Dr Russell Foster
Senior Lecturer in British and International Politics at King’s College London. His research focuses on identity and emotions in politics.
Twitter: @RussellDFoster
Email: russell.1.foster@kcl.ac.uk
UK Election 2024
Section 5: Policy and strategy
50. It’s the cost-of-living-crisis, stupid! (Prof Aeron Davis)
51. The last pre-war vote? Defence and foreign policy in the 2024 Election (Dr Russell Foster)
52. The 2024 UK general election and the absence of foreign policy (Dr Victoria Honeyman)
53. Fractious consensus: defence policy at the 2024 General Election (Dr Ben Jones)
54. The psycho-politics of climate denial in the 2024 UK election (Prof Candida Yates, Dr Jenny Alexander)
55. How will the Labour government fare and what should they do better? (Prof Rick Stafford and team)
56. Finding the environment: climate obstructionism and environmental movements on TikTok (Dr Abi Rhodes)
57. Irregular migration: ‘Stop the boats’ vs ‘Smash the Gangs’ (Prof Alex Balch)
58. The sleeping dog of ‘Europe: UK relations with the EU as a non-issue (Prof Simon Usherwood)
59. Labour: a very conservative housing manifesto (Prof Becky Tunstall)
60. Why the Labour Government must abolish the two-child benefit limit policy (Dr Yekaterina Chzhen)
61. Take the next right: mainstream parties’ positions on gender and LGBTQ+ equality issues (Dr Louise Luxton)
In his 26th May speech announcing the date of the 2024 UK General Election, Rishi Sunak invoked the Second World War – Britain’s perennial preoccupation – before warning the electorate that “the world is more dangerous than it has been since the end of the Cold War”. Six weeks later in his own 5th July speech upon entering Downing Street, Keir Starmer repeated his predecessor’s message, encouraging the nation to “[face] down, as we have so often in our past, the challenges of an insecure world”. These invocations bookended a campaign characterised by the usual gaffes and squabbles over normal electoral issues – the economy, NHS, immigration – but also highlighted a realm which traditionally does not factor. War.
2024 has been the first general election since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict. Britain’s role in overseas wars is not new, but this campaign saw defence and foreign policy play a far greater role even than the impact of the Iraq War in the 2005 election, the influence of three terrorist attacks on UK soil in the 2017 campaign, or the role of Jeremy Corbyn’s questionable stance on national security in 2019. Every election happens with a war going on somewhere. But few have been held in an atmosphere of deepening anxiety and defensive impotence, with over half the population fearing Britain is unprepared for a coming world war.
Defence appeared throughout the campaign, as the Conservatives’ main attack line and a poorly-planned nostalgia for national service. But while Second World War sentimentality was visible in the campaign and played a significant role in Brexit, it is not always the preserve of nationalists. Arguably, the collective memory of the war has played a decisive role in building British solidarity with Ukraine and pushing public trust on defence and foreign affairs away from the Tories. With the exception of fringe extremists on the right and left, support for Ukraine has been consistently high among the British public – an emotion which fed into the result. Keir Starmer’s industrious rebranding of Labour as patriotic and the party of defence (including nuclear weapons), in contrast to his predecessor, certainly contributed to Labour’s landslide. Meanwhile the Conservatives certainly suffered from widespread perceptions of their general inability to govern, with a consistent national narrative that the Tories could no longer be trusted with defence and security in an age of instability – contributing to their failure. A potential explanation for their surprising performance in the end is Nigel Farage’s public support for the Kremlin and fringe Reform candidates’ views on which side – and which leader – Britain should have supported in the Second World War. As Mr Sunak could have told Mr Farage after D-Day, disparaging the sacrosanct status of the War in British memory is not a wise strategy. But this has not been the only foreign affairs impact.
The ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict not only influenced voters but resulted in real electoral shifts. The 2024 Rochdale by-election saw the Workers Party – a Frankenstein’s monster of Stalinism and Little England nostalgia – enter Parliament on the single issue of Gaza. This was repeated on July 4th through single-issue independent MPs and candidates, some only a few hundred votes behind Labour cabinet members; viscerally abusive constituency campaigning; and a deeply polarised electorate on the UK’s legacy and leverage in the Middle East. This leaves Starmer facing a daunting challenge. By 2029, single-issue candidates might find a less receptive audience. But powerful emotions have been released, and as demonstrated by Brexit – the foreign policy issue nobody dared speak of this year – once the genie of pent-up public emotion has been let out of the bottle, it won’t go back in. Defence and foreign policy are back as election winners or losers. By 2029 Ukraine will either be in desperate need of Western reconstruction money at a time of domestic economic woes, or still fighting an existential, expensive war. British foreign policy will simultaneously need to balance competing focuses on authoritarian regimes, a feared 2027 Chinese invasion of Taiwan; strengthening UK relations with NATO, the EU, AUKUS, and the new European Political Community; and potentially using the Special Relationship – if it survives – to act as a Churchillian bridge between a tense EU and isolationist USA. The failed Brexit fantasy of ‘Global Britain’ may become reality – but not for the reasons Boris Johnson foresaw. Starmer has inherited an antagonistic population and empty coffers, precisely at the time when Britain – as both Mr Sunak and Sir Keir emphasised – needs a muscular foreign policy.
In January 2024 former Defence Secretary Grant Shapps spoke at Lancaster House, warning that Britain is “moving from a post-war to a pre-war world”. If he was right, Starmer may be a Prime Minister more akin to Neville Chamberlain than Clement Attlee – not an appeaser but the misinterpreted inheritor of a worn-down nation, frantically scrambling to rebuild Britain’s defences and relationships with her equally worn-out allies (and reputation among her posturing adversaries) in very difficult times. Foreign policy and defence were significant factors in 2024. By 2029, they may be the ultima ratio populi.
