A seat at the top table and those other silly meaningless metaphors about losing “global influence”. What gibberish.
Now WE, yes you and I, have lost OUR seat at the International Court of Justice. Gosh how will I recover from this? They deal with such important matters as Alleged Violations of Sovereign Rights and Maritime Spaces in the Caribbean Sea (Nicaragua v. Colombia).
“This is a failure of UK diplomacy“, says the BBC, and “a retreat from the international stage”. That’s it I’m getting in my nuclear bunker and I suggest you do the same, because Laos or Djibouti could invade any second and wipe us all out now that we are so tiny and frail. Little Britain all alone in the world. We’ll probably sink into the Atlantic some time soon if Laos doesn’t get us.
What these people are suggesting is that if we had a UK representative in the ICJ, they could simply ignore any kind of objectivity and legality in order to ‘influence’ things and make the rulings turn out in our favour – subverting international bodies to benefit the UK. Now that may be how many of these organisations work, and it’s certainly how the EU works, but to propose such a course of action says a lot about the neo-imperialistic approach some people support.