David Lammy sets out Labour's foreign policy

In a speech to the Institute for Government, the shadow foreign secretary spoke of how he would run foreign policy, but signalled few areas of radical change

A busy week for the Institute for Government: after the shadow leader of the House of Commons, Lucy Powell, set out her portfolio on Tuesday, it was the turn of David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, to address the think tank on the international policy of a future Labour government. If you want to watch the whole speech it is here.

Lammy has been busy recently. He has just finished a frenetic visit to Washington DC where he was making a conscious effort to reach out to leading figures in the Republican Party, and it has been striking how deliberately he has sought to mitigate remarks he has made over the years about Donald Trump, now that the possibility of a second term in the White House is very real. He met Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the Trump presidential campaign, and gave a speech at the Hudson Institute, one of the older conservative think tanks in Washington. At the beginning of the month, he had appeared “in conversation” at the Atlantic Council. This is obviously a sign that Labour’s campaign is stepping up a gear.

I will be honest at the beginning and say I have not been impressed by Lammy’s tenure of the foreign affairs brief so far. He is undoubtedly an intelligent and able politician, and a passionate advocate, but I have always found him rash and intemperate, tending to take one or two rhetorical steps too far, and I think those are disadvantages in a foreign secretary. Recently I wrote in The Spectator that Lammy’s past uncompromising criticisms of Donald Trump, whether you agree with them or not, will not easily be forgotten by the thin-skinned, grudge-friendly president. But in any event I think Lammy is too keen to parade his high-mindedness, yet aspires to a job which inevitably involves episodes of uncomfortable, inglorious compromise.

There are a few of my essays from this site which I should flag as complementary reading if anyone is keen to immerse themselves. They deal with the balance between idealism and reality in foreign policy; the benefit and costs of close alliances with foreign governments; how well lawyers have run the Foreign Office; foreign secretaries succeeding to the premiership; United States relations with China; and the philosophy of the United Nations.

At this stage in the electoral cycle, with an election probably no more than six months away and all the data pointing to a Labour victory, voters are entitled to expect the opposition at least to start making specific pledges and policies about how they would act in office. Manifesto commitments are regarded as much as hostages to fortune in the current political climate, and Sir Keir Starmer has looked like a man playing an ultra-cautious game, giving his opponents as little ammunition as possible. When I analysed Lucy Powell’s speech about Labour’s approach to the legislative process, I was critical of her reliance on a vague assurance that Labour ministers and MPs would be more effective and more ethical than the current Conservative government. This is a very weak platform from which to appeal for support and there is no reason we should take it particularly seriously.

Lammy resorted to a similar trope on several occasions. “For too long, he argued, “the Foreign Office has been seen by the outside world and the rest of government as generalist dilettantes.” Although he was careful to praise the “knowledge, professionalism and bravery” of civil servants, he set out a familiar list of vague aspirations: the Diplomatic Service must shed its “elite” image and be seen as more attractive to potential employers, the department must “rediscover the art of grand strategy”, diplomats must become more familiar with and more skilled in technology, especially AI, and the Foreign Office must co-operate more effectively with other Whitehall departments. And, of course, it must embody “mission-driven government”, one of the fundamental elements of Sir Keir Starmer’s offer to the electorate.

Roy Jenkins, the grandee’s grandee of the progressive left, once said that a statement is only interesting if one can imagine a sane man saying the opposite. By his test, most of Lammy’s general aspirations are uninteresting. Of course diplomats should be more familiar with technology, should seem less of an impenetrable elite, should be better at thinking in strategic terms and should work more closely with colleagues across government. No foreign secretary would start his or her tenure saying anything to the opposite effect. But they are airy hopes for improvement, and they are, importantly, utterly impervious to measurement.

In his defence, Lammy did touch on some institutional changes. He proposes a stronger role for the Policy Unit to provide central direction and strategic thinking for the Foreign Office leadership, an attempt to address accusations that a great deal of long-term planning has been absorbed by the Cabinet Office and especially by the National Security Secretariat. This will make the unit, he claims, “the place to go for the sharpest geopolitical minds” and allow the department to “deliver the sharp, coherent international strategy which the country urgently needs”.

Lammy also floated the idea of a “soft power council”, an organisation “which brings together leading figures from across arts, culture, creative industries and academia to work together to advance the national interest”. This will support the work of the BBC and the British Council in using the UK’s non-military and often non-governmental assets to promote foreign policy.

Finally, he pledged to upgrade the status of the International Academy (formerly the Diplomatic Academy) to a College of British Diplomacy which will “set the global gold standard for both diplomacy and development”. This will teach basic courses in language and history but also encompass “the key diplomatic issues of the future—such as climate science and AI”. It will be open not only to civil servants across Whitehall but also to students from friendly countries, and will be cost-neutral, financed by fees for students from overseas and “through generating partnerships with the private sector”.

These are sensible proposals, if hardly revolutionary. The College of British Diplomacy has some of the elements of the Defence Academy, the Ministry of Defence’s umbrella organisation which delivers professional training and development to UK and international armed forces, civil servants and students from the private sector. It should be noted, though, that the Defence Academy has been operating since 2002, and its oldest constituent part dates back to 1772: developing expertise and excellent, especially to a degree which is attractive and profitable internationally, takes time. A “soft power council” will be regarded with the kind of scepticism which all government advisory bodies are regarded unless it proves itself as effective: the rebranded Board of Trade launched last year has still to convince fully that it is making a major contribution to policy. The line between genuine expert input into how government does its job and a self-aggrandising talking shop is often a fine one.

As for the enhanced strategy unit, no minister or civil servant believes there should be less strategic thinking, that government should act more according to short-term considerations and with less attention to broader imperatives. There are two balancing acts for Lammy to achieve if he becomes foreign secretary. The first is managing the centrality of strategic thinking which he stressed in his speech while also, in his own words, “plac[ing] greater emphasis on delivering tangible outcomes to demonstrate diplomacy’s impact”. The two are not in direct opposition but can be subject to tension when ministerial attention and time is limited.

The second relates to Lammy’s desire to work more closely with the rest of Whitehall. He acknowledged that “foreign policy” in its broadest sense is not solely the preserve of the Foreign Office: the Ministry of Defence, the Treasury, the Department for Business and Trade, the Home Office and, of course, the Cabinet Office are intimately involved, as are other departments at different times. The role of the Cabinet Office has been important for decades, because of its role in supporting the work of the prime minister, but that role has been institutionally significant since the creation of the National Security Council in 2010. The body created by David Cameron exists, according to the official list of cabinet committees, to “consider matters relating to national security, foreign policy, defence, trade strategy, international relations, development, resilience and resource security”. Given this regular and intimate interaction between departments, the development of strategy within the FCDO can never happen in isolation and will always be at least partially contingent on the actions and policies of others.

Away from organisational changes and hopes for doing things “better”, what would a new Labour government’s foreign policy actually look like? Lammy has set out some guidelines in the past. In March 2023, he wrote a paper for the Fabian Society entitled Britain Reconnected: A foreign policy for security and prosperity at home, while in April this year he published an article in the respected journal Foreign Affairs called “The Case for Progressive Realism”. He spends a lot of time acknowledging the past mistakes of British foreign policy and describing the major challenges facing us currently—the war in Ukraine, the threat of China’s hegemony, friction in our relationship with the European Union—and proposes some solutions.

In his Foreign Affairs article, he declared that “European security will be the Labour Party’s foreign policy priority”. In his IfG speech last week, he touched on the notion of a “UK-EU Security pact” which he has previously pledged will include not just foreign affairs and defence but issues of economic, climate, health, energy and cyber security. However, the party’s room for manoeuvre is limited by the fact that Sir Keir Starmer has ruled out seeking to rejoin the European single market or customs union, and will not restore freedom of movement. Labour also wants to reach a so-called sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement with the EU to lessen disruption to trade and potentially solve the anomalous situation of Northern Ireland under the Windsor Framework. However, it has been reported that the European Union will only accept this kind of deal if its provisions are subject to the oversight of the European Court of Justice. This involvement could be modest, but Starmer has been clear that he does not want the UK to be a “rule-taker”, which presents him and his team with a political headache.

Lammy also wants to “revitalise the faltering international system”, and spoke of the need to reform the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in particular. He has previously expressed support for India and Brazil becoming permanent members of the UN Security Council, and for an initiative to modify the use of the veto by permanent members. He also wants the World Bank to focus more on helping developing nations to create clean energy infrastructure, and the IMF to act as a counterweight to Chinese investment as well as aligning with the values of Western nations in terms of education, healthcare and governance.

These institutional reforms are ambitious, to say the least. Reforming the United Nations is a near-impossible task, as I wrote recently, because ultimate power lies in the hands of a security council comprising self-interested nations who will use their veto powers to protect their own policies. There have been repeated attempts to make even modest changes over the past decades, and none has come to fruition.

A revised relationship with the European Union is slightly closer within reach. The EU/UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement which was concluded in 2021 will be subject to a five-year review by both parties in 2026, which will be an opportunity for a Starmer government to reassess the details of its relationship with the EU. But Labour will want to do more than that and do it more quickly. I have been critical of the party’s eagerness to conclude an agreement on defence, as I think there is a significant risk of complicating, or perhaps damaging, the operation of NATO (which in my view should be our primary international security context). Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see what Lammy can achieve within the political constraints of a pledge not to revisit Brexit.

Elections are rarely decided on foreign policy, and it is unlikely that this one will be. Nevertheless, an observer is entitled to ask how things would be measurably different under a Labour government. If we set aside technical, institutional changes and a sense among Labour politicians that they will be more effective and more ethical, the major departures are modest. Labour will not change the UK’s policy on Ukraine, and will seek to maintain the so-called “special relationship” with the United States, whether that is with a re-elected President Joe Biden or a returning President Donald Trump. David Lammy might find it challenging to forge close links with a Trump administration because of remarks he has made about the former president in the past, but he is certainly putting in a great deal of effort. And there is little sign of a significant approach in policy towards China.

This leaves us essentially with relations with the European Union. There is no doubt that these have sometimes been strained in the years since the Brexit referendum in 2016. It is true that the Labour Party does not have the baggage which many Conservative politicians bring to dealing with the EU, nor is there as long-standing or complicated debate within Labour about Europe. Nevertheless, Sir Keir Starmer seems to believe, rightly or wrongly, that Brexit is in principle a settled matter and there is no political mileage to be made in re-opening the issue of the UK’s membership of the EU. This will necessarily restrict Lammy’s freedom of action as foreign secretary when it comes to considering new agreements with the EU.

Those inclined to support Labour will see much to applaud in Lammy’s promises of effectiveness and high-minded service, while those of us who are towards the other end of the political spectrum will remain sceptical that a new Labour government will really be able to conduct itself in a very different way from its predecessor. What Lammy’s speech reflected, more than anything else, is a profound sense of caution within Labour, an avoidance of concrete pledges and a determination to give no hostages to fortune. Parties need not engineer differences in foreign policy simply for effect, but at a time when the geopolitical situation is volatile and the interaction of states is changing in kind as well as degree, we should not be anticipating a revolution in British foreign policy. It is not impossible, but the onus is on Starmer and Lammy to surprise.