to you, my interlocutor, there is no common foreign policy because one member state doesn't agree with the others.”” That is what a common foreign policy means. As I said in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North, in such circumstances, standing up for what we believe in as a single country would not put the UK in a weaker position than we would have occupied if we had never joined the Common Market and then the European Union. Before we joined the Common Market in those terms—we were, of course, in the European Free Trade Association, but in foreign policy we were alone—if we were in a minority of one on what would otherwise be a common foreign policy of the European Union, we would again be on our own, so we would not be in a weaker position. However, we would potentially be in a much stronger position if 27 member states were taking their lead from the United Kingdom on, for example, Zimbabwe, which is a more likely scenario, but not a definite one, because of our history with that country and our knowledge of it, as has been mentioned. On the one hand, we might be alone, which is not a weaker position than we would have been in, were we not involved. On the other hand, the upside is that we could be in a considerably stronger position. That seems to me a pretty good each-way bet.