Andy Burnham needs to fix a weakened Foreign Office

When Andy Burnham takes office as prime minister on Monday – as he looks certain to do – he will take responsibility for the UK’s foreign policy. From introductory calls with heads of state, to briefings on ongoing conflicts, upcoming summits and overarching strategy, it is the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) who will help Burnham navigate this demanding and unpredictable world. While Burnham will no doubt be greeted by a variety of expert Foreign Office officials, he will also find that those officials are supporting him while working for a weakened and unsettled department.

The Foreign Office is in a bad place

The 2020 merger of the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2020 tanked morale and left the new department unsure of its purpose and less capable than the sum of its parts – as the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2022 showed. The aid budget has been cut twice since then, and now sits at 0.3% of GNI.

Most of the junior staff (the majority of the department) are currently applying for their own – or each others’ – jobs as part of a major restructure. ‘FCDO 2030’, as the restructure has been branded,  was the brainchild of Olly Robbins – the former permanent secretary who was fired earlier this year following Keir Starmer’s refusal to take responsibility for his own poor judgment in Peter Mandelson’s ambassadorial appointment, and who is now requesting a judicial review of his dismissal. The department is being headed in the interim by second permanent secretary Nick Dyer.

A restructure at the Foreign Office is necessary to address the problems left over from the merger, as well as to bring the department up to date to deal with the reality of geopolitics today and the smaller aid budget. But this restructure is currently directionless, leaving staff unsure of what they are trying to achieve, what they are prioritising and how they are approaching international relationships.

Burnham’s foreign policy rhetoric is far from reality

Andy Burnham recently set out the principles he believes should guide UK foreign policy. At its core is resilience to shocks, confidence in the UK’s international leadership, and principled values, all of which sounded remarkably similar to the vision set out by the (current) foreign secretary Yvette Cooper a few days earlier. The most likely explanation for that is not a covert message from Burnham about Cooper’s position in a future cabinet, but simply that this is how leaders tend to talk about foreign policy: the UK is a great convenor, a principled ally, and one that will spend the money to meet our NATO commitments and build ‘hard power’.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that narrative. The problem comes in translating it into reality. This type of rhetoric can easily see the UK trying to respond to every humanitarian crisis, to convene scores of global initiatives, and to be a ‘leader’ on every part of the world stage. Without setting out priorities, and acknowledging where the UK might step back globally, a smaller Foreign Office is simply stretched thinner.

This is what Burnham needs to do to close the gap

Burnham does not have to be a passive witness to what he finds in King Charles Street on entering government.

The new prime minister must start by appointing an a new (or returning) permanent secretary at the FCDO who can – alongside the prime minister – set a clear strategy. Burnham’s decision to keep current national security adviser Jonathan Powell on will help provide some welcome stability in this space. Any strategy needs to set out where the department is going to pull back, and where it will lean in – the reality is that with a smaller aid budget and a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape the UK simply will not be at the forefront of every international crisis or initiative. Useful thinking has been published on what this could look like for the UK, and no doubt similar is being done in the department too. The permanent secretary and prime minister must find a way to hold the line they choose, rather than bowing to public pressure to respond on all fronts.

As well as a clearer view on what the Foreign Office is doing, the department needs to think far more innovatively about how it is working. In some areas – the scrutiny of aid spend being the obvious example – the FCDO is well ahead of the rest of Whitehall. But elsewhere, the department can be prone to a ‘that doesn’t apply to us’ mentality when looking at broader changes in the civil service. That isn’t universal by any means, and in a handful of embassies a combination of aid cuts and other changes have led to more innovative ways of working – with staff engaging differently with their host countries, rather than being cooped up in the embassy. But there is an increasingly strong and welcome practice in the rest of Whitehall of trying to learn what works from innovative practices, often found in ‘business as usual’ teams finding new ways to do their work, rather than in the shiny new initiatives at the centre of departments or crossing the minister’s desks; the Foreign Office needs to apply similar approaches itself, learning from its embassies, staff, and the rest of government, rather than continuing to treat its work as totally unique.

Rebuilding the Foreign Office won’t be easy. But if Burnham wants a foreign policy that more closely matches his lofty rhetoric, then this champion of devolution will need to spend some time and care strengthening this depleted corner of Whitehall.