Sir Keir Starmer ran for office on a manifesto that repeatedly invoked respect for international law and undertook to “reconnect with our allies” and “once again stand strong on the world stage”. As prime minister, he told European leaders gathered at Blenheim Palace last week, he would “reset” Britain’s approach and commit to a global engagement based on “humanity and with a profound respect for international law”.
The message has been taken forward. At the swearing-in of new justice secretary Shabana Mahmood, which I attended in my capacity as a barrister, she identified the rule of law as the “most enduring of British values”. A few days later, in the King’s Speech, Charles III spoke of his government’s commitment to “common values of individual liberty, democracy, human rights and the rule of law”.
After a decade of prime ministers railing against international rules and judges, it seems that Britain now wishes to re-engage. But what will this mean in practice? A change of tone is the easy part, and some actions — rejoining international bodies or modifying aspects of treaties with the European Union — are straightforward. Yet what is needed is something much more fundamental.
More than any other modern British prime minister, Starmer has actual experience of engaging with the world. I saw this at first-hand a decade ago at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, in proceedings in which we appeared together on crimes committed at Vukovar in the former Yugoslavia. I remember how he, forensically practical, introduced his arguments with the observation that his task was to go beyond “international principle to the nuts and bolts of proving the case”. Then, as now, both high ideals and mastery of detail were required.
Starmer and I are of a generation of lawyers who learnt directly from men and women who lived through the horrors of the second world war and embraced a new approach to international relations. My introduction to foreign affairs was in the autumn of 1980, a class at the University of Cambridge on international law offered by Professor Robert Yewdall Jennings, a pragmatic and realist Yorkshireman. He described a world that informed our perceptions: agreements mattered, Britain was a global leader — the Atlantic Charter, the United Nations, Nuremberg, free trade and so on reflected its values — and the country sat at the top table, one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
The world was different back then. Beside the so-called “special relationship” with the US — my American wife calls it a one-way arrangement — and historic connections with Commonwealth countries and the English-speaking world, Britain was a member of the Common Market, confronting a predominantly Soviet threat. As for the countries of the “global south”, my class notes treated apartheid in South Africa — along with colonial rule in Hong Kong and elsewhere — as part of a natural order, somehow not inconsistent with the new global rules. The double standard was there. Some of us, myself included, just couldn’t see it.
The scales soon fell from my eyes. I encountered the real world of law and diplomacy, one that presented a different landscape where Britain was not quite so dominant, politically, economically or militarily. As China, India and others moved to centre stage in the 1990s, the challenges of the environment, migration and technology gained traction. Instead of embracing change, our leaders chose to dig in. Seen from abroad, successive British governments, both Labour and Conservative, offered an air of entitlement and hubris. To many in Britain, the sense of continuity with a colonial past persisted.
With such a mindset, it was perhaps no surprise that grievous mistakes could be made, sharply diminishing Britain’s role and reputation. The 2003 Iraq war undermined the commitment to a rules-based order, and offered dangerous arguments seized on by others, not least by Vladimir Putin to justify his lawless aggression against Ukraine. The vote to leave the EU — premised on a vision of global greatness — damaged Britain’s reputation for pragmatism and principle, as well as stability and predictability. It was an act of self-harm that dramatically reduced the country’s authority at the UN and elsewhere.
I saw this first-hand in relation to major British setbacks in the summer of 2017 at the UN General Assembly. As counsel for Mauritius, I observed a large majority of countries vote to seek an advisory opinion from the ICJ on Britain’s colonial legacy, the 1965 dismemberment of Mauritius’s territory, creation of a new colony (known as the “British Indian Ocean Territory”) and forcible deportation of the entire population of Chagossians.
Not long after, the UN voted to end Britain’s tenure at the ICJ, electing an Indian candidate and leaving Britain with no judge on the court, a first since the body’s origins dating back to 1922. Some saw this as more of a failure of lobbying and diplomacy. The reality was otherwise: Iraq, Brexit, Chagos and articles by Boris Johnson that were disrespectful of Black people and Muslims combined to crush British hopes.
Lessons were not learnt. Instead, British governments and their media supporters doubled down, drawing on deep colonial roots with attacks on the rules-based system: the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was regularly trashed; British judges dealing with European cases were called “enemies of the people”; foreigners were subjected to an even harsher “hostile environment”; and parliament was somehow persuaded to override a Supreme Court judgment and determine that Rwanda was a safe place to deport people, even though everybody knew it was not.
Not long after signing the Northern Ireland protocol with the EU — a binding international agreement — the government was threatening to tear it up. For a country whose trade and reputation were constructed on a supposed respect for international accords, such actions were reckless and damaging, reinforcing the view that its leaders were increasingly disconnected from the realities of its situation.
In my own world of international law, there was growing incredulity at the weak or marginal arguments put to judges in various cases at the ICJ. Don’t give an opinion on Israel’s occupation of Palestine, Britain told the judges earlier this year. Don’t say anything about the responsibility for historic emissions of greenhouse gases, it argued in a case on climate change. Don’t say there is a right to strike under international law, it submitted in a third case, on the work of the International Labour Organization.
Such arguments are not the stuff of front-page news — but they send signals picked up by other countries, reinforcing the sense that Britain has become semi-detached from the rules-based system it helped to create. A country that condemns Russia for targeting energy infrastructure in Ukraine but passes in silence when Israel does the same in Gaza is unlikely to win many hearts and minds internationally.
Over two decades, as I have travelled the world, the regret, surprise and anger has been palpable. On its international engagements, Britain is often seen as hubristic, navel-gazing and unreliable, a country stuck in the past that is unable to confront new realities, prone to a double standard that treats international rules as being for others, not itself. “What’s happening to Britain?” is a question I am often asked.
Aung San Suu Kyi told the ICJ judges a few years ago that “international law may well be our only global value system”, and the former Myanmar leader may well be right. Starmer’s hope for a reset, to make Britain a positive player once more, is both welcome and possible. There remains a well of respect, for the nature of Britain’s role in constructing the rules-based order, for the quality of Britain’s diplomats and legal advisers, and for its judges and lawyers. The situation is not beyond repair.
The new UK government has made a start on its commitment to international rules. The Rwanda deportation policy is gone and it has been reported that efforts to delay the International Criminal Court’s issuance of indictments in the current conflict between Israel and Hamas may be dropped. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is once more being funded. There is active talk of a defence and security pact with the EU.
“That’s not a reset, that’s just a sanity check,” an American friend said when I mentioned these early steps. He’s right. A real reset will need more fundamental and far-reaching changes, a break with the sense of self that I was taught about at university and an acceptance of new realities. We need to bridge the gap between how Britain sees itself and how others see it.
First, let us be straight with ourselves about the past. Britain celebrates its successes and positives — as the posters at Heathrow remind us, proclaiming how “Great” Britain is — but is less keen on confronting past mistakes. Iraq cannot be undone, but it can and should be acknowledged for what it was, a grave error (David Miliband, the former foreign secretary, did so last year at the Hay Festival). Brexit is not about to be overturned, but its real consequences have to be recognised. There is much by way of historical legacies that needs to be addressed, as Germany has now done in relation to the genocide it perpetrated in South-West Africa, now Namibia, a century ago.
At school in the 1970s, I learnt nothing about enslavement or colonial rule, and three decades later the education of my children still showed serious gaps. Britain needs a proper conversation about legacies, not by way of self-flagellation but to pave the way for a more decent engagement with others, a reset with Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere, a pre-requisite to dealing with Chinese and Russian influences. South Africa has not forgotten Soviet support for the African National Congress during the apartheid era, one reason Britain has failed to persuade it to speak out loudly in resisting Russia’s incursions into Ukraine. Silence is not an effective foreign policy.
Second, a reset requires realism on Britain’s actual place in today’s world. Sure, Britain is a wealthy country with an economy that is among the world’s largest, but its trajectory is one of relative decline. This affects foreign affairs, including the limited ability to influence others.
A robust economy — one that is consistent with environmental protection — depends on trade in goods and services, and Britain’s largest trading partner by far is the EU. To have left the single market and the customs union has had serious economic implications. Direct foreign direct investment is down, while trade with the EU is significantly lower than it would have been otherwise.
The last government’s defence review offered an absurd tilt away from Europe towards the Indo-Pacific region, thousands of miles away. “This is seen as a joke in the region,” a former Australian prime minister told me a few weeks ago. The heralded new defence policy paper needs to address the real world, not delusions of global influence.
Third, as to the future, all agree that the world is — as the last government put it — more “multipolar, fragmented and contested” than ever before. These rapid changes are reflected in the world of international law: a few years ago, it would have been unimaginable for South Africa to go to the ICJ and allege that Israel was perpetrating genocide in Gaza, or for western countries to have failed to persuade even a single country from the global south to intervene in the proceedings at the ICJ in support of Ukraine’s case against Russia.
Britain needs the humility to accept this reality and work with it, or risk becoming irrelevant. The days of “international law for others” are over. Britain has to be ready to be held to account, for actions present and past, whether they be historic emissions of greenhouse gases, or slavery and other acts of colonial-era wrongdoing, or for waging illegal wars or turning a blind eye to manifest violations of international law by an ally.
A reset on relations with the world implies engagement with the “nuts and bolts” of global rules in every domain. If, as is likely, issues of immigration remain high on the political agenda in many countries, let us at least agree that Britain will treat foreigners with respect and dignity, including refugees, and in accordance with international rules. We need to commit to the rules, including the 1951 Refugee Convention, whose letter and spirit deserves the fullest respect.
I’d like to see Britain double down on its commitment to human rights and humanitarian law, holding its own allies to account where they fall short. A reset means speaking up for the global rules and condemning violations, wherever they occur, and taking the lead in supporting new initiatives, such as the proposed convention on crimes against humanity.
I’d like Britain to resume real leadership on climate change, of the kind initiated by Margaret Thatcher’s speech at the Second World Climate Conference, in November 1990, which paved the way for the global conventions. That means meeting our treaty obligations, reckoning with our past emissions, and revoking the North Sea oil and gas licences authorised by Rishi Sunak’s government. It means taking the lead on filling the gaps where the rules are inadequate, in terms of targets and timetables and domestic actions. It means supporting new ideas, including a new crime of ecocide.
I’d like to see Britain make good on its commitment to the rules prohibiting military force except by way of self-defence or where genuinely authorised by the UN Security Council. That means holding others to account for the crime of aggression, by supporting the creation of a special tribunal for the crime of aggression in Ukraine, as is being negotiated under the auspices of the Council of Europe, that allows Putin to be held to account.
I’d like to see Britain pursue growth that is environmentally sustainable and meets the highest international labour standards. The only trade agreement that really matters for economic wellbeing is one with its main trading partner, namely the EU. That has to be the priority.
I’d like to see Britain restore the reputation it once had with international courts, with candidates elected to the bench, making arguments that resonate — on climate change and on the right to strike, in pending cases — and respecting judgments and advisory opinions handed down. Last week, Chatham House called on the new government to finalise negotiations and resolve “without delay” the dispute with Mauritius, following the 2019 ICJ advisory opinion declaring that the UK must end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible.
Also last week, sweeping aside Britain’s lonely objections to its exercise of jurisdiction, in a case in which I acted for Palestine, the ICJ declared that the Palestinian people have a “right to an independent and sovereign state”, that “Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful” and must be ended “as rapidly as possible”, and that all countries, including Britain, are under an obligation “not to render aid or assistance in maintaining” the unlawful situation that persists.
The implications for Starmer’s government are clear: cease any military or other support that contributes to the illegal occupation, and recognise the State of Palestine, as Ireland and Spain recently have. Wobble on such matters and you forgo your ability to proclaim your re-engagement with international law.
Finally, I’d like to see the Labour manifesto commitment on soft power be followed through. Language, culture and arts — like respect for the rule of law and judges — are a central element of Britain’s reputation abroad. This means more funds for the BBC World Service — which is second to none in reporting on international cases — and the British Council, along with rules to allow our musicians, actors and writers to tour Europe and beyond. I’d like to see an end to the demonisation of my foreign university students, and Britain participating in European arts funding, rejoining the Erasmus programme, and being fully integrated into the EU’s Horizon science programme.
For the prime minister and his formidable foreign secretary and attorney-general, the hard work now begins in earnest. This means tough decisions rather than platitudes — like resisting reported US pressure on ICC indictments — which will become more acute if the US elects Donald Trump, an eventuality that has to be prepared for.
Without being starry-eyed, and while holding their feet to the fire, I welcome the commitment to a reset and the significant prospects it brings. I refuse to be cynical or defeatist, and hope for a real change, not just a reversion to the usual default positions. Britain can have a positive role in a tumultuous and dangerous world, but that requires a clean break with past attitudes on substance as well as tone, an approach premised on honesty and realism, and a whole lot less hubris or sense of entitlement.
Philippe Sands KC is professor of law at University College London and visiting professor at Harvard Law School. He is the author of ‘East West Street’ (2016) and ‘The Last Colony’ (2022). His next book, on Pinochet in London, will be published in April 2025
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