Tackling the climate emergency remains the top priority for Labour members

This year will certainly be one to remember. In the UK, we had three Prime Ministers in just two months and lost the world’s longest reigning monarch. Liz Truss’s ill-fated ‘mini-Budget’ crashed the economy and saw interest rates sky rocket.

Beyond our borders, the war in Ukraine began on February 24th and continues unabated. Natural disasters affected large swathes of the world and humanitarian crises deepened. Protests erupted in Iran following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for failing to cover her hair, Afghan women and girls have been banned from an education by the Taliban and the World Cup ignited debate about human rights and sport. More positively, COP27 ended with an agreement on loss and damage and Covid restrictions in most of the world, apart from China, appear to be a thing consigned to the past.

This year, our Labour Foreign Policy Group survey on foreign policy attitudes captured some of this tumult, and we designed it with a view to understanding whether Labour members felt the impacts of British foreign policy and world events on their daily lives. The overwhelming answer to this question was yes.

94% of our respondents recognised foreign policy and world events as something that affects their daily lives; they cited the war in Ukraine, climate change and Brexit as having had negative impacts including on energy and food prices, on our safety and security and on the ease of travel. Many also cited the knock-on effects of having left the EU on the UK’s global reputation, our relationship with European allies and its impact on the economy now and for future generations.

We also sought to delve more deeply into these responses. On Ukraine, more than 73% of respondents said we should be doing more to support the ongoing conflict. The most support came for accepting more refugees, closely followed by economic support, increasing sanctions and diplomatic engagement.

On whether Labour had got it right on Europe, only 22% said yes. Almost 29% thought we should seek a closer relationship and more than 25% said we should change policy to rejoin the single market and/or customs union. A dwindling proportion of respondents (11.7%), however, felt that we should campaign to rejoin the EU. Almost 96% of respondents thought we should be doing more to tackle climate change including increasing investment in renewables, funding a nationwide programme of home insulation and increasing taxes on fossil fuels.

Climate change remains, by far, the biggest issue for Labour members. It was cited as both the biggest threat facing the UK – ahead of the rise of global populism and global economic uncertainly – and as the top foreign policy priority Labour should have.

Interestingly, the break up of the UK fell out of the top three threats to the UK this year and the amount of people who indicated that they were not proud of UK foreign policy has fallen slightly. This may be due to the nature of the news cycle and the positive press the UK has received internationally for its efforts to support Ukraine compared with the mishandling of the evacuation of Afghanistan which featured heavily in the minds of people last year.

But we still have a long way to go. Respondents cited being most proud of UK soft power and foreign aid, but 17% indicated ‘none of the above’. Further, the most common words respondents used to describe UK foreign policy were: “isolated”, “diminished” and “declining”.

Labour members want a foreign policy that is progressive, fair and open. Having a strong message and plan on climate change will have to be a large part of this for any future Labour government. COP27’s agreements on loss and damage were a step in the right direction for this agenda and one on which Labour should build. At LFPG we will be launching a new climate working group in the new year to flesh out critical climate policy issues.

We have experienced a lot of change internally and externally this year – and many of the issues we have experienced this year will continue into the new year. Our intention is to track Labour member opinion on foreign policy annually to capture both a yearly snapshot as well as how opinion changes over time.