Ep 6. Has Labour abandoned progressive internationalism?

So you picked up on the point around the ODA cut, and I think that's really important, and we'll definitely come back to the policy.

But before we do, I wanted to, to interrogate you both on the, the idea of a values-based foreign policy to begin with.

You're both very principled women, of course.

But I think back to a lot of conversations I've had with others who would argue that values have no place in policy decisions and certainly not foreign policy.

Instead, government should be driven by outcomes regardless of the method that would result in benefiting the national interest.

So economic growth, more jobs, economic opportunity, security.

What, what would your response be to that? And I guess answering my own question or starting to do that is every political decision is driven by some, some kind of value, whether you make it explicit or not.

But tell me what you think about that.

Maybe I'll start with, um, you, Monica, if you have any thoughts.

Yeah, I mean, look, as, as a, a liberal Democrat, we will have our own, uh, sense of what liberalism means, uh, which is essentially, you know, written in our con- uh, constitution.

Nobody should be enslaved by poverty, and we don't believe that stops at the border, and therefore we will do anyth- everything.

Th- those are our values, and that will drive our foreign policy, and I think it's really important to cling onto that, particularly in a moment like, uh, we have at the moment, um, where we... essentially the world is, is in a more precarious state, uh, than it has been since the end of, certainly the end of the Cold War, and certainly for the UK, I think, um, since the end of the Second World War.

So, um, so, so we're res- realistic about the threat, that the only guide you can have is your values.

Um, and for us, we believe that liberal values are the only thing that, um, are gonna see us through that, and we need to meet them head-on.

And so therefore it's really important to kind of stick with them.

I'll just also come back that I, I think two things can be true at the same time, and I know this is said on every single pod- podcast at the moment [laughs], but, but this is true.

It is a moral imperative to help the most vulnerable in the world, but it i- it's also a strategic imperative to the UK because, um, the more you fund development, uh, and humanitarian assistance, the less conflict you're gonna get down the line, which means less extremism on our border.

The more you fund global health, the less likely you are to have another pandemic, um, and, and migration and so on and so forth.

So actually if you see, and we very much do, uh, that, um, the key arsenal of our foreign policy, if you like, is, is diplomacy, development, and defense, then you have to fund all of them, um, in order to support the other.

So some of the biggest, uh, proponents of, uh, development, a, a proper, properly funded ODA budget are actually the military chiefs that say if you don't sort the problem out in upstream in the first place, you're gonna spend more on wars down the line.

So I think you can do both.

You can be guided by the moral imperative, but, um, but also there is a strategic imperative there too, uh, for doing diplomacy well, development well, and defense well, and funding them all properly.

Mm.

Uh, and Laura, do you agree with that? Do you think there's a similar aspect of foreign policy that at once wants to hold values as well as national interest, or are there always going to be some elements of contradiction?

Um, so I think Monica's first answer, um, encapsulated a lot for me.