{"id":36112,"date":"2021-08-29T14:00:08","date_gmt":"2021-08-29T05:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/theobserver\/commentisfree\/2021\/aug\/29\/after-afghanistan-whither-britain-letters"},"modified":"2021-08-29T14:00:08","modified_gmt":"2021-08-29T05:00:08","slug":"after-afghanistan-whither-britain-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=36112","title":{"rendered":"After Afghanistan, whither Britain? | Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With our international reputation in tatters, we need to take a long, hard look at ourselves and our place in the world<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2009\u2018Very well, alone\u2019 did good service for Winston Churchill as a wartime rallying cry in 1940,\u201d says Andrew Rawnsley (\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/aug\/22\/boris-johnson-global-britain-exposed-impotent-friendless-afghanistan\" title=\"\">Boris Johnson\u2019s Global Britain is exposed as impotent and friendless by Afghanistan<\/a>\u201d, Comment). The myth that Britain \u201cstood alone\u201d in the Second World War and that Europe was then liberated from \u201cour island fortress\u201d was woven by Margaret Thatcher in her 1988 Bruges speech and became one of the driving fictions of Brexit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere is Global Britain in the streets of Kabul?\u201d was a little rich coming from Theresa May, who declared, when triggering article 50 of the Lisbon treaty in 2017: \u201cI want Britain to be\u2026 a great, global trading nation that is respected around the world and strong, united and confident at home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/theobserver\/commentisfree\/2021\/aug\/29\/after-afghanistan-whither-britain-letters\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With our international reputation in tatters, we need to take a long, hard look at ourselves and our place in the world\u201c\u2009\u2018Very well, alone\u2019 did good service for Winston Churchill as a wartime rallying cry in 1940,\u201d says Andrew Rawnsley (\u201cBoris Johnson\u2019&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":327,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,221,530,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-europe","category-european-union","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/327"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36113,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36112\/revisions\/36113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}