Cameroon shows that Britain must learn to stand up to its friends on the world stage

Aesop’s Fables teach us that a man is known by the company he keeps.

The foreign secretary has been on a charm offensive in recent weeks, waxing lyrical about Britain’s future place in the world, our long-standing alliance with France, our unparalleled network of friendships, and our commitment to democracy.

Jeremy Hunt has spoken of Britain becoming the “invisible chain” between democracies, and of the importance of strengthening multinational institutions to be able to better work together when we face a real and present threat.

Something is missing from his discourse. For, as J K Rowling so eloquently wrote, although it takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, it takes just as much to stand up to our friends.

Critical friendship is a crucial element of global diplomacy, so perhaps the foreign secretary feels that it goes without saying. But unfortunately, an awful lot of our friends do not share our values, and some hold only a very tenuous link to democracy.

Last week, an octogenarian President in a far off land was sworn in for his seventh term. His re-election campaign was marred by allegations of vote-rigging and intimidation.

It’s a deeply divided nation, where the fates of kidnapped school children are politicised by both sides in a separatist quarrel and linguistic divisions determine socio-economic futures, where armed civilian militias dominate the political landscape of a potentially secessionist region and regularly clash with the state military.

This is a conflict that is rarely, if ever, addressed by the UN, despite not one but two former colonisers sitting on the Council as permanent members. There are no EU sanctions – indeed, it is estimated that over 30 per cent of this nation’s exports go to EU countries.

While the death toll of his own citizens may be difficult to establish, this President leads a country where, within the last fortnight, an American missionary was shot and killed, and a renowned journalist has been arrested for treason for daring to report anything other than the state-sanctioned rationale for the killing.

Surely such a nation cannot be part of our network of friendships? Our allies would cast shame on us for giving tacit approval to such a regime through our inaction.

But this nation is Cameroon, a member of the Commonwealth and a country comprising former colonies of both France and Britain.

UK-based representatives of the Anglophone minority community of Cameroon regularly protest outside the Commonwealth Secretariat. They request that their country be expelled from the grouping for the systematic persecution they face from the Francophone majority, who control most of the levers of the state and are given significant support by the French government, our dear friends and allies across the Channel.

You might hope that Jeremy Hunt’s “invisible chain” between democracies, or our strong network of friendships and alliances, would have brought international attention and condemnation on Cameroon’s leadership.

It would appear not.

The Commonwealth is inaction personified, and representatives of the Cameroonian government are welcome still at Commonwealth events. Our French allies do nothing.

And the UK’s Africa minister’s statement on the recent elections offered no concerns at the democratic deficits of the country, instead merely requesting that the President work for a peaceable end to the separatist quarrel.

The bulk of Hunt’s vision of Britain’s place in the world hits the right tone. But without a strong, public commitment to stand up to our friends and our nearest allies, who sometimes act in complete conflict to our national values, our good works in other areas will always be overshadowed.

We will be let down by the company we keep, by which we should be proud to be judged and not found wanting.