British Foreign Policy Must-Reads: February

Reports

• Foreign policy choices—UKICE: Choices and challenges for UK foreign policy.

• UK-EU Defence cooperation—SWP: Third-State Participation in the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy Opportunities and Conditions for the United Kingdom

• Starmer and the EU—CER: Can Keir Starmer reset relations with the EU? The CER's annual report starts with an essay on whether Keir Starmer can reset relations with the EU. The report then highlights some of the CER's most important publications and events from 2024.

Books and Journal articles

• Brexit negotiations—JCMS: Brexit Rhapsody: Exploring Patterns of Issue Salience in the Negotiations. This study revisits the salience of the Brexit negotiations using an advanced Decision-Making in the European Union (EU) methodology to assess the relative importance of 20 key issues amongst the EU27 member states, the European Commission and the UK. Unlike earlier studies that suggest more uniform salience levels, except for the UK, our analysis identifies eight clusters of actors influenced by their political, economic and geographical contexts. These differences in salience levels have been conducive to logrolling, which likely supported a unified EU stance and a successful agreement with the UK. Additionally, our research quantitatively confirms the UK's distinct salience position, highlighting its isolation and reducing its ability to use divisive negotiation tactics. These findings offer insights into both the dynamics of past Brexit negotiations and ongoing EU–UK policy developments. They contribute to the analysis of Brexit and international negotiations in general by systematically exploring salience in high-level diplomatic negotiations. Moloney, D., and Jensen, M. D. (2025) Brexit Rhapsody: Exploring Patterns of Issue Salience in the Negotiations. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 63: 507–525

• Brexit’s effect on trade—The International Trade Journal: How Did Brexit Impact UK Trading at the Country Level? Evidence from Real Data. This study aims to assess the effect of Brexit on bilateral trade between the UK and its trading partners by applying the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood approach. The results suggest that Brexit’s impact is disparate across countries. UK imports from many EU countries decrease due to Brexit, but the TCA eases the decrease. There is some recovery in imports from some EU countries, but much weaker evidence of recovery for exports to EU countries. While the results suggest a more vibrant positive effect on imports from non-EU countries, the effect on the UK’s exports to non-EU countries is much weaker. Buigut, S., & Kapar, B. (2025). How Did Brexit Impact UK Trading at the Country Level? Evidence from Real Data. The International Trade Journal, 1–20.

Comment and news pieces

Strategic outlook

• Pallmerstonian foreign policy: Britain could thrive in splendid isolation

• International order—FT: Britain will not thrive in a might is right world. Attacks on attorney-general Lord Hermer illuminate a wider battle about how to defend UK interests

• Atlanticism—FT: Britain is struggling to accept the end of Atlanticism. The ‘special relationship’ has underpinned the UK’s security since the Suez Canal debacle — but the world has changed

• Isolationism or engagement—The Spectator: The engagement vs isolation debate returns

Europe

• UK-EU Relations—The Guardian: Starmer’s EU reset risks being dragged down by the Brexit undertow. With Trump back in the White House, politicians on both sides of the Channel need to acknowledge the urgency of closer ties.

• UK-EU strategy—DGAP: A Strategy for Europe from National Perspectives: Great Britain. The shock of Brexit revealed to Britons how important the EU was and still is. Britain now recognises that it needs an EU that is a geopolitical actor, but – given rejoining is unlikely anytime soon – it faces difficult choices about what it can do to help. To move Europe, Britain is going to need to work harder than when it was a member state. In this, the British face two problems: coming to domestic agreement that closer relations with the EU are worth the political risk and convincing the EU to deepen relations with Britain. 

• Irish passport application-FT: Irish citizenship applications from Britain hit post-Brexit peak. ‘Harsh’ realities of travel and work restrictions are pushing people to seek backdoor EU access, say lawyers

• Post-Brexit health—The iPaper: How Brexit caused a care crisis for Britons in Spain 'People hope nothing happens to them but when it does they struggle to cope'

UK-US relations

• UK v’s US—The Guardian: The question no one dares ask: what if Britain has to defend itself from the US? So much of our intelligence and military systems are shared or reliant on the US – if it becomes the enemy, it is already inside the gates

• UK-US—LSE Blogs: Trump’s re-election is a new chapter in Britain’s fluctuating relationship with America.

• UK-US Trade—Atlantic Council: The case for a US-UK trade and investment agreement

• Trump—Lewis Goodall: Europe’s darkest moment could be Starmer’s biggest opportunity. The collapse of the old order is a moment of political possibility. Starmer must seize it.

• Trump—Institute for Government: The UK needs to treat Donald Trump as a risk to be managed and mitigated. The UK needs machinery to anticipate and coordinate its US strategy.

  
  

Ukraine

• Starmer on UK commitment to Ukraine—The Telegraph: Potentially putting Britons in harm’s way is a huge responsibility – but we must be ready to do our bit for Europe. Helping to guarantee Ukraine’s security is helping to guarantee the security of our country and our continent

• Ukraine—The Conversation: Will the UK send troops to Ukraine? The challenges facing Starmer’s plan.

• Ukraine—The Guardian: Britain’s insistence on total Ukrainian victory was misguided – it’s time for a realistic compromise. By refusing to back negotiations for the past three years, the UK has become irrelevant to the search for peace – we must change course.

Defence and aid spending

• UK-EU Defence cooperation—Chatham House: To defend Europe, the UK–EU reset should prioritize defence industrial cooperation. The UK must be allowed to contribute to building a European – not EU – defence industrial base to ensure Europe is less reliant on the US for its defence.

• UK-EU Defence—Spectator: Starmer may come to regret his EU defence pact

• UK arms dealing—The Guardian: How arms dealing has compromised Britain’s foreign policy. Dr Sam Perlo-Freeman, Paul Bennett, Helen Jones and Laura Harling respond to an article by a former diplomat on the UK’s complicity in war crimes

• Aid cuts—The Conversation: Starmer announces aid cuts to fund defence – but Britain’s days as an aid superpower are already long over

• Defence spending—Institute for Government: Five key takeaways from defence secretary John Healey's IfG speech. What did John Healey's IfG speech tell us about his plans for defence reform?

• Aid cuts—The Guardian: Labour’s aid cuts are morally wrong. Here’s why they make no economic sense either. Aid was soft power but also good for business: as countries get richer, they buy exports. Strategically, this is very short-sighted

• Aid cuts—Institute for Government: Cutting international aid to pay for defence is Starmer’s first spending review trade-off. The government’s decision to slash the aid budget to increase defence spending is controversial.

• FCDO budget—FT: Ex-Foreign Office mandarins warn against cuts to diplomatic corps. Peter Ricketts and Simon Fraser call on chancellor to protect headcount at overseas missions in spending review

Conservatives

• Conservative foreign policy—Kemi Badenoch, It’s time for realism.

• Conservatives foreign policy—The Tories discover that Britain is located in Europe. The lesson of this world-changing month is that geography matters — despite what the Brexit campaign claimed

• Reform voters on Ukraine—Politico: Here’s what Nigel Farage’s voters really think about UK help for Ukraine. Reform UK voters are more likely than Labour and Tories to favor a cut in British support for Kyiv if Trump pulls back, according to new polling.

Other

• Religion—LSE Blogs: What’s religion got to do with it? A British approach to religious engagement. Recent decades have seen an upsurge in religious engagement initiatives by international organisations and ministries of foreign affairs. In this blog, Andrew Dickson asks how global the global religious engagement regime is.

• Afghanistan—BBC News: Special Forces rejected 2,000 credible asylum claims from Afghan commandos, MoD confirms. UK Special Forces command rejected resettlement applications from more than 2,000 Afghan commandos who had shown credible evidence of service in units that fought alongside the SAS and SBS, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed for the first time.

• Rwanda—FT: UK suspends aid to Rwanda over eastern DR Congo conflict. Keir Starmer’s government warns of further sanctions unless Kigali withdraws troops from its east African neighbour.