It often takes an outsider to see us most clearly. When I had breakfast with the ambassador of an EU country last week he asked me: ‘What is the Burnham government’s foreign policy? Because it seems to me there is only domestic policy conducted on the international stage.’
Keir Starmer and David Lammy’s approach was ‘progressive realism’. Under New Labour, Robin Cook advanced an ‘ethical foreign policy’. Andy Burnham, however, appears to have little interest, leaving the details to Ed Miliband, the Foreign Secretary. As a Labour peer notes: ‘We have Andy’s vibes and Ed’s conscience.’
But on Brexit, the Middle East and Ukraine, the Prime Minister has begun to discover the wisdom of the observation, often attributed to Leon Trotsky, that ‘you may not be interested in foreign policy, but foreign policy is interested in you’.
Miliband’s critics see a man with an almost messianic craving for the approval of progressive voters
Having reopened the Brexit debate, Burnham implied he’s had an intelligence briefing about Russian interference in the 2016 EU referendum in an apparent attempt to delegitimise the result. The move backfired when Sir Ken McCallum, the director–general of MI5, suggested such claims would ‘play into our adversaries’ hands’.
The German government and its leader Friedrich Merz privately signalled displeasure at Miliband’s decision to sanction Israeli products from the West Bank, in what was seen as an attempt to curry favour with voters in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election and Labour members at party conference. ‘This all started because Burnham doesn’t give a flying fuck about foreign policy,’ says a security source. ‘Burnham didn’t realise that basically everybody… was going to ask him, “What the fuck are you doing?”’
As I reported last month, the sanctions were opposed both by Jonathan Powell, the National Security Adviser, and by Simon Walters, the British ambassador in Tel Aviv, who advised that nothing should be done before the Israeli election on 27 October. It can now be revealed that Foreign Office officials warned in a memo that the policy will be very difficult to enact, since there is no legal distinction in Israel between products and services from Israel proper and the Palestinian territories. A source familiar with the warning says: ‘What are we going to do? Phone up the Israelis and ask them which companies to sanction? In effect, we are sanctioning the whole of Israel.’
This, in turn, has materially damaged relations with the US, since banks and other companies to be sanctioned are part-owned by Americans. Insiders say British insurance companies will also be hit. ‘Several Israeli banks have American stakeholders,’ says a London-based diplomat. ‘You will effectively be sanctioning American citizens.’
Labour MPs congratulated themselves that Miliband’s move initially passed with little comment in Washington. However, multiple sources say that the State Department was furious and wanted to criticise Britain publicly but was overruled by the White House – not because Donald Trump wanted to spare Burnham’s blushes, but because the President hates Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, and did not want to help his re-election effort by ramping up the issue.
Privately, however, the US believes Britain is effectively enacting measures which amount to BDS – Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions – a campaign run by pro-Palestinian activists, which could in turn trigger America’s anti-BDS laws. Theoretically, that could see Britain being sanctioned by the Americans in return.
A Labour grandee with contacts in Washington adds: ‘Marco Rubio [the US Secretary of State] has been particularly shocked about the turn of the Labour government. They’re concerned the UK wants to remove banking licences. There’s a real concern that the UK, which used to be a sensible voice in Europe, is now at the mad end of the mad.’
Miliband’s critics see a man with an almost messianic craving for the approval of progressive voters. ‘Ed was furious that Jeremy Corbyn became a cult hero,’ notes a former minister who sat with him in the Brown cabinet. ‘He wants to be to net zero what Nye Bevan was to the NHS. He wants to save the planet and now he wants to save the Palestinians.’ But even his opponents say Miliband is effective at getting his way. ‘Ed feels very powerful and unrestrained,’ the Labour grandee says.
Miliband’s defenders argue that, by taking a strong lead on Israel, he stopped a public display of anti-Israeli fervour – and that he is now to chair an international meeting to combat anti-Semitism. ‘I think Miliband is trying to take control of the Palestinian narrative within the party and not let that narrative control him,’ a diplomat says. ‘He dampened Palestinian voices at the Labour conference. They all wanted to wave a Palestinian flag. He killed it off.’ Insiders say Miliband has contacted members of the Israeli left, who he hopes might join a post-Netanyahu coalition government, with an eye towards playing a future role in the peace process. ‘Ed is looking for a major role post-election,’ a senior Labour figure says.
However, the sanctions have complicated that, firstly because some on the Israeli left believe Miliband’s intervention has helped Netanyahu. ‘I’ve got friends who are practically communists,’ says a former cabinet minister. ‘One of them is hard-left MK [Member of the Knesset]. She has nothing but venom for him because he gave Netanyahu an out at a moment when he was under massive pressure.’
Secondly, the Israeli response, closing the British consulate in East Jerusalem, has severed key ties between the UK and the Palestinians, ending training in Ramallah for Palestinian security forces. It was left to Powell and Walters to last week broker a deal with Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, which will see seven staff remain, in exchange for Britain lifting the threat of expulsions of Israeli diplomats in London. But they have been banned from training Palestinian security officials or from joining NGOs in Gaza. ‘Both the Israeli foreign minister and the British foreign minister blinked,’ a diplomat says. ‘But Britain blinked longer. The whole idea behind closing down the consulate was to signal that the UK is no longer relevant to the Palestinian issue.’ Sa’ar thinks Miliband is ‘beyond juvenile and untrustworthy’, a source reveals.
Friends of Jonathan Powell say he is likely to leave government in the months ahead, since his influence has waned under Burnham and he has to mop up the fallout of a plan he opposed. ‘Jonathan is furious,’ says one who knows him well. ‘He’ll leave.’ The security source adds: ‘The chances of Jonathan staying for another six months, I think, are now slim. He’s had enough.’
If Powell does go, that will also have serious implications for US-UK relations. Sources on both sides of the Atlantic say few in Burnham’s team are bothering to cultivate relationships with the Trump team as Starmer’s aides did. ‘Jonathan’s the last person left with a relationship with the Americans,’ says a Labour source. ‘Steve Witkoff [Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East] loves him but he knows the Foreign Office is under new management.’
Failing to find a proper strategy in all this, the EU ambassador concluded: ‘The decision that they made on sanctions was a domestic decision, it wasn’t a foreign policy decision.’
The problem for Burnham is that many in the EU can’t work out whether his stated desire to get closer to Brussels is another ploy to drum up support from Green and Lib Dem voters or a serious effort to recast the relationship. A former Labour cabinet minister says: ‘He thinks if he can dominate the left-voting bloc, you can win a general election with a far lower percentage of the vote than has hitherto been the case.’
The PM’s utterings about Russian interference, in a podcast with Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart – both outspoken Remainers – were catnip for their audience, but suggest Burnham is not across the detail. Those who have read the Russia report, produced by the Intelligence and Security Committee, including its classified and unpublished annexes, say that there is no evidence that Russian meddling influenced the EU referendum result. ‘It was much more significant during the Scottish referendum campaign,’ a former ministerial adviser says.
‘There’s a concern that the UK, which used to be a sensible voice in Europe, is now at the mad end of the mad’
Burnham has promised to outline several Brexit reset options: membership of the customs union or single market, keeping the status quo or rejoining the EU. But the practicalities are daunting. Starmer’s negotiator, Nick Thomas-Symonds, used to describe his policy as ‘as close as possible without freedom of movement’. In any of the ‘closer’ scenarios, the EU would demand a payment of around £20 billion a year to the EU budget. Rejoining the single market would mean Britain being a rule-taker and require full freedom of movement. Those familiar with the EU’s likely negotiating position say membership of even the customs union would probably require ‘at least free movement for business’, as well as an end to the trade deals the UK has signed with others since Brexit, unless they could be rolled into EU agreements with those countries.
The EU is already playing hardball with Burnham’s new negotiator, Hamish Falconer, over the renegotiation inherited from Starmer to remove barriers to trade over food and animal products, due to be finalised at an EU-UK summit on 20 November. ‘They’re testing the new team,’ says a Foreign Office source. ‘If Andy thinks he can vibe his way through this, he can’t.’ The EU ambassador, who studied in the UK and has a good knowledge of popular culture, admits there is a weariness in Brussels at the prospect of more Brexit negotiations: ‘The EU is focused on other problems. Some feel Britain is like David Brent. He left the company but kept turning up and hanging around.’
Senior sources believe that Burnham ultimately wants to rejoin the EU. ‘He wants to go back,’ says one Labour insider. ‘That’s taken No. 10 a little bit by surprise. He’s taken the cabinet a bit by surprise.’ The consensus in the cabinet is that while Burnham could probably take the UK back into the customs union or single market by putting such a pledge in an election manifesto and securing a majority (alone or with the Lib Dems), rejoining would be untenable without another referendum.
‘I do not think you can rejoin the EU in a general election, because I’m not sure the EU would accept it,’ another former cabinet minister says. ‘The problem with Rejoin is the EU would have to be persuaded that this was a settled view. If the Tories and Reform say they would take us straight back out again, why would anyone negotiate with us on those terms?’
David Frost, Boris Johnson’s Brexit negotiator, warns Brexiteers not to be complacent: ‘Both Tories and Reform need to speak up for national sovereignty and spend time rubbishing the propaganda. At the moment that’s not happening.’
Labour people agree that if Burnham is serious about a major reworking of the EU relationship, he will also have to publicly build a coherent case for something credible – and explain how that fits into a world of threats from Russia, China and Iran. In other words, he’ll need a foreign policy. Until that point, many, like the EU ambassador, will assume he is only in it for the domestic votes.
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