“Remember there’s few votes to be had in this game, but plenty you can lose”
I remember being given this sage political advice when I entered the Foreign Office. Sage because it both reflects a general rule of thumb about foreign affairs and in the end my own experience. The job so often became managing problems to the extent they didn’t damage the UK, rather than won elections.
One of the last projects I worked on at the BBC a decade ago was something we called “So you want to be a Secretary of State”. We examined all the departments and in a brief film for each, discussed via interviews with those, of all parties, who’d held the office what was unique to that role.
When it came to Foreign Secretary there was a caveat to it’s traditional description as one of the ‘Great Offices of State’ and that was that modern Prime Ministers had a tendency to jump in whenever something really big was about to land, and grab the limelight from their Foreign Secretary.
This is not just the bitter titbits from memoirs of “FFS” – that’s ‘former Foreign Secretaries’ before you think I’ve turned vulgar, though it might make a great title for the experience of being big footed by the boss – but a natural draw the world stage has on the psyche of a Prime Minister.
Whenever I launch a broadside at the performance of Sir Keir Starmer, certain voices push back with the “well you would say that wouldn’t you” line. I dismiss this as I do not have a general, all circumstances approach to calling him out. I have even given him credit on these pages, when he deserved it.
I have said before, his handling of Trump was considered to be pretty deft the first time they met and a trade deal – albeit a rather specific and limited one – is a feather in his cap. It comes on top of the trade deal with India which despite it’s tax deal deficiencies is still a trade deal with a hugely important nation to the UK. He claims he is raising the profile of the UK in the world, and whilst using the trading opportunities brought about by the very thing he claims damaged that profile, it is only fair to agree it is doing what he says.
Over the weekend Starmer was in Ukraine and working with other leaders on try to get some agreement towards peace for that doughty and determined victim of Russian greed and aggresion, a peace I still contend is fraught with problems, and bad options.
Despite the minor distraction of a quite ludicrous attack on President Macron, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and our Prime Minister Keir Starmer over the hasty removal of a tissue from a table that arch-conspiracist and performative US hysteric Alex Jones claimed was drugs – to most normal people once again our Prime Minister was on the front foot, at the table, leading the UK in some of the highest stakes discussions of the moment and firmly flying our flag on the world stage.
The Starmer world tour I know is felt to be a success in Downing Street, and grudging or not I’m not going to argue he’s fluffed his lines, or let the UK down. It’s a fair assessment that he’s been statesman like when he’s needed to be and doesn’t look out of place in the company of world leaders.
I would however point to that advice I started with. How many votes it all wins him is arguable.
There was an internal prism applied in the early days of this Government – ‘bring us things that with some concerted effort can be done relatively quickly and show the British public grown-ups have returned to Government. The pitch will be things Tories failed to do in years whilst we’ve done in months, and we’ll gloss over any compromises to get there’.
So far on trade deals they’d claim it is 2-0, but the same prism was in play for the ill-fated, unnecessary and hugely expensive Chagos deal, one I gather they are really rather regretting ever countenancing. Yeah, well me too, which despite touching it, we didn’t do.
What all this adds up to in a ballot box is very hard to know, if it even does, and here’s the real point: Manifest destiny to bestride the world stage as a modern diplomatic colossus or escapism from the countless pressures the office-cum-home-cum-bunker that Number 10 Downing street can be? The ever fresh ‘Yes, Minister’ offers a timely warning:
‘One minute you are out of the office – the next you are out of office”
I can attest to this very real feeling. On retuning to the UK in early October of 2022 after a series of foreign trips, and having hosted 150 world leaders for the funeral of her majesty Queen Elizabeth, we returned to the UK under the rule of a very different Elizabeth and for a Conference that had the atmosphere of a wake. The Foreign Office team all had the same thought
‘What the hell have you all being doing while we were away?!’
This morning’s papers are full of it, the weekend’s were too, Starmer has got a huge amount of current and future domestic headaches to contend with. He and his Chancellor are facing not just difficult choices but potentially excruciating ones. U-turns and doing things you claimed you wouldn’t, again, are back on the agenda.
Re-election, or reputation reset will not be done on the world stage, though it can help. Votes are won on domestic delivery and lost in swathes when you don’t. We really shouldn’t have to impress on any Conservative the truth of the latter.
Is this weakness for foreign over domestic a peculiarly Starmer trait. Heavens no. It tends to be a Prime Ministerial one, and plenty of Conservative versions have had it. The aforementioned Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, and to a lesser extent Cameron and Sunak all tasted it. Blair, as so often seems the case when looking at the functioning, or not, of the modern UK, set the pace in spades – many have noted he seemed to see Foreign Secretary as part of his job title.
So, it’s not a tribal rant at his performance. I can do that on specific topics and feel fully justified in every brutal word. No this is more a warning to them, and pointing to an opportunity – for us.
Opposition doesn’t have all that much room for foreign affairs for a reason. A Prime Minister might well grab the spotlight on the world stage and not see the extent to which his opponents are straining every sinew to steal his domestic audience, whilst his focus and lofty position obscure his view. Morgan McSweeney might be watching at home but despite jibes to the contrary he isn’t actually the PM.
I have one suggestion myself. Right next to the sign in CCHQ that should say ‘it’s still the economy, stupid’ should be another that reads:
‘Home is where the votes are.’
