DATE: 18:00-19:00, Thursday 19th April 2018
VENUE: The Henry Jackson Society, Millbank Tower, 21-24 Millbank, London, SW1P 4QP
SPEAKER: The Rt Hon. the Lord Owen CH FRCP, co-founder of the Social Democratic Party and author of British Foreign Policy After Brexit
David Ludlow, former diplomat, author of British Foreign Policy After Brexit
EVENT CHAIR: Dr Alan Mendoza, Founder and Executive Director of the Henry Jackson Society
Dr Alan Mendoza:
Good evening, and welcome to the hottest day in London since I think 1949 they were saying. And it’s hot not simply because of the weather, but because of the topic we are discussing of course tonight, which is of course this wonderful book British Foreign Policy After Brexit. Our two authors are going to speak, and in order we have Lord David Owen who will be known to most of you for the many roles he has undertaken in both politics and diplomacy. He was of course a Labour MP, Labour foreign secretary culminating there, then formed the SDP, one of the founders of that party. Once he left active front line politics went on into international diplomacy, and as the UN envoy in Bosnia, and of course has retained a lively interest and keen interest in foreign security ever since, from the House of Lords and beyond in that way. And he will speak first. And then we have David Ludlow who has had a very interesting career, mixing diplomacy in the foreign office – I think you served in Moscow which must be rather a sort of entertaining subject these days of course in those terms – but also commercially, banking history, exports, looking at the way in which Britain should function better I suppose in international markets. So a trade and export specialist here, foreign policy expert here, what they have to say I think is fascinating. You have a chance of course to actually buy the book after this outside, but they’ll be dividing it that Lord Owen will speak about a narrow-ish kind of defence policy, and then David Ludlow will take, pretty much everything else. So without any sort of respite I shall pass over to Lord Owen, who will take to the lectern and deliver his part. Please do give our guests a very warm welcome.
Lord Owen:
Well I’m always on the record these days, I don’t care what I say. Basically it’s an honour to be here, I didn’t know Henry Jackson but I heard him speak on many occasions and asked him a few questions once. Now there are three very dangerous potential crises that we face. I don’t need to tell you, North Korean nuclear weapons, Syria, particularly focused on the Middle East, and Ukraine on Eastern Europe. Any or all of these bubbles could suddenly hit us and we could be in a pretty nasty confrontation, and I just remind you that Ukraine went pretty bad, but I could have been a bloody sight worse; 50,000 deaths or even higher than that. Now North Korea, sometimes people think we have no involvement, we have serious involvement in this country. We sent our military in there in 1950, we watched it with considerable interest since, and I don’t think that we should forget that that war was only ended when President Eisenhower sent a message through Nehru to Chairman Mao, that if the talks went on stagnating and didn’t come to a conclusion very soon, he would put a tactical nuclear weapon into an unpopulated part of North Korea, just to remind them that he was serious. And I think it’s quite important to take that kind of thing into this situation. I believe that it was a very good decision of Trump, straight after getting into office, to speak to President Xi. It was a good thing that he went, and I think they have established a personal dialogue, and it’s quite appropriate that these two figures should tackle the North Korean problem basically together. Now I know there are many people in this, Europe and in America itself, who may justify criticisms of Trump’s handling of foreign affairs. We should remember that secrecy is an extremely important part of international diplomacy, and now we’re all very pleased to see Mike Pompeo went to North Korea, but it’s also important to remember that there is, has to be a clear and concise linkage between the use of force and the importance of negotiation. I remind you of the famous quote of Winston Churchill “jaw-jaw is better than war war”, is a fantasy, he did not say that. He said something far more important and far tougher. He said “meeting jaw to jaw is better than war”. Jaw to jaw. And I think we’ve got to get out of this habit of thinking you don’t talk to people when you don’t like them that is coming in. This is a prudishness that is absolutely outrageous. I have one message for you; I do not believe that we will ease these very serious tensions until Trump and Putin meet. And I believe that it’s quite urgent that they meet. Now, for example North Korea is being handled bilaterally, and it seems to me inevitable, that if nuclear weapons are going to come out, then the Chinese will have to give North Koreans an assurance that they will not be attacked, and the United States has to give it to South Korea. Now some of you may say “well what are the point of these nuclear guarantees? What happened to the Budapest memorandum?” Good question. What was Britain’s attitude to the Budapest memorandum? I never saw the slightest assumption that we had given guarantees, and all the rest. So there are lessons from Ukraine for how we handle Korea.
Now the situation in Ukraine. Nothing has happened. Two Minsks – nothing. At any moment, the dry tinder around in those parts of Ukraine where there’s strong Russian influence could blow up. And there is total intransigence on the issue of Crimea. The problem that we’re in is that, we’ll I’ll come to the Middle East, but in the Middle East Russia has got a crucial role and something to give to us all if there is to be peace. We’ve got very little to give to him. In Ukraine we have something serious to give to him, and until you run these two separate negotiations basically together, and until the United States is focused on both and Russia is focused on both, we won’t make much progress in my view. Now Syria, it’s no use going on about Syria in the way we’ve been talking about it for seven bloody years. We now have a situation in which it is perfectly obvious that the Iranian Islamic Republican Guard Corps is on the ground in Syria, and almost certainly in Lebanon. And there with drones and serious [inaudible] missiles which I’m sure have been given to Hezbollah. Now this situation is very urgent. I mean the Israelis are making flights and have been doing so for a very serious length of time, but they will not put up with this, and it isn’t just Israel these days; it means Saudi Arabia won’t put up with it, it means Egypt won’t put up with it, it means the United States won’t put up with it. And nor should Britain incidentally. Now we’re not a major player, but we have a long and involved interest in all this. I was the first foreign secretary to visit Israel, it’s hard to believe really. I was the first foreign secretary to visit Syria. Whatever one can say about the old man Assad, he is a very different element, much more controlled, much more careful, much more easy to anticipate. The present one is difficult, but a dialogue is going to have to go, but again it is Russia who is going to have favour. And again come to grips with reality, when in 2015 the crucial road links through to Damascus from the Mediterranean were very close to being broken, and Assad would have faced a situation where, we would have all faced a situation, where Damascus had fallen, he made an appeal to Russia to come in and they came in very quick with aircraft and established them near to the naval base which they’d had since ’72. These are all very important factors, and it’s no use denying them, “Oh but I wish Obama had done what I tried to ask him to do at the time”. Welcome Russia dealing with Damascus, and say to him we will help Turkey to deal with Aleppo. Yes there would have been a fragmentation of Syria, but this endless, I won’t say who it comes from, but this pursuit in keeping a country’s territorial integrity together while a war wages you can’t control. I’ve lived with that situation for quite a long time and we’ve got to be, both funnily enough in what is now Zimbabwe and then again in the Balkans.
So, we’ve done three sensible things; the first sensible thing was the Kerry-Lavrov initiative in getting rid of most sarin gas. Secondly, the United States was right once sarin gas was used again to go in and hit the airfield from which the planes had flown. That was a breach of an American-Russian initiative; whether the Russians knew that they had Sarin gas or just accepted it which I think is much more likely. And now then the third initiative which is effectively to deal with chlorine gas which was not part of the 2017… I know people will differ as to whether the British House of Commons made the right decision in 2013, I think they made exactly the right decision. I am extremely pleased with the decision the Prime Minister made this time round on not to consult Parliament; I think the right of a British Prime Minister to use the powers that have been given to us have served us well over many, many centuries, is absolutely correct. And this whole idea that the complicated coordination of targets and hitting and timing and everything like that could have awaited the British House of Commons, I’m afraid that after what had happened in 2013 whether right or wrong, they’d have just said get lost. And we’d have seen France and the US dealing with it by themselves.
Now what can we do? There’s one serious decision which has to be taken, and the sooner Theresa May makes it the better. Britain has to unilaterally if you like, take a decision to increase the 2% threshold established by NATO, and spend 2.5% at the very least on defence. And as soon as we can we’ve got to go to 3%. That is a post-Brexit or a pre-Brexit initiative that needs to be undertaken now. And that’s our answer to the story that Chancellor Merkel and President Macron have the meeting in Washington with the United States, that’s the natural development that’s going to come from Brexit, and we shouldn’t be too fussed about it. Half of my reason for suddenly becoming a Brexiteer was that I felt, and we describe it in the book, that no longer could we go on with this attempt for the three countries – France, Germany, and the UK – and I was as much interested in my own private secretary issue and Fergusson, some of you will know him was ambassador to Paris, and when he was in Paris he started to come to the conclusion that post-Maastricht Treaty we weren’t going to go into the Eurozone in particular but even without that, the alliance between France and Germany forged let us remember in 1958 between Adenauer and General de Gaulle. Adenauer understood de Gaulle, his nationalism, “yes” he said in Germany when people said, his critics “he’s nationalist”, yes he’s a nationalist, but he knows his nationalism cannot be used without a very close and continuing relationship with Germany. And he spotted it and he was correct, and they built up this relationship. No British government has wanted to break it, because it’s thoroughly in all of our interests that France and Germany get on together, but when you realise that the game is up, it’s much better for us to get our freedom and our foreign policy back.
Now just a few things about what to do on defence policy and then I’ll shut up. There is a group now that are pushing, pushing, pushing us to do what we’re doing on the economy, which we’re doing out of necessity, on defence. There is no necessity to do it on defence. First of all spend more, that’s the most fundamental message; money talks. Then say to all the organisation we argue in this book, don’t fix yourself too much into arrangements, it’s too early to see. First make the break, take whatever savings you can from the external, the European External Action Service, and remember all the mistakes they made and try not to repeat them that they did in Ukraine, and take our policy into the two great international, multilateral forums; NATO and the UN. David will be saying quite a bit about some of these other areas. I only just say this which goes a bit beyond our book, I should say he is a remainer and I am a Brexiteer, and he’s 25 years younger than me and I’m learning a lot from him, and we work together very closely he was my private secretary in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and I’m allowed a little licence. So what I want to say now is not in the book…
David Ludlow:
Not much.
Lord Owen:
Not much. And the licence is this; when somebody says to us we’ve got to form a new relationship or you’ve got to go along with all this European Union defence, remember that America has been hostile to it for 20 years, and at military level they’ve always said do not create two operational headquarters, and don’t go on expecting us to accept this double counting. These are European defence forces and these are defence forces and they’re the same ones. Now we have a choice. We make our commitment through NATO. And I think myself, one of the things that we should do, when I believe it will happen on the 1st April next year we are out, go into discussions with three very important countries, who are in NATO but not in the EU. First and foremost Turkey, and secondly Norway and Iceland. And I think we must face up to the fact that there is a real problem between the United States and Turkey at the moment, and probably between the EU and Turkey. I’m not saying the rights or wrongs of it, but Britain can and must do its utmost to try and help Turkey to stay, and it was of great importance that Erdogan supported this recent three country action in Syria. So, my suggestion is a simple one, that you would create as we have a right to do in NATO a special grouping, permanent joint council, we did it for Russia, never been properly used we should have used it right from day one in dealing Libya. It needs to be small to be present, to be coherent I would say just 10 countries, five non-EU, five EU – Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Spain, Turkey, and the UK. Might make very good sense. Not for me to choose them, NATO would choose its representatives, and the EU would choose theirs. But there is some involvement and some foreign policy that needs to come, but don’t let the foreign office drag us into continued involvement with Europe and all its procedure. If we had that you wouldn’t need PESCO, the Permanent Structured Cooperation on Security and Defence, you wouldn’t need CARD, which aims to build up European defence planning, you wouldn’t need the EDIDP. The European Defence Agency is a difficulty. We do believe in bilateral procurement in military fields, we do believe in European-British bi-participation, we do believe in British-US, you need all three. We are not going to and must not put up with the European view that self-sufficiency in military procurement is an essential European interest; it is not. We have gained hugely from our technological transfer on the nuclear deterrent to say but least, but on many missile systems and other things, and particularly now in cyber, we are indebted to our relationship with the United States, and we should not break it.
Dr Alan Mendoza:
Thank you Lord Owen, commendably forthright. David.
David Ludlow:
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak here, and hopefully I’ll make my remarks as interesting as I can after the [inaudible] Lord Owen. As you mentioned I cut my teeth initially both diplomatically and in business in the USSR and the former communist bloc, in working this book it was a great opportunity for me to revisit the fallout from that era and some of those critical issues that David’s just touched upon. Two other areas of interest to me, perhaps less glamorous are how government policy is coordinated, and the interaction between government and the private sector, the latter issue in particular is getting a lot of focus at the moment. In both I think it’s critical to be looking beyond the rhetoric and slogans such as “One HMG” and “Global Britain”, and see what’s really happening underneath the hood. Now after banking I spent a couple of years back in Whitehall trying to break down silos with varying degrees of success before taking perhaps the simpler option of working on this book with David Owen. And I think a key element that we looked at in the book of addressing policy coordination was the role of the National Security Council, which we thought was a great development, and a very positive move that has worked relatively well to date. However, it’s there as a framework for coordination of the key policy decisions, the real challenge there is how far it reaches into the day to day workings of government, away from the heat of the major issues that everyone is focused on. While there’s a laudable focus on bringing together security, diplomacy, influence, economic policy, and development into a coherent whole, I think there’s a lot more to be done to really deliver this in practice and with a need for more cross-Whitehall cooperation, interaction, and integration; many would question for example the decision to set up a new Department for International Trade, which I was a part of for a short time. There were others still asking the question of why it was necessary to spin out what is now DFID from the Foreign Office. And I think in a perfect world the existence of a National Security Council should remove the need for such debate, however, I think turf wars are an inevitable part of life and from what I’ve seen in my time both in Whitehall and more recent work around government and talking with others involved, it was a real risk in attempting to deliver One HMG, increasing focus is being spent on internal coordination – not in itself a bad thing – but this risks breeding more new layers of unhelpful bureaucracy and a focus on managing internal coordination – setting up working groups and formal bodies, etc. – rather than addressing the underlying issues in a timely fashion. I think we’ve got to get back to delivering decisions quickly.
And this constant need for coordination drains resources and I suspect this is felt nowhere more keenly than inside the Foreign Office, where the need for increased resources to manage the demand of a post-Brexit world is a critical issue, and a realigning of our foreign policy away from the focus on the EU, the CFSP, the CSDP, is going to require an in-depth review of the diplomatic resources which will be required post-Brexit. I think it goes without saying and we argue in the book that resources which are being diverted to DExEU for understandable reasons, should be reintegrated into the FCO post-Brexit, and it’s inevitable that working on those sorts of topics attracts people, many of the best people going into that sort of decision making, but there’s clearly and we’ve heard, a lot else going on in the world that requires a lot of expertise and focus. But even without the additional demands that this would place on the FCO, it’s increasingly clear that the current resources are insufficient for the tasks at hand and preparing for those that may arise in the future. I think the balance between the protection of the aid budget and the cuts imposed on the Foreign Office suggest that preventative diplomacy has perhaps been at best undervalued, and I think we need to readdress this point. Along with that the erosion of traditional expertise, linguistic skills, etc. in the Foreign Office has been noted on numerous occasions in parliamentary inquiries, in the press, and indeed by ourselves in the book, and we highlighted the way the EU-Ukraine association agreement was handled and the impact that had on the ongoing crises in Europe at the minute, and this really needs to be addressed quickly. Likewise, it is getting important to rebuild our diplomatic presence in both key European capitals where we had seen a migration to Brussels, as well as rebuild our global presence as focus turns to decision making in the UN, or policy making in the UN. I think today’s announcement by the Foreign Secretary that we’ll open, and I suspect in many cases in reality it’s reopen, nine new diplomatic posts across the commonwealth is a positive sign of this. However I think the accompanying justification is an example of why so much being said by the government about the post-Brexit world risks lacking credibility. And of course Boris Johnson said these new diplomatic posts are in regions which provide huge potential and opportunity post-Brexit for British businesses. The posts are Lesotho, Swaziland, the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St. Vincent, Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu – great countries but with all due respect, their economies, it’s really hard to see them move the needle in terms of UK trade. And it’s this mismatch of rhetoric and reality that’s a real challenge when looking at how Britain maximises its economic opportunities post-Brexit, which I’m a real believer in.
The new Global Britain, and indeed that concept has already been challenged by the FAC as lacking substance, doesn’t seem to be much different from the old Global Britain; we’ve always been a global nation whether within or without the EU. Our businessmen and women, those of them who are not off playing golf on a Friday afternoon as Liam Fox might have it, are not setting out like merchant adventures of old into virgin territories and uncharted waters. I think the sad reality, and I’ve seen on the ground, many of our traditional markets particularly in the commonwealth, again in focus this week with CHOGM going on, is that our European partners have aggressively been carving out market share, and that’s not to mention the inroads that are being made by China and indeed India. I think it’s ironic in her speech to CHOGM the Queen said that an increasing emphasis on trade between our countries is helping us to discover exciting new ways of doing business. I think it would have been a lot better if we hadn’t forgotten how to do business in the traditional way in the first place. And why Liam Fox may be right in saying we’ve got to change our culture in our country around exporting – that we need to stop thinking of exporting as an opportunity and start thinking of it as a duty – raises the question of what’s the government’s reciprocal duty to those business that are ready to rise to the challenge. Government has to help reduce the challenges which are not inconsiderable, particularly when you’re looking at some of the tougher markets of the world, as those of us who have done it know. Doing business internationally is a challenge, it demands many things including competitive products in the first place, management, time, finance. And while there’s many highly motivated civil servants out there trying to help business, they need to have a much better grip on the realities and pressures on business themselves, and the challenges of exporting to even the most sophisticated markets. Just calling on business to do more, or seize the opportunity, doesn’t really go down well, and particularly in the challenging markets which we are now being encouraged to enter. Many business need concrete support, and not just generic advice and unbridled enthusiasm.
And this leads on to the question of how we develop the economies of the poorest, most fragile countries in the world, and if we’re going to deliver global security and global prosperity I think we have to start there. And there’s been a lot of focus on this recently from headlines such as Boris smashes 13 billion foreign aid jam jars, to the more measured approach taken in Penny Mordaunt’s speech last week, where she was speaking to the need for public and private sectors to come together more closely in delivering economic development and growth. And this is another area where the reality lags the talk, perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly given how recently this approach seems to have matured and shifted. And during my work around Africa I came across many businessmen who, when asked about the impact of the development agencies would say, well, they go out of their way to steer clear of us, I mean they were so scared of being associated with promoting national interest that they would rather not talk to their own businessmen, and this was both our own DFID and other agencies that were being mentioned. And I think that is beginning to change but there’s a lot more to be done there. The other, the flip side of the coin I met a number of foreign government ministers who couldn’t understand why there was so much aid commitment from the UK, but it wasn’t followed by business commitment, and I think we’ve really got to work hard to bring these two efforts together, and I think the right message is being delivered at the top, it’s important that this now flows down the chain. We need to see sensible balanced risk taking encouraged, and move away from the culture of risk aversion if we’re going to see the UK return to play its full role in these markets. Great work is being done to create enabling environments for business to be done through British support, but this isn’t always being followed through aggressively enough. The Global Britain approach needs to have a more, be based around a more robust championing of British business by all involved, focusing on where we’ve got the real comparative advantage. And this can be done, and many other countries have done it, without compromising on any of our aid or development goals. As Penny Mordaunt said, we need to see our development policy delivering wins for the UK, and wins for the developing world.
So I think then that the one challenge that falls out of that is the real danger of falling foul of the law of unintended consequences, particularly when seeking to put in place the structures that work in economies and markets that have been built up over decades, if not centuries, and then trying to impose them, or introduce them might be a better way of putting it, into those economies which are emerging from a very fragile state or have recently emerged from that state. Recently, or in fact yesterday I heard independently the same story, from a group of bankers and a senior figure in a development finance organisation, about how higher regulatory standards, associated costs of know your customer, procurement, labour laws, etc. – which are fully understandable and legitimate objectives – are driving financial institutions and businesses away from the markets that maybe most need them. And particularly reputational risks and others, are seen as outweighing the incentives to invest in these markets by the largest companies which have got the capital and the wherewithal to really make the difference in them. I think something has to be done to address that. It’s a difficult circle to square, and coming up with a plan to increase private sector involvement in these markets, government is going to need to bare those realities in mind and do all they can to support in simple, concrete terms, and easily navigable terms as they can, to help the businesses which are willing to take up the challenge. There’s lots of great companies out there in Britain and I think sometimes we undersell ourselves and we’ve got to get better at selling the great technologies, the great businesses that we do have, both at the cutting end of disruptive technology in the city in fintech etc., down to the more traditional engineering businesses which are still hugely respected around the world. All of them deserve the support, and they need it sooner rather than later. Without it I don’t think we’re going to deliver the global Britain objectives. But that said, in concluding, these efforts to join up what Penny Mordaunt described as the trinity of the three D’s – diplomacy, development, and defence – themes that we explored in the book, and that we very much believe that the three go hand in hand, and are very much to be welcomed. Thank you very much.
Dr Alan Mendoza:
Right. Thank you both, and I think interesting to focus on the support case and the need for the government to get behind what we’re going to be doing and to make a success of the three D’s and much beyond. Now, we’re open for questions, if you’d like to ask a question please do indicate. I will just ask you for your name and any affiliation, we may take them in threes, if we have three to begin with. Two there, is there another one? And three there, right.
[Question]:
Edward Ben-Nathan, just a member of the society. Michael Fallon after he left office argued for defence to be increased to 2.5%, I’ve not really heard anything more. Do either of you think there’s any chance of the defence budget being increased?
[Question]:
There was a speech last night…
Dr Alan Mendoza:
Your name?
[Questioner]:
Sorry, my name is Ian Alston and I’m chairman of the Edmund Burke Society. Lord Patten made a speech in which he said it was too risky to leave the common market… what’s it called?
Dr Alan Mendoza:
The customs union?
[Questioner]:
Customs union, yes. Too risky, and he gave all sorts of reasons why it was so risky and it was safer to stay in the customs union, so I wonder how you would answer him? Because you seem to think David that there was great opportunity in trading with the Commonwealth, where as he really poo-pooed that idea.
Dr Alan Mendoza:
A nice short question then in terms of its implications!
[Question]:
Barry Cameron I’m independent at the moment really. Many years ago Winston Churchill said that Britain was at the centre of three circles; The Commonwealth, Europe, and the United States. This was poo-pooed by many pro-Europeans even 50-60 years ago, is there any truth in that view still? Or is that an old fashioned, out of date view?
Lord Owen:
Shall I answer one and two and leave David with the circles. 2.5%, any chance? Yes. It needs resolve but there is… Overseas development is part of the National Security Council, they’re there as a right, and these mixed bodies of officials and politicians are quite a good one. We are spending a lot of money which is defence pounds, to be blunt, in the 20 poorest countries who are many also of them have security issues. All that money should be pushed to the defence budget, but from the overseas aid budget because it’s to do with development. That is a factor, and there are some other mechanisms, but overall you also have to find some extra money. Look, nobody wants to spend more money on the NHS than I do, but I am absolutely convinced that can be done, and it needs to be done very quickly now. Break out of the Chancellor’s cycle, we’ve had enough demonstrations on the streets of Salisbury to show why we need increased defence spending, and it must come, and it must come very quickly. 2.5% is not too much, and an aspiration to 3%.
Now too risky to leave the customs union. Well, the customs union is an inhibition to having multilateral trade agreements. There is one example where this is broken, two basically, but one is with Turkey – there is a customs union, they’re out of the EU, theoretically the EU can interfere with the multilateral trade agreements they make. If we were right pushed against it because of voting in the House of Commons, we might have to live with it. I think it’s a very foolish decision, and there are better ways of perhaps making some other specific and difficult customs arrangements for Northern Ireland, I don’t think we’ll solve that problem here. All we’re to do, is to recognise what Lord Patten is up to, which is to stop us leaving the European Union, and it’s fine you know, but he lost his seat in Bath, which is a pretty hard thing for a Tory to do, and he has a lifelong commitment to the European Union – fine. But I take a view on the referendum, 500+ MPs voted for it, why? Because both in ’75 and in 2016 both the Labour party then the Tory party were split and [inaudible], and they could only deal with it by pushing that binary decision onto the general public. When you do that, you walk. The verdict of the people is clear, and you go. And I’ve been deeply depressed about this period, and I only hope it is not a sign that we have not got the national resolve to deal with the problems that will come in the wake of Brexit, and they’re not all economic, and there are opportunities, advantages, political and in many other spheres that need to be considered.
David Ludlow:
Before moving on to the three circles question let me just clarify my position on the trading environment and the comment on how it was going to be easy to just replace European trade with Commonwealth trade; that’s not my view at all. My personal view is we’ve clearly still got to have as strong a trading relationship with Europe as we can have. I think there are significant opportunities in trading with other parts of the world including the Commonwealth, but a lot of those opportunities are going to be very hard fought for. They’re a lot less than I think some people think in terms of the untapped markets. So while I think it’s going to be important to develop these new markets I think we still have to really make sure we get it right on the terms of our future relationship with Europe in terms of trade.
On the three circles I think at the time that Churchill made that statement that was absolutely right and valid to make. I think the circles have probably changed since then, the world is a different place, there are different organisations or groups of countries. The rise of China just wasn’t there when he was making those statements, and I think the Commonwealth is a very interesting group of quite disparate countries, and to see that as a circle in the current environment in my view is probably wrong. I think that we should be building relationships across the world, we should be taking advantage of relationships we already have like the Commonwealth, but I think to simplify it into a Venn diagram like that, the Commonwealth wouldn’t be one of my circles.
Dr Alan Mendoza:
Okay, let’s have another round of questions. We’ll start with you, then, yes, then there’s a third one as well in a moment.
[Question]:
I’m Charlie, I’m a Conservative party member, Young Conservative, and I was just wondering, a lot of Labour MPs tend to disagree with Mr Corbyn on foreign policy because he’s more of a pacifist. So I was wondering if it was possible that Labour could break away again like Lord Owen experienced.
Dr Alan Mendoza:
Well, very interesting question. Okay.
[Question]:
Dr Krystyna Maria Wilczek, World Peace Organisation. Hitler had started the Second World War, Stalin had divided, and the consequences we have now; NATO, non-NATO, European Union, non-European Union – we are everywhere divided. So the way to change that, for all this international states, is to create a new competitive international organisation that can give a peace guarantee for the entire world. And when we have a guarantee of peace we can smoothly develop economically. And that’s the best way, instead of investing money, like now into killing.
Dr Alan Mendoza:
Okay, so maybe I suppose the question is, is there the possibility of an organisation that can provide a peace guarantee for everyone?
[Questioner]:
And do they agree with me that this idea is the best?
Dr Alan Mendoza:
Okay. Any other, another question this round? Yes.
[Question]:
Do you think the foreign aid budget should be reduced?
Lord Owen:
Okay let me deal with one, David deal with two, and I’ll deal with three okay? I’ll deal with one and three now.
Dr Alan Mendoza:
He’s still in charge you see!
Lord Owen:
Well somebody has to! Labour MPs… Look, I’m not going to get involved in that, the situation is completely different to what it was in ’81, and my views are very clear. I think that we should never have got in bed with the liberals. The brand was a new party and we trashed it, and I think that was a huge mistake. So I’m not sure that the centre party, this was not a centre party, this was to replace the Labour party, or more likely, drive the Labour party into a negotiation with us so as to cut out the nonsense. There is a possibility of another breakaway from the Labour party with that motive, in which case they shouldn’t play around too much in the centre. The third possibility that is being played around with now I call “More Macron”, which is break away completely, and form a new party, and probably do it quite late, and I think that that if you want to do that. I remain basically a social democrat, I have never shifted, I have never joined the Liberal party, I have voted for – I don’t vote of course – but I gave money to Miliband. I swore I wouldn’t give money to Corbyn, but when I read the manifesto I gave him a little less money, but I did give them money, that’s all I can do I’m not allowed to vote.
And on the third point of this Foreign Office aid, we’ve answered it in a way that Ii think we both of us decided that we were not going to say the aid budget should be cut. That was too simple. We were going to argue for using the OECD escape clause if you like, that you can put money from the aid budget to defence, but it must be done properly, and seriously, and accounted for.
David Ludlow:
So I get the easy question of world peace. Hard to object to it in conceptual terms, and clearly it’s got to be the ultimate goal. In terms of creating another organisation that’s going to deliver it, I don’t see the space for that; we’ve got the United Nations, it may not be functioning in the way it should be.
Dr Wilczek:
It doesn’t exist. Or it isn’t effective, excuse me.
David Ludlow:
Yes, there’s issues over efficacy but is there going to be anything else to replace it? I think we’ve argued in the book that we need to be solving, or, the way to solve and stabilise some of these problems is from a position of strength in fact we’ve seen, you talked about this being the aftermath of the Second World War, we go back to the whole rationale for the EU in the first place, was to bring economic strength, the Marshall Plan, etc. – get people rich, stop them fighting. That may be very simplistic but I think that’s still a key driver of the way to achieve world peace is to make the world richer. I come from Northern Ireland, I think when people got a bit wealthier there, they stopped worrying about where the border was going to be and what religion their neighbour was; still problems, it was a small scale I admit it, but I think economic development takes the edge out of some of these conflicts. And that’s why I passionately believe in the need to get fragile states, the unstable states, stabilised, and I think that does take an effective security regime to do so, and then make them wealthier. You’re never going to solve every problem, there’s going to be irrational reasons for not agreeing with your neighbours. Some of them may be rational reasons, but there’s clearly no easy answer to it, but I think getting the world a richer place will save lives.
Dr Alan Mendoza:
I see a question in the back, and then one over here.
[Question]:
Lord Hamilton, House of Lords. I think one of the things we missed about Brexit, is the psychological effect of actually leaving this extraordinary bureaucratic organisation. We really suffer from the problem that we’ve been hanging on to nanny for so long, that we’re traumatised by the idea of no longer having nanny there. And I think the problem with Europe is that technology is moving faster all the time, and Europe’s response to everything has been completely bureaucratic and always a long way behind the curve. And I think that we should actually be looking with much greater optimism to the way we embrace change and technology, and make our own rules as we go along, and I think this is critical for the future of life outside Europe. And I really do think we’ve got to be much more optimistic, and stop judging everything by the rules under which we’ve lived in the past.
[Question]:
Justin [inaudible] from the British Group. You’ve talked a lot about nation states here, but actually we’ve just got on the floor below us here The Open Society backed by George Soros, we have the recent revelations from Facebook and other social media, and we’ve had all these issues with Russia doing cyber-attacks and other things. I worry that you’re sort of talking a lot in old school terms, how do we combat these new, non-state actors? And then specifically a question around George Soros who is vilified in much of Eastern Europe, should we be taking the same approach to him here in London?
[Question]:
Just wondering, has Theresa May missed a trick not visiting the Irish Republic, bearing in mind you know, has she missed a trick for obvious reasons?
Dr Alan Mendoza:
Right. So I don’t know how you want to divide that?
David Ludlow:
I want him to answer the young people’s questions [laughter].
Lord Owen:
What was that?
Dr Alan Mendoza:
You’re to answer the young, about the change of technology and optimism.
Lord Owen:
I’ll deal then with Lord Hamilton’s question on psychological effects, and Theresa May okay?
Dr Alan Mendoza:
Well we’ll let David go first and we’ll see what he leaves you.
David Ludlow:
Well then I’ll pick the easy ones, my sort of semi-specialist subject of Theresa May visiting Ireland. I think that the Irish issue goes back to questions, or issues I was flagging there about coordination inside government. I think this issue has taken the government from left-field or certainly the extent of the Irish question, I think going back to the point about world peace, one of the great steps forward over the past few decades has been the way Ireland and the UK interact and solve their differences. I think that is a fantastic step forward. Yes I think she missed a trick in terms of the way the Irish situation has been handled, and unfortunately I think we’re still going to have some more road bumps to deal with – hopefully not literal ones on the border – to sort that issue out in the context of the Brexit negotiations.
Lord Owen:
I think the less said about Northern Ireland the better.
Dr Alan Mendoza:
And Lord Hamilton’s question?
Lord Owen:
The psychological effects of leaving I think he’s absolutely right, and I think its Dyson has to be our model. And I think he’s somebody who’s … I don’t agree with him when he says you’ve got to stop going on with all this nonsense, leave now, don’t worry about the terms. I do think that we need a transition period, and I think that Theresa May has handled that issue rather well, and I think that it only amazes me that the Brexiteers, old-fashioned Brexiteers of which I’m not one, who accepted no vote and no dialogue really on EU regulations from the moment we leave on the 21st March 2019 to the end of December 2020. That was with a purpose, which was industry would not have to change twice. And I think once you are on a three year transition, it was vital that industry and everybody’s adaptation rate was basically a three year transition, and I think that’s enough. Now maybe we won’t get agreement at the end of the day in three years’ time, it won’t be a terrible tragedy if we don’t, but we’ll have given everybody time and opportunity. Article 50 is a perfect disgrace, it was designed by a very clever diplomat who is himself a perfectly committed European federalist, and he worked with others at the time that he designed it which is fine, and he designed it never to be used – and we used it like idiots. We should have used the Vienna convention, and we certainly shouldn’t have taken the terms under which the EU decided how article 50 would be interpreted. We should have had at least five or six months, but then David Cameron, if you tell the country that you’re going to stay regardless of the result which is exactly what Harold Wilson did, then you should bloody well stay! What is it this business we have now, a Prime Minister can say one thing one day and disown it the next. You will not get young people back into a proper dialogue with democratic politics as we see it in our system until you are more respectful of the truth.
Dr Alan Mendoza:
Now that’s a very good point but I wonder, I think the premise of the question is that, aside from more respect for the truth, there are forces out there that exist not to push the truth. And you’ve seen obviously examples of data being misused, you’ve seen propaganda being pushed out rather than truth, which reflects a changing modality of politics I think, is what you’re trying to say?
Lord Owen:
No, it’s always been, politicians always lie, and campaigns have always been [inaudible], but Prime Ministers have always said the truth. And this is something you should start looking at very carefully. When Prime Ministers start telling you not the truth, about war or peace, then there’s something very seriously going wrong. And it is now it seems to me you shrug your shoulders, and go, he didn’t have to say that. Wilson said it and meant it, and you’ve got to be quite blunt about it, it would have been a great deal easier to have that transition if the Prime Minister had stayed for eight/nine months, and there had not been this appalling problem that Theresa May was faced with, that commitments made by government and government spokesmen during the election campaign that they were now not responsible for and seem to have taken no account of. We now eventually will have to be told what the cabinet secretary said about article 50, what the legal department of the Foreign Office said, I have a feeling they never contemplated it, never said anything to government. But this is an issue of serious government. In 1975 when the referendum took place, Callahan and Wilson knew exactly what they were going to do, they were going to try and win it, and they used clever techniques, they didn’t go out on the front, let others fight it out and say things. This was a badly constructed campaign on both sides you could argue, but we’ve had it, we’ve got to live with it, and we’ve got to make it work. And that’s the spirit of endeavour that comes usually from Britain, and we’ve got to go back to it and we’ve got to make this work. Otherwise we are going to suffer. The decision has been taken by our own people, in a binary decision, and the government’s responsibility is to introduce it, and the opposition’s responsibility is to make constructive criticism, but to work with it. After all in the 2017 Labour gave the impression that they were in favour of leaving, let’s stop all this nonsense of blocking and mechanisms which are perfectly apparent. They say they’re not trying to stop it, they’re trying to stop it. And we should stop them trying that way. That’s lying.
David Ludlow:
Could I maybe take a stab at addressing your point a bit more directly, because I wouldn’t claim to have the expert opinion to comment on it but I think it was very interesting, the whole story around Soros etc., in having spent my formative diplomatic service years behind the iron curtain when it was still there in Moscow at the end of the 80s, and seeing the power of, all be it old-style print media, TV, etc., that message seeping into Eastern Europe I think played a big part in the unsustainability of the Soviet Union. So the power of a freer press that was hard fought for. And then the change in Soros, I mean I spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe through the 90s, a lot of friends who are now incredibly disappointed with the way their countries are turning, around the way the media is being distorted. I don’t have an answer for it, I don’t have enough knowledge of the way Facebook etc., is handling information. I think we’re now seeing that it was free flowing, I think we’re now looking at bringing it into control, I think there’s many instances, and I go back to I had a classical education and I remember one Greek phrase which was meden agan, nothing in excess. And I think we see the excess whether that was in the business community and it gets rained back in, and I think we’re seeing the same in this free flow of media. It’s got to be right that there’s free flow of information, but when it’s free flow of false information we’ve got to find a way to get it under control.
[Audience]:
I think its culture and art that are actually very important. Someone has founded something called “Artists for Brexit” which I thought was a bit of a joke to start with when we were at the meeting where they first turned up actually, and that is a very important additional front beyond diplomacy, and beyond the nation state.
Dr Alan Mendoza:
Very good. Well there’s three questions there and then we’ll finish.
[Question]:
Hello my name is Alfred Magnus. I greatly enjoyed the speeches of both speakers, I think they were most fascinating. I think they spoke as though the stance was that the government, the present government or something similar would continue. Would Lord Owen like to predict what would happen in the unfortunate circumstance of Jeremy Corbyn coming to power?
[Question]:
Tymofieiev, Embassy of Ukraine. First of all let me thank you very much for attention to the conflict in my country of Ukraine. First question, what do you think about possible political ways of this conflict resolving? And two small questions, how can the United Kingdom, how can the West tackle and counter the huge Russian influence in financial, energy, political, and informative spheres?
[Question]:
My name is John Wilkin. Probably covered partially by the last question but, Lord Owen said there’s a lot we can give Russia regarding the Ukraine. Is there anything we can give them which wouldn’t look like a 21st century version of the Munich Agreement?
Lord Owen:
We’ll I’ll deal with the first and I think we should both deal with Ukraine; David’s got a level of experience from Moscow which I certainly don’t have. Jeremy Corbyn, look, you’ve got your own view of Jeremy Corbyn, do what you like. You vote, I don’t have a vote they’ve taken that away from me. But I only say this to you; this man has increased the membership of the Labour party significantly to be the largest party I think now in Europe. And he’s also attracted a great number of young people. These are huge achievements, and as far as I’m concerned I don’t share his views, and I’ve never done so. We were in the same party for quite a long time together, he has allowed his views on defence to be overridden by his party, and he has accepted the nuclear deterrent should continue to be built. He undoubtedly comes from a group of people in this country who have a noble tradition of not only disliking war, but of being prepared to go out into the streets in protest of war whenever it is possible. And it’s a very healthy tradition. I’m not convinced he is a pacifist, but he has many pacifistic views which are very much in line with the views of a lot of people in this country. You can’t screw up as badly as we did over Iraq, and a Labour Prime Minister do it, and leave a lot of people feeling that he had never levelled with them, and never told them the truth about it, without it leaving a whole group of disillusioned people who are ready now. We have to rebuild confidence with them, that deterrence is a perfectly legitimate objective, and that freedom has to be on occasions fought for. But I do not like the savage press on Corbyn. But he is a decent man, he never replies, he doesn’t stoop into the gutter, the more they attack him in my view the stronger he will be – he is very credible. I don’t share his views, but like a lot of people we vote on more than one or two policies. What you do to the health service, I could use some pretty tough language about the marketisation of the health service, and the outrageous nature of the Health and Social Care Bill introduced by this government in 2012, and supported by the Liberal Democrats. I leave it no further than that.
David Ludlow:
On Ukraine, clearly it’s a tragic situation. Coming back to a couple of earlier points, I think we’ve got to avoid building walls in Europe. I think the sad part of the way Europe is going at the moment, and we lived through this for several years in the former Yugoslavia, instead of moving together we’re seeing further and further fragmentation, and that issue has to be addressed. In terms of how one deals with Russia, it may be a bit traditionalist but I believe you’ve got to do it from a position of strength. That’s again what we’ve been advocating here, Russia has been I suppose taking advantage of focus being elsewhere. International law has been broken in Ukraine and we have to work to address that. Where the UK fits into that picture at the minute, clearly we have got a very challenging relationship with Russia to say the least. It is difficult to see how we bring influence to bare on our own, it has got to be part of a wider international community effort.
Dr Alan Mendoza:
The Munich question?
Lord Owen:
The Munich question?
Dr Alan Mendoza:
Well essentially you mentioned that we had something we could give Putin, what is it that doesn’t make it look like Munich?
Lord Owen:
Well I think that it was a great mistake, and I think George Kennan was totally correct and we quote him in the book in saying that you must not push NATO up against all the boundaries of the new Russian Federation. And we are heading for that direction, when we said that we would admit Georgia and Ukraine to NATO. After what happened in Georgia, what happened in Ukraine I’m quite clear NATO under no circumstances should admit either of those countries to NATO. I hope that Ukraine will become a member of the EU, we will not be there to make that decision, but I would conduct British policy in a way that was as helpful as possible to getting Ukraine into the EU, we should form trading relationships and encourage them to do so. It’s going to be quite a long process, but its taken a long time for many countries to come into the European Union. But these are policies for the EU to take, as far as Ukraine and any other parts of the world, we should look upon them as a friendly nation to be encouraged in the UN, and we should go out of our way to put good diplomats there from the British embassy, because it’s an important country. So that’s my attitude. So if out of a negotiation with Putin there came a very clear decision that we were not going to take Ukraine into NATO I would not see that as defeat. I think Kennan was correct – he warned exactly what would happen. He said they’re not an aggressive nation now, this is in ’98, to do this would be to go right against Russian views of their sphere of influence. And don’t let anybody either in America, particularly in America or Britain, talk about the horrors of spheres of influence, we practiced that for decades and centuries. And Russia certainly feels it. So I don’t believe you can ignore that in this relationship. But I believe that you should get an acceptance, there will have to be an acceptance of Crimea having been left and the boundaries changed, but within that you need to negotiate some very tough understandings about what is going to happen with the rest of Ukraine, and that Russian is not going to continue to disrupt, and try to separate that part out from, and there will have to be Minsk 3 which means something and has some real clout behind it. And allied with that will come help for Ukraine, financial help, and all forms of other help, and they’ve got to have democratic help and help deal with the issue of corruption which is very considerable in that country.
You know I’ve been a businessman in Russia since 1995, I gave up two and a half years ago, and I’ve always held the view that it is through business we would be able to deal with the post-Russia situation, and particularly with the emergence of Putin’s philosophy that it was a great mistake to lose the USSR. And we are losing that battle. Now some sanctions are necessary, but we must be very careful. We don’t want to push the Russian economy, which is 70% state owned to take over the remaining 30%. We want to encourage private business, we need to encourage this. At least they’re not going back at the moment, yet, to a command economy and going against private enterprise and profits and things like that. This is not a re-run therefore, of the old Cold War in many, many respects. But it’s not easy to do, cooperate in business when you’re also having this cyber warfare, of course this episode in Salisbury. But again, look at Salisbury in its own specific context; we’re dealing here with one of our spies, who was exchanged in an international arrangement, and they’re arrangements carry out that those people who come back to their countries are respected, and are not assassinated. And therefore there’s been a very serious breach, of what were understood agreements, built up during the Cold War, in the attempted assassination in Salisbury. And this is a different thing. You’re dealing with a President who is quite clear that he believes traitors are fair game; that might be what we have to live with, but not in the exchange of spies, where there are conventions protocols that need to be respected. So there we are, it’s a difficult issue, but keep it separate. View Russia as a result of its history, and think of it in terms of its history and understanding. We don’t need to tell you the history of Ukraine if you come from Ukraine, but you know it well. And you know the degree to which that country was part of Russia as the Russians see it, for a substantial number of years. And the history is complex, but it is very close between the two countries and we need to understand that whole thing, and need to understand the politics of it. Who made his name in the administration of Ukraine after the Second World War? The man who became President of the USSR, both Khrushchev and later Brezhnev. And so we have to understand this linkage, in order to understand why Crimea has become separated by force. That isn’t to agree with it, and isn’t to not face up the fact that there has to be a negotiated settlement. There is room for flexibility when you look at Transnistria and all the other problems around it. It’s tough for Ukraine at the moment, very, very difficult, and we have to be as helpful as possible. But I am not ashamed to tell you, bluntly to your face, I don’t think you should become part of NATO.
Dr Alan Mendoza:
Right! Well I want to thank both Davids for their sterling contribution tonight. What I think has been interesting about the discussion tonight but also about the book, which we will shortly be able to sell to you, and sign for you as well with a comment maybe, is that it takes a look at the future not just the present. I think so often we are preoccupied with what is happening right now in Brexit, like the vote, this issue, we’re not really focused on what happens after March 2019 which let’s not forget, is under a year away. So I think it’s been an excellent attempt to come to grips with some of the issues here tonight, the book repeats those, I would encourage you to buy it, and I would encourage you to thank our speakers in the appropriate manner.