With Alexander, Labour is humming a new tune on foreign policy

By Larry Smith / @LarryAdamSmith

When Alan Johnson’s resignation precipitated a reshuffle of Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet in late January, there was concern in some quarters of the Labour movement that Douglas Alexander, hitherto one of the most anonymous members of the party’s top team had been handed the pivotal position of shadow foreign secretary. Everyone in Westminster knew the former international development minister had the intellect to handle the role. But there were doubts about Alexander’s gravitas, and lingering suspicions that his involvement in some of Labour’s biggest tactical blunders rendered him unfit for a brief demanding exceptional levels of political maturity. The former bugle player they called ‘Wee Dougie’ would surely not be up to the task.

Fast forward five months, and it is becoming clear that Alexander has confounded the expectations set for him. The tactical musings have been relatively fleeting, with his appearances in parliament and the media incisive and substantive. Most importantly, he has seized control of his new portfolio, revving up the party’s stance on a whole host of international issues at a time when coherence on foreign affairs has never been more vital to a party’s fortunes.

Alexander’s first major challenge and success was to make Labour credible on British intervention in Libya. Although not offering a definitive solution to the current impasse, the Scot has ensured his party is posing substantive questions about the UK’s involvement in the conflict. In the House of Commons the shadow foreign secretary has taken the lead in querying whether a UN Resolution authorising the protection of civilians ‘so long as Gaddafi remained in power’ enabled the government to target him militarily, arguing that the Libyan leader’s departure ultimately has to be a political aim. Although woven into a process-focused argument about competency, his response to the coalition’s disastrous attempt to initiate contact with rebels in Eastern Libya won praise for its clarity, and forced the government to provide greater transparency about what ground troops it was committing to the conflict.

At the same time, Alexander has made worthy contributions that have sought to focus minds on what diplomatic measures can be deployed to break the current deadlock. Addressing a gathering of EU ambassadors in April, he was right to urge renewed ‘non-military’ efforts to cripple Colonel Gaddafi’s oppression, such as seizing the Libyan leader’s oil revenues and ending his ability to finance African mercenaries entering through the south of the country.

Responding to the increasing complexity of the Arab Spring, Alexander has gone on to recalibrate his party’s attitude to the spread of democracy around the globe, offering a more nuanced view about how Britain should work to bring about political change abroad. In his EU ambassadors’ speech, the shadow foreign secretary did oppose the suppression of protests by Middle Eastern governments seeking to retain authority, criticising Bahrain and Yemen for what he called ‘sometimes murderous’ treatment of protesters. However, he declined to argue that the UK or any other nation should call for regime change, stating instead that he would prefer to see the west channel what influence it had into encouraging the Khalifa and Saleh regimes to institute reform.

Later in the same speech, there was a similarly cautious response to recent unrest in Iran: Alexander urged Britain be unequivocal in its condemnation of the Islamic Republic’s treatment of reformist demonstrators, but qualified this by saying that such statements should only ‘stand in solidarity with victims’ of violence. In contrast to both David Cameron and Barack Obama, who have explicitly voiced support for the pro-democracy movement in Iran, he appears to have concluded that the pronouncements of western nations – two of which inspire bitter feelings in that country – must be carefully chosen if they are to have any kind of positive effect.

Equally notable are Alexander’s efforts to speak up for multilateral institutions, and to illustrate how essential they are to successful diplomacy. Building on work by his predecessor, Yvette Cooper, Alexander took a lead in castigating the coalition for pursuing a foreign policy based on bilateralism and directed solely at improving British business.

In an interview with Total Politics back in March, he issued a forthright denunciation of one-on-one relationships that were proving ‘inadequate to navigate the complexities and challenges of a difficult and dangerous world’, and urged a ‘networked’ foreign policy built around the EU, the UN and other international institutions. While vague in and of themselves, these words have been backed up with more detail elsewhere. Alexander has pressed William Hague hard on the need to retain top-quality staff at British missions to multinational organisations, and in his ambassadors’ speech gave a clear definition of how the EU could work to improve the economic systems of emerging democracies such as Egypt and Tunisia. His calls for the Community to redirect its external funding and reform non-tariff barriers on North African nations exporting across the Mediterranean were well-judged.

Labour’s approach to the situation in Afghanistan also appears to have undergone a change for the better as a result of Alexander’s guidance. Parliamentary questions are once again being filed regularly on the issue, and the shadow foreign secretary is aggressively challenging the government to help formulate an inclusive political settlement for the country. In the last few months there have been admirable efforts to expose both the lack of work done on reconciliation at the grassroots of Afghan society and the absence of an authoritative figure like the late Richard Holbrooke to drive the process forward.

Those who dismiss Alexander as a lightweight might be tempted to see the hand of David Miliband in this strategy, and there is every reason to think that the former foreign secretary is providing policy advice to his close friend. But Alexander had already signalled before the last election that he harboured his own doubts about an approach to Afghanistan that focused exclusively on military success, voicing his concerns about the consensus that pervaded Washington and Whitehall at the time. The challenge for him going forward is to ask even bigger questions of Britain’s mission in South Asia. Are western-backed institutions, such as the Afghan army simply fanning Pakistani fears of an Indian client state? How best to implement a nationwide anti-corruption drive when the actions of Afghanistan’s leader have comprehensively sapped the loyalty of even his most ardent supporters? And how can any counterterrorism policy in the region succeed without a meaningful focus on the madrasahs that have mushroomed along Afghanistan’s Eastern border for decades?

Alexander’s time in the foreign affairs brief has not lasted long. But by skilfully navigating events few diplomats thought they would ever live to see, the former rector’s son has proven himself a serious political player worthy of attention. With any luck, his keynote will sound through corridors of power around the world for many years to come.