At the Rabbi Jonathan Sacks memorial lecture at the LSE this week, David Miliband ‘broke his silence’ after days of intense speculation that he will soon be announced as Andy Burnham’s Foreign Secretary.

Unfortunately, I think Miliband as foreign secretary would represent at best stale continuity and at worst a disaster

We shall have to wait and see whether he gets the call-up. But his speech will have further convinced his admirers that he has both the intellectual heft and unusually extensive experience to make a great success of the role. To his detractors, the speech, which focused on countering ‘democratic backsliding’, was further proof of his stale liberal internationalist outlook characterised by an unwavering commitment to the ‘Rules Based International System’ whose time is up.

Given the instability of British politics, in my 11 years as a Foreign Office official I served under no fewer than nine foreign secretaries. Spreadsheet Phil (Philip Hammond) was boring though conscientious, taking his lunch at his desk. Boris never stuck to script but loved the sense of history and grandeur of the role, choosing to do his all-staff addresses in the old India office’s Durbar Court, staff craning their necks out of the encircling balconies from where Peggy Ashcroft once called out to John Gielgud in a famed performance of Romeo and Juliet.

Hunt and Raab were competent enough.  Liz Truss was constantly crossing swords with her officials, generally coming out for the worse. Amiable James Cleverly was liked by staff and sought to grease the wheels of British diplomacy, gifting dignitaries jars of Tiptree jam from his constituency. Cameron, as a former PM, enjoyed great access to world leaders, but it always felt like a confused swansong.

Lammy arrived to much fanfare and a vow to make the Foreign Office the ‘international arm of the growth mission’. That quickly dissipated into nothingness with his only discernible foreign policy achievement being establishing a bromance of sorts with J.D. Vance. Yvette Cooper, meanwhile, will I suspect go down as the Foreign Secretary that somehow managed to combine a voracious appetite for detail with a failure to actually achieve anything.

I say all of this to illustrate that it has been a long time since we had a truly great foreign secretary. The stage is set, say his fans, for David Miliband – fresh from 13 years serving as the New York-based head of the International Rescue Committee, one of the biggest international humanitarian NGOs, and with the benefit of a previous stint in the foreign secretary job from 2007 to 2010 – to sweep back into King Charles Street and make a distinguished mark.

Unfortunately, I think Miliband as foreign secretary would represent at best stale continuity and at worst a disaster. The best we can probably hope for is that he works closely with the new Defence Secretary to ensure the PM gives the armed forces the money they need, continuing UK leadership in trying to get Ukraine the best peace deal it can, being more clear-eyed on the Chinese threat, and focusing our efforts in Africa on the great game for access to critical minerals rather than castigating African governments for daring to put to death murderers and child rapists.

The worst case scenario is that he spends his time taking us back as far he dares into the welcoming embrace of the EU, reviving the Chagos giveaway and doubling down on net zero ‘international leadership’.

His record from his last stint in the job leaves much to be desired. His early months were spent negotiating the Lisbon Treaty, and the latter months flirting with the idea of becoming European foreign minister. On a personal level I also remain very angry that he closed the Foreign Office library, giving away the contents to King’s College London, thereby ripping out the heart of the institution.

What we need is a foreign secretary who sees the need to invest unapologetically in hard power given the threats in front of us. Who does not see export wins, trade deals and support to UK businesses as uninteresting side-shows but the bread and butter of a properly mercantilist foreign policy. And who is willing to actually use the tools in our diplomatic arsenal – aid, trade, visas, security cooperation, diplomatic access – to deliver concrete outcomes in the British national interest. Like forcing countries to take back their own when we want to deport foreign  criminals (like Shabir Ahmed, the Rochdale grooming gang ringleader, who Pakistan are currently refusing to take). Nothing in what Miliband has said or done suggests that that realist vision of foreign policy, bold and unapologetic in pursuit of the national interest, is something he either understands or believes in.

Burnham’s thinking seems to be that he needs a safe pair of hands that he can delegate to whilst he focuses on domestic affairs, without being constantly drawn into international business in the way Starmer has been. Miliband would probably meet that need. But that doesn’t mean he’s the foreign secretary that Britian needs.