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A new window on the world?
KENNY COYLE takes a look at David Lammy’s emerging foreign policy, dubbed ‘progressive realism,’ which supposedly draws inspiration from Ernest Bevin and Robin Cook
QUO VADIS: Foreign Secretary David Lammy leaving Downing Street after a Cabinet meeting on July 9 2024

THE guiding philosophy of Sir Keir Starmer’s foreign policy has been described by Foreign Secretary David Lammy as “a clear-eyed approach to international relations: progressive realism.”

In a series of speeches, interviews, articles and pamphlets over the past year or so, Lammy has elaborated this apparently innovative outlook in British foreign policy.

The most substantial of these were an article for the influential US journal Foreign Affairs in May, The Case for Progressive Realism, Why Britain Must Chart a New Global Course later republished in The Guardian, and a 2023 pamphlet for the Fabian Society, Britain Reconnected A Foreign Policy for Security and Prosperity at Home.

Labour and multipolarity

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