UK's foreign affairs committee to elect new leader

Labour veteran Emily Thornbury and former trade envoy Dan Carden are vying to lead the influential group of MPs

Emily Thornberry at the Labour Party Annual Conference in 2022. Getty.

A veteran Labour MP is hoping to lead the group of MPs scrutinising the UK's foreign and international counterterrorism policies.

Former criminal barrister Emily Thornberry, who served in the shadow cabinet for 12 years while in opposition, is running to chair the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, at a time when the UK government faces uncertainty amid wars in Ukraine, Israel-Palestine and Sudan.

She faces opposition for the role from Dan Carden, a Labour MP who served as a trade envoy under Rishi Sunak.

The group holds the work of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to account. Earlier this year, its previous leader Alicia Kearns prompted an admission by the foreign secretary at the time David Cameron that he was “worried” that Israel had broken international law in Gaza. The group's 2016 inquiry into Britain’s military intervention in Libya in 2011, concluded that the operation had drifted to a regime change without a proper plan.

Ms Thornberry, who has been an MP for Islington South for 19 years, says she can be an “effective, no-nonsense” leader of the committee. Among her proposals is to launch inquiries with diaspora communities in the UK to ensure their concerns about foreign policy are heard. She has the backing of current shadow foreign secretary David Mitchell and Liberal Democrats foreign affairs spokeswoman Layla Moran, among others.

Ms Thornberry has supported Israel’s right to self-defence since October 7 and has been to Israel as a member of the Labour Friends of Israel group. Most recently, she supported the UK's partial ban on arms sale licenses to Israel but denied this was an acknowledgement that the country was committing war crimes in Gaza.

“This is not an arms embargo … given what’s going on in Gaza and on the West Bank, it’s right for the government to look at what’s happening and say … we want to be on the right side of the law,” she told Channel Four News.

Ms Thornberry’s diplomatic experience comes from her four years as shadow foreign secretary from 2016 to 2020. She opposed Britain's involvement in the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis in Yemen while acknowledging the kingdom as a “valued strategic, security and economic ally.” She also criticised the US killing of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani in 2020, fearing it could lead to further escalation.

She appeared to mirror her party leader’s soft position on the Assad regime. In 2018, Ms Thornberry said that the West had underestimated the support for Assad. “I think there has been a depth and a breadth of support for Assad that has been underestimated.”

She also questioned the reports of chemical weapons being used on civilians, calling for a formal investigation to be conducted before Britain took military action. “Relying on so-called open source intelligence provided by proscribed terrorist groups is not an acceptable alternative,” she told parliament.

Her challenger is Dan Carden, a former trade unionist from Liverpool who served as former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s trade envoy to Mexico until last year. He has risen quickly through the ranks since he became MP for Liverpool Walton in 2017.

He was Mr Corbyn’s shadow international development secretary and then appointed a shadow minister to the Treasury by Keir Starmer in the party’s reshuffle in 2020. He was among the 10 front bench Labour MPs to defy Keir Starmer over a ceasefire vote in November last year, a motion that was tabled by the Scottish National Party.

A disciple of Labour’s Ernest Bevin, who played a leading role in establishing Nato, Mr Carden believes the UK must work with allies to deter hostile powers. He prioritises strengthening relations with Ukrainian parliamentarians, with whom he claims to have “strong relations”.

He has the backing of Ms Kearns, the committee’s former chair, among others. Like Ms Kearns, Mr Carden appears to have made an impact in just a few years by being outspoken on a wide range of issues, including the right for families to visit dying loved ones in hospital during the Covid-19 pandemic.