PM to hail ‘Global Britain in action’ in major foreign policy speech

The Prime Minister will make the case for working with allies to harness technological innovations and private finance in pursuit of a greener and more stable and prosperous world, in a speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet tonight [Monday].

He will reflect on the achievements of the COP26 summit, including new international public-private partnerships to tackle climate change, and on the work we still need to do over the next decade to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

Addressing an audience of business leaders, international diplomats and dignitaries at the event at the Guildhall, hosted by the new Lord Mayor of the City of London, Boris Johnson will note the critical role of the private sector and entrepreneurs in providing climate finance for developing countries and driving jobs and green growth in the UK and around the world.

He will set out the impact of technological advances, bolstered by the UK’s innovation-friendly environment, on our own net zero ambitions, and look ahead to how Artificial Intelligence and super-computing can drive further progress. The Prime Minister will commit the UK to building a general-purpose quantum computer and securing 50% of the market in quantum computing by 2040.

Looking internationally and at the current situation in Poland and Ukraine, the Prime Minister will also stress the importance of building alliances with like-minded nations based on science, values, finance and diplomacy to protect our collective prosperity and security.

Please see below for excerpts of the Prime Minister’s speech. 

“On Saturday night after years and months of work the nations of the earth came together  and forged the Glasgow Climate pact.

“And of course that deal will and must have its detractors and we must be honest with our children and we must confess that this deal won’t do it alone.

“Glasgow won’t stop climate change,  Glasgow won’t prevent the heating of the planet that is now baked in, but Glasgow can still help us to slow that warming down.

“What we have in our hands is now a road map: detailed, waymarked with milestone after milestone, and for the first time in history humanity has agreed to move beyond coal.

“I want to thank Alok Sharma for everything he did and for what he is going to do.  Because our COP presidency didn’t end on Saturday,  we are the “world COP-holders” for another year.

“We will build on the historic Glasgow Climate pact, which calls for countries to do better next year- accelerating the five-year cycle set out in the Paris agreement.

“We will push for more ambitious goals, stronger plans and better implementation- and so we further narrow that gap to 1.5 degrees.

“We will work with partners across the world. We will work tirelessly: we will never give in.

“This is Global Britain in action.

“And I know how frustrating it was – as we stood on the verge of agreeing to phase out coal - to see that commitment weakened.

“But I tell you this: I have been watching politics a long time now and I know when a tipping point is reached.

The language does matter but whether you are talking about phasing down or phasing out, the day is now not far off when it will be as politically unacceptable, anywhere in the world, to open a new coal fired power station as it now is to get on an aeroplane and light a cigar.

…..

“And if Glasgow has been on the whole a success, if we have made important progress,  then it is worth pausing and asking ourselves why? What has changed since Madrid and Katowice and Paris and Copenhagen?

“And you can see how all sorts of things have come together in the minds of the leaders of the world. There is the data about what is actually happening: the storms, the floods, the fires, the swarms of locusts.  There is the ever growing clamour from their electorates 

“Perhaps we were also helped in Glasgow by a collective sense of embarrassment at the way internationalism failed us during Covid:  the squabbles over PPE,  the crazy decisions of some countries to try to stop the export of vaccines to others, something we were victims of at the start of this year.

….

The Prime Minister will argue that we need to replicate the model of public-private green investment in the UK around the world, and call for an alliance of like-minded democracies:

“I believe this concept of coalitions coalescing around science, and security, and values and finance and diplomacy and above all people, should be at the heart of what Global Britain is doing.

“Because it is clear that some countries are simply not going to evolve towards free market democracies and we should be clear eyed about that.

“We have to deal with it,  we have to manage it,  we must have relations that are as friendly and pragmatic as possible. But the consequence is that we work ever more closely with those who do share our values and instincts.

“So when we say that we support the sovereignty and integrity of Ukraine that is not because we want to be adversarial to Russia, or that we want in some way strategically to encircle or undermine that great country.

“And never let it be forgotten,  in this season of remembrance,  that it was Russian blood that enabled us to defeat Nazism.

“It is because we have a commitment to democracy and freedom that is shared now across the vast mass of the European continent.

“And when our Polish friends asked for our help to deal with a contrived crisis on their border with Belarus, we were quick to respond.

“And we hope that our friends may recognise that a choice is shortly coming between mainlining ever more Russian hydrocarbons in giant new pipelines  and sticking up for Ukraine and championing the cause of peace and stability,  let me put it that way.

……

He will also make the case for greater investment in Artificial Intelligence and Quantum computing:

“Having talked to Demis Hassabis and to Eric Schmidt, formerly of Google, it is clear that we need to go big on Quantum Computing.   If AI can mimic the intuitive flair of the human brain, then Quantum computing will enable us to process information so fast that we can process an almost infinite number of solutions at once.

“And if we could perfect it there are so many problems we could solve: including how to turn nitrogen into fertiliser and feed the world without creating so much C02.

“So I am setting the ambition that the UK will aim to build a general purpose quantum computer, and secure the single biggest share of a global quantum computing market by 2040.

“And that is why this country is determined to become once again a science superpower.  We know that is the way to create 100,000s of jobs in the green industries of the future.

“It is the way to ensure that we are not dependent on the technology of others in a way that could ultimately compromise our national security.

“And with our lead in the technologies of tomorrow  we can help spread our values, just as we helped to distribute 1.5 bn low cost Astra Zeneca vaccines, and help to fix the problems of the world.

“And that is how we can influence things for the better,  not with gunboats, or not solely with gunboats, not with usurious loans, but with public billions leveraging private trillions to drive the expansion of new technological solutions,  from bioscience to carbon capture and storage and the production of green hydrogen.”