You Voted Green To Stand Up To Imperialism And Now Britain's Strategic Defence Review Is A Group Hug With Islamabad — The Country That Jailed The Last Four People Who Criticised It Has Been Promoted To 'Key Climate Partner'

Congratulations, You've Abolished Imperialism (Please Hold)

Remember the plan? You voted Green because the manifesto said Britain would pursue 'decolonised diplomacy rooted in solidarity with the Global South'. You imagined peace conferences, fair trade agreements, maybe a tasteful mural of Greta in Whitehall.

What you actually got is a Strategic Defence Review whose opening chapter is titled 'Listening To Our Partners In Islamabad' and whose closing chapter is a QR code that links to a Pakistani tourism advert. The Ministry of Defence's entire threat assessment now consists of a laminated card reading 'Britain Has No Enemies, Only Misunderstandings'.

The Green Foreign Secretary — a man who once described the Royal Navy as 'inherently violent water' — announced last week that Pakistan is now a 'Key Climate Partner'. This is a country with roughly enough money to power one (1) traffic light, an intelligence service that treats journalism as an extreme sport, and a nuclear arsenal it describes as 'minimal' in the way a man holding four pints describes himself as 'not drunk'.

The Roast Dinner Doctrine

The naive expectation was beautiful, in the way all naive things are. Ethical foreign policy! No more selling arms to despots! Instead, we'd engage in what one Green MP called 'roast dinner diplomacy' — honest, warm, no hidden gravy.

The reality: Britain has sent £14 billion in 'climate solidarity funding' to Islamabad, which was immediately allocated to a new intelligence headquarters, three border guns for the Afghan frontier, and a ministry responsible for ensuring that people who criticise the government experience 'administrative difficulties'. The last four British-Pakistani journalists who wrote critically about Rawalpindi are currently guests of the state. Their families in Birmingham have been informed this is 'a consular matter'.

The Foreign Office's internal briefing on the relationship, leaked last Tuesday, is eleven pages long. Ten pages are redacted. The final page says, in its entirety: 'Why did we do this. Why did we do this. Why did we do this.' It has been photocopied 400 times.

Tehran Called. It Wants Its Narrative Back.

Here's the bit that should keep you up at night, if your electricity is still on. In 1979, Western progressives lined up to celebrate the Iranian Revolution as an 'authentic alternative' to Western hegemony. Michel Foucault — the era's equivalent of a Green peer with a podcast — personally cheered the Ayatollah as a spiritually refreshing change from materialist America. The students in Tehran who made it happen were the first people the new regime arrested.

Lebanon ran the same film with a different soundtrack. Sectarian blocs were welcomed into the political system as 'authentic community representatives', each 'accommodation' praised as tolerance, until the accommodations had eaten the state and Beirut was a car park with excellent cuisine. The progressives who cheered went home. Everyone else stayed.

The pattern is always identical: a naive Western left, bored and comfortable, adopts a foreign movement as a fashion accessory against 'the establishment'. The movement is not what the tote bag promised. The movement takes power. The movement does not care that you composted.

And now Britain's Green government has picked Islamabad as its 'authentic alternative' — a state that jails its own opposition, finances militancy abroad, and has just been handed a line in the UK defence budget labelled, we are not joking, 'Climate-Resilient Ordnance'.

Your Passport Now Costs More Than Pakistan's GDP Per Capita

Meanwhile, back in Britain: the Greens' solidarity pact includes 'reciprocal climate migration arrangements', meaning displacement claims from Pakistan are now processed on an 'honour system' that has already been honoured 2.3 million times. The Home Office — sorry, the Ministry of Welcome — has a backlog described by its own director as 'a vibe'.

You wanted to stick it to the imperialists. You have instead funded a nuclear state's security apparatus, imported its sectarian politics into your local elections, and made Britain's foreign policy a group project with a government that cannot afford bread. The imperialists, it turns out, were fine. It's you who's been colonised — by your own good intentions.

The 07:42 to Paddington is still stuck in a consensus-building workshop, by the way. But at least the driver now has dual nationality and a grievance.