Dr Robin Niblett CMG
Welcome to Chatham House. Delighted you could join us today, where we’re going to have the opportunity to hear from Lisa Nandy MP, the Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign Policy and Commonwealth Affairs, lay out the Labour Party’s approach to foreign policy, its thinking about the future. And obviously the timing of her first formal foreign policy speech, laying out the Labour Party’s thinking, comes in the context of the release of the government’s integrated review a couple of weeks ago, its Defence Command Paper subsequently. And so, I think it’s an excellent moment for us and for our members at Chatham House to be able to compare and perhaps contrast the two approaches that are taking place between the two major parties in the United Kingdom. So, thank you very much, Lisa, for joining us, we’re really pleased that you would come and share your thoughts with us, with our members, and our guests today.
Let me just remind everyone, perhaps self-evidently, that this meeting is on the record, and you are welcome to tweet away, or other social media ways of sharing your reactions and thoughts. If you wish to use on Twitter the #CHEvents, please do. This will be a conversation, it’s – I’ll hear some remarks, we will, from Lisa Nandy in a minute, laying out the main themes that she and the party have developed. But then we’ll engage in a conversation, with me initially, and obviously bringing you, our members, into the conversation as quickly as possible thereafter. So, please use the ‘Q&A’ function for that purpose today, it’s at the bottom of your screen. Do not use the ‘Chat’ function or raised hand, which will not be the places that we will be looking at. We hopefully will be able to draw you in through the Q&A function, as we go forward.
Let me just say, first of all, Lisa Nandy obviously has held this position since Keir Starmer became leader of the Labour Party. She is a key figure within the Labour Party at the moment, having made a very significant push of her own for the leadership position when it came up, and getting quite a bit of support. She was first elected as the MP for Wigan back in 2010. She has held a number of front bench roles and positions, including as Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. She also came a little bit from the think tank community early in her career, having worked in the charitable sector and having established a think tank, the Centre For Towns, which I think captures for you both her, and I think, as I understand it, the party’s sense of wanting to engage foreign policy with local communities, but we’ll hear more about that in a minute.
Lisa, again, welcome, thank you very much for joining us. We look forward to your opening thoughts and then to engaging in conversation. Over to you.
Lisa Nandy MP
Thank you so much, Robin. When I took up this post 12 months ago, I made it my mission to bring about a values-based approach to China and a robust approach to Russia, and to waste no time building relationships with leaders across the world, who share our aims to strengthen democracy at home and defend it abroad. It is a challenging age, and Britain must step up. But today I want to talk to you about something else, to lay out what lies at the core of our approach to foreign policy, to explain what drives us now, and what will drive us in government.
And it starts in Halifax, where this time last year, I was in a café in my wellies, in torrential rain, listening to the owner, in tears, as she described the second set of floods that had devastated her business in just three years. She didn’t mention COP26 once, but this year, we will host a global conference where we will choose whether to allow harm and loss to be inflicted on more families like hers, or choose change. It’s a stark reminder that the global and the local are one and the same, or, as C. L. R. James once put it, “genuine internationalism must be based on the national scene.”
Visit any town in the UK and you see, in the everyday lives of millions of people, examples like this that should sound the alarm. The man in my surgery shocked to his core, cheated out of his lifesavings by a criminal gang whose tentacles stretch across the globe, the football fans who fought for a year to save their loved local club after it was thrown away for a gambling debt by financiers on the other side of the world, and the steelworkers who stand to lose their jobs because the get-rich-quick activities of a financial whizz-kid, with unparalleled access to government, has created a bubble that eventually burst on the other side of the world. These are stark reminders that the world beyond our shores and our ability to mould and shape it affect the lives of people at home, to an extraordinary degree.
But why then more than the economy, more than education, more than health, is foreign policy so often discussed and agreed in closed rooms, without reference to the people affected? The debates are separate, the worlds are disconnected. When was the last time our great foreign policy institutions debated these issues in towns across Britain?
Now, I want to make the case today that this gulf is a direct threat to the security and prosperity of our country. That it has cost us the support and consent of the British people for our activities overseas, holding back our ability to make positive and lasting change in the world. And it has led us to make choices that have caused nothing short of devastation at home, writing off people and places in every nation and region of the United Kingdom, and tugging at what Orwell calls the invisible chain that binds our nations together.
We seek power in order to change this, and I want to set out today how we will do it. Beginning with a rejection of the uncritical embrace of economic globalisation in the 1980s, a model that handed so much power to capital that, by the late 90s, it had convinced the Labour Government that this model of globalisation was not a choice, but a fate. It ushered in an era of flexible labour markets and deregulation to untie the hands of business, as the then Prime Minister described it in his famous Chicago speech. And in a sink or swim world, those who were not swift to adapt, slow to complain, open, willing and able to change, found themselves on the wrong side of history.
And this is how places like Jackson, Kentucky, made memorable to millions through J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, and Wigan in Lancashire, known globally for Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier, came to be stripped of their vitality, their purpose, their inheritance, seen no longer as contributors, but as the problem itself. Their wages too high, their demands too many, and so the work was transferred to company – countries where this problem was removed, and the dignity of labour became a private, not political, concern with questions of ethics handed to the market to decide.
Less than two decades later, on both sides of the Atlantic, the people of those places delivered their verdict on that approach, but four years on from those political earthquakes and where are we now? More adrift than ever in a world defined by greater challenges, chiefly the rise of China, the climate emergency, and new forms of conflicts. With a foreign policy that has failed to defend the interests of people across our four nations, pandering to the Trump administration, even as shattering tariffs were imposed on the Scotch whisky industry, recklessly cavalier about the impact of a paper-thin Brexit agreement on the Welsh farming industry, shamefully using the Good Friday Agreement as a bargaining chip, threatening the security of people in Northern Ireland, and slowly, little-by-little, undermining support for the union itself.
This is a government whose Global Britain policy was silent on the deep discontent in towns across the country. The latest big idea is to relocate 500 Civil Servants from London to Darlington. But where is their assessment of the assets and potential in Darlington? This is a town that gave the world the first passenger steam railway, an engineering company that built bridges across the world from Sydney to the Humber, and lays claim to the creation of our country’s first national newspaper. It once stood at the centre of the world. Where is their future plan that matches that proud history?
Instead of healing these wounds, the government has sought to weaponize them, based on an imagined idea of working-class communities that is utterly at odds with the views and aspirations of those who live in them. So, instead of good jobs and fair trade, we get wave machines to deter asylum seekers, pork-barrel grant schemes handed out to high streets by Politicians who never leave Whitehall, and Ministers who wrap themselves in flags and berate the BBC for failing to sufficiently do the same.
It shows a contempt for people that reminds me of the time Grant Shapps once famously promised beer and bingo, helping hardworking people do more of the things they enjoy. And in the end, I think this is the fatal flaw in the government’s approach. At heart, I think that they believe that foreign policy has absolutely nothing to do with people in Darlington or Saltcoats, but our relationship with China is more central to the factory operative, earning £8.72 an hour in Stockton than any high street grant handed out from Whitehall.
And for all the faux flags waving, there is no patriotic vision for those people or places, for all the talk of levelling up, the grubby details emerging about Greensill Capital, China’s spotlight on a government that appears more than content to allow this system to persist, a system which allows a chosen few with unparalleled access to the power to milk the system until it breaks. And they can take risks, happy in the knowledge that if they win, they win big, but if they lose, it is never them, but people in towns like Rotherham and Hartlepool who will shoulder the appalling losses. Perhaps this is why, in the end, they are so relaxed about a decade, which has left us with dwindling influence abroad, and weakened foundations at home.
But I’m here today to tell you that it doesn’t have to be like this. We can build an agenda for Britain that matches the ambition of the people in it, big and generous, not small and petty, measured not in the number of our flags, but in the health of our children, the strength of our communities, the dignity of our workforce, and the security of our nation. That will be the benchmark for the success of our foreign policy.
So, first and foremost, the next Labour Government will make national security our top priority, to defend the British people from new and traditional threats. We will protect our armed forces, take action to defend our democracy, and work with partners across NATO and the EU to deal with Russian aggression. The defence and security of the British people is written into the Labour Party’s Constitution, and it is part of our DNA.
Second, we will reset the approach of the last 40 years and take long overdue domestic and international action to rebuild the economic security of Britain’s people and the places they call home. And thirdly, we will make environmental security our priority. Climate change threatens the future of our planet, but it directly affects the lives and prosperity of working-class people across this country and the wider world right now. Modern socialism must see it as a central pursuit of social justice, not an addition to it.
So, those are our priorities, but how to achieve them? Well, firstly, we will restore Britain’s reputation as a consistent reliable partner. To steal a phrase from Lincoln, “the world is complex and interlinked, but important principles may and must be inflexible.” Never on our watch will the Good Friday Agreement be used as a bargaining chip. For Labour it is and remains an article of faith.
We’ll do the heavy lifting needed to reinvest in our relationships across the world. This is work that Keir and I have already started, looking first and foremost to our neighbours in Europe. The dividing line in British politics is no longer do we do Brexit, but do we do it well or do we do it badly? But we have a government that is less interested in making its deal work than we are. This needlessly antagonistic approach, pursued by both sides, has cost us all, so we will seek to build new points of depth and connection with our closest neighbours.
Starting from the view that close bilateral relations with European countries are enhanced by a constructive relationship with the EU itself. They must respect our decision to stand outside of the EU, just as we respect the importance of the European project to our friends and neighbours. But from sanctions and trade to financial regulation and climate change, the EU is an important partner and we should seek creative ways to work together. And we will seek a relationship with the United States, built on areas of future co-operation not nostalgia, building a fairer global economy and developing clean energy to create jobs in places that once powered the world and will do so again.
We’ll seek to breathe new life into multilateral institutions and we’ve begun this work through the UN Commission led by Lord Collins. Our commitment to the NATO alliance is unshakeable, and we reject the idea that alliances can be purely transactional. They are built on solidarity and survive only if they can pass that test. And we will pursue a new economic statecraft to help bridge the divide between the global and the local.
We’ve have focused on the potential for the Chinese political model to become more dominant, but we’ve paid far too little attention to the consequences of China’s economic model for the British people, a model which relies on low working standards, poor wages and unfair trade practices to drive growth. Tackling this will be a priority for Labour. As my colleague, Anneliese Dodds, has pointed out, British companies have some of the weakest protections of any in the world, be it against dumping or the use of slave labour or other unacceptable practices.
So, we will set about building a trade policy fit for the 21st Century, that prioritises fairness, as well as market access, that protects the environment, and champions labour rights from Bolton to Bangalore. We’ll clean up the dirty money that flows through the City of London and sustains authoritarian regimes, close tax loopholes and bear down on tax havens. Working with trade unions and likeminded governments, we’ll defend working people the world over from the race to the bottom and level the playing field, for those incredible bricks and mortar businesses who are rooted in our communities and invest in our people. And we will start a new national conversation about our place in the world and the sort of country we want to be, grounded in all our nations and regions, drawing on the many great organisations, movements and institutions who are prepared to lift their eyes beyond their own horizons to consider the better country and better world I know we can be. And this is how we’ll build and sustain the support to act as a force for good in the world and earn the support and consent of people at home.
This is what our patriotism looks like. A country at ease with itself, that knows what it’s for, that can deliver on our values at home and have the confidence to stand for them overseas, that invests in its people and puts them at the centre of our vision for the country because in the end, it’s from them that power is derived and must return. As Ernest Bevin put it, “after all the thought you can give to it, the only repository of faith I’ve been able to find is the common people.” That is what underpins our approach to foreign policy. It’s been a long time coming for so many people who for decades have longed to see hope flickering back to life in their communities, and that is why success is the only outcome that we’re prepared to consider.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
Thank you very much, Lisa. Thank you for those remarks and for laying out Labour’s stall very clearly there, and we heard you, as you said, not just lay out your objectives, but also some of the ‘how’ that you hope would be the ways that you would be able to get there over time, both in terms of the kind of institutions you’d work with, the reliance on alliances, some of the important bilateral relationships. And I heard your commentary there about the interlinkages between relationships with European partners of states and the European Union, one of those issues that’s going to become a continuing feature obviously of British foreign policy as far forward as we can see into the future. But if I could just come in with a couple of opening questions and remind everyone, please, if you have questions for Lisa Nandy, use the ‘Q&A’ function at the bottom of your page, and insert your questions there and we will be able to turn to you, over the course of this conversation. But let me take a few minutes just to, sort of, prod a little more deeply into some of these questions.
You kicked off by talking very much about needing to have a foreign policy that is connected to what people need and what people want, and I suppose what I wanted to ask you, just as a kick-off here is, what do you think the British people want? Because there was one phrase that stood out to me in particular, which was that having a strong relationship with China economically, and I’m pretty certain I heard this outlined this way, is more important than a handout. In other words, that there is an important economic relationship needs to be developed there, and what people around Britain don’t need are handouts, they need, I presume therefore, an economic policy that takes their interests at heart. But I’m just – you know, that was a statement about what you believe the British people want. What do you assess at the moment are the British people’s priorities that you’re trying to meet with this layout of this foreign policy? Obviously, you – I don’t know if you’ve had a chance yet to do the surveys or the focus groups or the checking. How would you go about this, in making sure the two things are properly aligned?
Lisa Nandy MP
Well, I guess the first answer to the question is to ask them. It’s no use me telling you, Robin, what people want, without having gone out and done the heavy lifting and the hard work to really understand not just what people are talking about, not just how people are responding to survey questions, but what people really feel is missing in their lives and communities.
You mentioned in the introduction that I set up a think tank called Centre For Towns. The reason that I did that was in response to the EU referendum when the decision to vote ‘leave’ by towns across the country was greeted in Whitehall and Westminster as some kind of rejection of internationalism, some kind of pulling up the drawbridge sort of approach, worst it was categorised as racism, without anybody, who wrote those articles, really bothering to come and find out what was happening in towns like Wigan, which I call home.
It occurred to me, when the EU referendum was called, that the first time I’d had a discussion about our membership of the European Union with my constituents, was the week after Cameron called the referendum. And it was an eyeopener for me to find that many people, who I’d fought every battle with, in Wigan, who count themselves as lifelong socialists and trade unionists, had come to a very different conclusion about whether our membership of the European Union was part of the solution or part of the problem then I had and then that the Labour Party had. So, I think that ongoing conversation is incredibly important, but I will just give you a few pointers, and it really stems from the examples that I gave in my speech.
Over the last 40 years, we’ve had this economic consensus that has allowed jobs to be outsourced, wages to be depressed. We’ve seen investment where it has happened and it did happen, under the last Labour Government, from the European Union and from the government, has gone into cities, in the hope that the benefits would trickle out to surrounding towns, it’s – those domestic choices compounding the problems that that global system had created.
And as a consequence, you go to many towns around the country, university towns perhaps the exception to this, and you will find areas that once stood at the centre of the world, like Darlington, like Barnsley, suddenly find themselves reliant on call centre work, delivery drivers, work that is insecure, that has cost communities their stability, their security, the mental health impact writ large, young people forced to leave, in order to seek better opportunities, and credit to the last Labour Government for opening up those opportunities to go to university. But when they look back, what is there to return to? And as a consequence, those communities stripped of their spending power, the high street’s falling apart, the bus services cancelled because they lack the passenger numbers to sustain them, all of those things you can connect back to a dom – set of domestic and global choices that have robbed those communities of their purpose, of their assets, and of their future.
Now, despite that, many of those communities are doing well. They’re pulling together, they’re investing in themselves and each other, but think what they could do with a government that was prepared to take a much bigger, much more ambitious approach, working with other governments around the world who are likeminded, in order to raise standards and restore that sense of pride and purpose to those communities. That’s what I saw over in the United States when I visited, just as Donald Trump was about to win the Presidential election, it’s exactly what I see back home in Lancashire.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
I mean, you mentioned Joe Biden and the Biden administration, what’s been notable about them at this point is that they are going to take quite a tough line on trade issues. There is some talk of them retaliating against the government’s decision to impose a digital tax, and yet the imposition of a digital tax is precisely something that it could be argued will provide additional money for the Exchequer to be able to cover public services, etc. Are you concerned or how would you deal with the fact that actually, a foreign policy that focuses more on local people’s needs and tackles globalisation, the way you described it in your remarks, you wanted to, kind of, do away with that free for all globalisation, is there not a risk that that’s going to then actually make relationships with certain partners, in particular the United States and potentially China, that much more difficult? How are you going to square that circle?
Lisa Nandy MP
Well, on – you know, as Keir and I have been reaching out to partners around the world, one of the things that I’ve really felt is that people want to work with the United Kingdom, you know, there’s been this, sort of, curious lack of ambition and, sort of, declinist approach that’s characterised both left and right, in recent years, in the way that we’ve talked about Britain.
You know, on the left, we’ve often lamented the fact that outside of the EU, perhaps Britain is a country that can’t continue to go out and make change in the world whilst, on the right, I often detect, in the House of Commons, a sort of sense that if we don’t shelter under the auspices of the United States, regardless of the consequences, that somehow Britain will be cast adrift. And actually, the view from our international partners is very, very different. They’re interested in Britain and they want to partner with Britain, but they want to know what we’re about, what we’re for, and what our future agenda is.
I think working with those partners, we could have a real impact in driving and shaping the direction of travel in the world, and tax is a really good example of this, where if we get this right, what we’ll see is more of that tax being poured into our public services, into our infrastructure, into the skills of our young people. You know, it’s no use saying we’re going to move 500 jobs from London to Darlington, unless you’re equipping young people with those skills, in order to get those jobs. And so, I think there’s a great agenda around tax that we could pursue, but we have to do it collaboratively with our partners, and that’s one of the reasons why I said that, you know, we’ll invest in those relationships.
It’s a curious approach from this government, that at times feels very much like the approach that the Trump administration took, a very transactional approach to international relationships, particularly when they see everything through the lens of trade. But actually, the leverage that you get comes through sustained investment in those relationships, in doing the hard yards, in making compromises and seeking solutions together. That’s how people know that you’re serious, and that’s when they’re prepared to expend political capital to help you, as well.
But I don’t accept the idea that the UK is headed for a collision course with the United States because I think fundamentally, in the end, the agenda that the Biden administration is determined to pursue, stems from very similar factors that the agenda that we’re developing here and there’s a synergy there that, you know, there are only moments in history when those things come together and potentially, in 2024, this is one of them.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
I can see a lot of questions coming in, so I’m going to take – I’m going to do a couple myself. We may be able to unmute some people as we go along, but let me just grab a couple of them. Do please put the questions into the ‘Q&A’ line if you can, and not the ‘Chat’, because we’re going to keep an eye on the Q&A, but it comes back to this question I was trying to raise with you a minute ago, Lisa, about China. David Sayer asks, you know, “Would a Labour Government welcome inward investment from China, for example, in renewables and other areas, that are regarded as acceptable under national security and investment law? You know, are you interested in encouraging greater trade and a greater reliance on China, the largest soon-to-be consumer market in the world? Where do you stand on this?” Because I think I – as I said earlier, I did hear you make this comment that you felt that China’s going to be important for jobs, for those manufacturing and other service providers around the United Kingdom. Where do you stand on that aspect of Chinese investment and trade?
Lisa Nandy MP
Well, the point I was making earlier is that China is an incredibly dominant global country. It has reached across the world, it’s deeply embedded in economies across the world, including ours, and we’ve been having this furious row, in the House of Commons recently, that has been characterised as in most of the House of Commons, ourselves included, and many Tory backbenchers, too, wanting to stop trade with China versus the government that wants to continue to trade with China.
That’s not what that argument is about. The argument is about whether we give preferential trade terms to countries that are deemed to have committed genocide. That is the amendment that we’ve been pursuing, and the amendment that the government has been twisting arms in order to reject. I mean, look, I think we need to take a far more consistent, far more strategic approach to China. We can’t continue with a situation as we saw a couple of weeks ago, where the government was announcing sanctions on officials in Xinjiang in the morning, and by evening, was twisting parliamentary colleagues’ arms to vote in favour of retaining the right to do preferential trade deals with countries that commit genocide. China has to know where we stand, and we have to be clear about those values.
I think we need a twin pillar approach to China. On the one hand, we need to seek constructive engagement on areas of mutual concern. There is no global problem that can be solved without China, so from COVID to climate change, we have to have a level of engagement with the Chinese Government. But that can never come at the expense of our values, and that’s why we need far greater strategic independence.
So, to answer David’s question, in relation to investment, we shouldn’t be seeking to do preferential trade deals with countries particularly in China, in Xinjiang, where they are committing crimes against humanity, that share features of genocide, and are refusing access to the UN to go and investigate. We recognise that trade with China will continue, but that has to be consistent with national security. We can’t, on the one hand, ban 5G from our – Huawei from our 5G networks, and at the same time be entertaining the prospect of Chinese-backed companies taking over large sections of our nuclear power industry. It has to be consistent with national security, we have to be cleareyed about this, and we can’t continue to rollout the red carpet to Beijing, as we have done for a decade, whilst turning a blind eye to human rights abuses. It just simply does not serve our interests.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
Understood, and I think therefore, what I’m taking for you is the comment about being clearer about where the UK does or does not offer the prospect of preferential trade agreements as opposed to trade, let’s call it, under standard terms and so on. Again, I’m just going to keep picking out a couple of questions that align with the ones I wanted to ask you in any case, so that we’ll have a chance to get through as many as possible, as they keep coming in.
Lorenzo Clady asks the question, “What does it mean for the Labour Party for the UK to be a force for good in the world?” It is a term that this government has put squarely into its view of British foreign policy. I was struck, but I think I missed reference, I was scribbling notes down, to the word ‘democracy’ in your remarks at the beginning, and obviously, the Biden administration has made defending democracy certainly one of its top priorities. Now, I’m wondering how would you interpret this concept of being a force for good? Is that a term that the Labour Party would, does, use, and is democracy and protecting it somewhere part of that mix?
Lisa Nandy MP
Okay, so I’ll try and do those quickly, both together, so the – you know, on the force for good in the world, you know, I think there’s been a view that has been pushed by the current Prime Minister and sections of the Conservative Party about this, kind of, small island nation that goes out punching above its weight in the world, without ever really stopping to ask why on earth it is that we’re punching at all. We believe that for us to win, others do not have to lose. That we can go out and fight for good in the world, with our allies, with other democratic countries. You know, the sort of country that goes out and flies the Pride flag above our embassies in countries where just loving who you love is punishable by death, the sort of country that goes out and campaigns against the death penalty across the world, the sort of country that is clear about our values, consistent about those values, and lives up to those values at home, and that’s been one of the biggest problems for the UK, in recent years.
We lectured China about the Law of the Sea, but then we break it ourselves. We ignore international rulings, in relation to the Chagos Islands. We threaten to tear up the Withdrawal Agreement unilaterally, and these things are heard and felt by other countries, by our allies and our partners, but also, by authoritarian regimes around the world. So, we need to be clear and consistent, both at home and overseas, and go out and stand up for and championing those values. And that includes democracy. We believe in democracy, but it also serves our interests. We believe in other country – the people of other countries have the same democratic rights as we do. So, we supported the government, over the action that they took in relation to Belarus recently, not to force the people of Belarus to make a particular choice, but to give them the choice in free and fair elections that were – that are respected, so that their voice is heard. We think that’s how, little-by-little, the world becomes safer and more secure, and that benefits us all.
There’s been a lot of talk about the democratic – you know, pursuing democracy, and extending democracy across the world, but the truth is that freedom has been in retreat for 14 straight years, and under the cover of COVID, we’ve seen more of that. And we’ll stand up for those values, we’ll stand up for people when they’re trying to defend their own right to determine their own destiny, and we’ll seek partnerships with other democratic countries, respecting the fact that they are democratic countries, but also where we see democracy in human rights infringed, these are universal rights and values, and we won’t be afraid to say so.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
I’ve got a – I’ll just pivot very quickly, to a very direct question that links to this from Ben Glaze, which is asking you specifically do – “Would you want to see Britain continue to export typhoon jets, for example, to Saudi Arabia, which may be used in war, or would you prefer not to, and therefore run the risk, back to your opening point, to the jobs that depend on them in Lancashire, etc.?” So, where would you stand on that particular question, Lisa?
Lisa Nandy MP
Look, we’ve been absolutely clear that we don’t believe that we should be providing arms to Saudi Arabi. The situation in the Yemen is – even the government has admitted it, is the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world, and we’ve – you know, the argument that I’ve just laid out, Robin, is that we’ve got to be clear and consistent about our values in the world, that short-termism doesn’t serve our interests. And I couldn’t be clearer that we need to stand up for human rights where we see them threatened, and that Britain has to be a force for good in the world.
And, you know, just to Ben’s point about, you know, trying to – you know, raising, understandably, questions about what that means for people here in the UK, that’s why today I’ve tried to lay out a forward-looking agenda, not just what Britain should not be doing that it’s currently doing under the Conservative Government, but what Britain should be doing that we’re just not thinking about. And that’s why it was so curious that for all the talk of levelling up, Global Britain was silent on what is happening in towns around this country.
I think one of the areas where we’re best placed to partner with the United States on is around clean energy technology. But just this morning we had announcements about cuts to scientific research, we had Scientists saying on the media this morning “That Britain is no longer seen as a stable or reliable partner.” But we should be reaching out to our allies, in order to create those jobs in towns across Britain. Why shouldn’t young people, in towns like Wigan and Barnsley, power us through the next generation, just as their parents and grandparents powered us through the last?
That’s why we can’t just say that, you know, these are the things that we don’t do. We’ve got to have a forward-looking vision. And too often, when I talk to friends and counterparts, you know, in our sister party, the Democrats, over in the United States, what they hear from Britain is a relationship that they love and they believe in based on, you know, our shared history, our shared ties, but nostalgia is no substitute for the future. The future is what people, in places like Wigan and Barnsley, are interested in, and that’s what we’ve got to deliver on, that’s what any government worth their salt would be trying to deliver on.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
Thanks very much. Look, we’ve got lots of questions in here, and I want to try and get a few other voices than mine asking them, even though I’ve been bringing in a few, and I’m going to turn – I think we can unmute – I want to turn to Simona Leskovar, who I’ll allow to introduce herself in a minute, but let’s see, Emily, are we able to unmute Simona Leskovar and if she could ask her question? So, Simona, you should be unmuted. Please go ahead and ask your question. You need to unmute yourself, I think now, Simona. I can see you’re still – the little – there we go, that’s it. Go ahead, Simona.
Ambassador Simona Leskovar
Thanks, Robin, and thanks, Lisa, for your introduction. I’m Ambassador of Slovenia here in the United Kingdom. Just a very brief question. I would be interested in your views on the rise of the populistic leaders in Europe, and else, how worried liberal democracy should be and how worried are you in the Labour Party regarding that? Should that be in the forefront or should that be on our top agenda of a joint – on our joint top agenda in triangle of the United Kingdom, US and European Union? Thanks.
Lisa Nandy MP
Thanks very much. Yes, we are really concerned about it. I think that COVID-19 has shown two visions of what the world can be. On the one hand, we’ve seen rising geopolitical tensions, particularly between the United States and China, we’ve seen the scapegoating of migrants, we’ve seen populist leaders trying to exploit those tensions, we’ve obviously seen the closing of borders, which was inevitable, but was welcomed by some for other reasons. We’ve seen a tax on the World Health Organization and on those Scientists, who’ve tried to co-operate across borders.
But at the same time, Jonathan Ashworth and I have been speaking regularly to those Scientists who, through the World Health Organization, have been co-operating across borders, often at great personal risk, even as the global situation has become more toxic. Chinese Scientists, US Scientists, European Scientists, British Scientists, and together, they have found the treatment, diagnostics and vaccines that already have saved millions and millions of lives.
And that is the spirit that I think we need to sum up for the challenges that lie ahead. We will face future pandemics, we know that. Climate change is the great elephant in the room, the thing that is coming down the track far quicker than we’re prepared for. These great challenges can only be solved by the world pulling together and coming together and defeating that sort of populism and the rise of nationalism, and the breaking apart of the world that we saw briefly, during that time with the scramble for PPE, and the scramble for vaccines, and the rise of vaccine nationalism.
And that’s one of the reasons why I said at the outset that the absolute top priority that we had that, after Keir appointed me back in April, was to make sure that we changed course on China and Russia, in order to safeguard not just the country, but to take a really robust approach with our partners. But most of all to reach out to other world leaders, likeminded world leaders, who think like us, because this is a battle now for the future of the globe, and we’ve got to be on the right side of that, we’ve absolutely got to win it. You can see these tensions playing out through all of the major multinational institutions, and it’s a battle that we’re determined to take part in and ultimately to win.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
Thanks very much, Lisa. Let me bring in Mark Lyall Grant, Former National Security Advisor, Ambassador of the UN, and a member of the Chatham House Panel of Senior Advisors. Mark, hopefully you are unmuted or you will be able to unmute yourself. Yeah, go ahead, Mark.
Mark Lyall Grant
Thank you very much for your remarks, Shadow Foreign Secretary. I just wondered what it was in particular in the recent Integrated Review on Defence, Security, Foreign Policy and Development that the government published that Labour would have an issue with, and would change when you do your own?
Lisa Nandy MP
Great, thanks very much. I think, so, a few things. First of all, as I outlined in the speech, that it was silent on the circumstances, the realities, facing many people across Britain. I think what I’ve tried to outline today is that a foreign policy that isn’t rooted in the needs, the support, the consent, of people in Britain is not going to stick, it’s not going to last. That is one of the lessons for me from the EU referendum.
But it’s more than that, it’s that, you know, the way that we understand whether foreign policy is working, the key test of that, is not just what happens on the other side of the world, although as committed internationalists, we care about that, internationalism is in our DNA in the Labour Party. The test is whether it’s working for people here as well, and by failing to involve people in that conversation, we’ve simply failed to hear what is happening to reset and to change course.
You know, one example that I’ve given before is when David Lammy came to my constituency in Wigan during – just after the EU referendum. He was trying to understand how it could be that a constituency like his, Tottenham, had come to a completely different conclusion about the role of the EU in their lives than a constituency like Wigan, where people face many of the same challenges. And one of the first people that he met in our local Book Cycle was a man who, you know, we just stopped and asked, “Why did you – what did you vote and why did you vote for it?” He voted leave because he didn’t like the way that Greece had been treated.
And I think it was a bit of a surprise to David, you know, he doesn’t underestimate the people of Wigan, but I think it was a bit of a surprise to David that people had taken this really seriously, that they’d been following it, that they had values and principles. But, you know, if we’d been able to hear that, if we’d been able to hear that years before, I think it would have given us the courage, the confidence, the mandate, to go off and fight for those changes at EU level that, when it came to the referendum in the end, and for those of us who wanted to remain, it was just too late. So, I think there’s something really important about that.
I also think that we can’t hope to go off and lecture other countries about what they should be doing if we’re going to be inconsistent and contradictory at home, and I talked quite a lot about that in rel – when the Global Britain review was published. You know, there’s a real contradiction between, for example, I’ll just give you one example, the desire that the government has to fight Daesh, which we fully support, and the decision last night to cut aid to Syria. It just doesn’t make sense, and it sends mixed messages to our partners, and it makes us less effective, both at home and abroad.
And I just – finally, I would – guess I would say this, as well, that the integrated review was promoted very much as a kind of tilt to the Indo-Pacific, but there’s a reason why we’re tilting, and it’s because we’re completely unbalanced because we lack an anchor. Our anchor will lie in our relationship with Europe and our relationship with the United States, and at the moment, the truth is that the government has not got a strong relationship, future-focused relationship, with either, and we need to do far more, in order to shore that up, but yet Global Britain was largely silent, at least on one of those relationships.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
I’m actually going to come in a minute to a question I’ve got here, Lisa, which will address your particular point about lacking that anchor, whether the UK is lacking an anchor or not, for its tilt? But before I do so, something you said there just triggered another question I wanted to bring in. I’m going to ask it myself, just for the interests of speed ‘cause it’s a nice, punchy, short question from Edward Clay, which I think, if I get it right, Edward, I’m trying to find it back up here, but in any case, if I can’t find it, I know it ‘cause I’ve got it in my head – here we are. “Do you want to be Secretary of State for the FCGO or just the FCO?” I won’t editorialise, I’ll throw it back to you. How would you handle that very important question? You just linked those two things together in your answer to the last point, so I think it’s an interesting question, how would you think about it?
Lisa Nandy MP
I mean, it’s a brilliantly-framed question, but at the end of the day, the structures matter less to me than what you do about it. You know, if we – if we’re in government in three years’ time, I will be seeking to ensure that we raise the bar on aid. Firstly, that we don’t cut aid in the middle of pandemics. Secondly, that we are reliable in the way that we deal with aid, so transparency continues to be an important principle for us in relation to aid, and independence.
But I do think that the government having rolled the FCO and DFID together, ostensibly under the guise of saying that they wanted to be far more strategic about how we use aid, provides a moment where we have to hold them to account for that. I think we should be more strategic about the way in which we use aid. One example that the government has begun to float, over the weekend in response to Joe Biden’s suggestion, is about providing alternatives to countries for the Belt and Road.
We have been really concerned about the way in which democracy is being undermined in – particularly in developing countries who lack alternatives to Chinese lending, Chinese finance and Chinese aid. We could do far more as a country, in order to shore up those countries’ democracies, so that they retain the right to make their own decisions. And when I said that we wanted to breathe new life into multilateral organisations, this is the sort of thing that we’re thinking about, that Lord Collins is looking at for us at the moment, under the auspices of the UN review. So, I’ve kind of – I’ve sort of ducked the question a bit there, Robin, but, you know, for me, what – you know, what you are in politics is far less important than what you’re able to achieve. Whatever the mechanism is for doing that, that’s what we hope to achieve in government.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
Right, let me flip over to the EU. Richard Bridge, I think, phrased the question in an interesting way. Richard, hopefully we can unmute you and get you to come and ask the question. Yeah, I see you there. Unmute yourself, I think now, Richard, if you can, yeah. Over to you.
Richard Bridge
Oh, good, thank you very much, Robin, and thank you very much, Lisa, for being here, and I greatly appreciate what you’ve said in the past about northern towns in Lancashire ‘cause I come from one of them. The question is about the EU. You said that you want to – you will want to seek a creative way to have a relationship with the EU, but of course, we have just walked away from a very creative way of having a relationship with the EU, and that move has caused some disruption, and it will cause job losses, no doubt in northern towns, but not only, lots of sectors, whether it’s in Cornwall or in North of Scotland, to no advantage. And I wondered, therefore, whether Labour would want to take a lead and attempt a radical way of renewing the Europe link? By a radical way, I mean re-join, but there might be some other way of putting it. Thank you.
Lisa Nandy MP
Well, Richard, notwithstanding that you come – well, you come from a northern town, and people in northern towns are known for their directness, so I’ll just be completely direct, we’re not seeking to re-join the EU. That question has been settled. I think I’ve been quite consistent on the fact that I don’t think that revisiting referendums, whether in Scotland or in the – across the UK are a helpful thing.
I think this is a moment where the country has to pull together and look to the future, and I think that we have spent too much time, over the last few years, fighting lost battles, old battles, and not looking at the challenges that are in front of us. There are huge challenges that now lie ahead of us, not least that we’ve had a paper-thin Brexit deal, that, as I said in the speech, the government doesn’t seem remotely interested in making work, and we’ve got to find a way of making that work.
You know, I mentioned the Welsh farming industry, but there are so many industries that I could mention around the country that are struggling at the moment with the impact of that deal. We’ve got to strengthen and deepen that relationship with the EU, in order to make that work and to protect the jobs of people in this country. But more than that, we’ve got to start looking at other areas where – which our government has taken off the table.
If you cast your mind back to a few years ago, when chemical weapons were used on the streets of the United Kingdom in Salisbury, when Theresa May took the decision to expel 30 Russian Diplomats, rightly, in my view, where did she go to look for support? She went to our friends, our allies, our neighbours, across Europe. But ask yourself where would this government go with this escalating war of words? Where would they go for support? And the answer isn’t completely clear. Now, that is an ar – a question, to which any responsible government would have an answer, but to which ours currently doesn’t.
You know, whether it’s on sanctions policy, as I outlined, whether it’s on climate change, there may be times when we go further than the European Union, and that’s right, and that’s fair, and they must respect that. But there are also times when it makes no sense to go it alone, and actually, sanctions is a really good example of that, where recently, there’s been a cross-party consensus in the House of Commons about the need to impose sanctions on, for example, Chinese officials in Xinjiang, which the government did last week.
This is really important that we move in step with our partners and our allies, and it’s where you can see the benefit of us working closely with European partners, in order to do that. So, we want to reopen that conversation about foreign policy and security policy and how we can better co-operate with the European Union. At the moment, we just simply aren’t in the room. John Kerry came over the other day, he met with European leaders to discuss the agenda for COP26. This is a conference that we are co-hosting in the autumn, and we weren’t even in the room, that just cannot persist.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
Just to piggyback very quickly, and we’ve got a lot more questions and about eight minutes left, so I’m going to just let you manage your time, Lisa, but there’s some important ones that I’d like to try and get in. But would you be looking then, to – given your direct answer to Richard’s direct first bit of his or last bit of his question about not re-joining, not even trying to re-join the EU, what do you think a Labour Government would be doing, in terms of the terms of the relationship?
Part of the problem we have with the Northern Ireland question at the moment is the extent to which there is a divergence or a perceived risk of divergence of regulations between the two sides who are outside of the single market. You know, country like Norway is not a member of the EU, but is inside the single market, let me just put it simply in that way, and I know there were members of the Labour Party who were advocating that solution, and there were some of the Conservative Party advocating that four, five years ago. So, where – would you be looking to try to redo the deal, even if you’re not looking to re-join the EU? I suppose that would be my core question.
Lisa Nandy MP
I think no is the straight answer to that. We don’t want to just start from scratch and reopen that conversation. I think the country is absolutely desperate to move on from Brexit, but there is a genuine question to be had about the sort of relationship that we want to have. So, we need to make sure that we get rid of needless trade barriers, particularly, you know, as Richard said earlier, because there are jobs that are at stake right now that are needlessly being impacted. We need to get rid of this needlessly antagonistic war of words on both sides of the channel.
I’ve been very critical about the role of the European Commission in the vaccine and the threats that have been made, but I’m equally critical of this government and the way in which, at times, they’ve sought to inflame and escalate those tensions, and the way in which they’ve failed to understand that the relationship with the EU, if we get it right, strengthens and deepens our bilateral relations rather than seeing them as an alternative to one another, which I think the current Foreign Secretary does.
You know, one of the relations we’re very, very keen to repair is our relationship with Ireland. I think that has been needlessly strained in recent years, and we would do far better if we were to have a much stronger, deeper, closer relationships with Ireland. So, Louise Hague and I have made that a priority, is to reach out. I said recently that if I was Prime Minister for a day, the Taoiseach could be the first person I would invite to Downing Street, socially distanced, obviously. But there’s – you know, there’s a really important principle there, before we get into any conversation about the formal mechanisms through which we co-operate.
And just to return, Robin, to where we started with this, we’ve got to involve the people of this country in that conversation. I think people do support high standards, they want to see their wages protected, they want to see the environment protected. If you look at that extraordinary coalition that has come together around protecting food standards and farming standards, for example, across British politics recently, I think people do want this, but we’ve got to make sure that we involve people in that conversation because, in the end, change that is driven by and has the consent of the people is the only change that lasts.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
Let me actually piggyback off that and ask Saleh Kamel Saleh if we can unmute him and get Saleh to come in, ‘cause there’s a question which I think is quite well-linked to what you just said there. Saleh, you’re unmuted, go ahead and ask your question.
Saleh Kamel Saleh
Yes, thank you. So, my question is on the contradiction between this approach to get a populist input into foreign policy and the current situation in the UK with Scotland, where Scotland’s vote in favour of – or against Brexit is one of the reasons why it would like to revisit the referendum, so how do you see that issue going forward? Thank you.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
Yes, how do you listen, but listen to what you want to hear, I suppose, is the – one way of phrasing that question?
Lisa Nandy MP
Well, I mean, I guess – and I guess the answer is that you can’t, but if I’ve learnt anything, in recent years, it’s that progress is not inevitable. And if you want to create change, you have to seek permission to do it, and you have to go out and win the argument, and you have to go out and do that community-by-community, town hall by town hall. There is no substitute for that hard graft. There is no quick fix.
In relation to Scotland, I think the evidence is mixed at the moment about whether people in Scotland want to reopen the question of independence. I’m not denying for a moment that there are a lot of people who do, but there are a lot of people who don’t, as well, and I think particularly with COVID, and being in the middle of a pandemic, with people worried about their jobs, their livelihoods, their kids’ futures, now is not the moment to start another divisive argument about a second referendum. But I do think we have to go out and involve people in that conversation.
And just to, sort of, push back a bit on the way in which Saleh framed that question. You know, for me, democracy is not just about ‘might is right’. One of the things I loathed about the go – the process of going through the referendum is that when I talked to people in Sunderland or in Wigan or in Bolton, the places that I campaigned up and down the North of England for ‘remain’ in areas that largely were voting to leave, what I heard was the most interesting, nuanced, thoughtful set of views, where people had very mixed feelings often about our membership of the European Union, and wanted to communicated them – communicate them, and wanted them to find expression in the political system, but by saying the answer was yes, no, black, white, we divided people from one another, instead of seeking to bring people together on the common ground.
Now, there was a moment, after the referendum, when that could have been very different. When we could have brought the country together in a national conversation and said, “Okay, we’re leaving, we’ve voted to leave, but with, you know, 52:48, the only real mandate is to compromise about the future of this country. So, what is standing outside of the European Union going to look like and how do we deliver on the aspirations of people who, in the end, took different views about our membership of the EU?”
That never happened, and if it had happened, I think we perhaps would have had a very different few years in this country. All those issues that are talked about in towns like mine might have been dealt with if we’d actually listened to what people were really trying to tell us. So, for me, this is not, you know, populism, might is right, you know, one side wins, the other side loses. This is about bringing people together in a national conversation because, in the end, that is how you get it right, and that is how you make things better.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
Thanks, Lisa. Look, we’ve got – we might go not probably more than two minutes over the hour or so, but there are quite a few questions left, and I wanted you to go into a few more detailed ones. I’ll let you try and see if you can be quite sharp on the answers, but they’re quite specific questions. There’s one from Lee Harpin here saying that “The Israeli Palestinian question obviously being such a fundamental one under the previous leader – Labour leadership, how would the approach to this important issue differ under you and Kier?” From Lee Harpin. Over to you.
Lisa Nandy MP
Well, we’ve worked very hard in the Labour Party, over the last year, to show that we’ll take a balanced approach on the issue of the Middle East. We won’t shy away from calling out behaviour that abuses human rights, that erodes the rights of people, that makes a two-state solution evermore distant, particularly in relation to the settlements and the annexation plans. We’ve been incredibly vocal, and we’ve pushed our government very hard, in order to take concerted action.
But we’ve sought to do so in a way that makes clear that something that I’ve believed all my life, and I know Keir does too, which is that there is no solution, there is no peace between Israel, Palestine, and in the wider Middle East, unless we take seriously the fears, the concerns, the needs of both the Israeli people and the Palestinian people. And so we’ve sought to take an even-handed approach to that, we’ve reached out, we’ve rebuilt relations with, we’re rebuilding relations with the Israeli Labour Party, and we’ve met recently with the Israeli Ambassador, we’ve met with the Palestinian Ambassador recently as well, and we work very closely with different groups across the Labour movement.
And I think most of all, what we’ve tried to do is show that we’ll lead, to nick a phrase from Joe Biden, not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. So, Keir has made it his absolute top priority to get our own house in order, in relation to antisemitism, not because the two things are one and the same, but because often, what we saw, in recent years, was the way in which antisemitism was able to spill into the debate around Israel and Palestine, and the debate around Israel and Palestine was able to be used by some, a very small number of people, to propagate antisemitism, and we are determined not to allow that to happen.
You know, one of the most moving movements I’ve had, as the Shadow Foreign Secretary in the last year, was sitting with a group of leading Palestinian and Israeli figures who meet regularly and work together across the divide, in order to change things collectively for the people that they are part of and that they represent. They thanked us for taking a fairer, more balanced approach. On both sides, they wanted an official opposition and a future Labour Government who could command the support and respect and be heard and listened to by both sides, in order to provide that honest broker role in the Middle East. I believe that is the best way that you stand up for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people, and that’s what we’ve tried very hard to do, Lee.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
Thank you, Lisa. Look, I’m going to – I’m afraid I have to knock off the bulk of the rest of the questions that I wanted to ask. We’ve had a huge number of them, as your colleagues will let you know later here, so thank you all, and I apologise for not getting to all the ones I haven’t got to. Hopefully, I think, you’ve maybe seen some of your questions answered.
I’m going to save one up, which I think is important, not least ‘cause it’s been very important for the Labour Party, in the last more than ten years, from Paul Dawson, and it’s really about immigration policy. “One of the key decisions taken by the Blair Government,” he says, “was allowing EU citizens to work in the UK, ahead of other EU countries, without the derogations. This led to a huge increase in immigration,” he writes, “the displacement of UK workers.” But his key question is, “How would a future Labour Government reform what he calls the dysfunctional immigration system?” Obviously, the UK Government itself, the Johnson Government, have made some pretty fundamental changes, as part of leaving the EU. What would you change? What would you do differently? How would you tackle immigration?”
Lisa Nandy MP
Well, I guess the first thing is that, you know, I alluded to it in the speech, about the way, you know, the Priti Patel scheme recently to use wave machines to deter asylum seekers, I think we’ve got to calm down the rhetoric. We’ve got to stop trying to pit groups against one another. We believe, and have always believed, that immigration can and has tremendously enriched this country, and it’s in our interests, not just that we’re able to have cultural exchanges, that people are able to come and contribute to this country, but that young people from across this country are able to do the same and get those opportunities across the world, so we want to see that approach taken.
But, you know, just in relation to the very particular issues that I was talking about in the speech, Paul, we – you know, one of the problems, in towns like Wigan that I could writ large during the referendum, is the lack of investment in those people and those places, which meant that when, you know, they heard Politicians talking about immigration and the need to attract immigrants into fill skills shortages, you had young people in towns like mine saying, “I want to do that, I want to work in that hospital.” You know, they welcomed the fact that there were Nurses coming from across the EU to work in the hospital.
They are enormously popular in Wigan, but they wanted to be able to do the same, and when you abolish the nursing bursary and you hike up tuition fees, those doors are closed to those young people. And I heard the same thing in towns like Cottbus in Germany, I heard it when I visited Austria, just a few months after the EU referendum, outside of Vienna, the story was exactly the same, young people saying, “Where are the opportunities for us, as well?” And when I say we need to work together to build a global – fairer global system, that’s the sort of thing that I’m talking about. Not to drive other people down, but to lift others up. That’s the sort of patriotism that Labour believes in. That’s the sort of patriotism that we’ll fight for. That’s the sort of vision for the country in the end that will create a stronger, more prosperous country, that’s able to deliver at home and go out and fight for people abroad. I hope I’ve given you a bit of a sense of that today.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG
Well, Lisa, thank you very much. We’ve gone over time. Thank you, folks, for staying with the call, and, again, thank you to all our members for a super set of questions, which I could not do full justice to, but hopefully, people have been reading through them and being able to engage almost in the debate around them. Lisa, thank you very much for laying out Labour’s stall here with us today.
One thing that’s clearly the case is that there is a debate about the future of British foreign policy taking place. We’re thrilled, as Chatham House, to be part of that debate and to be reflecting, debating, and informing all the different views that have been put on the table. But I think you’re absolutely right, as an international affairs institution, we’re very interested to see a much more active and thoughtful debate taking place in the integrated review. Your remarks, obviously the departure from the EU, has created a context in which this cannot be avoided and needs to be tackled seriously. So, we thank you very much for sharing your thoughts on this.
Thanks for the great questions, and keep engaged, everyone, with what we’re doing, and keep engaged yourselves with the debate, so that our political colleagues, I will say, they’re no longer masters, can come up with the best answers. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you, Lisa, and look forward to seeing you all at our next event. Bye, bye.
