What does Labour’s win mean for British foreign policy?
SIR KEIR STARMER enjoyed many strokes of luck en route to becoming Britain’s prime minister on July 5th. The diary of diplomacy has handed him two more. On July 9th Sir Keir and some of his most senior ministers left for a summit in Washington, DC, to mark NATO’s 75th anniversary. And on July 18th, just a fortnight into the job, Sir Keir will host a meeting of the European Political Community (EPC), a loose gathering of states in and around the European Union, at Blenheim Palace, a vast Baroque edifice where Winston Churchill was born.
These two events, and the EPC in particular, will give the new Labour government an immediate stage to signal where Britain’s foreign policy will stay the same and where it will shift. They will also reinforce the biggest change of all, to the country’s reputation. Almost overnight an exaggerated image of Britain as a chaotic clown-show—true under Boris Johnson, a bit less so for Rishi Sunak—has flipped to an idealised image of stable government led by a serious-minded centrist.
On most of the foreign-policy fundamentals—principally Nato, Ukraine and the relationships with America and China—there is lots of continuity between the new government and the old. In Washington, Sir Keir affirmed Britain’s “unshakable” support for the alliance. Re-embracing NATO was an essential part of his project to make Labour fit for power again after the tenure of Jeremy Corbyn, his leftist predecessor.
Nor will British support for Ukraine waver, Sir Keir told Volodymyr Zelensky, the country’s president. The new government says it will stick with its predecessor’s promise to spend £3bn per year ($3.8bn; 0.1% of gdp) on the country “for as long as needed”. As an early signal of intent, on July 7th John Healey, the new defence secretary, marked Ukrainian Navy Day in Odessa with Mr Zelensky, where he announced a new shipment of Brimstone anti-armour missiles, AS-90 self-propelled artillery pieces and other kit.
Labour is an Atlanticist party, and it is determined to keep the Anglo-American relationship on the road in the event that Joe Biden loses power in November. The risks of a flare-up with Donald Trump are real: he developed a fixation with Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, in his previous administration. But David Lammy, the new foreign secretary and a frequent visitor to Washington, has sought to build bridges with Mr Trump’s circle and has said that European states will be required to contribute more to the continent’s defence whoever wins. “I tell my European friends, don’t personalise this. ‘Do more’ is the American ask whoever wins,” he said recently. The new government has promised to increase defence spending to 2.5% of gdp, without pledging to do so by 2030 as the Tories had.
As for China, Labour has said it will conduct a full audit of its relationship with the country. In reality the trajectory of the Tories’ policy is likely to continue. That implies an attempt to maintain openness towards consumer-goods trade (although Rachel Reeves, the new chancellor, has made hawkish noises about imports of subsidised Chinese-made electric vehicles), while taking a sceptical view of Chinese investment in nuclear, telecoms and other sensitive areas.
If the continuities are many, the breaks with the past are also real. The most immediate shift is in relations with the EU, where Labour hopes for much warmer ties. The new government has not wasted time: at the weekend Mr Lammy visited his counterparts in Germany, Poland and Sweden. But the EPC meeting is the real gift.
The EPC is more an event than an institution; no formal communiqué means no late-night haggling over texts. Instead there will be discussions on migration, energy and European security, and hours of bilateral meetings—the perfect occasion for a new government to turn the page on the introspection and discourtesy that marked the Brexit years.
Labour has ruled out rejoining the EU, the single market or the customs union (were that even on offer). But as well as deals on cross-border trade in food, and closer ties in education and research, it does want a new form of security-and-defence co-operation agreement. There are signals the EU’s leadership are keen to talk: Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign-affairs chief, has suggested that Mr Lammy should attend a gathering of the bloc’s foreign ministers. The problems will come over issues such as supply chains and energy, which risk brushing up against the single market, says Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank.
Europe is not the only area where a change in tone will be apparent. Labour was wounded by a marked loss of support among British Muslim voters in the election, triggered by the party’s perceived equivocation over Israel’s war in Gaza. Sir Keir told Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, on July 7th that statehood is Palestinians’ “undeniable right”.
Labour hopes for better relations with the global south, too. Among other critiques of the Tory government, Mr Lammy points to a troubled merger of Britain’s aid ministry and the Foreign Office, and to Mr Johnson’s tin-eared recitation of a colonial-era Rudyard Kipling poem while visiting a temple in Myanmar. A descendant of enslaved people in Guyana, Mr Lammy has spoken candidly of Britain’s colonial past. Labour also plans a greater emphasis on climate diplomacy; Mr Sunak was reluctant to attend Cop, an annual global emissions-reduction summit.
This blend, of greater activism in some areas and marked continuity in others, reflects an approach to foreign policy that Mr Lammy has called “progressive realism”—an attempt to revive the crusading optimism of Sir Tony Blair’s administration while recognising that Britain is less influential, and the geopolitical backdrop less benign, than it was back in 1997. But the immediate change is less about Labour’s doctrine, more about Britain’s international standing. Policy will move a bit. Perception will shift faster and further. ■
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