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Jonathan Powell: the UK’s ultimate fixer flies into world hotspots

The diplomat who Tony Blair credited with negotiating the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland is now talking to the Turks, Kurds, Syrians, Ukrainians, and Americans, to name but a few.

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The UK's National Security Advisor Jonathan Powell, who has a track record of helping enemy combatants agree terms.

Jonathan Powell: the UK’s ultimate fixer flies into world hotspots

Con Coughlin

last update on 27 Jul 2025

Together with Peter Mandelson, the British ambassador in Washington, D.C, Jonathan Powell is the latest big name from the last Labour government to be given a big job by the current Labour government.

Powell, who was (then) Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Chief-of-Staff from 1997-2007, was appointed as the UK’s new National Security Adviser by (current) Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in November 2024. Still a relatively new role, his precessors have all been career-long civil servants.

Although he was Blair’s longest serving aide, now best known for negotiating the Good Friday Peace Agreement in Northern Ireland, Powell is no apparatchik, and his latest appointment is seen as political, something not lost on opposition parliamentarians and critics.

They argue that the NSA role should be non-political and point to Powell’s involvement in the recent September 2024 deal that led to the UK handing over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius—a controversial move, given that the island chain houses a top-secret US military base at Diego Garcia. So, who is this ultimate British deal fixer trusted in different roles by several governments?

From ETA to FARC

Born in 1956, Powell has had a varied career, including working in finance at American investment bank Morgan Stanley, and as a journalist with the BBC and Granada ITN. He founded the charity Inter Mediate in 2011, using his experience as chief British negotiator to help resolve complex conflicts, including acting in 2014 as the UK’s Special Envoy to Libya under David Cameron.

The author of several books, it is his diplomatic experience that is now most relevant to his current role. Beyond Northern Ireland, Powell worked on the successful negotiations with ETA in the Basque country, on the negotiations in Colombia with the FARC, and on the peace negotiations in Mozambique.

The National Security Advisor (NSA) is the principal official advisor to the Prime Minister and Cabinet on national security matters. This includes strategy, policy, capability, and civil contingencies. He is also Secretary to the National Security Council, and leads the national security teams in the Cabinet Office, meaning that he works across all Whitehall departments and overseas.

Overseas postings

A key part of the job is his network of international stakeholders, counterparts, businesses, industry, and civil society groups. Some contacts may even go back to his Oxford days, where he studied History, or later, at the University of Pennsylvania. Most he is likely to have met along the way, his career having begun in journalism, before he joined the Foreign Office in 1979.

Powell worked on the negotiations with ETA in the Basque country, in Colombia with the FARC, and in Mozambique

He was posted to Lisbon in 1981, then to Stockholm in 1986, and then to Vienna, then to the British Embassy Washington, D.C. as First Secretary in 1991, where he attached himself to Bill Clinton's Presidential campaign as an observer. After Clinton's election win, it was Powell who introduced Blair to the new US president.

After Blair became Leader of the Labour Party, he asked Powell to become his Chief-of-Staff. In the early years of the Blair government, one of Powell's top priorities was the Northern Ireland peace process that led to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. He later called for tactics used successfully in Northern Ireland to be applied to the War on Terrorism.

Behind the talks

Fast forward to his current post holding, and it was Powell who met Bangladesh's interim leader Muhammad Yunus during his first official visit to the UK last month. Powell was in Istanbul the week that the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) said it would disarm, and met the Ukrainian delegation as it arrived for peace talks with Russia, having been in Kyiv days before meeting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Ahead of the now-cancelled UN peace summit on Israel-Palestine, Powell was also tasked with briefing restive MPs about the UK's future recognition of the Palestinian state, with French President Emmanuel Macron this week having said France would recognise a State of Palestine at the United Nations in September.

Behind the scenes, Powell's presence is hugely influential. It was his charity, Inter Mediate, that played a key mediation roles with both the PKK and the rebel-led opposition government of Idlib before the latter toppled President Bashar Al Assad late last year. It is said that it was Powell who persuaded the PKK to dissolve. Other reports have Powell meeting Syria's current President Ahmed al-Sharaa back in May 2021, when he was better known by his jihadist nom de guerre.

Growing impact

His influence extends to personnel. Former close colleagues of Powell's are now acting in an advisory role as the fledgling administration finds its feet in Damascus, where Inter Mediate is said to operate an office inside the presidential palace. A Turkish source revealed much when speaking to The National newspaper recently. "Jonathan Powell played an important role in terms of dealing with these very sensitive issues," they said. "He is like a foreign minister. In the Middle East, Powell plays a more important role than (British Foreign Secretary) David Lammy."

Inter Mediate displays Powell prominently on its website, highlighting his role as 'a key architect of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement' in Northern Ireland. It says that he founded the organisation 'to share lessons from the Northern Ireland peace talks and help other leaders navigating similar dilemmas'.

He is like a foreign minister. In the Middle East, Powell plays a more important role than (British Foreign Secretary) David Lammy

A Turkish source, speaking to 'The National' newspaper

It further notes how Powell helped end the Basque conflict in Spain, served as a 'peace adviser' to President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, and worked alongside Mozambique's President Filipe Nyusi to end the country's civil war. After he returned to government in November, he stepped down from his charity, according to the requirements under UK law, and there is no suggestion that he has been involved in the operations of Inter Mediate since then.

A Powell 'power grab'?

In Labour's parliamentary party, there are grumbles about the power wielded by Powell and the Director of Policy Delivery, Liz Lloyd, who was once Powell's deputy in the Blair administration, with mutterings of a "power grab".

The opposition Conservatives have seized on it, calling for a parliamentary investigation into why Powell has been given special advisor status—rather than being a direct ministerial appointment—meaning that he does not have to answer to Parliament, despite dealing directly with foreign governments on behalf of the UK, and despite him negotiating the handover of the Chagos Islands.

Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Alex Burghart said this month: "Not being able to question (the NSA) on his role in the Chagos surrender is outrageous enough, but it now turns out that he is using his private outfit to run back channels to terrorist groups. Parliament must surely be able to question him about this. If the Government has nothing to hide, it wouldn't be trying so hard to keep Powell away from the cold light of scrutiny."

Whether he surfaces for scrutiny is now a question for Starmer, but even the most cursory look at Powell's diplomatic career suggests that he works best behind-the-scenes and beyond the public gaze. One wonders whether it is the results he so often achieves that could be the real problem for the opposition.

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