CONTENTS

politics first | Spotlight
ADVERTORIAL
britain in the world:
is the foreign office fit for service?
88
Emily Thornberry
Shadow Foreign Secretary, Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union and Labour MP
for Islington South and Finsbury
In Ed Balls’ new book, Speaking Out, we discover George Osborne’s reaction
when Mr Balls – then Osborne’s Treasury shadow – told him he was worried
about what impact the further devolution of tax powers to Holyrood would
have on the sustainability of the economic union between Scotland and the
rest of the UK.
Mr Osborne’s response was: “Let’s worry about that after the
referendum.” This Tory government has always been one to act first and
worry about the consequences later: the plunge into austerity post-2010;
the NHS White Paper; Libya; and the European Union referendum, to name
just a few of the many examples.
As far as David Cameron and George Osborne were concerned, they did
not do Plan Bs, and were always too arrogant - and too reckless - to see the
need for them. They have both now paid the price with their jobs, but the
country is still living with the consequences.
If you want to see the sheer scale of that arrogance and recklessness,
go back to the Spending Review of October 2010. Incoming ministers were
given just five months to assess all the issues facing their departments, and
offer up proposals for the biggest cuts in decades to the programmes and
manpower required to deal with them.
In department after department, we can look back and see how utterly
short-sighted and catastrophic those cuts were. And now we can add to
that list of avoidable errors the huge cuts imposed on the Foreign Office
in 2010, which have left that once proud and world-leading department
looking hopelessly ill-equipped to deal with the impact of Brexit and the
new relationships it will require the UK to strike with countries around the
world.
And nobody can say that Mr Cameron, Mr Osborne and then Foreign
Secretary William Hague were not warned. While they saw the civil servants
and overseas offices as an easily-expendable target, these individuals, with
rather more expertise in the matter, knew the calamity this would cause.
By 2014-15, the Foreign Office budget had been cut by 16.1 per cent,
and its core budget for administration and diplomacy had been reduced to
just over one billion pounds. As the Tory chair of the Foreign Affairs Select
Committee said, these cuts went “beyond just trimming fat: capacity now
appears to be being damaged.”
The Committee said that the Foreign Office was “struggling to
fill positions in critical business areas”, and that expertise within the
department was viewed by many to have suffered, particularly in terms of
local knowledge overseas. “To impair the FCO’s analytical capacity for the
sake of a few million pounds could be disastrous and costly.”
At the end of the last Parliament, we were left with a Foreign Office
that was overly-centralised, focused on the wrong priorities, losing local
knowledge and influence overseas, and – as former ambassador to the
United Nations Jeremy Greenstock put it – a “fading power” on the world
stage.
Even an internal report conducted by former Downing Street foreign
policy advisor and ex-ambassador to the Lebanon, Tom Fletcher, reached
the same conclusion: “We are a ministry of Foreign Affairs. Our core
purpose is to work overseas to increase the UK’s influence, prosperity and
security. But only one-third of our UK staff are overseas and two-thirds of
our staff overseas are working on corporate issues.”
It was too little, too late that George Osborne’s 2015 Spending Review
promised to maintain Foreign Office spending in real-terms – and this
could not begin to repair the damage that had been done, and the desperate
absence of capacity within the Foreign Office even to plan for the potential
impact of Brexit, let alone manage it.
Even before the vote, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee had warned
of the “regrettable” absence of any apparent contingency planning by the
Foreign Office. Writing after the vote, this July, they were not so restrained:
“The previous Government’s considered view not to instruct key Departments
including the FCO to plan for the possibility that the electorate would vote
to leave the EU amounted to gross negligence. It has exacerbated postreferendum
uncertainty both within the UK and amongst key international
partners, and made the task now facing the new Government substantially
more difficult.”
From a Tory-led select committee, that is an utterly damning verdict,
but it is also a simple statement of reality. The Foreign Office is literally not
prepared for the task it now faces, but this is no fault of the hard-working
civil servants and diplomats who manage and staff the department.
Like the rest of Brexit, it is a mess entirely of David Cameron and George
Osborne’s own making, and it is the only legacy for which they should be
remembered.
OP ED BY IMRAN MADDEN
FOR POLITICS FIRST
Few people can have anticipated a year ago what a changed
political and economic landscape we would find ourselves in
today.
As the UK prepares to bring its 43-year membership of the EU to
an end following the Brexit vote, we have a new Prime Minister
in Number 10, a mass of changes in the line-ups of Cabinet and
Shadow Cabinet and a long list of trade and other relationships
and agreements to develop or renegotiate. If I had to pick one word
that sums up these tumultuous times, it would be ‘uncertain’.
With so much uncertainty, the instinct of some will be to
contract. A contraction of policy and public spending, to focus
more exclusively on communities and lives here in the UK. A
contraction in the media, to pay less heed to events further afield
and more to those closer to home.
It is certainly easier to communicate a narrative that is immediately
relatable to the target audience: it sells more papers and it wins
more votes. But I passionately believe that now is not the time to
turn in on ourselves and away from the wider world. If we do so we
will be neglecting our wider responsibilities as one of the world’s
richest countries and we will risk becoming isolated, insular and
irrelevant.
An argument that has been gaining attention in recent months
is the one that says we should abandon the UK’s commitment
to spend 0.7% of gross national income on foreign aid to free
up funds for domestic priorities. “Why are we paying billions of
pounds to help foreigners,” the argument goes, “with so much
poverty and inequality on our own doorstep?”
It is a reasonable question to ask, of course. Some view international
aid as a luxury when times are good, and therefore an obvious
target for cuts when the going gets tough. But international aid
spending is driven by a moral imperative to respond to extreme
poverty and suffering, and is also in our own national interest.
Aid partnerships, and the investment they make in building
opportunity and prosperity in the wider world, contribute towards
both foreign policy influence and trading opportunities for British
business. And at the end of the day that 0.7% is not an absolute
amount but a percentage pegged to the state of our economy
– if the pie gets smaller, for whatever reason, the funds made
available for foreign aid will be reduced.
The UK’s international aid programme is extremely well regarded
and appreciated internationally. If there were an Olympics for
excellence in this sphere, Team DFID would pick up a lot of medals,
just like Team GB in Rio. Islamic Relief has first-hand experience
of how effective British aid can be when it targets the poorest
and most vulnerable and empowers them to lift themselves out of
poverty. We need bold voices in politics, the media and the third
sector to tell this story, and to speak up for the poor communities
overseas who don’t have a direct voice in our politics.
International development plays an unheralded part in maintaining
the UK’s ‘soft power’. By committing 0.7% of national income to
foreign aid we are sending a strong message to the international
community that we stand in solidarity with them, that we put
our money where our mouth is when it comes to humanitarian
values, and that the UK remains an open and inclusive country –
despite navigating the uncharted waters of Brexit. By responding
generously to the refugee crisis we reinforce something important
at the core of British values – welcoming the stranger, and
providing a place of refuge for the oppressed.
I believe that our commitment to international aid will reflect what
kind of country we want to be outside the European Union. Will
we be outward looking and progressive, innovative and adaptable;
or will we turn in on ourselves, raise the drawbridge and seek
scapegoats where we should be seeking allies?
With our country’s ultimate position on the world stage still to
be defined, it is now more important than ever that we maintain
a progressive and outward facing approach to foreign aid. I look
forward to working with policymakers, the media and third sector
colleagues to reframe this crucial debate.