Episode 383: Is Andy Burnham Ready for a World at War?

In this episode of The International Risk Podcast, host Dominic Bowen is joined by Lord Peter Ricketts, the UK’s first National Security Advisor, former Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, and former British Ambassador to France, to unpack what Andy Burnham’s rise to Downing Street means for Britain’s place in the world.

Ricketts examines why Burnham, arriving as the UK’s seventh Prime Minister in ten years with almost no track record on foreign policy, inherits a fragile but consequential legacy from Keir Starmer, from steadfast support for Ukraine to a more assertive European security posture. He explains why personal relationships between world leaders are not a soft add-on but a genuine strategic asset, why Burnham will have to build trust with Trump, Macron, and Merz essentially from scratch, and why a hard right shift in France under Marine Le Pen could complicate cooperation on defence and migration. The conversation also covers the Strategic Defence Review‘s warnings on warfighting readiness, the sobering “letters of last resort” every new Prime Minister must write for Britain’s nuclear submarines, and why Britain’s credibility in NATO depends on defence spending it may struggle to sustain.

Key topics discussed:

• Why Burnham’s political style raises real questions about his readiness for crisis decision making
• Why personal relationships between leaders matter as much as institutions and interests
• The risk that a Le Pen led France could complicate UK-EU defence and migration cooperation
• Why continuity on Ukraine is critical, and the spending trade-offs Burnham will face at home
• What Britain needs to do to keep pulling its weight in NATO
• The reality of nuclear command responsibility that awaits every incoming Prime Minister
• The international risks Lord Ricketts is watching most closely today, from war in Europe to climate change

This episode is relevant to anyone interested in international relations, defence policy, European security, diplomacy, or international risk.

The International Risk Podcast brings you conversations with global experts, frontline practitioners, and senior decision-makers who are shaping how we understand and respond to international risk. From geopolitical volatility and organised crime, to cybersecurity threats and hybrid warfare, each episode explores the forces transforming our world and what smart leaders must do to navigate them. Whether you’re a board member, policymaker or risk professional, The International Risk Podcast delivers actionable insights, sharp analysis, and real-world stories that matter.

Dominic Bowen is the host of The International Risk Podcast and Europe’s leading expert on international risk and crisis management. As Head of Strategic Advisory and Partner at one of Europe’s leading risk management consulting firms, Dominic advises CEOs, boards, and senior executives across the continent on how to prepare for uncertainty and act with intent. He has spent decades working in war zones, advising multinational companies, and supporting Europe’s business leaders.

Episode Transcript

Dominic Bowen: Britain is now in its seventh prime minister in 10 years. And this one has arrived at Downing Street with almost no track record on foreign policy, at precisely the moment that the transatlantic alliance is under the most strain in definitely a generation. So does Andy Burnham’s ascent mean a shift in how Downing Street handles Washington, Moscow, Brussels, or even Beijing? Or is it just going to be a changing face and the same script? To help us read the signals, we’re joined by someone who has advised prime ministers on exactly these questions. I’m Dominic Bowen, host of the International Risk Podcast, where we unpack the topics that really matter.

Today we’re joined by Lord Ricketts. He was the UK’s first National Security Advisor, former Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, and former British Ambassador to France. Few people have watched more changes of UK leadership up close, or thought harder about what this means for Britain’s place in the world. He’s also just published a new book called Peacemakers: Shaping the Modern World — the Men and Women of the Foreign Office in World War II, which is about diplomats who shaped the post-war order. I think there’s a lot we’re going to unpack today that’ll be really interesting for our listeners. Lord Ricketts, welcome to the International Risk Podcast.

Peter Ricketts: Thank you very much for having me, Dominic. Very much looking forward to chatting on this rather interesting day.

Dominic Bowen: Very interesting day. It must be a very exciting day for the new prime minister and his family. What do you think is going through his mind today? There must be so much — the prime minister of Britain, what an amazing job.

Peter Ricketts: Yes. In a way, this is going to be his best day, because you arrive, there’s all the accolade in 10 Downing Street and the cheering, and you walk in, and then the hard choices start. I think he’ll find a deluge of things that need to be done in the first hour, the first day, the first two or three days. He’ll have his own agenda, of course — I think he’s going to make a big domestic policy speech tomorrow. But he’ll find that international issues are there as well, right from the start. All prime ministers find that the sheer pace and range of things that come at them once they’re inside that famous black door is surprising. I expect Andy Burnham is going through that as we record this, in his first couple of hours as prime minister.

Dominic Bowen: Now, your book, Peacemakers, is about a generation of Foreign Office figures who had to steady the ship through a massive change of era. Many people will look back at Trump 2.0 and say it was a similarly tumultuous era. Andy Burnham arrives with almost no foreign policy record. So for someone assessing UK risk right now, should they be worried about foreign policy, or is it the civil service and the UK’s long alliances that really matter much more than a prime minister?

Peter Ricketts: Well, I think Andy Burnham will inherit Keir Starmer’s legacy of British foreign policy, which I think is a good one. Keir Starmer really established himself both in the diplomacy around Ukraine and supporting Ukraine, and also in handling British interests through that very difficult period over the war in Iran, when he kept Britain out of the aggressive war but has helped the Americans since then. European security leadership — he’s been very active. And Burnham inherits that on day one. I think the issue for him isn’t whether he changes the fundamental approach — I don’t think he will. I think he’ll be staunch on Ukraine, and I think he’ll want to push forward on relations with the EU. The question is how much he’s himself going to invest in terms of time, because Keir Starmer was criticised — I think unfairly — by many colleagues in Parliament for not being there. “Never here, Keir” was the tag, because international events were pressing in hard.

Now, the international events will still press on Andy Burnham, but I think he’ll probably, at the beginning, try to show that he’s a prime minister paying more attention to the domestic agenda, and try to outsource what he can to his new foreign secretary. In my view, that isn’t going to work beyond a certain point, because big crisis issues now happen at leader level.

Dominic Bowen: And I think that’s a really important point. Now, you were a key architect behind the National Security Council, and of course the first National Security Advisor under Prime Minister Cameron. From what you’ve seen of Burnham as a politician, what does his style tell you about how he’s likely to behave in a crisis? Is he going to be someone who seeks consensus, or someone who’s more comfortable making unpopular decisions? What predictions can you make about his style during crises?

Peter Ricketts: I think we’re all going to get to know what his style is — at the moment it’s pretty unknown. He’s an experienced politician, but he’s got very little track record in international affairs or international crisis management. I think his instinct is consensual — to be liked, to try to have everyone on board using his charm, his personality, his people skills. All that’s fine. But being prime minister, especially in a crisis, sometimes involves very difficult decisions on very little evidence. In the end, you have to make a judgment call — a big call, like Keir Starmer made, over whether to join Donald Trump in the attack on Iran. Big stakes on either side, and he called it clearly that he would not. I think that was right.

Can Andy Burnham find the grit, the toughness, the ruthlessness to make those kinds of tough decisions, where advisors are divided, where public opinion is pushing him one way and his instincts the other? We don’t know. We will find out. But he’s an intelligent, experienced politician, so I hope he’ll understand the need for that.

Dominic Bowen: How much does it actually matter? I’m wondering, for business leaders and politicians in Brussels and DC, how much attention do they actually pay to a UK leadership change? There’s been a rapid succession of leaders in the UK, more than we’ve historically seen. Is this being read overseas as just routine democratic turnover, or is it something more consequential globally?

Peter Ricketts: I think it’s a surprise to people. People used to look at British politics as fairly stable — a prime minister elected for five years, getting a majority in the House of Commons, possibly a second one. But to have four prime ministers in five years is absolutely not normal in British politics. If you’re someone like Emmanuel Macron, coming to the end of a ten-year mandate, he’ll have seen seven British prime ministers in that time. That’s bound to lead to questions, and also a slight feeling of weariness — here we go again, having to establish a personal relationship. You shouldn’t underestimate the importance of personal relationships in international affairs. Yes, we have interests, foreign policy bureaucracies, certain things that are pretty stable. But equally, the way leaders get on with each other — do they trust each other, have they looked each other in the eye, can they be confident a commitment made person to person will be kept — those things matter.

So I think Andy Burnham will have to start more or less from scratch in building a relationship with Donald Trump, with Emmanuel Macron, with Chancellor Merz of Germany, with Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels. That takes time. And if he doesn’t do it, then when the crisis comes, he doesn’t have the personal relationship. So I do think they matter, and they do take time. I’m sure he’ll come to understand that, but he’ll have the inevitable pushback from his domestic advisers — “no, you can skip that international meeting, send the foreign secretary instead.” Each time he does that, international leaders will think: is this guy really serious? Is he really a player on the big international issues that count for all of us? That’s the dilemma he’ll face.

Dominic Bowen: Yeah, and those are some of the important trade-offs he’s going to have to make. Ukraine, of course, is one of the most significant challenges Europe has faced since the Cold War. If you were briefing the new prime minister on Ukraine on his first day in office, what would you tell him? What are the most important, most strategic messages he needs to understand about Ukraine and Europe’s security today?

Peter Ricketts: Continuity, I would say, because I think Keir Starmer has done a very good job of putting Britain in a leadership position with the French on supporting Ukraine, and he’ll need to understand quickly why that’s so important. All the warnings we’ve had — from Lord George Robertson, for example, the Strategic Defence Review last year saying Britain has to be ready for warfighting, that we need to learn from Ukraine about how war is changing, how they’ve managed to hold the Russian advance and begin to roll it back, the role of drones and AI transforming war — all of that he’ll need to understand quickly. I think he’ll need to ring Zelensky early on to declare that Britain is going to stand squarely with Ukraine.

But that quickly brings him up against the issue of money, because if we’re going to go on supporting Ukraine, and rebuild Britain’s armed forces, Keir Starmer was already deeply involved in difficult discussions with the Treasury to find the money to keep ramping up UK defence spending, which is no longer in as good shape as it was among NATO nations. That will pull against his government — it’ll pull against Burnham’s domestic agenda of spending more to control the cost of living and implement his new policies, on taking back public control of water, for example. But if he doesn’t continue Starmer’s upward trend of defence spending, then Britain’s leadership in supporting Ukraine will look increasingly hollow. So there’s a whole clutch of very difficult issues there. But I think instinctively he’ll want to show staunch support for Ukraine, and make that clear early on.

Dominic Bowen: You’ve had an impressive career in national security and foreign policy. Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine is certainly moving into a very long war of attrition, and sustaining political support may become harder than sustaining military support. I’ve been very impressed, and even surprised, at how united Europe has largely been in its support for Ukraine — it’s clearly the right decision. But looking across Europe, and across America today, are you confident about the long-term, coherent strategy for supporting Ukraine? There’s a difference between managing a conflict and actually trying to shape the outcome, and increasingly I feel we’re just managing the conflict rather than trying to shape the outcome. How do you feel about how we’re managing and supporting Ukraine today?

Peter Ricketts: Well, first of all, I think we’re not doing enough to put Ukraine in a position to win, whatever “win” means. But it’s quite remarkable that after a longer war than the First World War — over four years now — Ukraine is not only still in the fight, but is pushing the Russians back kilometre by kilometre. The UK and other Western countries have done an awful lot to support Ukraine, and not just for Ukraine’s sake, but for our own benefit too — because if the Russians had succeeded in getting to Kyiv, or dislodging the Zelensky government and putting in a puppet government, that would have been terrible for European security.

Even now, with the Russians on the back foot, we get constant messages about sabotage, subversive activities, that they might try a provocation in the Baltic states — grab a piece of territory and see how NATO reacts. So however it ends in Ukraine, we’re going to be facing a hostile Russia across the centre of Europe for the foreseeable future, and it’s in our interest to go on supporting Ukraine.

Like you, I’ve been amazingly impressed that the British public has been so clear and stalwart in supporting Ukraine across the political spectrum. It started with Boris Johnson — one of the few parts of Boris Johnson’s foreign policy I would have supported — and it’s true to this day. As the costs ramp up, it will clash with other spending priorities, and around Europe we’re beginning to see some signs of fatigue in continuing to bankroll Ukraine. The Hungarian prime minister, Orbán — notoriously pro-Russian — was voted out, and we’ve now got a more mainstream Hungarian government. But if we then get Marine Le Pen coming in in France, or populists winning elsewhere, we could find support for Ukraine sagging again across Europe. And if that happens, and the Ukrainians begin to lose the initiative again, it will encourage and embolden Putin — not just in Ukraine, but more widely.

So we need to go on being at the forefront of supporting Ukraine, explaining to public opinion why, preparing for further provocations from the Russians. I’m not sure we’re as resilient a country as we should be yet. You look across at the Baltic states, or a country like Sweden or Denmark — they’re doing more. One anecdote from being in Denmark recently: I talked to their national security advisor, and he said they were having a debate inside government about whether to risk telling public opinion that things were so bad that they were going to refurbish the Second World War air raid shelters still standing in Copenhagen. Eventually they nerved themselves up and announced it. The reaction of public opinion was, “what took you so long?” The public understood better, probably, than the politicians did. They were absolutely up for this. People are more sensible than politicians sometimes think. So I think the Burnham government can be more upfront with people, once they’ve got their feet under the desk, about the real risks here — maybe not going so far as to say we’re at war with Russia, but the Russians think they’re at war with us, and that’s a reality we have to take into account. Definitely more to be done on preparing British opinion for what could be a difficult period.

Dominic Bowen: Definitely. On the International Risk Podcast we try to hear from as diverse a range of guests as possible, and I remember one guest, from Russia, who said: in the West you talk about winning the Cold War, and then it ended — but for us, it didn’t end, we lost part of it, and we’re still fighting it. I thought that was such an interesting way of looking at it. It’s a Cold War that’s been continuing. When people ask me about the prediction that Russia would invade Ukraine — well, you only had to go back to 2007, and it was clear from the Munich Security Conference onward, example after example, that Russia was pushing, that it wasn’t a static, friendly nation.

I’d like to go the other direction now and talk about how you think the new prime minister needs to develop relationships with NATO in response to the growing threat, and also with the US. But before that, I’ll remind our listeners that if you prefer to watch your podcasts, the International Risk Podcast is always available on YouTube — please look for us there and hit subscribe. It really helps other people find our content.

So, Peter — some people in the Labour Party expect Burnham to be less deferential to President Trump than Keir Starmer perhaps was. What would that look like, and how do you think he should engage with President Trump? You’ve worked with diplomats, you’ve written about diplomats, you understand how diplomacy works — what’s your advice to him?

Peter Ricketts: He’s unlike any phenomenon I’ve ever met as a diplomat. I think people have been learning over the last few years, and Trump too — after his re-election, he’s a more difficult customer than Trump one. Yes, Keir Starmer started off with quite a deferential tone, but over time he hardened his approach to Trump. By the time Trump was threatening to occupy Greenland, for example, Keir Starmer, like Macron and others, was prepared to be pretty blunt with Trump, to say he was getting it wrong. He also stood up to him over Iran, refused the cajoling to join the American strikes or use UK bases to do that. And the relationship has survived that.

I think the lesson is you don’t have to be deferential. You need to be absolutely clear what you’re trying to achieve, avoid antagonising him or saying things he can take as insulting — because then you get punched back even harder. But if you’re frank, and you explain why you’re taking the position you are, and you don’t humiliate him in public, then it’s possible to navigate it.

Andy Burnham starts from a position of being pretty unknown, apart from being a left-wing socialist running a town, or whatever it was Trump said. In the last few days I think Trump has slightly misunderstood what Andy Burnham said about opening up the North Sea oil fields to further exploration — Trump has long been pushing British governments to do that, not that it’s any of his business at all. So there may be a little bit of disappointment that what he’d understood Burnham to be saying wasn’t quite that. This is going to be another up and down. No doubt they’ll have an initial, reasonably polite conversation, but that doesn’t mean Trump won’t come after him at some point and start insulting him, the way he does, for example, with Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London — terrible insults. So he’ll have to be ready for that, and get used to the fact that, although he likes people to like him, he can’t have that internationally all the time. He’ll have to take a tough line in support of British interests.

Unfortunately, there are no more state-visit cards to pull out of the pack, because Trump has now had two state visits to this country. So I don’t think he needs to run after Trump. But if he goes to the UN General Assembly week in New York in September — and by the way, I think that will be one of the litmus tests of how seriously he’s prepared to take foreign affairs — almost all the heads of state and government around the world gather for a kind of diplomatic speed-dating, two or three days in New York in late September. He could meet Trump there, as well as a lot of other world leaders. The problem is it comes just before his first Labour Party conference as leader, which will be a big domestic moment for him, and I can well imagine his political advisers saying, “no, you don’t want to go to New York, you’ve got to concentrate on your party conference speech.” If he’s not there, he’ll miss out on an opportunity to get alongside Trump and many others, and it would be a first signal that he’s downgrading his own personal engagement in foreign affairs — other leaders will understand that message.

Dominic Bowen: I think that’s a very astute analysis, and I think it’s correct. NATO is clearly an area where defence spending promises have been made, and whether they’re kept will be more than just a litmus test — it’ll be a very clear statement. You’ve served across NATO, across very different areas. There’s obviously going to be a lot of official briefings that Burnham will have to receive, digest, analyse, and then make decisions based on. What’s one thing from your experience that you’d want him to understand that’s probably not going to sit in the official brief when it comes to NATO?

Peter Ricketts: The first and most sobering thing a new prime minister has to do is sit down quietly in his office, on his own, and write out four letters to each of the four captains of the nuclear weapon submarines. These letters have to tell the captain what he needs to do with his nuclear weapon load — which is capable of destroying many cities around the world — if there’s some cataclysm while he’s submerged on patrol. London’s wiped out, there’s no more government, there’s been some kind of nuclear attack — what does he do with his nuclear weapons? He needs instructions from the prime minister, even if the prime minister is no longer there. Those letters — each prime minister has to write them out. They’re sealed up and put in a safe on the submarine, and then when the prime minister changes, the previous one is taken out, not opened, and put down the shredder. So nobody ever knows exactly what the prime minister told the captain to do. That’s quite a sobering moment, when you realise you’re personally responsible for decisions on the nuclear deterrent.

And then, on NATO more broadly — he needs to understand that to have influence, you have to be seen to be pulling your weight. At the moment, the British are not pulling their weight. We can’t meet all the commitments we’ve taken on in terms of the forces we make available to NATO. The armed forces don’t have the reserves, don’t have the size, the numbers of troops. Much of the equipment needs a lot of maintenance, needs updating. Keeping our level in NATO, which has always been a leading one, requires defence spending to continue upwards — and if we don’t have that, we’ll gradually sink down the rankings, and people will pay less attention to us. Given that there’s a risk NATO actually has to be put into action in real terms, if the Russians try some kind of adventure in the Baltic states, we can’t afford that. Britain has to be able to show it continues to lead. I’m sure intellectually Andy Burnham will want that, but he’s got to make the tough spending choices to make sure it’s true.

Dominic Bowen: Now, your book. I’ve read many reviews of Peacemakers. One, by another acclaimed author, called it a gripping account of British diplomacy during World War II, filled with high drama and moments of tension, saying you vividly bring to the fore some of the most fascinating figures in the history of the Foreign Office — which I thought was a lovely review. When researching the book and bringing it all together, what surprised you most? What were some of the intriguing stories you found about the men and women working in foreign policy during World War II?

Peter Ricketts: You’re so kind to give me a shout-out, Dominic. Yes, it’s recently come out. I was a diplomat for 40 years, so I felt I really knew the organisation inside out, and loved it. When I joined, some of the people who were then senior had joined just after the war, so I felt a kind of continuity. I’d always felt the Foreign Office sometimes gets airbrushed out of discussions about the Second World War — it’s all about Churchill and the generals and the battles. But actually the diplomats were doing fascinating things too. So the book is basically a series of anecdotes, episodes in the life of the Foreign Office during the war, both in London and in the embassies around the world.

As the Germans rolled forward and much of Europe became occupied, the embassies were scrambling to get British citizens out, to evacuate. In some cases — our man in the Vatican, for example, when Italy became an enemy power, the Vatican was a little neutral island in the middle of it all — Francis D’Arcy Osborne was asked to stay in the Vatican. He moved in with his butler, his dog, and his secretary, stayed there for four years, and in the end managed to organise an Allied prisoner-of-war escape line from inside the Vatican, as the German armies moved towards Rome. An extraordinary story. There are others, like the British community interned in Tokyo for eight months when Japan declared war on us, before they could be got out.

I also wanted to put the spotlight on women, because rightly, most people think the Foreign Office at the top levels was all male, mostly Eton and Oxford. But women were doing really interesting things right across the organisation, including abroad. I found a number of case studies of women who did remarkable, brave things in embassies around the world, usually in neutral countries like Switzerland, where a lady called Elizabeth Wiskemann was picking up political intelligence from all around occupied Europe, from businessmen, journalists, dissidents, dodgy characters in the shadows. Or somebody like Freya Stark, an Arabist, a great expert on the Arab world before the war, who was sent to the most remote parts of the Arab world to pick up intelligence and promote Britain. She found she could get into the harem as a woman, made friends with the wives, and then when the great men came home in the evening, she was able to get to them and put across the British message.

Those are the kind of people-stories that bring it to life. And then one last theme is that in the middle of the war, the British Foreign Office started thinking about the future peace, and began to design what became the UN, working with the Americans on that. While everybody else was concentrating on the war, they were concentrating on how to make the world a better place once the cataclysm was over. Both the UN and NATO have their roots in planning the Foreign Office did during the war. I think there’s a message for today there — even when the world’s in disorder, like now, you need your diplomats thinking ahead to how we can make it better when this is over.

Dominic Bowen: You definitely see it. I engage with a lot of embassies around the world when I’m travelling, and I’ve had a really blessed career of 25 years bouncing from one war zone to another. Unquestionably, where we’ve got a great British Foreign Service, a US State Department, an Australian Foreign Service — you feel it. They’ve got the tentacles, the networks, they know what’s happening, they can give you great advice. And they’re always collecting information, from travellers, business people, humanitarians, journalists. I think it really does make a big difference. But I think that’s how it should be — it’s behind the scenes.

Peter Ricketts: It’s soft power, isn’t it, Dominic? Military power can only be translated into political effect if the diplomats are there to negotiate the peace settlements, rebuild stability in war-torn countries, foresee where the next crisis is coming from. That was all true in the war as well. Both the Australian and British Foreign Services go back a long way — they have deep knowledge of countries, great colleagues. Anyway, if anyone’s looking for a holiday read, it’s not heavy going. There’s some good fun in it as well, but I think it gives you a new perspective on Britain’s wartime period.

Dominic Bowen: Fantastic — we’ll link to it in the show notes, so if people want to know where to pick it up, we’ll link that down below. Looking to the future, Peter — what would success look like for UK foreign policy under new leadership? And maybe give us a bit of background on what quiet groundwork needs to be happening today to achieve that success.

Peter Ricketts: Okay, I think two levels. First, keeping up British leadership in areas like Ukraine, with the Coalition of the Willing, over what a post-conflict Gulf-Iran situation looks like, with a mission there to give reassurance to shipping if needed, a more European NATO, keeping the Americans engaged but reflecting that Europeans are going to do much more. I think on those big-picture issues, Britain should continue to be influential, coming up with ideas, seen by colleagues as thought leaders, a country really pulling its weight.

And then the below-the-radar things. I think there’s a lot of work to be done in what I’d call the non-aligned capitals, beyond our transatlantic allies and our Asian allies like Australia and New Zealand — countries like Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Kenya. Important countries, but they feel they’ve been ignored by the West for a decade or more — we’ve been absorbed in our own issues. They’re often China’s largest export markets; Russia often sells them arms. We’ve lost ground in many of these capitals, and I think we can do more quiet work to rebuild confidence that we’ve got the right solutions to their problems. Allying with the Chinese or the Russians isn’t a good strategy in the long term — it always comes with awkward strings attached, whereas relationships with our countries can be beneficial, but it needs more effort put in. How we find the time to do that, given the urgent crises in front of us, is another matter. If the Burnham government wanted to do something a bit different, I think it would be to have the foreign secretary sometimes in Africa, or Southeast Asia, or the Pacific, really doing the political and diplomatic legwork to keep Britain engaged and respected in those countries.

Dominic Bowen: Excellent. Peter, one question we ask all guests on the International Risk Podcast: when you look around the world, there are so many places risks can come from — climate change, geopolitics, artificial intelligence, credit markets. When you look around the world, and when you’re speaking with your family and at conferences, what are the international risks that concern you most?

Peter Ricketts: Short term, it’s the war in Europe. That’s what could do devastating damage to our way of life here and across Europe, and it’s not impossible to imagine we might face some sort of conflict with the Russians. That’s certainly what I’d be concentrating on in the hard security world. And in the middle of a record-breaking heat summer here in the UK, I’d be putting even more effort into climate change work. I have grandchildren — they may well still be alive in 2100, and I want the climate in 2100 to be livable and bearable for human beings. Given the trend we seem to be on, that has to be in doubt. So I’d urge politicians not to do the easy thing of putting off spending on the priorities that deliver net zero, diverging from our climate change targets in the interests of short-term support for people paying their bills this week. I’d urge them to keep focusing on the longer term, recognising that the rising generation still needs a planet that can bear human life. There’s nothing more urgent, at the end of the day, than that.

Dominic Bowen: Well, thanks very much for explaining that, and thank you very much for coming on the International Risk Podcast today.

Peter Ricketts: It’s been a pleasure, Dominic. Thanks so much for having me, and thank you for the shout-out for my book.

Dominic Bowen: Well, that was a great conversation with Lord Peter Ricketts. I really appreciated hearing his thoughts on how this new leadership change in the UK is going to be interpreted internationally — what it means for continuity, credibility, geopolitics, and of course the risks and opportunities for British foreign policy. Today’s episode was produced and coordinated by Andrea Crawford Wicklund. I’m Dominic Bowen, your host. Thanks very much for listening — we’ll speak again in the next couple of days.