UK Labour Party Leaders' Attitudes to Conventional Threats to National Security, 2023-2024

Abstract

Introduction. The article focuses on the securitisation of power threats in the public speeches of the UK Labour Party leaders (Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Defence Minister John Healey and Foreign Secretary David Lammy) during the 2023-2024 election campaign. An attempt has been made to highlight the commonalities and peculiarities in the approach of the current and previous British governments to countering the main threats to national security. Materials and methods. The paper combines qualitative and quantitative approaches: a critical content analysis of sources and discourse analysis in an electoral context (using data from sociological surveys) are conducted, while the frequency of word usage in the public speeches of the Minister of Foreign Affairs is analysed using the tools of quantitative analysis of big data (R programming language). The methodological basis of the work is the theory of securitisation proposed by the Copenhagen School of the theory of international relations.Research results. It is concluded that the main change in London's foreign policy after Labour's victory in the 2024 parliamentary elections will be the prioritisation of security cooperation with European states. Labour Party leaders do not question the need for ‘dual containment’ of Russia and China, but they give the ‘China threat’ secondary importance: there are noticeable differences within the party on this issue. On the other hand, Labour's position on the ‘special relationship’ with the United States is characterised by a steady continuity with the Conservative government's approach. The need to deepen cooperation in Euro-Atlantic security structures (primarily NATO) and continental formats (EI2, JEF) is stated.Discussion and conclusion. On the basis of qualitative examination of policy documents and statements of the Labour Party leaders, as well as quantitative analysis of big data, conclusions are drawn about the key elements of potential continuity and variability in the foreign policy of London before and after the parliamentary elections on July 4, 2024. The results of the work can be useful in forecasting changes in the foreign policy of Great Britain after the victory of Labour in the parliamentary elections of 2024. The theoretical importance of the work lies in the fact that the article proposes a new methodology for quantitative analysis of the foreign policy of the UK.