The UK has a new Prime Minister, its seventh in the last decade, with Andy Burnham now taking the helm. Allies and adversaries alike will have been watching his early statements and Cabinet appointments to glean what they might mean for the UK’s role on the world stage. Fundamentally, a new Prime Minister is unlikely to bring about any seismic changes in UK foreign policy without going to an election. Jonathan Powell remaining as National Security Advisor points to continuity. Commitment to Ukraine will remain firm, Burnham will continue to avoid further entanglement in the conflict with Iran, and the UK will push ahead with its reset of relations with Europe. The new PM will also want to manage the relationship with Donald Trump carefully.
Burnham has signalled that he wants to focus his energies on domestic policy, and his Cabinet appointments suggest he is willing to delegate responsibility to his top team – though that does not come without risks. The experience of recent Prime Ministers suggests he may well find that foreign policy requires the direct attention and energy of the Prime Minister.
One of Burnham’s main challenges is his lack of international profile. As he came to power two weeks after the NATO Ankara Summit – and with the Alliance likely to cancel its 2027 and possibly 2028 summits – there is a chance he could pursue a ‘NATO First’ strategy without actually attending a full NATO Summit. In the coming weeks, he will need to decide how to address this and determine which bilateral relationships he wants to prioritise. Helping him in that work will be the new Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband.
When former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wanted to focus on domestic policy, he appointed one of his predecessors, David Cameron, as Foreign Secretary. A strong communicator and well-known figure on the international stage, Cameron was given the independence to lead on UK foreign policy and was broadly successful. Andy Burnham will be hoping the same will prove true for Ed Miliband. While not quite as internationally recognised as Cameron, Miliband is widely seen as having delivered on the government’s agenda as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, and he has been a major figure in the Labour Party for more than a decade.
Miliband sits on the centre-left of the party, and there may be some shift in tone on the international stage. He has anti-interventionist instincts and famously whipped Labour MPs in 2013, while Leader of the Opposition, to defeat a motion to intervene in Syria. Behind the scenes, he also played a major role in limiting UK involvement in the war with Iran earlier this year. As Energy Secretary, he has shown greater willingness to work with China than some of his ministerial colleagues. That said, while the tone may change, the UK’s commitments to Ukraine, strengthening ties with Europe, and NATO will remain paramount.
Burnham has signalled that he wants to focus his energies on domestic policy, and his Cabinet appointments suggest he is willing to delegate responsibility to his top team – though that does not come without risks. The experience of recent Prime Ministers suggests he may well find that foreign policy requires the direct attention and energy of the Prime Minister. Jack Pannell and Ed Arnold
Choosing John Healey as Chancellor is positive for defence. Healey served as Shadow Defence Secretary for four years and as Secretary of State for Defence for two, giving him a deep understanding of the challenges facing the sector. He also resigned on principle because the Treasury was “unwilling” to increase defence spending to three percent of GDP by 2030. It is now his challenge to find the additional funding, and he faces exactly the same constraints as his predecessor. He is likely to consider new funding mechanisms, such as the Canadian-led Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB) or “war bonds”, though HM Treasury is also likely to remain resistant to what it sees as additional borrowing. Healey also knows that three percent is a UK target, while 3.5 percent by 2035 is the true NATO benchmark. Although the public broadly supports increased defence spending, that support quickly evaporates when it is linked to cuts in welfare, reductions in health spending, or higher taxes. He will therefore have to set out a clear and credible path for the next decade – one of the central challenges facing a Burnham government.
Choosing Wes Streeting as Defence Secretary is both a reward for his delivery of NHS reforms – which reduced waiting lists by 6.75 percent – and, perhaps more cynically, for his decision not to stand against Burnham in the Labour leadership race. Burnham will see this as a valuable skill in driving forward the defence reforms begun under Healey while demonstrating to HM Treasury that the Ministry of Defence can absorb additional funding responsibly. Moreover, the Defence Investment Plan includes £10.3 billion in projected “efficiencies”, which will be critical to the rapid delivery of new capabilities. Achieving those efficiencies, however, will take time – time the Ministry of Defence may not have, given the UK’s assessment that war between NATO and Russia could break out by 2030.
One final ministerial change has received less attention but could have significant consequences: the removal of Nick Thomas-Symonds as Minister for the Constitution and European Union Relations in the Cabinet Office. He has been replaced by Hamish Falconer, who will serve jointly in the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office. Thomas-Symonds spent the past two years building relationships and negotiating with the EU, and a new face means that much of that relationship-building will have to begin again. A UK-EU summit had been planned for this month but was delayed following Starmer’s resignation. Falconer will now need to lead preparations for a rescheduled summit.
All of these challenges are compounded by a wide range of domestic pressures and a tight fiscal environment. There will be difficult choices ahead for the Prime Minister over where to spend money and where to expend political capital. Supporters hope he will prove to be a stronger communicator than his predecessors and reverse the party’s poor polling. If his new team can deliver on foreign policy and defence on his behalf, his job will be considerably easier. The turbulence of recent years, however, suggests that may be wishful thinking.
The European Leadership Network itself as an institution holds no formal policy positions. The opinions articulated above represent the views of the authors rather than the European Leadership Network or its members. The ELN aims to encourage debates that will help develop Europe’s capacity to address the pressing foreign, defence, and security policy challenges of our time, to further its charitable purposes.
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