Alex Bigham Articles

How would the balance of power held by the Liberal Democrats in a hung parliament affect foreign policy?

Celebrating success is not always something that comes easy to the left in politics, not least when the word Iraq is mentioned.

Michael Cockerell’s documentary series on the great offices of state examined the history of the Foreign Office in its second programme shown last week. In it, the veteran journalist wistfully considered the faded glory of King Charles Street, the failures expressed in the grandeur of rooms like the Locarno suite which celebrate collapsed treaties and concluded it seemed to symbolise more a ‘palace of dreams’ than a powerhouse of the modern era.

In the world of media management, Baroness Kinnock’s timing couldn’t have been less fortunate. To admit, just two hours after Gordon Brown had made a series of policy announcements on tackling the terrorist threat, that counter-terror funding in Pakistan and counter-narcotics work in Afghanistan was being cut was a gift to the opposition. While the scale and significance in the impact of the exchange rates shouldn’t be overblown, it raises an interesting question about how we can most effectively deliver a counter-terrorism strategy at a time when resources are stretched.