KNeufeld

Closing 2025 view on British foreign policy and strategy. Napoleon Bonaparte is quoted as saying: “to understand the man, you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty.” The average British politician is around 50 years old, so let us ask - what did the world look like for them in 1995? In this unipolar landscape dominated by Pax Americana, Britain was home to around 58 million people, with net inflows in the low tens of thousands a year and social cohesion mirroring these numbers. Its economy was larger than India and China’s combined, with Shell and BP leading the FTSE100. Defence stood at 3% of GDP, health spending somewhere between 6 and 7%. Culture was fixated on Cool Britannia and the Battle of Bripop between Blur and Oasis; England would host the Euros the following year. An American company called Microsoft had just launched Windows 95, heralding the tentative arrival of the internet and online worlds for our 20 year old, who may have also just nabbed themselves a new Japanese gaming device called the PlayStation for Christmas that year. Arriving for drinks at a pub in Westminster, our future MP may have paused Michael Jackson’s Earth Song on their Walkman, walked through the door, and begun discussing the inevitable Labour victory on the horizon under up and coming leader Tony Blair. Moving the conversation beyond the Channel - where a tunnel had just been completed between the UK and France - our intrepid politico may have ruminated over a second £1.50 beer that while it was indeed a complex world, it was one in which a sense of liberal progress was being made, evidenced most strongly by the end of apartheid in South Africa and the post-Soviet transitions of many nations into new multiparty systems. So while the end of history it was not, it would have been hard to feel anything other than a glowing sense of optimism for liberal democracies around the world. The 21st century, the group would have agreed, was shaping up to be a good one. Times change, even if mindsets don’t. Very few statesmen recognise that we are in a new reality, yet the minority of the best do. In a 2018 interview with The Financial Times, the late Henry Kissinger observed: “I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretences.” Too many in the Westminster village are products of an era that has passed, and are destroying this country’s ability to reform by holding on to old pretences of grandeur. The reelection of President Donald Trump is a feature, not a bug, of a new era. We now live in an epoch of protectionism, nationalism, transactionalism, scientific acceleration towards artificial general intelligence, and energy autonomy. It is a return to the great man theory of political history and a fundamental restructuring of the liberal order which existed from the end of the Cold War until the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. More practically, our political class has failed to capitalise on the chaos of the world and to protect key industries. Instead, like grotesque characters from a Hogarth illustration of a courtly dinner, they have clambered over each other to try and impose ideas the wider public neither agrees with nor voted for, but that are popular at commentariat dinner parties or among their peers. Dull, low rumbling chaos and panicked apathy envelop Westminster. These are manifested in the constant churn of new prime ministers, ministers, and officials, each with their own ideas, failings and ambitions. It is evidenced by the lack of action, the inability to build, and the gross sectarianism that is beginning to creep into this nation. The UK’s limping economy, where the key elements needed to underpin successful foreign policy live and die - energy security, military strength, cutting edge innovation - have been stifled, ignored, or sold off to the highest bidder. Eras change. This new era demands a more pragmatic, dexterous and focused approach. It requires a leader with a holistic overarching vision who understands the foundations of what will make British foreign policy successful. This leader should reach into Britain’s history to understand what enabled its rise - science, naval power, trading influence - but this must be coupled with a hard-nosed approach to securing the spaces that will define the next century - artificial intelligence, quantum, compute, and - quite literally - space. British foreign policy must be interlinked with the health of the economy, clear investment in the science sector, the public’s attitude towards immigration, and a general feeling that life is improving for British citizens. These latter points are vital to understand: strength abroad must be built on social cohesion and strength at home. Yet Britain has faced more existential challenges than this. This small island battled for a place on the international stage, kicking and screaming and fighting against some of the most brilliant leaders and empires of their time. We created global corporations that moulded humanity around them. Our ideas underpin nations on every single continent on this earth. We have previously cemented ourselves as a democracy of real influence, a powerful purveyor of free trade and customs, a place where capitalists can trade and grow wealthy. And Britain continues to produce some of the finest innovators, scientists and thinkers on this planet. It's not over yet.