Secrecy surrounds UK foreign secretary’s Middle East talks with Tony Blair

“Secrecy surrounds UK foreign secretary’s Middle East talks with Tony Blair Submitted by Daniel Tester on Tue, 05/19/2026 - 09:41 Meeting with Yvette Cooper came as former prime minister was advocating for Trump's Gaza 'Board of Peace' - but foreign office says no minutes exist Britain's former prime minister Tony Blair attends the inaugural Board of Peace meeting at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, 19 February 2026 (Kevin Lamarque/(Reuters) Off The UK foreign office failed to keep any minutes of a meeting about the Middle East last December between Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and former prime minister Tony Blair, Middle East Eye can reveal. The lack of records of what was discussed at the meeting, which took place at the same time as Blair was advocating on behalf of US President Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace for Gaza, was described as “deeply concerning” by one government transparency expert. The 4 December meeting was revealed in foreign office documents published on the UK government website in March, which has not been previously reported. But in a response to freedom of information requests, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) told MEE that no minutes were recorded. It also said it had no records of briefing materials prepared for Cooper, nor any correspondence related to the planning of the meeting. Blair, who as prime minister led the UK into the 2003 Iraq war alongside the US, was named by US President Donald Trump in September 2025 as a founding member of the controversial Board of Peace set to govern post-war Gaza. He was confirmed in the role in January. Internal EU meeting minutes obtained by Follow the Money in February revealed that lobbyists from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a think tank founded and chaired by Blair, urged the EU to join the Board of Peace on 15 December. What is Trump's 'Board of Peace' and who will govern Gaza? Read More » The board grants extensive powers over Gaza to Trump, who serves as chairman for life, and contains no Palestinian representatives within its executive committee. World leaders from 28 countries have joined the board so far, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Gaza. The UK said in January that it would not join the board, with Cooper expressing concerns about Trump's invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin to join its executive committee. “We won’t be one of the signatories today, because this is about a legal treaty that raises much broader issues, and we do also have concerns about President Putin being part of something which is talking about peace, when we have still not seen any signs from Putin that there will be a commitment to peace in Ukraine,” Cooper said on 22 January. Cooper later appeared to distance herself from Blair on 8 March after he criticised the UK government’s hesitancy to offer full military support to the US-Israeli war in Iran. She told the BBC: “I also think, having been a minister in the last Labour government, it is important to learn lessons for what went wrong in Iraq … and recognising that all of our decisions need to be about what is right for British citizens.” 'Gaza Riviera' Blair has also faced scrutiny over the involvement of staff members at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change , which has received extensive funding from the billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, on a previous plan for Gaza dubbed the “Gaza Riviera”. The plans were widely condemned as appearing to condone ethnic cleansing of the territory’s Palestinian population. Chris Doyle, Director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, raised concerns about Blair’s record in the Middle East. He said that among many policymakers “there’s still this sense that he should be respected because he spent so much time working on the Middle East, rather than a sober assessment of his dire record when dealing with it". He added: “In terms of the Middle East, it has just been one failure after another for Blair. ”He is a man who is entrenched in the palace views of the uber-elites of the Middle East, with very little sense of the real trends going on there.” Sam Raphael, Professor of International Relations and Human Rights at the University of Westminster and director of Unredacted , which researches government transparency, also raised concerns about the foreign office meeting. "The lack of minutes and other official records in relation to the Foreign Secretary’s meeting - especially with an individual as controversial and consequential for the Middle East, and with such labyrinthine personal interests - is deeply concerning," he said. The foreign office is already facing criticism over record-keeping, accountability and transparency. Last week, it was criticised by the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) for failing to adequately record meeting minutes and records during the committee's review into the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador in December 2024. Raphael said that the meeting between Blair and Cooper appeared to reflect the ISC’s finding that “the FCDO stands out as a department failing to produce a necessary audit trail for discussions and decisions. “The ISC found this to be 'unacceptable', and the Cooper-Blair case is a clear and flagrant example of this,” he added. Freedom of information laws allowing citizens to request information held by government bodies were introduced by the Blair government in 2000. He later described the laws as one of his greatest political regrets in his 2010 memoir. Government files declassified in 2024 revealed that he encouraged ministers to keep records on Post-it notes to avoid having to disclose information to the public during his premiership. The FCDO and the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change were approached for comment. UK Politics News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0

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