Sputnik: Will the UK look for closer alignment with the US on foreign policy after Brexit?
Margot Parker: We’d like to think that you would have a good measure between the two because where we’ve got a sort of common policy, sensible guidelines, you would want to see a general meeting of the two if possible.
We’ve got American Presidential elections coming up, so it will be all over the place with the US this year, I guess until November, but by and large, I don’t see a massive change at the moment.
Obviously we are looking for trade arrangements, that’s important, and to that end; I’m hopeful that the EU will, in fact, be constructive because we’d like them to be, we want them to be, so we will see.
There are so many tinderboxes going on in the Middle East, and you’ve got the overarching thing with the US election Iraq WarCoronavirus at the moment, which is horrific for the world, so there’s got to be a general pulling together on those issues that are absolutely pertinent right now.
I think there will be changes to the foreign policy. The Middle East has been so awful for so long, so destabilised, that I can hope that we can actually walk that middle ground.
Sputnik: Could the UK be drawn in to additional conflicts in the Middle East, if foreign policy is more aligned with the US, as opposed to the EU?
Margot Parker: I think the British public is really not up for that, they had enough with the Iraq War. I guess when the first Gulf War happened there was a reason, because literally Iraq invaded Kuwait, and that was a very good reason to take up arms and to say “no you don’t.”
They didn’t see it through, and sort of left it there without finishing that business, and of course we have what we have now, which is a shocking mix of do they want democracy in the Middle East? Can they tolerate democracy?
We’ve also got this awful situation in Libya where you have so many factors. They are literally holding the power, the wealth of the oil money, and all of the other things that make the Middle East, which is terribly vulnerable.
Sputnik: Could food standards in the UK drop after Brexit?
Margot Parker: I think there is an element of scaremongering. It’s been something that the Labour Party have hung their coat on for a long time, so the chlorinated chicken thing has been done to death, and at the end of the day, if you want to buy chlorinated chickens; you buy them, and if you don’t, you won’t buy them.
I think the UK has very high standards, and we introduced a lot of the animal safety standards into the EU in the first place, and in fact; some of our standards are higher than in the EU now.
