Anglo-German Defence Agreement Welcome but Won't Worry Putin or Help British Firms, Citizens Recover Lost Rights in Europe

                  If Britain and Germany really want to face down Putin and Russia there is an easy, quicker way to do it and getting the German arms firm Rhinemetall to make some gun barrels in Britain.

                  Berlin and London could and should jointly agree to provide their long range missiles – Taurus in Germany, Storm Shadow in Britain – to Ukraine to stop Russia using missile bases to launch missiles at civilian target in Ukraine – energy plants, transport, factories, schools.

                  There is a growing confidence in the pro-Putin camp in Europe that the western democracies are quietly giving up on supporting Ukraine. The main worry is the very possible victory of Trump in the US. But as in the 1930s when Britain and France refused to send arms to defend the democratic, elected government of Spain thus handing the Spanish over to the tender mercies of the facist golpista, General Franco, for four decades, so too Albion perfide and Putinversteher Deutschland are leaving Ukraine and its brave citizens to their fate.

                  Britain was the leading European nation in defending Germany from any Soviet threat from the Berlin airlift to the years of the Berlin Wall. Now Germany is repaying the debt with a modest arms contract and sending a few patrol planes to keep an eye on Russian incursions.

                  After the frivolous defence ministers of the Brexit era governments Britain now has a calm, serious, unflashy Defence Secretary in John Healey. He has now agreed a new agreement with Germany. This has little to do with the EU or Brexit. Tony Blair agreed the St Malo declaration with the French president Jacques Chirac in 1998. Cynical FCO officials allowed the French to write most of the world as they and Blair knew that whatever token Anglo-French military cooperation was possible it would all be within the context of Nato which was and is Britain’s principal defence-foreign policy Treaty covering Europe.

                  Gerhard Schröder, then Chancellor of Germany, complained sarcastically to me that Tony Blair had not informed him of the French deal with Chirac, a European leader not held in high regard in Berlin.

                  Straight after the St Malo declaration, Islamists attacked New York and France refused to work in alliance with Britain to build a coalition to tackle Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. Chirac was looking at his re-election in 2002 and latent French hostility to “Les Anglo-Saxons” meant keeping Blair at a distance. It culminated in Chirac unilaterally announcing he would veto any UN resolution that Blair was working on to get UN backing for action against Islamist military attacks.

                  David Cameron followed with the more grandly titled Lancaster House Treaty with Nicolas Sarkozy who succeeded Chirac as President. After the so-called Arab Spring in the early months of 2011  Cameron and Sarkozy launched their campaign for regime change in Libya and Syria. They held a news conference in Tripoli announcing victory but both nations were turned into failed states without law, policing, democratic elections, a functioning economy and endless armed uprisings against the central government.

                  All the Cameron-Sarkozy intervention achieved was to turn Libya and Syria into  a highway for millions of economic migrants and political refugees flooding out of Africa and the Near East to seek a new life in Europe and Britain.

                  The Lancaster House Treaty collapsed when the Labour Party in 2013 refused to support the next President of France, François Hollande, who had agreed with President Obama to launch an attack on Russian controlled military bases in Syria which were keeping the Syrian dictator Assad in power. Labour refused to vote for air strikes and this appeasement of Putin was also supported by Liberal Democrats whose votes were necessary for Cameron to stay in power.

                  French planes were fuelled and ready to leave their hangers in support the pro-democracy forces in Syria when this stab-in-the-back by Perfidious Albion destroyed all hopes of a united western response to face down Putin and Assad in Syria.

                  More than a decade later both Libya and Syria remain failed states despite the Lancaster House Treaty.

                  It is to hoped of course that the new UK-German Trinity House agreement, to give it its formal name,  will be more robust. The UK needs to replace its 50 year old Challenger Tank. An agreement with Rheinmetall to build a UK-German tank would be a big statement but the default setting in Whitehall is to buy made-in-America defence gear.

                  What neither the St Malo declaration nor the Lancaster House Treaty did was in any way help Britain’s relations with Europe as a whole. A new defence and security agreement with Germany is worthwhile and John Healey deserves congratulation for producing this agreement after eight ugly Brexit years treating all European nations as inimical to Britain’s national interests.

                  The trade minister, Douglas Alexander, has just pointed out that 47 percent of UK’s exports go to EU member states. The 1001 barriers to trade with the EU especially in the services sector – now 81 per cent of the UK economy – remain in place. With the best will in the world the hopes of Rachel Reeves and Labour ministers to restore Britain to a serious growth path is unlikely if all the MPs who did not share Tory hostility to Europe do not find ways of allowing British firms and individuals to reconnect with Britain neighbours and potential economic partners across the Channel.

Denis MacShane is the former Minister of Europe and author of Brexiternity. The Uncertain Fate of Britain.Bloomsbury.