The contributions to this essay collection highlight the range of different opportunities that a truly engaged Global Britain can take advantage of on the world stage as it seeks to move on from post-referendum instability and introspection. The UK needs to provide some reassurance to its partners that it still wants to play well with others, by showing it is still willing to muck in as well as to lead. So the UK will have to do a lot of hard work to retain and build alliances with like-minded countries to make regional and global systems work in both the national and international interest. In order to build trust the UK should find ways to demonstrate that it still believes in the intrinsic value of international cooperation as more than simply an instrumental tool in its foreign policy kit. As an internationally focused middle power, the UK benefits enormously from promoting wider global acceptance of both international institutions and established norms.

The UK will need to work effectively at a number of different levels and through a range of different vectors, so the FCDO will need to be properly resourced to prevent overstretch at a time of tightening budgets. Irrespective of the UK’s aspirations to pivot to the Indo-Pacific as Prof Jamie Shea reminds us the ‘UK’s security priorities today are still overwhelmingly focused on Europe’.[1] So the UK needs to find a new way of working with the EU once the current sound and fury has subsided. This can start at a local level where as Balfour suggests UK Embassies and EU Delegations re-establish cooperation and information sharing on the ground in third countries and international institutions. In the future it may be possible to revisit issues such as formal foreign policy and security cooperation, as part of a future EU-UK Partnership and Cooperation Agreement or Strategic Partnership. Irrespective of the state of UK-EU relations Britain will need to redouble its efforts in the other European focused forums such as NATO, the OSCE and Council of Europe, with an emphasis on looking creatively at how to support the work these institutions do to promote democratic values.

At a global level, the UK must continue to build on its strong position at the UN and take full advantage of its leadership of both the COP and G7 in 2021 to set out an ambitious agenda for the UK’s future foreign policy. It should seek to build on ideas around a ‘Democracies-10’ (D10), by promoting expanded G7 membership to include South Korea and Australia. It should find new ways to promote engagement with the democracies of the global south and support UK NGOs and institutions, such as the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, to play a bigger role. The UK will need to work flexibly and creatively with longstanding partners in new formats such as the Alliance for Multilateralism, the Accountability, Coherence and Transparency (ACT) coalition, as well continuing current efforts to build greater collaboration between the ‘CANZUK’ countries, though recognising the geographic and economic limitations to the scale of such ambitions.

Building on the findings put forward in this collection, there are a number of recommendations that the UK Government and other partners could consider including:

• Finding a future framework for UK-EU cooperation in foreign and security policy and other non-trade areas, while rebuilding operational-level information sharing and cooperation;
• Enhancing parliamentary cooperation between the UK and European Parliaments and strengthening UK delegations to NATO, OSCE and CoE Parliamentary Assemblies;
• Funding projects conducted by the OSCE and Council of Europe’s human rights mechanisms and supporting election observers as well as secondments and leadership candidacies;
• Working with the Commonwealth on modern slavery and supply chains, while promoting the Commonwealth Charter and the use of aid and trade to improve compliance with its principles;
• Using the UK Presidency of the G7 to refocus the organisation as the group of leading democracies by expanding its membership to include South Korea and Australia, while reinvigorating outreach to global south democracies;
• Supporting the UK’s role in democracy promotion by supporting UK NGOs and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy; and
• Working creatively with forums like the Alliance for Multilateralism and the Accountability, Coherence and Transparency (ACT) coalition, while developing further CANZUK cooperation.

[1] As addressed in previous publications in the Finding Britain’s Role in the World series.