By Eliot Wilson
Labour’s foreign policy is in need of less idealism and more expertise if it is to survive a world gripped by crisis, writes Eliot Wilson
It is nearly 61 years since former US secretary of state Dean Acheson said in a speech at West Point that Britain “has lost an empire and has not yet found a role”. At the time, it stung because Acheson, a Wasp-y, white-shoe lawyer, was regarded as a friend; but it also stung because it had a distinct resonance.
Since Brexit took full force in January 2020, Britain’s place in the world has once again been subject to fierce debate: Acheson’s thesis still haunts us. Wherever one stands, however, it is easy to sense a degree of hubris in David Lammy’s recent announcement that an incoming Labour government would appoint a “new special envoy dedicated to Middle East peace”. Looking back at the effects of the McMahon-Hussein correspondence, the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration, the UK may not be ideally suited to the role.
We have been here before. Sir Tony Blair appointed his close friend and fundraiser Lord Levy as his emissary to the region in 1998—without major geopolitical success—while Gordon Brown replaced him in 2007 with former UN official Michael Williams, who lasted only a year. Blair himself was the envoy for the Quartet (UN, EU, US and Russia), with his own office in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, but he made little impact; an aide to the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas described him as ”useless, useless, useless”.
Lammy is not good at nuance. Nevertheless, he admitted that our influence in the Middle East “has limits” but pledged to recognise Britain’s “historical responsibility”, a loaded phrase in an age of claims for reparations and hereditary guilt. The idea of a special envoy has also been raised by the Conservative chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Alicia Kearns, previously a Whitehall foreign policy official. Given the UK’s record of mediation in the region, however, it hints at an unrealistic conception of the country’s influence.
I fear that this ineffective gesture belies a greater weakness in Labour’s foreign policy. Lammy’s broadest vision has been April’s “Britain Reconnected”, which is heavy on idealism and lighter on practical measures. But the shadow foreign secretary has no real policy background, his ministerial experience spanning five domestic departments, and he is prone to reckless and provocative outbursts which might sit uncomfortably with his potential role.
His frontbench team offers equally slim pickings: Stephen Doughty (Cardiff North and Penarth) worked for Oxfam International but there is no other significant professional experience or academic expertise among the five MPs. Three were aides to other MPs; two were social workers.
The problem goes wider. Sir Keir Starmer has made few bold or original statements on foreign policy, and his approach to issues has tended to be process-driven and legalistic, hardly surprising for a former director of public prosecutions. He is not surrounded by a brains trust of strategic thinkers: Blair is believed to have opened doors for him in the Middle East, and Starmer’s head of international policy, the respected Mark Simpson, is a veteran Brussels wheeler-dealer, but a great deal of responsibility is falling on the chief of staff, Sue Gray. The former Cabinet Office head of propriety and ethics is a skilled operator, and has impressed Labour insiders with her professionalism and dedication, but she cannot do everything.
Blair’s approach in 1997 is an instructive contrast. His chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, had spent 15 years in the Diplomatic Service; head of policy was the young but brilliant David Miliband, educated at Oxford and MIT, who had written on foreign policy; and Blair quickly brought in experienced FCO hand Robert Cooper, a passionate advocate of liberal interventionism, as his special adviser.
Labour feels underprepared for foreign policy, both in ideas and execution. Starmer’s rote adherence to our international alliances is thin gruel in a world gripped by what historian Adam Tooze calls “polycrisis”, and the party has no engaging, experienced figure to construct a coherent narrative of how a Labour government would interact with the world. Lammy has made some rough sketches, but he and Starmer will need much greater focus and detail if they are to avoid a shock to the system in government.
