Is Progressive Realism Real?

In “The Case for Progressive Realism” (May/June 2024), David Lammy, then British shadow foreign secretary and now foreign secretary, proposes “progressive realism” as an organizing principle for a Labour government in the United Kingdom. But what he outlines is neither progressive nor realist. If anything, it is repackaged neoconservatism. Lammy advocates the use of military power (the “realist” part of “progressive realism”) to defend or promote democracy and human rights (the “progressive” part). But this is exactly what neoconservatism is—as the French philosopher Pierre Hassner famously described it, “Wilsonianism in boots.”

Neoconservatism emerged in the 1970s as a response to and a rejection of realism. Ever since, it has been a constant temptation for the left. Lammy’s essay suggests that the British center-left is being drawn back to it again, even though taking such a turn led the previous Labour government, under Prime Minister Tony Blair, so disastrously astray—notably in its support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Instead of repeating these mistakes, Labour should be more imaginative. If the basis of progressive politics is the idea of equality, the starting point for a genuinely progressive British foreign policy should be the problem of global inequality, a subject about which Lammy has almost nothing to say. The United Kingdom should deepen its relationship with countries in the global South—especially its former colonies, to whom it owes a particular debt—and work with them to create a more just international economic order.

Hans Kundnani

Visiting Fellow, Remarque Institute, New York University