Innovation, not restoration
When Andy Burnham gave his first speech as Britain’s new prime minister on July 20th, he said he was “acutely conscious that [he was] the sixth person in the last ten years” to walk into 10 Downing Street. Since 2016, Britain—a country previously known for its relative political stability—has seen unprecedented churn in its prime ministers. Unfortunately, this revolving door of governments coincided with a period when the world around Britain was changing rapidly, and disruption hit the country’s two most important relationships, with the EU and America. Amid the turnover of leaders, Britain has failed to adapt its foreign policy to a radically different context.
As a result, Burnham and his foreign secretary Ed Miliband now face some fundamental and unresolved questions about Britain’s place in the world. The past ten years have seen Britain’s exit from the EU and dramatic changes in US foreign policy under President Donald Trump, both of which have affected Britain’s global standing. In the longer term, the country has failed to adjust as the world moves from a post-cold-war order marked by broad cooperation to an environment characterised by competition and conflict. This is exacerbated by leading powers such as China and the US, which are increasingly using control of essential goods and strategic chokepoints to exert pressure on their rivals.
Britain is thus at a disadvantage; the country is exposed at a time when international uncertainty is intensifying. Britain is vulnerable to disruption of essential supply chains and coercion by rival powers. Outside the EU and without reliable US backing, it lacks the scale to resist pressure from the assertive countries on which it depends for AI, pharmaceuticals, critical raw materials and components for clean technology. Tariffs and other trade restrictions are blunting its economic potential. It also faces the impact of daunting global problems, including climate change and the unrestricted development of AI, as collective action to solve them is falling short.
Amid the global turbulence, Burnham has said he wants to focus on domestic issues such as promoting nationwide growth and opportunity through reindustrialisation. But these goals could be threatened by the country’s fragile position in a tightly interconnected world. At the same time, Burnham must contend with declining domestic support for Britain taking on an ambitious international role. There is growing scepticism among parts of the British population about whether the country’s traditional commitment to an open, rules-based order continues to serve their interests: what began with the Brexit vote in 2016 has continued with the rise of the populist-nationalist Reform UK party.
Britain’s inherited foreign policy playbook, centred on a commitment to multilateralism and the transatlantic alliance, has thus lost both effectiveness abroad and credibility at home. This is a problem for Britain, which needs functioning international partnerships to fulfil key national objectives. It is also a problem for Britain’s allies, above all other European countries. Britain’s assets, from scientific and financial expertise to diplomatic weight and global connections, allow it to make a powerful contribution to the efforts of like-minded partners that are similarly grappling with a radically changed international environment.
This paper argues that Britain needs a new way to strengthen itself against coercion, rebuild international influence and regain domestic support. It can do so by positioning itself as an innovator in international cooperation. In place of its traditional adherence to established frameworks and relationships, it should embrace a more flexible and dynamic approach to global partnerships for a world in flux. At the same time, Burnham and Miliband need to more clearly articulate how a renewed vision of international cooperation advances a specific set of British interests and concerns. This will require breaking away from an ingrained tendency for Britain to present its goal as the preservation of the international system for its own sake.
The paper shows how Britain can implement a more innovative, flexible and focused vision of international cooperation, using three concentric circles of partnership. First, with Britain’s closest and most like-minded allies, especially the EU; second, with a wider range of middle and emerging powers that are gaining influence in a more multi-aligned world; and finally, with the collective institutions that remain at the centre of the multilateral system. Across these different areas, Britain should put itself at the centre of moves to renew international cooperation in ways that can still deliver shared benefits, even at a confrontational time.
The changing global order
After Britain joined the European Economic Community in 1973, its international strategy came to be defined by close ties with the US, membership of the EU and a prominent role in the multilateral system. Indeed, Britain has traditionally had an outsized role in global governance. It has permanent membership of the UN Security Council and holds a central position in the Commonwealth. It was also involved in setting up the World Bank, the IMF and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, as well as later the World Trade Organisation (WTO). And British policymakers have long touted the country’s attachment to the idea of a rules-based order. They tend to think of Britain as a steward of the international system, with British interests seen as indistinguishable from the preservation and effectiveness of the order itself.[1]
But this approach to international cooperation is now challenged on all fronts, and Britain is lonely and exposed. The very system of laws, norms and institutions governing international relations that Britain played a leading role in establishing has broken down. The rise of geopolitical competition, a resurgence of inter-state wars and the use of economic interdependency as an instrument of coercion have fundamentally changed the character of global politics.
China has emerged as a formidable power that uses mercantilist methods to try to achieve dominance in a raft of industries that are critical to future global prosperity and security. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a direct challenge to the UN charter’s rules on the use of force, and participants in contemporary wars routinely flout the laws on the conduct of hostilities. As its permanent members spar, the UN Security Council seems powerless to have any impact on wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, Sudan and elsewhere.
The international system is increasingly stalemated. As global power shifts away from the West, many emerging powers question the legitimacy of its presumed leadership role. The WTO is hobbled by the lack of a functioning appeals system and powerless to stop the US and China using tariffs and export restrictions for geopolitical ends. Global cooperation on climate and health through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process and the World Health Organisation (WHO) has been insufficient to deal with accelerating global warming and the risk of future pandemics, and recent summits and negotiations show how difficult it is becoming to reach consensus.
As countries increasingly focus on their own security, progress on global development is falling behind UN Sustainable Development Goal targets. There is also a glaring absence of any international process to control the potentially huge risks posed by the rapid development of AI.
Most strikingly of all, the US—which has long stood as a central reference point for British foreign policy—has turned dramatically against many aspects of international cooperation. Under Trump, America has become an unreliable ally, pursuing a transactional approach to foreign policy and putting its commitment to traditional security structures such as NATO in doubt. Trump’s support for Ukraine against Russia has fluctuated unpredictably. The idea of a Western values-based alliance has been undermined by US threats to annex European territory and by the US adoption of a civilisational vision, with American officials interfering in European politics to promote far-right and nativist causes. With the creation of his Board of Peace, Trump turned his back on a Western tradition of liberal peacemaking. He has often embraced a personalist and extractivist approach to conflict resolution, with a focus on obtaining US access to oil and critical minerals.
The US has also rejected action on climate change and withdrawn funding for a slate of international institutions. It has abandoned a liberal vision of support for human rights and democracy, and repeatedly resorted to armed force in violation of the UN charter. America has thus adopted a vision of economic statecraft focused narrowly on the interests of the American people and used tariffs as a political tool against allies and rivals alike, undermining the central precept of the international trading regime. Trump has threatened to punish European allies for regulations that harm US technology companies, impinging on their ability to regulate digital services and AI. He also briefly imposed an export control directive that suspended foreign use of two Anthropic AI frontier models.
As these changes unfolded, Britain’s departure from the EU left it outside the bloc that is its largest trading partner and closest geographical neighbour, with which its supply chains are most closely integrated. Britain is excluded from EU trade agreements and internal EU discussions on defence, economic security and broader foreign policy, as well as from intra-EU coordination meetings in multilateral forums. But in a more transactional world, size and weight matter. To resist coercive pressure from assertive rivals, countries need to be able to mount a credible threat of retaliation. Their success here depends on the assets they can deploy, the size of their economy and their dominant positions in key sectors—all of which Britain compromised with Brexit.
Implications for Britain
Against this backdrop of an unravelling global order and fracturing alliances, Britain is in danger of being held back by old habits—for example, relying on a rules-based economic and trade system to adequately protect its interests, and assuming that a Western alliance led by the US will look after its security needs. This lack of foresight has made Britain vulnerable to the impact of global developments such as conflict in the Middle East, over which it has little influence. It still relies on an unpredictable US for its defence against Russia, and is ill-prepared to defend itself against trade restrictions and other forms of pressure from China or America.
Vulnerable security and industry
As Burnham has acknowledged, Britain’s status as a large middle power with an open economy and strong trading links means that its strength at home and its strength in the world are indivisible. Global disruption has consequences not only for domestic security but also for prosperity.
Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have led British citizens to recognise that prices and jobs are directly affected by events overseas. Britain’s vaunted relationship with the US did not buy it any influence over Trump’s costly decision to attack Iran. Moreover, Britain’s dependencies on unreliable partners are more problematic in a transactional world. On defence, Britain relies on the US for key elements of its nuclear deterrent and other weapons systems such as F-35 jets, Apache helicopters and C-17 transport planes. But it appears to have done little planning for an alternative strategy at a time when Russia has stepped up its threats against Britain.
On AI, which is likely to be a key source of national power and influence, Britain allowed its most promising start-ups to be bought by US companies, at the price of losing control of its technological ecosystem—an approach that prompted the leading American scholar, Tim Wu, to write that Britain was “curiously at ease” with its own dependence. Meanwhile, British industry is reliant on access to Chinese rare earths across a range of sectors vital to the nation’s economic future and security, including defence, automotive, clean energy, healthcare and advanced manufacturing.
These vulnerabilities and dependencies could stand in the way of Britain’s economic revival. Burnham has said that he wants to focus on domestic policy, but his goal of reindustrialisation and promoting growth in Britain cannot be achieved without consideration of its international partnerships. Given the interconnectedness of the global economy, the kind of industrial strategy the government wants to pursue must have an international dimension. Preserving and building Britain’s role in advanced manufacturing and other strategic sectors depends on access to inputs, investment and markets overseas. Burnham’s predecessor Keir Starmer went some way towards recognising the implications of a riskier world by launching an industrial strategy that aimed to promote Britain’s economic security by reducing supply chain vulnerability across eight sectors including clean energy, life sciences and advanced manufacturing.
Compromised industrial sovereignty
Following on from Starmer’s approach, Burnham has promised to rebuild Britain’s hard power by reinforcing industrial sovereignty—directing procurement towards Britain’s own defence industry and promoting investment in technology from shipbuilding and energy to AI and quantum. But domestic production cannot meet all the country’s essential needs, and reindustrialisation requires inputs from overseas. In some respects, the government has recognised that British self-sufficiency is not an option, and that it would be more realistic to strengthen Britain’s position in other ways.
For example, AI minister Kanishka Narayan, who attends cabinet meetings, has set out a thoughtful strategy. Rather than seeking to establish a sovereign stack, he suggests that Britain should focus on areas of national advantage where it can establish a degree of primacy, including specialist chips and professional and scientific applications. On its own, though, Britain does not have the scale to stand up to potential coercion from great powers like China or the US, or the market size to secure reliable supplies of critical materials, technology and investment. Britain’s approach to resilience is held back by the absence of a clear plan for working with partners on these issues.
Loss of influence
Britain’s weakened position in a more transactional world heightens the risk of coercion and dependency. But Britain is also failing to exercise the influence it could have in promoting international action on urgent global challenges at a time when multilateral cooperation is falling short. The AI revolution threatens to create new dependencies while posing risks of an unknown scale through unregulated development of an extraordinarily powerful technology. Climate change, global health threats and humanitarian crises impact Britain directly and indirectly through global instability and migration.
As a globally influential country and in line with its proclaimed values, Britain has also traditionally aspired to act on a principle of solidarity to help relieve suffering around the world. New forms of international action on these problems are needed as multilateral mechanisms falter, but Britain is at risk of punching below its weight. For example, influential observers say that Britain’s more isolated international position, financial constraints and recent political turmoil have cost it influence in bodies such as the IMF and World Bank.
Public disillusionment
Britain’s international approach is not only out of step with today’s more dangerous world—there are signs that the British public is increasingly losing faith in it. Opinion polls show declining trust in the British government to pursue a foreign policy in the national interest, while Reform UK (which led in political polls over much of the last year) calls for a politics of national self-interest with strong echoes of Trump’s anti-internationalist rhetoric.
As former prime minister Gordon Brown has argued, the rise of political nationalism across the world and the declining effectiveness of international cooperation are linked: people turn to exclusionary nationalism in part because they feel that global cooperation is not helping with many citizens’ most pressing concerns.
However, this connection creates a political opportunity for Burnham. His pledge to bring government closer to all of Britain’s people provides him with an opportunity to increase public backing for Britain’s international role. The new prime minister can achieve this by showing that international cooperation benefits people both in Britain and overseas, and demonstrating that focused global efforts on issues such as climate or debt can still be effective. He should ensure his mission to redistribute power and opportunity around the country incorporates a vision of Britain’s global engagement. But this vision needs to be rooted in the concerns of the broad mass of the British population, rather than the country’s inherited role in the international system.
There is some basis for thinking this could work: the Rockefeller Foundation has published an opinion poll showing that a slim majority in Britain supports international cooperation, even if it involves compromising on some national interests. The challenge for Burnham is to re-establish the idea in citizens’ minds that the government is centring their concerns in both its domestic and foreign policy.
About the author
Anthony Dworkin is senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, working on human rights, democracy and Europe’s place in the international system.