And taxpayers are on the hook.
Britain’s current government has hardly hidden its internationalist credentials. One of the first—and disastrously unpopular—decisions the Labour Party made upon entering office was to hand control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Implementing the recommendations made by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the government formalized a deal that gives control of the islands, which Britain bought for £3 million in 1968 (equivalent to roughly £45 million in 2025), while leasing back control of the Diego Garcia military base for £101 million ($137 million) per year for 99 years. Britain, in turn, allows the United States to operate the base.
Somehow, we ended up losing a strategic string of islands and paying £1 billion for the pleasure.
Then, last month, the government announced a new deal with the Spanish government over Gibraltar, a 2.6 square mile headland in the south of Spain, over which Britain has retained sovereignty since 1713. This new deal gives Spain control over border checks at the airport, currently managed by the British military, allowing Spanish officials to deny British citizens access to their own territory.
David Lammy, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, has often referred to his approach to international diplomacy as “progressive realism,” a strategy founded on the belief that we need to be “honest about assumptions the West made in the past that turned out to be wrong.” This revisionism includes, according to Lammy, “climate diplomacy,” “European security,” and—crucially—the UK becoming a “leader in development” by “trading with other countries to build long-term win-win partnerships—rather than following an outdated model of patronage.”
International trade is good for everyone, and dismantling barriers to economic growth is no doubt a positive. But the proposed methods adopted by this government appear to be less of rational self-interest and more like self-flagellation. For example, last month, the government met with a delegation from Caribbean nations to discuss “slavery reparations,” spurred on by the UK agreeing last year at the Commonwealth summit to participate in “inclusive conversations about reparations for slavery.”
This issue is too thorny to be dealt with here, but the key takeaway is that these moves are evidently driven by Lammy’s “progressive realism” philosophy, and are indicative of a wider belief in “global equity” as a form of justice.
The government’s recent decision to sign the Sevilla Commitment should therefore come as no surprise. A product of the United Nations’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the commitment seeks to fix the “funding gaps” for projects covered by the SDGs, including (among others) climate change and debt burdens.
The headline goals perfectly align with Lammy’s philosophy, and by extension, that of the government: setting a minimum tax level relative to GDP; and scaling up climate finance to £1 trillion ($1.3 trillion) by 2035. While the commitment (also referred to as the “Sevilla Compromise”) is not legally binding and not expected to compel any action in the immediate term, it is telling for two reasons. First, it was agreed unanimously by all UN members except the United States; and second, it undermines Britain’s capacity to act as a sovereign nation in the management of its economy.
The first of these points matters a great deal; at a time of greater international instability and an increasingly hostile global stage, it is naïve to think that all other nations are acting in good faith, while presuming it is irrelevant that the most powerful nation is not signing up to this commitment. America and Great Britain, under our current government, have increasingly divergent interests, and that is only damaging to one of the two.
Given that the United States withdrew from the preparatory process of the Fourth International on Financing for Development (FfD4), the lack of a signature is evidently not a consequence of the contents of the Sevilla Commitment itself. It is rather a result of two things: first, the stance taken by President Trump, during both his terms, to stand aloof from international agreements that undermine economic and political sovereignty; and second, the inability to reconcile the current administration’s political priorities with the FfD4’s intentions, claiming it “crosses many of our longstanding red lines.”
But it’s the second factor that should be of greatest concern to friends of liberty. Britain’s tax-to-GDP ratio is currently roughly 35%, and while the Sevilla Commitment advocates for a minimum of 15%, this does align with a broader international shift that is increasingly hostile to low-tax economies—including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s push for a global minimum corporation tax of 15%.
Sure, Britain’s tax system will not be under immediate threat, but it is the bundle of tax recommendations in the Sevilla Commitment that are disconcerting. The Commitment uses phrases like “making polluters pay,” and, with the £1 trillion climate financing commitment, it suggests that punitive taxes on key commodities like oil will increase. British gasoline prices are already over-inflated: for every liter of diesel sold in the UK, 52.95p is fuel duty. VAT at 20% is charged on the total price, including the fuel duty. As of writing, that means close to 45% of the cost of a liter of diesel is tax.
The substance of these taxes might be worth supporting if that is the stated will of the people, but in the absence of any public consultation or consideration on this matter, the political consequences must be paid attention to. Britain’s political system rests on a key tenet—that no parliament may bind its successor—and for that reason, tying Britain’s tax codes to an internationally-directed program is antithetical to our traditions. Prosperity relies on liberty—this commitment respects neither.
