Over much of the last decade I have watched the Labour party’s policy and other positions on a range of issues related to national security. As the next general election approaches, we have seen several recent statements on these subjects. First, it was defence. Now, it is foreign policy. I know this is a newsletter about cyber policy, but my excuse for writing this post is that cyber policy is made in a wider context, so if we want to reflect on what UK cyber policy might be under a Labour government - which seems like a sensible thing to do - then we need to reflect on what that government’s foreign policy is likely to be.
The Shadow Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, had a recent oped in the Guardian, explaining Labour’s foreign policy approach to British voters. The framing slogan of the oped was ‘progressive realism’. Basically: Labour will aim to achieve realistic objectives, taking the world as they find it, but in doing so they will be motivated by progressive principles. This is perfectly reasonable framing within the domestic context. It signals the distance between Keir Starmer and his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, on issues of realism. It also signals a dividing line with the current Conservative government, on progressive principles.
The Lammy oped in the Guardian continued a long-running theme of Starmer’s leadership: Labour is now totally mainstream and totally sound on national security and defence, but it can also be more trusted than the Conservative incumbents to be sincerely pro-environment and pro-European (but not too much to scare away voters).
That Guardian oped is complemented by a longer form version in the U.S. foreign policy journal Foreign Affairs. This longer piece also invokes the concept of progressive realism. Personally, I think a more apt description of the approach outlined would be pragmatic (small ‘p’) progressivism, but I freely concede that this wouldn’t be as useful or euphonious as a slogan. The logic the piece advocates is that Labour would recognise the world as it is, and identify what can feasibly achieved to move in a progressive direction. Pragmatic or realist?
The Guardian piece was obviously aimed at reassuring British voters. Whilst some British voters read Foreign Affairs, Lammy’s longer piece is obviously aimed at a different, international readership. That’s actually a tricky challenge, as there is not one single international readership. Should the piece talk mostly to a U.S. readership, or should it speak to the wider world? And if it aimed at the former, should it try to reassure the foreign policy establishment of both parties, or double down on Labour’s progressive affinity with the Biden administration?
To its credit, Lammy’s piece doesn’t try to hedge either question with Johnsonian ‘cake-ist’ tactics. It aims squarely to outline areas on which Labour’s approach is very closely aligned to the Biden administration and then speaks to a wider global readership about how a Labour government would try to engage constructively and not make the mistakes of recent UK governments.
Aside from a line about the need for improved NATO burden sharing - which resonates across US politics - there is nothing you could say was a signal of pragmatic willingness to cooperate with a possible future Trump administraiton. Some might see this as calculated risk. I don’t think there is much of a risk. One very middle-of-the-road oped is hardly likely to make a difference (or even to register) in Trump world, and I don’t think anyone believes that a Labour government wouldn’t try to establish the most pragmatically constructive relationship it possibly could with whoever occupied the White House. Also, even though this is a long form piece for a US journal, it is still a publication from a Labour front-bencher in (almost certainly) a general election year. Labour won’t energise British progressives by publicly signalling a willingness to be pragmatic in working with a possible Trump administration.
A few other things struck me about the Foreign Affairs piece. First - and this is a niche cyber point - whilst the Foreign Affairs piece was published alongside the Guardian oped, it was virtually certain to have been drafted and submitted to Foreign Affairs earlier than the Guardian oped. (I’m assuming their timelines are longer.) There is a line in the Guardian oped that doesn’t appear in the Foreign Affairs piece. The Guardian oped line refers to the threat of yet ‘another cyber attack from a hostile state on UK soil’. That line moderately vexed me, because I thought it was an implicit acceptance of the framing of cyber espionage (particularly China’s cyber espionage) by the current Conservative government as an attack of UK democracy. I don’t think cyber espionage on political targets - China’s, the UK’s, or anyone else’s - should be interpreted as an attack. Catch the intrusion, remediate it, make it harder for foreign spies to do it again. Take other measures depending on context. But don’t make it into something it isn’t. The fact that only the presumably later-drafted Guardian piece has this form of words, makes me think that the UK government’s late March statement about China’s espionage is the key moment that explains the difference, proving to my mind that this interpretation is the correct one. But reasonable people may differ. (Am I wrong to interpret it this way? I readily concede that this in no way serves as a reliable guide to how Labour would approach cyber statecraft in office, but I don’t think it’s a brilliant indicator of how much it has played a part in opposition deliberations. Probably the overarching explanation is not wanting to be seen to sound softer on security threats than the incumbents.)
Second, I was interested in how the Foreign Affairs piece invoked history to support its arguments. It is by now a commonplace of the current Labour Party’s rhetoric that it will invoke Ernest Bevin as a symbol of how mainstream Labour now is - a strong global role, support for the nuclear deterrent, etc. But the Lammy piece - in a move that I thought was rhetorically deft, but perhaps historically a little more awkward - was to invoke Robin Cook as a great modern foreign secretary. The piece channelled Cook’s values and famous call for ethical foreign policy. But it also highlighted the uplift in UK development spending as a triumph on Cook’s watch, which I think kind of papers over what were reportedly somewhat scratchy relations between Cook’s FCO and Clare Short’s DFID.
Third, the Foreign Affairs version makes what I think are several entirely uncontroversial points that go with (rather than against) the grain of current UK foreign policy, albeit implicitly presenting them as differences with the incumbent Conservative government. One is that the AUKUS agreement should be the ‘floor’ not the ‘ceiling’ of broadening and deepening UK cooperation in the region. I don’t think anyone involved in current UK policy would disagree with that. Ditto on the UK’s China policy, the basic compete/cooperate framing is very similar to the current government’s. And, again consistent with current UK policy, the oped highlights the need for the UK to engage with the ‘Global South’ or ‘hedging middle’, so also expect there to be continuity between a Labour government and the current UK government on this ‘middle ground’ priority.
Finally, something a bit lighter. I couldn’t but wonder: is the excellent illustration - by Shonagh Rae - intended to be a little irreverent? It complements Lammy’s article with a depiction of lots of random crayon direction arrows & a man walking in the steps of his own shadow? It says to me: ‘which road should we take? Well, steady as she goes then!’ It made me smile anyway.