Source: The Conversation – UK
The route to 10 Downing Street is often fairly parochial, requiring knowledge and experience of local or national issues, rather than international ones. Andy Burnham has been involved in politics for a quarter of a century. But his variety of posts gives us little indication of how he is likely to manage relations with key allies and the UK’s role in various parts of the world.
Burnham has just appointed Ed Miliband (who opposed further North Sea exploitation) as foreign secretary. This suggests a willingness to risk the disapproval of Donald Trump. With the exception of his brother David, Miliband is the first Jewish person to hold the post since Malcolm Rifkind in the 1990s and favours a strong relationship with Israel but is no Zionist.
So many premierships become dominated by international affairs that it is easy to forget just how rarely new prime ministers show a keen interest in foreign policy. Burnham is not alone in this. (Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill are, of course, major exceptions, and Boris Johnson had already been foreign secretary before becoming PM).
Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher were more typical in coming to office with little knowledge of, or concern for, global politics. The former admitted of Afghanistan that he initially “knew little” of it. Yet within a few years, an adviser remarked that Blair seemed “almost bored with all the ordinary stuff and interested only in all the foreign leaders, Clinton, wars, etc”.
It is often the case that prime ministers develop an interest in international affairs only once they have taken office. Burnham’s first week in charge will be filled with various national security briefings, many of which will have an international hue. He’s already committed to spend less time abroad than his predecessors. Yet the pressure to attend bilateral and multinational conferences, Nato summits and meetings with EU counterparts could prove difficult to resist. Diplomatic conventions exert a powerful pull, as does the desire to help the UK stand tall on the international stage.
Before taking office, Burnham said that his party “didn’t get it right” over Gaza, and that Keir Starmer’s government should have condemned Israel’s actions far earlier. Yet he hasn’t described a genocide or promised to stop arms sales to Israel. He may well follow the status quo of hedging while condemning when it comes to this and the ongoing conflict between Iran and the US and Israel.
He has also hinted at being less warm towards a full rapprochement with the EU than Starmer. He is likely to treat the matter with some caution, after one-time leadership hopeful Wes Streeting’s recent calls for the UK to rejoin the EU. As always with the EU, Burnham will be keeping a keen eye on the domestic as he monitors the public mood.
The US remains the UK’s most crucial ally. I wrote in The Conversation last year about Starmer’s success in pursuing a productive relationship with Donald Trump and thus keeping him interested in Nato, still the cornerstone of UK foreign policy. This wasn’t to last and Starmer earned Trump’s ire after refusing to aid in the bombing of Iran.
Burnham’s affability will surely allow for at least a good level of rapport with Trump. The president was initially dismissive of the PM-in-waiting, but they have since had a “very good conversation”.
Burnham’s reputation as being rather more to the left than Starmer will not immediately endear him to some in Washington. But time and again we have seen that Trump is ultimately far more motivated by flattery and personal relations than philosophical differences.
The UK’s grand strategy
On other important international issues such as Russia/Ukraine and the relationship with China, we have precious little to hint at what sort of policies Burnham might develop.
The reality is that, because of the presence of an underlying grand strategy – however ill-defined – that has largely endured since 1945, UK foreign policy tends to stay relatively constant.
Grand strategy is a set of underlying principles informing a state’s medium- to longer-term international goals and interests. The UK’s is informed by a network of individuals and institutions, including the foreign secretary, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Ministry of Defence, various thinktanks and the periodic strategic defence reviews.
This underlying strategy is not codified in a single document and thus can seem elusive. Nonetheless, it provides the stanchions – membership of Nato, the transatlantic relationship, maintaining global reach – that support the foreign policies of the day. May and Johnson’s Global Britain, Sunak’s Indo-Pacific tilt and Starmer’s deeper security relationship with the EU were all rooted in this strategy.
Prime ministers can and do shape foreign policy in profound ways – see Cameron’s warmth towards China, May’s and Johnson’s focus on Brexit and, further back, Blair’s interventionism. But grand strategy is more deeply embedded and longer lasting than any (increasingly short in the UK) prime ministerial term. Jonathan Powell’s continuation as national security adviser seems to embody the endurance of strategic principles across a longer period of time.
The distinction between policy and grand strategy can be fine, but it is important in understanding why the UK’s foreign policy can seem resistant to change.
Burnham will probably define his own foreign policy with a slogan of some kind, perhaps in the vein of Blair’s “ethical foreign policy” or the longer-lasting “Global Britain”. But it is highly likely to be underscored by the same long-running shibboleths of UK strategy that informed his predecessors.
Nick Whittaker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/21/what-ed-milibands-appointment-does-and-doesnt-mean-for-the-uks-foreign-policy/