NEW SPEECH: Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy sets out Labour's approach to China and diplomacy

A Beijing to Britain briefing note

Hello,

Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy has just delivered a major speech at Chatham House outlining his party’s foreign policy vision. Lammy’s view is that three major trends are shaping the foreign policy landscape the next Labour government plans to inherit: a new age of geopolitical competition, weaponised interdependence, and a blurring of the distinction between foreign and domestic policy.

Labour’s answer? “Britain Reconnected”, a foreign policy strategy that acknowledges these realities, and produces five categories of policy ideas.

Key China points for leaders and policymakers

• Citing President Joe Biden, Lammy said that “interdependent foreign policy has become domestic policy...[a]nd domestic policy has become foreign policy.”

• Labour’s foreign policy vision can be split into five themes: security, prosperity, climate action, international development and diplomacy. For each theme, Labour has produced a set of pledges it wants to undertake.

• The rhetoric around climate action and working with the European Union is likely to draw significant coverage, but Labour also plans to focus on soft power and reforming institutions such as the Foreign Office and the United Nations Security Council.

• Labour will commit to a “complete audit of the UK-China relationship”, based on a strategy of three Cs: Challenge, compete and cooperate. There is an acknowledgement that China has a huge market share in areas such as green technology.

• Lammy picked out Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Quantum and Biotech as sectors that risk being “used as tools of authoritarian power.”

An entire transcript of the speech is at the end of this briefing note, in addition to Beijing to Britain analysis.