UK minister says Britain will deepen links with S-E Asia

Britain’s new Labour government wants to reset its leadership on tackling the climate crisis and will capitalise on the country’s new-found stability to deepen its relationships with Singapore and the wider region, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said.

- Tan Hui Yee

In an interview with The Straits Times in Vientiane before joining the Asean foreign ministers’ meetings on July 26, he said: “We went into the (July 4) election absolutely committed to reconnecting the United Kingdom.”

Labour went on to win 411 out of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, roundly defeating a Conservative government that had overseen the exit of Britain from the European Union and has changed prime ministers four times in the past eight years.

“We have come out of a period now, I think, where we had a lot of prime ministers, a lot of foreign secretaries. We had instability in the UK,” he said. The election results represent “a period of stability and certainty for the UK”.

“Singapore will find our government very outward-looking and very determined to deepen our relations, not just with Singapore but across the region, with countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam as well,” he pledged.

After leaving the EU in 2020, Britain sought to widen global relationships, including in South-east Asia. In 2021, it became a dialogue partner of Asean. It also applied to join the 11-member Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership in February 2021, and formally signed the trade pact in 2023.