What a UK Labour government will mean for Australia’s global interests

Opinion

January 28, 2024 — 3.30pm

Before the year is out, we are likely to see important changes in the leadership of at least one, if not both, of Australia’s AUKUS partners.

Most attention will, naturally, focus on the United States, where the prospect of a second Trump presidency has moved from the implausible, through the distinctly possible, and is now knocking on the door of the probable. The latest RealClearPolitics average of opinion polls has Trump leading Biden nationally by 3.8 per cent. Every major poll taken since the Iowa caucuses has Trump ahead, as do the betting markets.

Labour prime minister in waiting Keir Starmer. Credit: Carl Court/Getty Images

Nevertheless, there is a long way to go until November 5. While a second Trump administration – so unthinkable to many people barely six months ago – is now beginning to seem likely, it is still too soon to predict that it will happen.

In the United Kingdom, however, there is little doubt about the outcome of the election later this year. Labour having led the Conservative government by about 20 points for more than a year, two opinion polls published last week had its lead stretching to 25 and 27 points respectively. Incredibly, in the past few days there has been serious speculation about the possibility of yet another Tory leadership change. To lose two prime ministers in the space of seven weeks was bad enough, but to lose three in less than 18 months would have left even Lady Bracknell lost for words.

I don’t think the Tories will be mad enough to dump Rishi Sunak, but I do expect he will lead them to electoral slaughter. I’ve been in London lately, and have not spoken to a single person – including some very senior Tories – who thinks otherwise.

This raises the question of what a UK Labour government will mean for Australia. Last Wednesday, at an address to the London think tank Council on Geostrategy, the Labour shadow foreign minister for Asia and the Pacific, Catherine West, addressed the issue. West, Sydney-born and educated, is not a member of shadow cabinet but, because of both her background and portfolio, she would be Australia’s most important contact in an incoming Labour government.

First, a UK Labour government would pose no threat to AUKUS. It will remain a fixture. The attraction of AUKUS to Labour probably lies more in the employment opportunities it will create in the economically disadvantaged north of England than in any grand strategic vision.

Second, there will be no walking back from Britain’s deeper engagement in its trading relationships in the Indo-Pacific. The Free Trade Agreement with Australia, signed by former trade minister Dan Tehan in December 2021, came into force last year. Nor will a Labour government walk away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, to which the UK also recently acceded.

It is in strategic outlook that we are likely to see a marked difference. In 2021, the UK published its much-vaunted Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, a historic state paper that set out Britain’s aspirations for its role in a post-Brexit world. One of the most important elements of the review was the so-called “Indo-Pacific tilt”.

Reversing more than a half-century of British foreign policy – the Labour government of Harold Wilson declared in 1968 that the UK no longer considered that it had important strategic interests “east of Suez” – the review concluded that Britain’s 21st-century interests were indeed global; that the increasingly borderless nature of threats to the international order meant geography and locality were of less importance; that the geostrategic binary of the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific was less relevant; and that as a global actor, which Britain aspired to be, it must adjust its strategic posture accordingly.

Labour promises broad continuity in UK foreign policy, and has not repudiated the “Indo-Pacific tilt”, but its enthusiasm for the wider global engagement that underpins the Integrated Review is muted. Many in Labour see “global Britain” as just Brexiteer rhetoric, the aspiration to be a major player beyond Europe dismissed as Johnsonian hubris. Labour’s foreign policy interests beyond the NATO area are likely to focus on the Middle East and Africa, not the Indo-Pacific.

The shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, has already announced that a Labour government would subject the UK-China relationship to a comprehensive “cross-Whitehall” audit upon coming into office. When I spoke to West last week, she told me the terms of the audit would not be published until after the election. However, it is reasonably clear that its scope will not be limited to the China relationship; it is likely to extend to the UK’s broader engagement with the Indo-Pacific.

In politics, the announcement of an “audit” is usually code for a reassessment of priorities and a reallocation of resources. The UK defence budget is already under serious pressure. Labour wants to significantly expand development assistance.

Wars in Ukraine and Gaza have refocused attention on Britain’s nearer interests. Public discussion in London reflects increasing alarm at Russia’s future intentions in Europe beyond Ukraine, heightened last week by an unexpected visit by Vladimir Putin to the Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, which was widely interpreted as a threatening message to the Baltic democracies.

In this environment, it seems unlikely the globalist ambitions of the Integrated Review, in particular the Indo-Pacific “tilt”, will be embraced by a future Labour government. The UK will continue to engage diplomatically in our region, for instance, as an ASEAN Dialogue Partner and through the Commonwealth, but its focus will narrow as its attentions return closer to home.

George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK, and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general. He is now a professor in the practice of national security at the ANU’s National Security College.