Domestic politics may take precedence during an election campaign. But politicians govern under the primacy of foreign policy. Robert Walpole – in many ways, our first prime minister – came to power on a promise to sort out the financial crash. He was felled by his failure to defend the European balance of power. William Pitt the Younger rose to office with plans to tackle corruption and the national debt, but his premiership was dominated by challenges from Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. David Lloyd George might have championed the People’s Budget but he really soared as a leader during the First World War. Tony Blair proclaimed a “new dawn” in 1997 but was derailed by Iraq. What fate, then, awaits Keir Starmer?
Unlike New Labour – which inherited only the Wars of the Yugoslav Succession – Starmer arrives into No 10 with two existing conflagrations, and at least two others in prospect. Russian aggression in Ukraine continues apace, as does the Israeli campaign to root out Hamas in Gaza. An Israeli attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon, whose rockets have displaced nearly 100,000 inhabitants in northern Israel, is more likely than not before the end of the year. It is also possible that the simmering tensions between the US, or its allies, and the People’s Republic of China over Taiwan or the South China Sea, will spiral out of control.
All of this is happening at a time of acute uncertainty about the direction of American politics. Donald Trump – after surviving an assassination attempt on 13 July – is still widely predicted to return the to the White House in November. He has threatened to reduce US support for Nato, an impression bolstered by Tuesday’s appointment of an even-more isolationist JD Vance to be his vice-presidential running mate. A Trump/Vance ticket is reason for anxiety. And, even though Joe Biden has resigned – and Kamala Harris is expected to replace him – there is still a big question-mark over America’s willingness to maintain its security umbrella in Europe at a time of domestic crisis and growing focus on the Indo-Pacific arena.
Starmer is facing the bleakest international environment of any prime minister in the 21st century, and in some way, since the middle of the Second World War.
It is just as well, then, that much of Labour’s programme is framed in terms of national security. Their election manifesto asserted that “keeping the country safe” in the face of threats from hostile actors such as Vladimir Putin was “the first duty of any government”. Failure in this area, the manifesto made clear, would render all of the party’s other missions redundant – the party is right.
There are some causes for optimism. David Lammy’s outreach to the Republicans ahead of a likely Trump victory in November was badly needed. In light of the Vance appointment it looks positively clairvoyant. Speaking to BBC Breakfast from Blenheim Palace on Thursday, before the fourth meeting of the European political community – the biggest gathering of European leaders in the UK in a generation – Lammy said: “I can find common ground with JD Vance.” On a trip to Washington before the election Lammy referred to the senator as his friend.
Meanwhile, the new Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has spoken of “securonomics”, a recognition that in the age of supply chain disruptions and geopolitical competition, the old globalisation shibboleths will no longer do. The commitment to an industrial strategy that articulates the need for the state to support critical sectors is also a step in the right direction.
And though Keir Starmer himself may have relatively little experience in foreign affairs, the distance he has placed between himself and Jeremy Corbyn – first with a clear condemnation of Russia’s poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in 2018, and with a forthright statement on his willingness to use the nuclear deterrent if necessary – bodes well.
These overtures are positive. But Starmer is facing a fractured world. He announced in Blenheim his intention to reset the UK’s relationship with Europe, cleaving closer to the continent and pivoting away from the Global Britain of his predecessors’ imagination. Deepening ties with France and Germany is a priority. But this does not come without its challenges. It makes sense to shore-up security collaboration across the channel, and the UK has a lot to offer in intelligence and counter-terrorism fields beyond what it provides through Nato. But defence production – where the economic potential for the UK appears greatest – is trickier to navigate. This is perhaps the area where the UK’s interests are least aligned with those of Brussels – which is concentrating on defence suppliers within the single market.
And, Lammy’s embrace of the progressive realist mindset to foreign policy may lay future traps. Deeper ties with Europe also means greater vulnerability to the continent’s whims. The example of the Horizon Research Programme, from which the EU suspended the UK for a time over disagreements to do with Northern Ireland, is a cautionary tale. Meanwhile, going after international corruption is likely to annoy leaders in the Global South. Increasing defence production and strengthening supply chains also necessitates strong export markets to sustain investment. Some of these sales may have to be to repressive regimes. The “progressive” and “realist” sides of Lammy’s doctrine may soon find themselves in conflict with one another.
Another tension looms. Labour’s position on China (softer than that of the outgoing government) and its hopes for close collaboration with the US are incompatible sensibilities. The Foreign Secretary’s links to the Republicans will only get him so far if he cannot offer Washington concrete measures against Beijing – in return for continued military engagement in Europe. This may not mean naval deployments, but it will certainly involve coordinated economic statecraft, including on export controls. It goes without saying that “de-coupling” from China (or at least “de-risking” in the way that America wants), though essential for our own security, will be costly and add to domestic woes. The case of Shein, the PRC fast-fashion retailer currently seeking to list on the FTSE 100 will be an early test case for where the new government stands on this issue.
But the greatest flaw in Labour’s foreign policy is the apparent absence, and here the outgoing government was no better, of any strategy for victory in Ukraine. Mere competence or dutiful fulfilment of alliance obligations under American leadership is no longer enough. Both Washington and Berlin have decided, for various reasons, to help Ukraine to avoid catastrophe but not to achieve anything that might look like a Russian defeat. The trouble is that Putin will not desist until his aim of undermining Ukraine as a whole is defeated, and he is forced to withdraw from all occupied territories. Russia never intended simply to annex more swathes of the country, and consequently cannot be appeased by handing these over or declining to recapture them. Putin wants to prevent any part of Ukraine from joining any part of the western system, be it the EU or Nato, and becoming a prosperous “anti-Russia” which might offer an alternative model to his rule at home.
If Putin succeeds in this aim the consequences for Europe will be horrendous. At the moment, the Russian forces facing the Baltic States are negligible. The units studied by Nato before 2022 are decimated, their equipment wrecked and crews slaughtered in Ukraine. The minute the war there ends, Putin will start to reconstitute and reinforce them. Unless Nato immediately restores credible deterrence, the three Baltic states would soon become uninhabitable. Moreover, the subjugation of Ukraine will lead to a fresh wave of millions of refugees westward, aggravating the already very fragile domestic politics of many polities here. The money we refused to spend on Ukraine will then have to be raised twice over to deal with the aggravated threat.
Matters may come to a head after November if Trump is elected and if he delivers on his vow to force Ukraine into a negotiated peace. But even a re-elected Democrat administration would be no panacea. If Russia is to be stopped, we Europeans can still hope for American support, but we will have to do the heavy lifting ourselves. Doing so will be far harder if we let one of the largest and most effective armies on the continent, that of Ukraine, go down to defeat.
This is where Britain, and Keir Starmer, not only can make a difference, but must make a difference. There is no other European leader capable of doing the job of leading a coordinated programme in support of Ukraine and containing Russia more widely. President Macron of France is largely a busted flush. The German chancellor Olaf Scholz is more afraid of provoking Russia than defeating it (and he is heavily embattled at home). Poland is robust, and getting stronger by the day, but still lacks Britain’s military and political heft, not least a nuclear deterrent.
So far, the new government has indicated it will do more, but not that it will do enough. Lammy’s trips to Sweden, Germany and Poland to shore up the northern flank are welcome, as are Starmer’s calls for more Nato spending. But when the Prime Minister told the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky that the change of government would “make no difference” in the level of support for his country, he sent exactly the wrong signal. Unless the election makes a big difference, on the lines described above, there is a real risk that Ukraine will fall.
Failure to articulate and implement a strategy for victory in Ukraine will cost not merely the country, but Labour dear. The chaotic scramble from Afghanistan the summer of 2021 was the result of many earlier mistakes, Republican and Democrat. But it helped to define Joe Biden’s foreign policy image. If Ukraine falls, the failure of the Conservative governments to build on Boris Johnson’s early and critical support for Kyiv will be partly to blame. However, the disaster will have happened on Starmer’s watch.
Deterring Russia will not win Labour the next election, but failing to do so would be this administration’s defining legacy. If the new government builds a whole “New Jerusalem” of homes and jobs it will earn nothing if Ukraine and parts of the Baltic fall to Putin. The resulting refugee influx and increased defence expenditure will render those triumphs nugatory. That said, if Keir Starmer does not build a single new house, or open any new school, or curb any more emissions, but manages to contain Vladimir Putin, then he will go down in history as one of our greatest prime ministers.
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