The Labour leadership essays were all good at presenting us the domestic choices we face on things like Net Zero and devolution but blank or evasive on our choices in geopolitics. I think anyone seeking to be Prime Minister needs a clear answer to these four sets of questions on China, the United States, Europe and the Middle Powers and to explain how their choices to each add up as a strategy. 1. China — 🇬🇧🇨🇳 First, is the mega-trend reshaping the world order the deepening of a Chinese-led axis of complimentary grievances between Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and Pyongyang, with consequences for worldwide democracy and the balance power? Or is the geopolitical balance turbulent but essentially balanced between US and Chinese alliances? Following on from that, do we actively embrace the promise of cheap goods, cheap electrification and new science tie-ups with the Chinese techno-industrial state despite the risks that poses to hollowing out wider European manufacturing? Or are we in fact concerned about that and the way China has weaponised monopolies such as rare earth and actively seek a global techno-industrial coalition to balance the playing field and protect Western industries? This is a choice: if you believe the Chinese-led axis is our riskiest mega-trend you will prize Western or European unity at higher costs. And if you believe Chinese industrial overcapacity is a risk to European manufacturing you need to push certain tariff walls up giving higher costs on Chinese green goods like electric cars. 2. The United States — 🇬🇧🇺🇸 Are we long America, seeing the country as in many ways a rising power when it comes to tech and military capacity, and riding out the Trump turbulence whilst seeking to build ourselves into their 21st century techno-industrial state like we did into the 20th century military-industrial state? Or do we think we have an America problem, with the superpower we have built our grand strategy around increasingly coercive towards us, thus requiring us to build up our autonomy by investing our way longterm out of our critical security dependencies? This is a choice and not something you can ultimately balance: if you think the US is increasingly coercive and unreliable you don’t want to build yourself totally into its AI system. 3. Europe — 🇬🇧🇪🇺 Is our economic policy towards Europe based on a long-term strategy of maximising strategically chosen areas of divergence such as AI, biotech and financial services at the calculated expense that has to other sectors limited access to the Single Market and thus accepting the hard cap on how deep relations with the EU can go? Or is our policy one of seeking maximum benefit for the economy as a whole through maximum convergence with the Single Market, with the consequence being a rule-taker relationship like Switzerland or Norway, putting us on a path to this imbalance tilting us towards eventually rejoining? This is a choice: if you believe our priority is divergence sectors it means picking winners and accepting a hard cap on how much access the rest of the economy gets to the EU — or the other way round a hard cap on how far that divergence can go. 4. Middle Powers — 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇨🇦🇯🇵🇰🇷🇧🇷🇮🇩🇲🇽 With the limited diplomatic and time resources we have are we focusing our diplomatic efforts on the only Middle Powers we can actually integrate with and build joint capabilities with, which are the CANZUK countries, and Japan and South Korea, through efforts like a genuine CANZUK grouping or Japan and South Korea in a new “Democratic 10” grouping? Or are taking a more expansive approach trying to invest efforts more broadly on Global South players like Mexico, Brazil or Indonesia who might not share our read on geopolitics or want to build up joint capabilities with us but are significant geoeconomic players nevertheless? This is a choice: on sub-priority issues we have limited PM, FS, NSA time and making something of either strategy requires UK prioritised initiative.

Some news… I’m very exited to say I have been appointed the new political editor at The Sunday Times! It will be a wrench leaving the Telegraph. I’ve been here 14 years (a third of my life!) and owe a lot to the editors who have supported me during that time. I’ve admired The Sunday Times’s dogged, agenda-setting journalism all my career. Their political coverage has a reputation for being fair, incisive and revelatory - values more important now than ever in these uncertain times in Westminster. I’ll be starting in September. Who knows where politics will be by then? Can’t wait to get stuck in.