When prime minister Miliband walks into Downing Street on 8 May 2015, he will inherit a foreign and security policy machine that needs fixing. The country can't afford to support its ambitions for world leadership; new alliances are needed with the private sector; investment is needed in systems capacity - especially technological and linguistic - and the Labour prime minister will need to rebuild the trust of a public rocked by Snowden's revelations about how the machinery of foreign and security policy really works.
Here are five messages for prime minister Miliband and his foreign policy team.
Labour needs a streamlined foreign policy
Austerity Britain can no longer afford to support its grand ambitions; the Foreign Office (FCO) budget is set to half as a proportion of departmental spending and the Ministry of Defence is facing cuts larger than any other department. Given these constraints, it makes sense to do less but better, focusing on a much smaller number of strategic priorities. The FCO should think in terms of campaigning rather than diplomacy, taking on a small number of touchstone foreign policy campaigning issues with a clear objective, measurable aims, a roadmap for success, smart communications strategy, and high-level leadership. The foreign secretary's campaign to end sexual violence against women in conflict areas is a great example of this approach in practice, and will have ripple effects to broader work on gender, conflict and development.
Labour needs to rethink multilateralism
Let's be honest; our international institutions do not work. And while reform efforts continue, a Labour government needs a new way of getting things done. It should look to convene small action-oriented networks of countries looking for solutions around specific problems. The Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia, created in 2009, is an example of what these flexible can-do networks can achieve - the results have been staggering.
Labour should also prioritise investment in regional bodies to deliver local solutions because these efforts tend to be more effective, build resilience and are sustainable. The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) has turned a lost cause into a beacon of hope - this is the kind of thing we need in Mali instead of French boots on the ground. Three-quarters of Al Qaeda leaders are now in Africa.
Labour needs to bring the private sector into foreign policy making
Discussions within foreign policy tend to read like a cartographical roll call of who's hot and who's not. But power is not just shifting from West to East; it is seeping away from government, meaning that foreign policy solutions are found in boardrooms rather than embassies. For example, while Cathy Ashton deserves credit for mediating a landmark nuclear agreement with Iran, for years the EU failed to enforce its own sanctions. 18 months before this agreement was reached, a tiny NGO - United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI) - successfully lobbied SWIFT to discontinue its services to EU-sanctioned Iranian financial institutions, including Iran's Central Bank. What brought Iran to the table? Careful diplomacy or economic isolation achieved by a tiny but focused and determined advocacy group? Similarly, Google's new uProxy product that allows ordinary citizens to allow campaigners under repressive regimes to use their internet connections as safe, anonymous proxy servers, could have a much larger impact on political reform in countries like Iran and China than careful, steady diplomacy.
Labour needs to put technology at the centre of its foreign policy making
Foreign policy can draw on a multitude of new technology tools to make it more effective - but it doesn't. It could use large-scale sentiment analysis of social media big data to gauge the mood on the street. It could use social media platforms as a route to direct communication and engagement with foreign publics. And it could even crowd source policy making by enabling citizens to analyse data, as exemplified by the work of Brown Moses, who managed to join the dots quicker and more effectively on weapons in Syria than diplomats and analysts within government with access to highly classified information.
Labour needs to win back public trust in foreign policy
Perhaps the most important foreign policy ally for the next Labour government will be the British public. What Iraq started, Snowden finished, reinforcing the feeling that things aren't working, that the 'system' has as much interest in self-preservation as public duty, and that elected politicians are not up to the job of reform. Labour should launch a public national enquiry into the impact of new technologies, the Internet and social media on foreign and security policy, addressing the full range of ethical challenges, governance issues, access to information, and opportunities for improving effectiveness and impact. It should be led by someone independent of the establishment who will not shy away from holding the foreign policy community to account.
The previous Labour government's approach to foreign policy was the source of considerable public mistrust and dissatisfaction of the party. The scale of the challenge means that foreign policy is something that the next Labour government ignores at its peril.