All incoming governments say they are going to reinvent foreign policy, so no one should have been surprised that William Hague used his first major speech as Foreign Secretary to signal "a new approach" to Britain's relations with the rest of the world.
Reporting of this speech has naturally focused on Mr Hague's pledge to play a bigger role in Brussels, but in fact it was his wider commitment to adapting UK foreign policy to a progressively more "networked world" that was much the most significant part of what he said. Mr Hague's starting point is the obvious but apparently forgotten dictum that the primary purpose of foreign policy should be national prosperity and security, and by implication not the muddled adventuring in foreign affairs that has come to dominate international perceptions of British engagement with the outside world.
