Foreign Policy at the Conservative Party Conference

Those with an interest in foreign affairs in the broadest sense - diplomacy, defence, development and soft power - will have found plenty to engage with at both Labour and Conservative Party Conferences this year.   From the set-piece speeches by frontbenchers, VIP guests - including the academic Niall Ferguson - and fringe events, there was more than enough to give a good flavour of where the parties are coming from.

This year, I was at the Conservatives’ conference in Birmingham and also had the opportunity to chair two panels: one on what sovereignty means as far as today’s technologies are concerned, the other on AUKUS. Do take a look at the blogs on these here and here.

But what of the Conservatives’ “main event”?  You couldn’t miss the strong emphasis on defence and Ukraine, with the eye-catching announcement on the “Britannia Shield” initiative, on which our Senior Research Fellow Ed Arnold has commented here and guest appearances not least by a senior Ukrainian MP and a Ukrainian children’s choir.   

So much, so (perhaps) unsurprising, given that the Conservatives have long positioned themselves as the party of defence, even if since the end of the Cold War, they were in power for much of the time in which defence spending was allowed to fall as part of a - broadly welcomed - “peace dividend”. In today’s more unstable global environment, support for strengthening defence has risen across parties (and with the British public), though the Conservatives argued again during this Conference that the Government has not matched its rhetoric with the required funding.

As far as Ukraine is concerned, the Conservatives remain proud of their swift and substantial commitment initially under Prime Minister Boris Johnson.  It remains the case that support for Ukraine remains strong and bipartisan. Although Ukraine has fallen down the list of foreign policy priorities for the British people in BFPG’s annual survey this year, national security in the face of Russian threats remains at the top, suggesting if anything that support for Ukraine is more durable now that it has moved from being seen more through a humanitarian prism to being more directly tied in to vital British national interests.

This Conference also revealed a significant difference not just in degree, but in the language - and arguably fundamental approach - of the two parties.   By including Helen Whately, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, in the foreign policy and defence segment, the Conservatives emphasised in terms that for them foreign and domestic policy were intrinsically linked, specifically that savings in domestic spending (ie welfare) were essential to pay for increased defence.

But the differentiation with Labour goes further, in both tone and substance.   Shadow Foreign Secretary Tom Tugendhat said that Britain’s approach to foreign policy should be built on “right, might and money”.  Britain had to exercise its right to defend its interests; this called for might (soft power was not enough and there was no mention of development); this called for more money for defence, at the expense of domestic spending.   On defence spending, Tugendhat mentioned specifically AUKUS [LINK to my blog] and the need to strengthen both the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force.

The Shadow Foreign Secretary insisted that this vision was not isolationist: he would want the UK to build relationships and alliances with other countries, but always to put Britain first.   In this context, he included both defence (eg the JEF) and trade (eg CPTPP) as the kind of collaborative ventures to support.   We should decide what’s best on the basis of “what works” for Britain, not abandoning human rights but not slavishly following contrived interpretations of international law either.   Tugendhat specifically mentioned the Government’s proposed Chagos deal as being based on a false and politically-motivated interpretation of international law.   

In addition to criticising the Government and his opposite number Ed Miliband (notably on Iran and net zero) for weakening the UK’s position, Tugendhat was critical of the official FCDO for “behaving too much like an international NGO” more concerned with international law than justice or the UK’s own interests.   Diplomats should be “negotiat[ing] better deals for Britain” and FCDO should be the “long arm of British strength around the world”.   The idea that trade alone would “tame the tyrants” was an illusion. Faced by autocratic adversaries, hard power, not soft power or values, was the “entry ticket” to this conversation. 

All in all, this was not the language colleagues would have heard a week earlier at the Labour Party Conference, although there is still much broad common ground on, for example, Ukraine, AUKUS and resilience across the mainstream parties.   But what kind of foreign policy were the Conservatives describing?   It’s definitely not the internationalism which Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband represents.   Tugendhat is right that it isn’t internationalist and the emphasis on alliances and collaboration was repeated throughout the speech.   The choice of Niall Ferguson as a “star” guest might suggest it’s verging on the expeditionary and “neocon”.   But perhaps in reality what the Conservatives want their foreign policy under Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat and James Cartledge to be seen as is “realist”.  If so, it may be heading back to the centre of gravity of where traditional British - and Western - foreign policy has normally been.    Our readers can decide whether that’s the right place for it.

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