On 12 May 1997, the new Labour government's foreign secretary, Robin Cook, informed an expectant audience of the course he intended to plot for British foreign policy. He announced ‘a global foreign policy’ which was to be guided by the goals of security for all nations, prosperity, protection for the environment and ‘an ethical dimension’ (FCO, 1997b). This part of the mission statement dominated the media coverage the following day, but there were other hints of a radical departure from the pragmatic conservatism that had dominated British foreign policy for fifty years. New Labour's view of British identity seemed quite different from the jingoism that dominated the Thatcher governments. Sovereignty talk, so loud under the previous government, was nowhere to be heard. There was no mention of ‘threats’ to national security, no elevation of the principle of non-intervention in Britain's domestic affairs. In their place, we heard ‘internationalism’, ‘promoting democracy’, ‘promotion of our values and confidence in our identity’, ‘a people's diplomacy’ and so on.

The most significant discursive departure concerned the priority to be accorded to the promotion of human rights: ‘Our foreign policy must have an ethical dimension and must support the demands of other peoples for the democratic rights on which we insist for ourselves. The Labour Government will put human rights at the heart of our foreign policy …’ (FCO, 1997b).