The British government has refused to disclose the criteria that permits the US to militarily colonise Britain. Defence minister Al Carns told Your Party MP Jeremy Corbyn it was a secret due to ‘security reasons’. Highly original, Al.

Corbyn had posed a simple written question on 19 January:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, if he will set out the factors that his Department takes into account when deciding on a case-by-case basis whether to approve the United States’ use of its military bases in the UK for operational purposes.

Carns responded on 22 January:

Due to operational security reasons, the specific factors of consideration cannot be disclosed. However, all decisions on whether to approve foreign nations’ use of military bases in the UK for operational purposes considers the legal basis and policy rationale for any proposed activity.

The government’s catch-all cop-out strikes again. The UK is well known for its perverse love of secrecy. And for using the ‘national security’ argument to avoid being held to account.

The English Disease

As legendary Guardian and now Declassified UK journalist Richard Norton-Taylor has written, the term is one of two that the British governments use to hide the truth:

“National security” is often used to cover up embarrassment rather than genuine, serious threats to the country.

The other?

When ministers and officials recognise that deploying the phrase would be an obvious exaggeration, they use an alternative argument, saying that it would not be in the “public interest” to disclose the information.

Norton-Taylor reminds us that even senior politicians have lamented UK government’s long love affair with secrecy:

Official secrecy, said the Labour heavyweight politician and intellectual, Richard Crossman, who overcame fierce Whitehall opposition to the publication of his diaries, is “the real English disease”. He was writing in the early 1970s when industrial strikes, not secrecy, gave the country the sobriquet the “Sick Man of Europe”.

US military in Britain — sovereignty or submission

In fact, Corbyn posed two questions on 19 January. Here is the other:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether the United States’ use of its military bases in the UK to send military equipment onward to a third country requires his approval.

Can you guess the character of Carn’s non-response, also published on 22 January?

You guessed it — ‘security’ again:

Due to operational security reasons, the specific factors of consideration cannot be disclosed. However, all decisions on whether to approve foreign nations’ use of military bases in the UK for operational purposes considers the legal basis and policy rationale for any proposed activity.

Around the same time that Corbyn submitted his questions, Green Party leader Zack Polanski suggested US bases and troops could be ejected from the UK. The comment came amid globe-spanning discussion about Donald Trump’s erratic threat to invade Greenland. Trump has since cooled off. For now….

Corbyn’s question is fundamentally about sovereignty. How is it that the US — and, by extension, Donald Trump — has over 10,000 troops and 13 US military bases here. And how is it that the US effectively controls ‘our’ nuclear arsenal?

The answer: none of your damned business — at least according to British governments of any colour. It might be time we start thinking about what sovereignty actually looks like…

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

This post was originally published on Canary.