Bew, John

John Bew is Professor in History and Foreign Policy at King's College London and from 2013 to 2014 held the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the John W. Kluge Center. In October 2024, he became distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and Distinguished Advisor to the Australian National Security College. Bew has served in senior positions at the highest levels of the UK government. He spent over five years as the chief Foreign Policy Advisor in No.10 Downing Street, working for four Prime Ministers and through two general elections. He was the penholder on the last two UK national security strategies and intimately involved in the foreign policy challenges of that period, from the creation of AUKUS to the war in Ukraine. He has worked across the aisle, serving both Conservative and Labour administrations and moving from a political appointee to a civil service role. In 2021, he also served as the UK's expert representative to the NATO secretary general's Reflections Group, which provided recommendations for the alliance's 2022 Strategic Concept. In 2019, Bew joined the Number 10 Policy Unit under Prime Minister Boris Johnson, continuing to serve as foreign policy advisor under successive Prime Ministers Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak. In 2023, the New Statesman described Bew as "the great survivor of Downing Street". It has been said that his book on realpolitik helped shared government policy over this time. As a biographer of Clement Attlee and former writer at the New Statesman, he is widely regarded as a bipartisan rather than party political figure. Former National Security Advisor Lord Ricketts describes his strength as “applying historical expertise to modern policymaking, using the lessons of the past, and using the strategies of previous statesmen to inform the way governments do strategic work now”. According to David Liddington, chair of the Royal United Services Institute, “He's somebody certainly I think that would feel at home equally working for an Atlanticist, strong, pro-defence Labour ministry, as well as for the Conservative equivalent.” Following the 2024 general election, he was asked to stay in government by the Keir Starmer administration, working on defence and security issues. He travelled with the new Prime Minister to the NATO Summit in Washington DC, was sent to Ukraine on behalf of the Prime Minister and helped launch the Strategic Defence Review.