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Sam Hogg's British Diplomacy Tracker
Hello,
Welcome to this new project, my British Diplomacy Tracker. It’s an effort to track, contextualise and analyse British foreign and international economic policy, interspersed with history and trade views. In a time of instant gratification on social media apps, screaming headlines from a dying industry, and a largely detached political elite, I want this to provide a slower, more thoughtful analysis of where Britain currently sits in this new era. It will be free for a while.
In a recent post, historian, author and Greenmantle founder reflected on an insightful Henry Kissinger observation from 1957:
“History teaches by analogy, not identity,” he wrote. “No significant conclusions are possible in the study of foreign affairs … without an awareness of the historical context [because] history is the memory of states.”
Unsurprisingly, I agree.
The format I propose to follow is simple:
Cheat sheet: skimmable in a minute, bringing you the key points
Set pieces: the major movements, which could include gatherings such as the G7/G20. It will include any foreign policy-focused speeches made by ministers and a breakdown of bilateral ministerial meetings.
Diplomatic tectonics: movements on defence, aid, economy, AI, climate. New ambassadors, old friends, odd meetings. You’ll find them here.
Sub signals: a final section on emerging trends by other countries not currently on the British radar.
— Sam Hogg
Noted
Politico reports Downing Street now boasts a total of zero foreign policy Special Advisers. Professor John Bew, the foreign affairs adviser to three Prime Ministers, is no longer in post either.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced new measures to tackle record-high immigration numbers. His speech directly linked successive Conservative government’s ‘Global Britain’ foreign policy outlook with the high immigration levels. Said the Prime Minister “a failure on this scale isn’t just bad luck, it isn’t a global trend, or taking your eye off the ball. No – this a different order of failure. This happened by design, not accident. Policies were reformed, deliberately, to liberalise immigration. Brexit was used for that purpose, to turn Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders. Global Britain – remember that slogan. That is what they meant.”
Foreign Secretary David Lammy attended a G7 Foreign Ministerial gathering in Italy. Top of the agenda: the Middle East and Ukraine.
Defence Secretary John Healey attended a NATO gathering in Germany.
Britain denied it would send British troops to fight in Ukraine. Foreign Secretary David Lammy pushed back on French media reporting, saying "We are very clear that we stand ready and continue to support the Ukrainians with training particularly, but there has been a long-standing position that we are not committing U.K. troops to the theater (sic) of action."
Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds was before the Business and Trade Committee on Tuesday, while Foreign Secretary David Lammy appeared before the Foreign Affairs Committee the following day.
The UK launched a new Laboratory for AI Security Research (LASR) "to protect the UK and its allies against new threats" and “to stay one step ahead in this new AI arms race.” It will see collaboration from the intelligence community, some universities, and various departments. LASR’s opening brief said it was seeking collaboration with like-minded partners, starting with the Five Eyes countries and NATO allies.
Russia expelled a British diplomat, accusing them of espionage. The target had arrived in-country in August following a previous round of expulsions by Moscow, again on charges of espionage.
The Trade Remedies Authority (TRA) proposed that a new anti-dumping measure of up to 83.5% be applied to imports of excavators from China to the UK.
IMMIGRATION
“[E]xcessive immigration brings pressures, real pressures on our communities up and down the country. Pressures on schools, housing and healthcare and social pressures too. When large numbers of people arrive in new neighbourhoods, perhaps not all able to speak the same language as those who live there, perhaps not always wanting to integrate, perhaps seeking simply to take advantage of our NHS, paid for by our taxpayers, there is a discomfort and tension in some of our communities.” So mused Prime Minister David Cameron in 2011, promising a set of policies aimed at reducing immigration to the UK, which the previous year had been “a staggering 239,000.”
13 years later, Prime Minister Keir Starmer addressed an audience of journalists to relay his new plans to tackle migration. He noted net migration to the UK in the previous year was 906,000, “four times the migration levels compared with 2019,” This was having an economic and social impact on Britain, he argued, by effectively being a form of human quantitive easing. Formulating strategies to reduce immigration is intrinsically linked to foreign, security, aid, climate and development policy; each strand has second and third-order consequences.
To this end, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper visited Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) where she sealed a series of cooperation deals to tackle shared threats - including migration. Some of the agreed actions, such as the commitment to “launch communications campaigns in both Iraq and the KRI to counter the misinformation and myths that people smugglers post online”, will very likely be subcontracted to British private sector firms well-versed in these arts. A glance through the FCDO’s spending over £25,000 in July 2024 reveals several companies likely to work on this and similar projects.
Unsurprisingly, immigration issues regularly come across the desk of British diplomats and trade negotiators. Earlier this year, I noted that Britain’s High Commissioner to Namibia, Charles Moore, recently responded to data showing a 5085% increase in people seeking asylum. Speaking to local media, he said there was no reason why Namibians should claim asylum in the UK at all, adding that 91% of Namibian asylum claims have been declined since 2018. The UK-India Free Trade Agreement - resumed last week following a leader-to-leader meeting between Starmer and Modi - hit stumbling blocks over immigration in 2023. We will soon know more about Starmer’s plans to act: an incoming Government White Paper on immigration will be closely scrutinised by Westminster and foreign embassies throughout London.
G7 FOREIGN MINISTERS MEETING
As summer's heat enveloped Rome, Marcus Aurelius would escape the capital's stifling atmosphere for his villa near the town of Fiuggi. This retreat, a blend of leisure and administrative oversight, allowed the philosopher-emperor to reflect on his world. In moments like this, Aurelius would consider his empire at large, and the challenges he faced: 65 million individuals in varying levels of content, wrecked by a devastating plague lasting over a decade, with an ongoing conflict on the north-eastern border, and a war-induced economic strain so severe that the emperor was forced to auction off some imperial assets and reduce the silver content in the Roman denarius. Interestingly, he chose not to raise taxes.
Nearly two thousand years later, Britain’s Foreign Secretary found himself discussing thematically similar issues a stone’s throw away from the villa. David Lammy joined his peers from the G7 for the final ministerial gathering under Italy’s leadership. The UK’s foreign policy under Labour has remained largely one of continuation across the key theatres of Ukraine, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific, but with a new emphasis on ‘resetting’ relations with blocs such as the European Union and Africa as part of a ‘growth’ mindset, and efforts to build resilience into the system ahead of the return of President-elect Donald Trump in 2025. The latter point, in particular, haunts the background press briefings given to journalists at recent gatherings.
Ministers and representatives from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, the Philippines, India, Indonesia and South Korea were present for various parts of the gathering. Each wants something different from Britain - the Indo-Pacific nations will be watching with concern the ongoing Strategic Defence Review for any signs Labour may pull back from the tilt, while Middle Eastern countries are puzzling over how exactly the British Government wants them to invest, following a shaky investment summit last month and ahead of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s visit to the region in the coming days. Other notable attendees included India’s Dr S Jaishankar, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, and EU High Representative Josep Borrell.
The concluding Foreign Ministers’ Meeting Statement ran to 15 pages. The first four covered Ukraine, the second three the Middle East, and a similar amount on the Indo-Pacific. Like most of this year’s G7 output under the Italian Government, it will likely fade into the annals of history.
On arrival, Lammy told reporters that “[i]t’s hugely important that this G7, that all colleagues across the G7 continue to stand with Ukraine for as long as it lasts” and that the UK was “confident that Ukraine can have the funds and the military equipment and kit to get through 2025.” To this end, he announced a further 30 Russian ships would be sanctioned, as part of an ongoing campaign to tackle “Russia’s shadow fleet, responsible for transporting billions of pounds worth of oil and oil products in the last year alone.” Estimates shared with politicians this week are that Russia has spent $10 billion building up this fleet. This latest round brings the total of ships sanctioned by the UK to 73.
One of the units tasked with aiding the Foreign Office’s sanctions push is the Treasury’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, who appeared before in a Treasury Committee session this week. The OFSI’s size has roughly tripled since the invasion of Ukraine, and includes a newly established intelligence unit.
Lammy also emphasised the continued British support for the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), a programme with Japan and Italy to create a common fighter jet that will replace existing aircraft like the Eurofighter Typhoon and Japan's Mitsubishi F-2 by the mid-2030s, in a bilateral meeting with his Japanese counterpart. The Foreign Secretary granted a three-way interview with European newspapers Le Monde Die Welt and La Repubblica. Pushing back on the increasingly popular view in foreign policy circles that President-elect Donald Trump would bring Ukraine and Russia to the table almost immediately, Lammy said "I see absolutely no appetite from Putin to negotiate. In fact, what we see is escalation. We saw it a few months ago with the sourcing of Iranian ballistic missiles, we've seen this development, too, with troops from the DPRK [North Korea] to Russia." It’s not entirely clear how Britain plans to exert leverage on changing any path a Trump presidency may take on this issue.
Reflecting on conversations I have with diplomats, the macro view remains that many non-European countries engaging with the new British Government are unclear on what terms they are doing so. An ongoing Strategic Defence Review is causing stress in the Indo-Pacific, the UK-China Audit is likely being rushed, and last month’s investment summit failed to impress many Middle Eastern friends. Officials get the message: growth is central to this Government’s ambitions. But when is it not?
Quoted
“I have argued on the Indo-Pacific that there is a great deal the UK can contribute in industrial alliances, diplomacy and technological partnerships…but there is a necessary realism about the level of military deployment that this country can make on a continuing basis into the Indo-Pacific.”
Defence Secretary John Healey, speaking before the Defence Select Committee last week
AI LAB FOR SECURITY RESEARCH
Pat McFadden MP, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, announced the launch of a new Laboratory for AI Security Research (LASR) at the University of Oxford "to protect the UK and its allies against new threats." Speaking at the NATO Cyber Defence Conference at Lancaster House, McFadden told the audience “Russia has targeted our media, our telecoms, our political and democratic institutions, and our energy infrastructure.”
The lab will seek collaboration with like-minded partners, starting with the Five Eyes countries and NATO allies, and is funded by the UK Government’s Integrated Security Fund. Partners will include the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, the Department for Science Innovation and Technology, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), National Cyber Security Centre, the MOD’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, the Alan Turing Institute, the AI Safety Institute, the University of Oxford, Queen’s University Belfast and Plexal.
Noted
The £8 million in funding for the UK’s Laboratory for AI Security Research (LASR) is equivalent to roughly 23 minutes of NHS spending, or 8% of the amount of money the Government may spend building a bat tunnel along a proposed HS2 route.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer released a statement on the French and US-brokered peace between Israel and Lebanese Hizbollah, as did Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, delivered a speech at the British Embassy in Italy. It was wide-ranging, covering economic growth and bilateral ties.
Defence Secretary John Healey was in Berlin to attend a NATO gathering. A short snippet of his speech can be found here.
Indo-Pacific Minister Catherine West delivered a speech setting out the Labour Government’s Indo-Pacific policy. It covered a wide variety of countries the UK is committing to or currently engaging with throughout the region in brisk detail. Yours truly was present, along with several ambassadors and several interesting folks.
Economic Secretary Tulip Siddiq delivered a speech setting out the Government’s plans to place the financial services sector at the heart of the growth mission. Although not the main purpose of the speech, she confirmed the British Government would be holding a Financial Dialogue with India next week, and with China and the Gulf States soon.
Tourism Minster Chris Bryant delivered a speech outlining the UK’s aim to attract 50 million annual visits.
Quoted
“In the space of 4 years, net migration rose by almost 5 times to a record high - that shows the serious damage that was done to the immigration system, the lack of proper controls in place, and the over-reliance on a big increase in overseas recruitment. Net migration is still 4 times higher than it was at the beginning of the last Parliament and we are clear that it needs to come down….Migration has always been an important part of UK history and our economy, but the system needs to be properly managed and controlled.”
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announcing new action on migration
Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, spoke on the phone to:
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukrainian President. The pair discussed “the egregious Russian missile strike in the early hours of this morning, which had deprived more than a million people of heat, light and electricity. Russia’s systematic attacks on Ukraine’s energy sector was depraved” the Prime Minister said.
Olaf Scholz, German Chancellor. They discussed illegal migration and Ukraine among other issues.
Angela Rayner, Deputy Prime Minister, met:
His Holiness Pope Francis. The Deputy Prime Minister praised the Pope for “show[ing] great leadership on addressing the global issues of our time and building bridges of dialogue among faiths.”
Antonio Tajani, Italian Deputy Prime Minister. They both spoke at a joint UK-Italy event hosted by the British Embassy in Rome, as part of the Pontignano Conference (Rayner’s speech here). Cabinet Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds was also in attendance.
David Lammy, Foreign Secretary, met:
European Ambassadors in London. A roundtable was held in the Foreign Office.
John Healey, Defence Secretary, met:
Anatolie Nosatii, Moldovan Minister of Defence in London. Joined by Defence Minister Luke Pollard, they discussed the new UK/Moldova Defence and Security Agreement.
Stephen Doughty, FCDO Minister for Europe, met:
General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ambassador of Ukraine. The pair discussed “Russia’s missile strike on 21 Nov, using ballistic missiles against Ukraine—a blatant violation of international law.”
Mehmet Kemal Bozay, Turkey’s Deputy Foreign Minister. The pair discussed usual security matters and driving growth.
Catherine West, Indo-Pacific Minister, met:
Hiroshi Suzuki, Japan’s new Ambassador in London. They discussed a wide range of topics regarding future Japan-UK cooperation, including security and defence, trade and business, people-to-people exchanges, and sports.
Lindsay Hoyle, House of Commons Speaker, met:
HE Emmanuel Mallia, the High Commissioner of Malta. The pair discussed the High Commissioner’s departure from the UK.
HE Mariana Plaza, the UK Ambassador for Argentina in Speaker’s House. The pair discussed the bilateral, which celebrates 200 years of diplomatic engagement in 2025.
Noted
A quiet announcement on the sidelines of the G7 between the group’s diamond technical team and Botswana on transparency around the shiny goods, aimed at stopping Russian gems entering G7 markets. Russia is the world’s largest producer; Botswana the second. The landlocked African nation may well spot a chance to win new market share, with diamonds currently accounting for 20% of Botswana's GDP.
DEFENCE
The Government’s newly-minted National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell held talks with newly-minted Mauritian Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam. The former worked with the latter’s predecessor on the controversial plan to give up British sovereignty over Chagos; Powell was advising on the deal in a private sector position before being made National Security Adviser. Prime Minister Ramgoolam is not keen on the deal, a view shared by the incoming Trump administration. Powell is set to travel to Washington next to try and smooth things over.
The Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) successfully concluded a multinational exercise in Liepāja, Latvia, demonstrating its ability to deploy and respond to an unfolding near real crises scenario in the Baltic and Nordic region.
Vice Admiral Andrew Burns delivered the keynote speech at the UK-Norway Defence & Security Conference.
Britain’s High Commissioner to Nigeria, Richard Montgomery, spoke alongside Nigeria’s National Security Adviser as part of a Security and Justice Symposium.
Britain’s Ambassador to Finland, Laura Davies, visited Tapa Military Base in Estonia in mid-November with fellow British Ambassadors from Nordic & Baltic countries.
The crew from HMS Medway assisted local schools with fence damage from Hurricane Oscar. Admiral Sir Ben Key, First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff, visited RFA Lyme Bay at the close of its 13-month deployment. The construction of HMS Sheffield, an advanced anti-submarine warfare ship for the Royal Navy, officially began with a traditional steel-cutting ceremony in Glasgow.
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) launched an investigation into suspected bribery and corruption at multinational aviation and defence electronics group Thales. The company is involved in several AUKUS projects.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
In a joint statement, the British High Commission, the Embassy of Norway, the Embassy of Switzerland, the High Commission of Canada and the United States of America Embassy in Mozambique raised concerns around violence in the post-election period.
Paul Fox, Britain’s Ambassador to Hungary, welcomed a British parliamentary delegation. Led by Sharon Hodgson MP, the group spoke to Hungarian National Assembly representatives, key members of committees & the Chair of "For a Diverse Hungary" group.
Parliament voted in favour of a motion rejecting Chinese distortion of international law regarding Taiwan.
MIGRATION
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper visited Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) to seal a series of cooperation deals to tackle shared threats. It included a heavy focus on migration.
AI AND EMERGING TECH
The UK’s Permanent Delegation to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) attended an AI conference in Cairo.
A MoU on critical minerals between the UK and Indonesia has been published. The South-East Asian country holds 42% of the world’s nickel reserves, has the second largest tin reserves, and is the sixth largest bauxite producer.
Quoted
“The Government is preparing a Whitehall-wide ‘China audit’. Does the scope of the audit include the UK’s automotive industry and the potential risks of rising Chinese exports of electric vehicles and its dominance of the electric vehicle supply chain? The EU Commission has introduced higher tariffs on the imports of electric vehicles from China, following an anti-subsidy investigation. What discussions have you had with the automotive industry about the advantages and disadvantages of requesting a similar investigation by the Trade Remedies Authority in the UK?”
Liam Byrne MP, Chair of the Business & Trade Committee, in a letter to the Government.
ECONOMY
Ian Murray MP, Secretary of State for Scotland, is on a trip to Malaysia and Singapore to launch Brand Scotland. He has met Malaysia's Minister of Economy, Rafizi Ramli, whose Twitter bio reads “Life is what happens while you are busy planning other things. I am a wanderer & adventurer. I have attention span of 2 years.”
Douglas Alexander MP, Economic Security Minister, is in Canada. He attended the Plenary Session of the Comprehensive & Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (ministerial statement here). British Consul-General in Vancouver Tom Codrington said part of Alexander’s trip was about ‘Strengthen[ing] the UK's partnerships with Indigenous leaders and businesses’ among other issues.
Owen Jenkins, Director General for the Indo-Pacific, Middle East, and North Africa at the Foreign Office, paid an official visit to Hanoi. He discussed ASEAN matters with his counterparts.
The UK and Taiwan co-hosted the 6th UK-Taiwan Energy Dialogue recently. It was a multi-departmental affair from both sides, with one session focussing on energy security, which “noted recent developments in Taiwan’s energy security, including a sharp increase in electricity demand on the back of the AI boom.”
The UK-ASEAN Trade Mission, part of the UK Government-funded UK-ASEAN Collaboration on Women’s Economic Empowerment, connected women entrepreneurs from Indonesia with UK companies in Jakarta, Indonesia.
ENVIRONMENT
The UK will provide £1.98 billion over three years to the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank’s fund for the world’s lowest-income countries, to go towards projects promoting economic growth, tackling poverty and addressing the impacts of climate change.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy: “Growth and stability in lower income countries is firmly in the UK’s interest. If we are to grow our economy, tackle the climate crisis and reduce irregular migration, we need to work in partnership with these countries. IDA’s track record shows that it is one of the best ways to do this. I urge other donors to step up at next week’s conference.”
The Royal Navy and Global Fishing Watch signed an information-sharing agreement to tackle the global scourge of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. The UK Government, Global Fishing Watch and the Joint Analytical Cell (JAC) already work closely together to tackle illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing through an innovative pilot project in the Philippines funded by the UK Government’s Integrated Security Fund.
Indo-Pacific Minister Catherine West: “Effective fisheries management is essential to maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific. It protects ocean ecosystems, supporting vulnerable coastal communities, resilient global food supplies and regional prosperity. This partnership between the Royal Navy and Global Fishing Watch underscores the UK’s on-going commitment to security, prosperity and sustainable economic development in the Indo-Pacific.”
The UK is supporting the Terra Solar Project in Nueva Ecija, which is set to become the largest solar energy project in the Philippines.
A British delegation visited Brunei’s Department of Energy and spoke about the expertise the UK has in the energy and oil and gas sector.
Noted
Catherine West, the Minister for the Indo-Pacific, has visited the region four times, travelling to 10 countries in the last five months.
Thailand has emerged as a new strategic location for global data centre providers investing in infrastructure and service networks. Several international companies, from Google to Huawei, have ploughed hundreds of millions of dollars into building centres throughout the country, buoyed by financial incentives, strong existing infrastructure, and a forward-looking government strategy to turn into the digital hub for the CLMVT (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand) region.
The groundwork for closer British engagement with Thailand on this issue was set in the 2024 UK–Thailand Strategic Partnership Roadmap under the Sunak premiership. The new Labour Government signed an enhanced trade partnership agreement very early on in September, which - if followed through - will result in new and existing working groups working on many of the key issues Thailand is looking to build a strategic lead on.