As the world becomes more confrontational, it is imperative that the United Kingdom (UK), as a major power with interests to uphold internationally, presents a unified front to allies and adversaries alike. Given Britain’s diplomatic reputation and international convening power, the necessity of such unity extends to its foreign policy.
It is often said that policymaking should include more varied stakeholders from across the UK. A more proactive approach would draw upon expertise from industry, think tanks, academia, and the media alongside that within His Majesty’s (HM) Government. With this in mind, this week’s Big Ask posits the following question to six experts: How can Britain build a genuinely ‘Team UK’ foreign policy?
Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and PhD student, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London
Academia, both through technical and higher education, is a key player for ‘Team UK’. As the UK’s foreign policy adapts to the worsening global security outlook, HM Government should therefore cohere disparate elements across academia to support national priorities. The 2025 National Security Strategy recognises this, asserting education as a ‘significant source of soft power’ amid the strategic priority of upholding international stability. Despite this, the higher education sector’s systemic financial crisis and acute security challenges from foreign interference both create significant uncertainty with which HM Government must contend.
Despite these risks, British academia remains an excellent vehicle for international collaboration, often in support of government priorities. For example, the UK-Australia Advanced Skills Alliance sees the formalisation of bilateral research and innovation ties in direct support of the AUKUS security pact. Furthermore, Imperial College London’s hosting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) Programme helps to forge mission-specific links between academia, industry, and government.
It is this ‘triple helix’ where HM Government should provide further support for Britain’s education sector to support national objectives. The Defence Universities Alliance is an encouraging step, with 35 universities in the UK signing up to the scheme, thus reflecting a clear appetite for academic engagement with strategic objectives. For the further development and deployment of research outside of the defence discipline, HM Government should create additional funded pathways. The Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office’s (FCDO) Areas of Research Interest, while appearing to address this demand, does not offer funding for researchers – thereby potentially limiting uptake.
To ensure British academia continues to remain a core pillar of national power, HM Government should communicate clear priorities, provide additional funding, and create new opportunities for engagement.
Research Fellow (National Security), Council on Geostrategy
If HM Government wants to foster a more united foreign policy effort across the nation’s varied stakeholders, four things are necessary:
Greater clarity from government about foreign policy direction;
Improved top-down direction and bottom-up feedback loops;
Reduced classification guardedness from Whitehall; and
Greater cross-Whitehall awareness.
For a start, stakeholders beyond government would benefit from clarity. Different elements of Whitehall are pulling in different directions on a number of foreign policy issues. Here, the most obvious case in point would be the UK’s approach to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), where the security apparatus of Whitehall and elements of the FCDO and HM Treasury diverge significantly on perspectives. Until clarity is provided, stakeholders cannot help to pull the machinery of the nation towards the same objectives.
Related to this is the need for new mechanisms to inform stakeholders of these objectives – beyond the top-level strategic documents and briefings HM Government provides – and for Whitehall to receive feedback from the wider stakeholders. British academia, business, development organisations, and others are all wealthy sources of ‘on the ground’ information on foreign affairs that HM Government could utilise better.
This is where the other two points come in. For the above to be done effectively, HM Government should be more willing to declassify information, most of which is already available through open source. Clearly, some information cannot and should not be shared, but the current overclassification approach is stifling coordination with wider stakeholders. Finally, greater oversight of Whitehall’s work with outside stakeholders in relation to foreign policy is needed. Many government organisations do fantastic work already with those outside of the governmental apparatus, but are unaware of what other departments are doing. This leads to duplication of work and contacts, and hampers greater strategic coordination.
Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy; and Director of Defence Policy, Government Affairs, and Communications, Make UK Defence
There has been increasing recognition inside HM Government that industry is a pillar of the UK’s foreign and defence policy, with the Defence Industrial Strategy stating that ‘innovation and industrial power are central to deterrence’. Ultimately, Britain cannot deter conflict if its industrial base lacks the resilience and scalability needed to surge in a time of crisis. However, this thinking inside HM Government needs to evolve into concrete actions, not just slogans.
A ‘Team UK’ strategy should look deep into the supply chain, including to the component and critical raw material levels. The Ministry of Defence is making some good progress via its work on a ‘Back British’ approach, which will include a critical industry mapping exercise to understand the UK’s industrial strengths, supply chain bottlenecks, and critical risks.
Recognising that Britain is not alone here is important. The PRC dominates the global supply for most of the critical minerals at the mining and processing stages, and has shown a willingness in the past few years to leverage its position in a harmful way to the global market. While the UK has some significant strategic deposits for critical minerals and elements, such as tungsten and lithium, it will need to diversify its supply chains to friendly, allied nations to reduce critical vulnerabilities. This is mutually beneficial work for Britain and its allies and partners.
Research Manager, Coalition for Global Prosperity
The UK’s foreign policy is increasingly constrained by the demands of the news cycle and the frequent turnover of political leaders. While the Civil Service possesses expertise, a dedicated workforce, and institutional knowledge, the immediate pressures of government and politics can make long-term strategic thinking difficult. The result is a foreign policy that becomes reactive rather than proactive and assertive.
Think tanks have an important role in addressing this challenge. Their value lies not simply in helping HM Government to answer the questions already being asked, although this is important. Rather, they are here to identify the questions that HM Government ought to be asking. Their purpose is to look beyond where political attention is, free from ministerial change and political cycles, to provide an anchor for long-term visions.
Across the foreign policy ecosystem, there needs to be a renewed emphasis on macro-level approaches. This means that as part of ‘Team UK’, think tanks should, first and foremost, produce research and analysis that challenges existing assumptions and helps to shape the intellectual framework underpinning British foreign policy, rather than simply conforming to existing outlooks through incremental policy recommendations. The broader strategic thinking provided should then be supported by more technical, policy-oriented work that translates these ambitious ideas and visions into options for whichever party is in power.
Challenging established thinking should be viewed as part of a constructive partnership with HM Government rather than confrontation. The strength of the UK’s foreign policy will depend on the strength of its ideas, not just its resources, and think tanks are well-placed to provide them.
Co-President (Research), Council on Geostrategy
In an era of geopolitical confrontation, the fundamental barrier to a unified ‘Team UK’ foreign policy is that the FCDO lacks a clear, granular, and cascading definition of the British national interest. Until it gains this intellectual compass, King Charles Street remains trapped in a state of perpetual strategic confusion – drifting between cosmopolitan abstractions and reactive crisis management.
To build a genuine ‘Team UK’ approach, the FCDO should clarify what the British state exists to protect and advance: sovereignty, prosperity, and international freedom of action. Only when national priorities are stated in unambiguous, realist terms can the UK marshal resources at home to project and secure its interests abroad.
This conceptual failure directly impairs how Whitehall engages external expertise. The FCDO currently acts as a passive consumer in an open market of ideas – purchasing isolated reports from academia and think tanks that often pull against sovereign necessity. It should stop treating external institutions as passive vendors and start acting as the active organiser of a disciplined national caucus in pursuit of national interests.
King Charles Street should proactively curate, direct, and fund a network of experts, scholars, think tanks, and academic departments whose work is explicitly aligned with core state objectives – from supply chain resilience and strategic forecasting to asymmetric advantage and the future of the British-American relationship.
Strategic unity cannot be forged around an intellectual vacuum. Until the FCDO articulates the national interest with ruthless clarity, ‘Team UK’ will remain a hollow concept. By defining British interests tightly and marshalling national intellectual power to serve them, the FCDO can restore strategic coherence and outmanoeuvre ruthless foreign adversaries.
Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Lecturer, School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews
A key strength of the UK during both world wars was its ability to mobilise the country’s collective expertise. Besides headline leading accomplishments in the hard sciences, a host of experts and academics contributed to the war effort. Sociologists and anthropologists ran wartime social surveys that helped calibrate rationing and sustain morale. Artist Norman Wilkinson invented the ‘dazzle’ paint schemes that complicated German U-boats’ efforts to sink British ships in the First World War, while Solly Zuckerman, an Oxford zoologist, helped to redefine the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) strategic bombing campaign in the Second World War.
Both academia and think tanks played a prominent role in this process. Entire colleges at Oxford and Cambridge transitioned themselves to wartime activities. During the Second World War, Chatham House coordinated research efforts amongst the many exiled European experts – including Polish, Norwegian, Czechoslovak, and French – who found themselves in the UK. However, such efforts cannot be improvised. It took years of haphazard engagement with experts in the First World War to develop the mechanisms by which experts were more successfully incorporated into policymaking between 1939 and 1945.
The current world order demands reinventing these mechanisms for HM Government to tap Britain’s expertise better – in academia, think tanks, and the private sector – on behalf of the nation’s security. The UK should develop registers of experts and processes for vetting them to the Security Check (SC) clearance level to create a reserve of human capital that can be drawn upon. Working groups, combining policymakers with outside experts, should be established, and should meet regularly to explore key challenges. Some movement is occurring in these directions, but it currently falls far short of where Britain needs to be, and what it achieved in the past.
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