“The Foreign and Commonwealth Office requests the honour of your company at a major address by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, The Rt Hon William Hague MP,’Britain’s Foreign Policy in a networked world’.”
Thus reads the invitation from the Foreign Office. If emails could be gold-embossed, this one probably would be. The speech on Thursday is the Foreign Secretary’s first major speech in London. Colleagues like Liam Fox and Andrew Mitchell have already kept their speech-writers busy, but until now the Foreign Secretary has only done the odd interview, and one address (in Sarajevo). He did however open the European Affairs debate in the House of Commons earlier in the month and has already stamped his authority on many policy issues. But there has yet been a speech setting out his vision.
What do you think should be in the speech? Let us know. For inspiration you may want to listen to this foreign policy debate between Malcolm Rifkind and Paddy Ashdown that I recently chaired; plenty of scope for intra-coalition agreement and disagreement.
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