Former Foreign Secretary Says UK Public Needs A “Philosophical Reset” On Defence
James Cleverly was foreign secretary between 2022-23 and home secretary between 2023-24 (Alamy)
9 min read
James Cleverly, the former foreign and home secretary, has called for a “philosophical reset” in how the British public views national defence, arguing that the country must be prepared to defend its values through both diplomacy and military strength.
"British people are going to have to get their heads around that maybe we're going to have to start thinking about how we defend our values – not just soft power, but hard power defence,” Cleverly told PoliticsHome. “That takes a reset. It's not instant.”
Cleverly has been lying low since he lost the Conservative leadership contest to Kemi Badenoch last year, and has not taken a role on the opposition front bench, despite having held two of the most high-profile and demanding jobs in the previous government: first as foreign secretary, then as home secretary.
“I don't know whether it was good luck or bad luck that I ended up doing two very difficult jobs,” he said. “But it was a privilege to be in government departments where the stuff that needed to be done was difficult, but important. So I don't regret a minute of it – although I like getting more sleep now.”
Glancing at his Apple Watch, Cleverly noted he now gets about six and a half hours of sleep a night, which is apparently two more hours than he managed as a Cabinet minister. “Particularly as foreign secretary… lots of travel, lots of jumping between time zones, eating at funny times,” he recalled.
While relatively well-rested, Cleverly sat down with PoliticsHome for this interview during a time of heightened global instability. Conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine dominated the Nato summit in The Hague earlier in the week, where Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his long-term ambition to spend 5 per cent of the UK’s GDP on defence by 2035, and raise it to 2.5 per cent by 2030.
However, Cleverly warned that increasing spending alone would not go far enough. What is needed, he argued, is a broader cultural and political shift in how the UK thinks about its security.
The former foreign secretary pointed to the decades since the Cold War as a period in which government spending drifted away from defence. “If we went back in time 20 years and I put down the pie chart of UK government spending in front of my predecessor from 20 years back, they would be amazed, probably horrified.”
Current defence spending is around 2.3 per cent, so huge questions remain for the government on how they can more than double this amount in the next decade. But Cleverly is adamant this shift does not require higher taxes, instead arguing that “tackling the bloating of the welfare budget” could free up the funds needed for investment in national security.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer attended the Nato summit alongside other world leaders last week (Alamy)
A report by the Resolution Foundation last year found that the overall size of the welfare state was bigger than it was on the eve of the financial crisis, rising from 10 per cent of GDP in 2007-08 to 11.2 per cent in 2024-25, with most of this period being overseen by a Conservative government. The Labour government's current attempt to reform the welfare system by removing eligibility for Personal Independence Payments (PIP) from hundreds of thousands of disabled people has been met with a massive rebellion among backbench Labour MPs, leading to significant government concessions.
For Cleverly, this debate over public spending underscored his broader argument that the government must reallocate resources towards defence. He believes today’s threats – “a major war in the Middle East, a major war on the European continent, and China taking a very aggressive posture across the Taiwan Strait” – justify a serious recalibration of priorities.
“If we think spending money on keeping the peace feels expensive, wait until people see how much it costs to actually go into war.”
The reassurance we've had from being an island nation isn’t as robust as it once was
He agreed with comments by Nato Commander Admiral Pierre Vandier, who told The House a significant rearmament programme is needed and that new military technologies have diminished the UK’s traditional advantages.
“The world has become a much, much smaller place, and the ability of hypersonic missiles and next generation munitions to cover huge distances very quickly means that the reassurance we've had from being an island nation isn’t as robust as it once was,” Cleverly said, adding that the UK must also become “quicker and more effective and more efficient” in its defence procurement.
The government published its National Security Strategy last week, warning that the UK must prepare for a potential wartime scenario at home “for the first time in many years”.
Asked whether he saw this coming during his time as foreign secretary, Cleverly responded that it was “inevitable” that the country’s strategic posture would need to be toughened. However, he expressed concern about “a lack of public confidence in British military intervention”.
“Some of the decisions that were made under Tony Blair, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, cast a very, very long shadow,” he said. “We need to be better at making the case for defence expenditure and military action and explain that it is about defending our values.”
He was critical of the New Labour years’ approach to foreign policy, saying there had been “a bit of an addiction to liberal interventionism”, and urged a more grounded approach. “We need to be realistic about what is achievable and desirable with regard to military action.”
We’re now discovering that the UK seems to be an afterthought in President Trump’s thinking when it comes to military operations
One Conservative policy that sparked significant public debate during the general election campaign last year was the proposal to reintroduce a form of compulsory national service for young people, both military and non-military. Cleverly defended the policy at the time, saying it would get young people “out of their bubble”.
A year later, he told PoliticsHome that the proposal had been mishandled. “In hindsight, putting an idea into the public domain without pitch-rolling it, without really explaining exactly what it meant, was a counterproductive move,” he admitted.
While he said he is “not obsessed” with military national service, he still strongly supports the idea of schemes that help young people from different backgrounds connect.
“Jo Cox was absolutely right: there is more that unites us than divides us, and finding opportunities to experience those unifying things is absolutely key.”
Cleverly also struck a cordial tone when discussing Labour’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy, describing him as someone he likes “a lot”. But he argued that Lammy’s approach to foreign policy so far was merely a continuation of Conservative-era policies, lacking fresh direction or substance.
“They don't seem to have a direction of travel for their foreign affairs policy,” he said. He pointed to the government’s China audit, published this week, as a “re-announcement of old money and a couple of headlines without any real meat to it,” arguing it amounted to little more than “rehashing” his own work in office.
Cleverly would not go as far as some of his colleagues – including former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith – who accuse countries like Russia, Iran, North Korea and China of forming an “axis of evil”.
But he did tell PoliticsHome that there are a “number of countries who are deeply at odds with our philosophies, our values, and they are at various degrees working together”.
“I’ll let others come up with creative headlines, but what I expect from the government is to hear what they're going to do about it,” he said. “And at the moment, there's just a vacuum.”
However, Cleverly rejected suggestions that Britain’s global power has been waning over the last few decades. “We have been very much at the forefront… and I would say this, wouldn’t I?” he joked.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly and former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the 2023 Nato summit in Vilnius, Lithuania (Alamy)
He said that while he could not go into details, the US had “intimately” involved the UK in its planning of strikes against the Houthis in the Red Sea, “right from the get-go” in January 2024 when the Conservatives were in government. The US-UK special relationship, he claimed, has now cooled.
“We’re now discovering that the UK seems to be an afterthought in President Trump’s thinking when it comes to military operations,” he said. He blamed this, in part, on Starmer and Lammy’s past criticisms of Trump, which he suggested had damaged the UK’s credibility with the Republican president.
“I'm not surprised that there's a trust deficit between the UK government now and the presidential team,” he continued.
“Having gone from a top-tier diplomatic and defence nation, we’re now in the relegation zone because of the complete lack of confidence in Starmer’s ability to deliver on these [defence spending] promises. And that is really, really, really damaging.”
It is doubtful, however, whether there is much more confidence in the Conservatives’ ability to deliver on these promises. According to YouGov’s first MRP poll since the general election, only 18 per cent of people would currently vote for the Tories, compared to 23 per cent for Labour and 26 per cent for Reform UK.
The Conservatives, therefore, have a monumental challenge on their hands to regroup and regain power at the next general election. And if they somehow manage this, what kind of world does Cleverly think they would inherit?
“I see lots of ways that the world is less predictable and more volatile,” he said.
“I hope I'm wrong, but unfortunately, I can see a lot of volatility, which is why I think we do need to go back to more resilience in terms of food security, energy security, defence, protection of our values, close alignment with our existing allies.
“But also, we need to build long-term relationships with the countries, like India, like Indonesia, like the Saudis, Emiratis, Brazil and others that are going to be the power players going into the next 50 years.”
