Description
On the verge of Labour’s election victory in 2024, David Lammy set out ‘progressive realism’, a foreign policy doctrine that would “use realist means to pursue progressive ends”, a mission of “ideals without delusions”. Progressive realism would address climate change, democratic backsliding and the crisis of multilateralism, all the while alive to the balance of power. Within eight months the doctrine had been paired with a vast budgetary shift from development aid to the military, and a target of 5% of gross national income to be spent on defence, resilience and security. Lammy is no longer Foreign Secretary, and progressive realism is less often spoken of. For many critics, this confirmed that the ‘doctrine’ was little more than a public relations gloss. In this paper I dig further. First, I present an alternative history of Labour foreign policy, looking at contentions over decolonisation, collective security, ethical foreign policy, the responsibility to protect and internationalism. Second, on ‘progressivism’, I show how Starmer and Lammy renounced the broader view of security that had gained such momentum since the 1990s. As well as radically reducing aid in perpetuity, recent defence and strategic discourse largely abandons prior commitments to gender equality, global justice and ’non-traditional’ security threats. Third, I suggest that the government’s version of ‘realism’ has been contradictory, combining elements of 'sovereign capability’ with a persistent Atlanticism binding Whitehall to Washington. As well as disappointing eft internationalists, progressive realism has therefore also obscured profound questions about British statecraft.
