Foreign Secretary Liz Truss named Israel as being amongst the UK’s most trusted allies as she spoke of a new “network of liberty” to counter authoritarian states and “malign actors”.
In a speech on the first day of the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, Foreign Secretary Truss vowed to strengthen the UK’s security ties with other liberal democracies – naming Israel, Australia, Japan, Mexico, and South Korea alongside NATO and the G7.
Setting out a “patriotic foreign policy” she said: “My vision is to strengthen our economic and security ties in order to build a network of liberty around the world”. She added; “We must win this battle for economic influence … and this starts with forging closer ties with our friends and allies” at which point the Foreign Secretary named the countries including Israel.
Foreign Secretary Truss continued: “The democratic world order faces a stark choice. Either we retreat and retrench in the face of malign actors … or we club together and advance the cause of freedom. We need to rise to meet this moment”.
She also revealed that International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan would soon be getting “stuck in” to negotiating trade deals telling a fringe event at the conference that “Anne-Marie Trevelyan… is going to be negotiating deals with India, deals to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with the Gulf, with Israel”.
