Prologue: the Mission Statement

When, on 1 May 1997, a Labour government was returned to power in Britain after eighteen years in opposition, none of the ministers who were appointed to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) by Prime Minister Tony Blair had had any prior experience of government office – indeed only the new foreign secretary, Robin Cook MP, had been in parliament when Labour had last held power. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Cook had been a critic of the underlying assumptions of British foreign policy shared by the Wilson, Callaghan and Thatcher administrations– assumptions such as the supreme importance of Britain's relationship with the United States and the value of British membership of the European Community–and although these criticisms had been more or less silenced by the emergence of ‘New Labour’, Cook was widely regarded as the most influential left-wing member of the new government. In the circumstances, there seemed good reason to expect at least some changes in the content of British foreign policy and in the foreign policy-making process.

One almost immediate symbol of change was the unveiling of a Mission Statement for the FCO. Although the imagery was very New Labour, the actual text of the Mission Statement was, for the most part, conventional. The summary reads ‘The Mission of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is to promote the national interests of the United Kingdom and contribute to a strong international community.