Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. Kirst Armer has been
Speaker 1: very vocal about his mission to reset Britain's relationship with
Speaker 1: Europe and to put the UK back on the global stage.
Speaker 1: Two weeks into the job, he got a chance to
Speaker 1: make some headway when he hosted more than forty of
Speaker 1: the continent's leaders at Winston Churchill's ancestral home. Just before that,
Speaker 1: he had traveled to Washington for the NATO Summit. But
Speaker 1: what's his best strategy for fostering global relationships? In this episode,
Speaker 1: we speak with someone who is arguably the best place
Speaker 1: to answer that question. Welcome to the City of London,
Speaker 1: The City of the City, The City of London.
Speaker 2: These mind the gap between and the financial heart of
Speaker 2: the country.
Speaker 1: The City, the City.
Speaker 2: Welcome to in the City, Then clear of the dows Peace.
Speaker 1: Welcome to in the City. A podcast from Bloomberg about
Speaker 1: the stories important to the City of London. I'm an
Speaker 1: Augus Stratton and my co host Francine laquer and I
Speaker 1: spoke with Baroness Ashton of up Holland, also known as
Speaker 1: Kathy Ashton, currently a Labor member of the House of Lords. Previously,
Speaker 1: Kathy Ashton served as the first ever High Representative for
Speaker 1: Foreign Affairs and Security from twenty oh nine to twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: It's a role that even she admits took some time
Speaker 1: to cultivate and understand.
Speaker 3: I recall going to Moscow to have a first proper
Speaker 3: sit down meeting with then Foreign Minister love Rof and
Speaker 3: I could see that they were all quizzically looking at
Speaker 3: what on earth this was. And sometimes it's useful to
Speaker 3: be able to explain that you also understand that were
Speaker 3: at the beginning of a process, not the end. And
Speaker 3: so I told a joke that the then Slovenian Prime
Speaker 3: Minister had told me, which was very simply that the
Speaker 3: American President is told by his Secretary of State that
Speaker 3: there is good news that the Kissinger question, if I
Speaker 3: want to talk to Europe, who do I call had
Speaker 3: been answered and the answer was me. And so, with
Speaker 3: great gusto, the American President says, well, why don't we
Speaker 3: call Kathy's number. See what happens. They called my number
Speaker 3: and they get my voicemail, and my voicemail says, welcome
Speaker 3: to Europe. For the French position, Press one, the Italian
Speaker 3: position Press two, and so on, And as I recall,
Speaker 3: Lavrov laughed. My message I think got through that I
Speaker 3: was under no illusion that we were starting a process,
Speaker 3: not finishing it.
Speaker 1: Kathy was one of the world's most powerful women at
Speaker 1: the time, immersed in some of the most complicated problems,
Speaker 1: many quite similar to the problems the UK faces today.
Speaker 1: So we spoke to her about what she sees as
Speaker 1: Labour's priorities regarding trade deals, their relationship with the US,
Speaker 1: and their strategy for rehabilitating a European relationship soured by Brexit.
Speaker 2: You're one of the great diplomatic minds that the UK has.
Speaker 2: What will diplomacy and foreign affairs look like? Hendrik Kearstarmer.
Speaker 3: It's great to be on the podcast, and I think
Speaker 3: the first thing to say is that there is an
Speaker 3: understanding of the importance of ensuring that Britain plays its
Speaker 3: part in world affairs, and that translates into a number
Speaker 3: of things. First of all, the importance of the relationship
Speaker 3: with Europe not to look backwards, not to go backwards,
Speaker 3: but to go forwards, to develop a stronger foreign policy,
Speaker 3: security defense relationship with the like minded countries of the
Speaker 3: European Union. It means looking across to the Transatlantic relationship
Speaker 3: regardless of who's in the White House, and ensuring that
Speaker 3: the depths and strength of that continues. Britain was always
Speaker 3: known as the bridge between the European Union and the
Speaker 3: United States. Well that bridge isn't quite there now, but
Speaker 3: there's still to be done in that relationship too. And
Speaker 3: then I think some of the big foreign policy questions
Speaker 3: that we're facing, the war in Ukraine, the crisis in
Speaker 3: the Middle East, the strength of our relationship with countries
Speaker 3: we've known a long time and countries we're trying to
Speaker 3: develop new relationships with, and of course the challenge of China,
Speaker 3: so very clear, big issues to be dealt with, but
Speaker 3: I think a determination that Britain will be more present
Speaker 3: than it's been in recent years.
Speaker 1: If you look at European countries, they're all grappling with
Speaker 1: the same issue of an increase in migration. I'm really
Speaker 1: wondering how the Labor government manage to get from the
Speaker 1: French and the Germans and others agreement on handling migrants,
Speaker 1: just purely from the perspective, which is they also have
Speaker 1: their domestic electurates that are very volatile, like the UK electurate.
Speaker 1: What's the way through is it possible.
Speaker 3: I think you have to start further back in a way,
Speaker 3: which is why people are moving. And one of the
Speaker 3: things that is always a challenge in foreign policy is
Speaker 3: the short cycle of governments and the fact that we
Speaker 3: are dealing with always more than one crisis at any
Speaker 3: given moment. So it tends to be a bit like
Speaker 3: the game Whack Them All, where you kind of whack
Speaker 3: the crisis back down and then move on to the
Speaker 3: next cool right, and I hope that it won't pop
Speaker 3: up again. But so many of the issues that we
Speaker 3: face in the world have taken decades, if not centuries
Speaker 3: to erupt. So why we think two years is going
Speaker 3: to solve it? I don't know. So the first thing
Speaker 3: to say is that there's a collaboration to be done
Speaker 3: that is more than just Europe, which is about saying,
Speaker 3: why is it that these people are coming, what's happening,
Speaker 3: How do we inject some ways of sort of solving
Speaker 3: the problem or at least alleviating the problem that we're
Speaker 3: not doing already that maybe could help. And also looking
Speaker 3: on the horizon, scanning for places that are likely to erupt,
Speaker 3: And that may seem sort of easy to say and
Speaker 3: very long term, But actually you do need to think
Speaker 3: in ten twenty thirty years time what will be the
Speaker 3: challenges that we face. And I've mentioned climate change is
Speaker 3: a good example. If people are living without a you know,
Speaker 3: at the infrastructure and the social blanket if you like
Speaker 3: that will support them. Then what happens when they can't
Speaker 3: grow the crops? What happens when the village is flooded
Speaker 3: for the fourth time. They have to move somewhere, and
Speaker 3: they may choose to move internally, or they may choose
Speaker 3: to move further afield. And that's going to be one
Speaker 3: of the things that we have to deal with, regardless
Speaker 3: of how effective we are in solving some of the
Speaker 3: problems that we have on climate change. So number one,
Speaker 3: start much further back in the process, and then number two,
Speaker 3: we're in it together. We're all trying to tackle this
Speaker 3: in the best way, recognizing that people come for different reasons,
Speaker 3: recognizing that you have to make choices and they're hard
Speaker 3: and difficult, and then trying to be more collaborative. And
Speaker 3: I think that at least is a good place to start.
Speaker 3: How they're able to do this, what the agivements will
Speaker 3: look like is not for me to say but I
Speaker 3: think it's important to at least begin that process and
Speaker 3: to really think about what could make a difference. And
Speaker 3: I think actually smashing the gangs that create the misery
Speaker 3: that we see would be a really, really effective tool.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting I gro that you bring up immigration
Speaker 2: because for me, if you look at some of the
Speaker 2: challenges right in twenty twenty four, it's probably like US
Speaker 2: and Trump, who wants to put terrorfs some and then
Speaker 2: you don't really know how to deal with China. But
Speaker 2: I guess there's a disconnect between these bigger foreign policy
Speaker 2: issues and what citizens vote for, right, I mean foreign policy.
Speaker 2: People don't vote for governments on foreign policy. Is that
Speaker 2: a mistake, Well, they don't.
Speaker 3: But again because it's actually domestic. They are voting on
Speaker 3: domestic issues which actually have a foreign policy element to them,
Speaker 3: sometimes bigger than others. So and issues of migration, immigration,
Speaker 3: there are bigger domestic and bigger foreign policy issues buried
Speaker 3: within that. Then there would be when people think about,
Speaker 3: you know, the cost of things, or whether their small
Speaker 3: business is going to be effective and so on, those
Speaker 3: two have a foreign policy implication. If you're no longer
Speaker 3: able to trade in Europe the way you did because
Speaker 3: of the way things have worked out. That has a
Speaker 3: direct impact on you and your family, and your community,
Speaker 3: and your customers and so on, and your workforce in particular.
Speaker 3: If we can sort of solve some of those problems,
Speaker 3: which is foreign policy, then it has a direct impact
Speaker 3: on the domestics. So although people rightly vote on the
Speaker 3: issues that concern them, that's not to say that foreign
Speaker 3: policy doesn't play its part in helping them get what
Speaker 3: they need.
Speaker 2: So you've dealt with what's called them tricky characters, You've
Speaker 2: negotiated with there on, You've negotiated with Russia and Lavra.
Speaker 2: What was your secret tool in trying to get them
Speaker 2: to the table and actually sign something.
Speaker 3: Well, if you take the around talks, I had two jobs.
Speaker 3: One was to help hold the six countries together because
Speaker 3: this was China, Russia, United States, France, and the UK,
Speaker 3: the P five the permanent five members of the Security Council,
Speaker 3: plus Germany because they'd been an original negotiator with Iran.
Speaker 3: It's the only negotiation in history where the P five
Speaker 3: worked together and stuck together and voted together. And it's
Speaker 3: a great loss, amongst many other things, that that possibility
Speaker 3: no longer exists, at least for now, and getting them
Speaker 3: to have a common position when they needed and wanted
Speaker 3: different things from the negotiation, they'd have settled for less
Speaker 3: or needed more was one of the jobs that we
Speaker 3: had to ensure happened. Because what you have to have
Speaker 3: in a negotiation as complicated and as technically complex as
Speaker 3: iruand negotiations was absolute clarity that we are all on
Speaker 3: this position and we're sticking to it, with the maneuverability
Speaker 3: you also need in a negotiation, because what would have
Speaker 3: been disastrous would have been if either Iran had felt
Speaker 3: able to pick off a couple of countries or equally
Speaker 3: that they would have been completely confused. If the messages
Speaker 3: they were getting were different, it would be impossible for
Speaker 3: them to be able to develop their own positions. So
Speaker 3: that was number one on The second job then was
Speaker 3: to take that and to negotiate with the Iranians. The
Speaker 3: US did a lot of the heavy lifting. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to pretend otherwise, because that's absolutely true. But it
Speaker 3: was a six country negotiation with the EU chairing and
Speaker 3: leading it, and we shouldn't underestimate the role of any
Speaker 3: country because there were moments in that five years, four
Speaker 3: and a half years of my negotiation, when each country
Speaker 3: did something that actually held the talks together, and that's
Speaker 3: something we shouldn't forget. But getting that negotiation to work
Speaker 3: was about those two things coming together.
Speaker 1: Did you realize things about yourself through that process? Sorry
Speaker 1: to go all it can't lytical, but it's so hard
Speaker 1: to keep all those six countries going. Is it a
Speaker 1: very personal job or is it something you know you
Speaker 1: go on to autopilot and it's actually you know, you've
Speaker 1: got a briefing and you stick to it and so on.
Speaker 1: What's the balance between the personal and the state craft
Speaker 1: of the Foreign Office?
Speaker 3: Well, of course I've never been in the Foreign Office,
Speaker 3: and I was creating a brand new foreign service, and
Speaker 3: I'd never been a diplomat. But I'd been an negotiator,
Speaker 3: as it turned out, and you sort of recognize the
Speaker 3: skill set as leader of the House of Laws or
Speaker 3: as a minister in the Laws. I never had more
Speaker 3: than twenty two percent of the vault guaranteed, so everything
Speaker 3: I did was an negotiation. I'd shared a health authority,
Speaker 3: which meant merging hospitals. That was a negotiation. You sort
Speaker 3: of understand in yourself that there are skills that you've
Speaker 3: got that you recognize in yourself, that you use in
Speaker 3: that context. So I suppose the thing I discovered about
Speaker 3: me was that this was something I knew how to do.
Speaker 3: It was very challenging to carry the weight sometimes of
Speaker 3: the Iran negotiations. I didn't carry it along, but I
Speaker 3: carried it. You felt it. You'd be in a hotel
Speaker 3: for sometimes weeks on end, trying to work through very
Speaker 3: technical issues, trying to get an agreement that would hold,
Speaker 3: and knowing the consequences of not doing it could be extreme,
Speaker 3: and you felt that a lot. But there was a
Speaker 3: part of me that also thought, but I know how
Speaker 3: to have these conversations and how to maneuver my way,
Speaker 3: how to listen for the nuance. I often say to
Speaker 3: young diplomats, the first thing you do is listen to
Speaker 3: what they're saying between the words, because when people read
Speaker 3: out their speech or they give you their first line
Speaker 3: of attack, they're often saying things that you've just got
Speaker 3: to understand. And the more you can get underneath that,
Speaker 3: the more you can work out who you're dealing with
Speaker 3: and how to establish the kind of relationship that might
Speaker 3: get you there that really matters.
Speaker 2: But it's hard when you have nothing in common I
Speaker 2: guess in terms of values with someone on the other side.
Speaker 3: It's of course hard, but almost inevitably in a negotiation,
Speaker 3: you're not negotiating with your mates. You're negotiating with people
Speaker 3: who you're trying to change their behavior and who may
Speaker 3: have very little in common with you. But of course
Speaker 3: we're all human beings. And one of the things that
Speaker 3: is again I think is so important is that you
Speaker 3: should always find a way to do what I call
Speaker 3: the warm up. So in all the negotiations I do,
Speaker 3: I always spent time with people before we sat in
Speaker 3: the formal chairs, finding out what was happening. So in
Speaker 3: the Iran talks, I had dinner with the chief negotiator
Speaker 3: the night before the talks. Every single time we met
Speaker 3: with the Serbia and Kosovo dialogue, I met the two
Speaker 3: prime ministers separately for a cup of coffee beforehand, so
Speaker 3: you can pick up a lot of the new and
Speaker 3: just more generally, if you sit in this big room
Speaker 3: with loads of press photography going on in this big negotiation,
Speaker 3: it's much easier to begin the conversation as I always could,
Speaker 3: with thank you for dinner. It's really important to always
Speaker 3: keep a sense of yourself and also a sense of humor.
Speaker 3: There are some extraordinary moments in diplomacy and in negotiation
Speaker 3: where people do laugh, and often when you explain that
Speaker 3: people sort of say, how can you possibly share a
Speaker 3: joke with ofver? But funny things happen, weird things happen,
Speaker 3: and you have to be able to do that. It's
Speaker 3: a human thing and above everything, whatever you're doing in diplomacy,
Speaker 3: you're dealing with human beings who look at the world
Speaker 3: in a completely different way to you, look at you
Speaker 3: in a completely different way to the way you see yourself.
Speaker 3: But they are people and somewhere along the way, if
Speaker 3: you can find ways to connect, not to cross over
Speaker 3: to their side, but to connect, probably got better chance
Speaker 3: of getting to a solution.
Speaker 2: We're recording this before cures. Darmer actually hosts European leaders
Speaker 2: at Blenham Palace. This was basically a forum that was
Speaker 2: set up by Roshisunac. So is that awkward for the
Speaker 2: Prime Minister? What will he try and achieve from Europe?
Speaker 2: Which is I have to say quite distracted with political matters?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean it's a forum that Richie Snac was shairing,
Speaker 3: but it's set, of course, an original idea by President Macron,
Speaker 3: and the Foreign Office is very good working out how
Speaker 3: to manage transitions from one group of people to another,
Speaker 3: not least because actually in the previous few years we'd
Speaker 3: had a number of changes both in the Foreign Office
Speaker 3: and actually in Prime ministers, so they're kind of used
Speaker 3: to a bit of that. But the fundamentals so are
Speaker 3: already set anyway, because it's not just about what the
Speaker 3: British want out of that agenda. It is also a
Speaker 3: more collaborative discussion. I think what probably happens in the
Speaker 3: differences where things come up on the agenda and how
Speaker 3: they're dealt with, of course shows that things have changed.
Speaker 3: So we shall see how that translates into what happens afterwards.
Speaker 3: But there'll be a lot of curiosity, I'm sure as well.
Speaker 3: You know, who is the new Prime Minister, what's he
Speaker 3: like and so on, and a lot of countries wanting
Speaker 3: to see him visit them, wanting to see how far
Speaker 3: they can have, you know, real dialogue with him by
Speaker 3: laterals and so on. So it's going to be quite
Speaker 3: a busy time, I think.
Speaker 1: Kathy, how much will the EU say to the UK
Speaker 1: and return for collaboration on security and defense. That orcus
Speaker 1: and some of that Pacific tilt needs to go or
Speaker 1: may not be feasible for it to go. But how
Speaker 1: much do they see the UK's attempt to build relations
Speaker 1: around the world and in the Pacific as at odds
Speaker 1: with more collaboration.
Speaker 3: It was a problem in the past. I tared the
Speaker 3: Defense Minister's meetings for five years, and within that there
Speaker 3: was a desire to sort of try and collaborate effectively.
Speaker 3: It wasn't about creating something European in the sense that
Speaker 3: people sort of try and put this as a negative.
Speaker 3: It was about how do we best use the resources
Speaker 3: we've got, bearing in mind we effectively share the same
Speaker 3: concerns and have the same issues. So within that Britain
Speaker 3: already had lots of relationships other countries the same. I
Speaker 3: don't think it will really affect it. What they'll want
Speaker 3: to see is that there is a genuine desire to
Speaker 3: collaborate better than we've seen in recent years, and also
Speaker 3: to ensure that that fits well with NATO the EU
Speaker 3: through the for example, the European Defense Agency did some
Speaker 3: great work certainly that I remember on improvised explosive devices,
Speaker 3: on mid air refueling, on helicopter training, all of which
Speaker 3: benefited EU countries but also of course benefited NATO as well.
Speaker 3: So getting that collaboration so that everyone benefits will be
Speaker 3: really important. I think they'll be more interested in that
Speaker 3: than trying to stop Britain doing things.
Speaker 1: Kathy.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's quite a lot of fury over Trump's
Speaker 2: you know, vice presidential running mate Jdvans claimed that the
Speaker 2: UK is an Islamist country with nuclear weapons. How should
Speaker 2: the Prime minister deal with with comments like that?
Speaker 3: Well, as I understand it, David Lammy has already established
Speaker 3: some connections with the potential vice president, and I take
Speaker 3: the view I've had so much rhetoric from so many
Speaker 3: leaders over so many years that is about what I
Speaker 3: call a campaign rhetoric. You know, people say things. They
Speaker 3: say things because they're watching how the news covers issues.
Speaker 3: And as you'll know in America, you can get a
Speaker 3: story that you recognize as a brit but it has
Speaker 3: a particular spin or a particular angle, such that if
Speaker 3: you didn't know what was really going on in Britain,
Speaker 3: you might take a particular view. And what I don't
Speaker 3: know is of course why he thinks of where he's
Speaker 3: got this from. You know, what are the news outlers saying,
Speaker 3: what are the things he's reading? And so on. The
Speaker 3: most important thing is that the Prime Minister or the
Speaker 3: Foreign Secretary and others continue to work and build a
Speaker 3: relationships with both camps, both potential presidents, in order that
Speaker 3: the relationship that Britain has with the US, which is
Speaker 3: much much deeper and much more sort of strong than
Speaker 3: any individual president or Prime minister. But really try and
Speaker 3: work at that and not get sidetracked him much by
Speaker 3: what people say in the rhetoric, because as I say,
Speaker 3: over the years, I've some extraordinary things being said by
Speaker 3: leaders all over the place which you understand in their
Speaker 3: own context, they're not talking to you, They're actually talking
Speaker 3: to their own domestic audience in some particular way. Doesn't
Speaker 3: make it easier, but it makes it at least comprehensible
Speaker 3: from that point of view.
Speaker 1: But Kathy, what is undoubted is jd Vance and others.
Speaker 1: We interviewed Elbert Colby, who potentially will be a potential
Speaker 1: Trump the Second's national security advisor and the pivot away
Speaker 1: from Ukraine towards the Pacific or to China. How difficult
Speaker 1: is that going to be for the UK and others
Speaker 1: who want to support Ukraine.
Speaker 3: I think it's really important to understand that the war
Speaker 3: in Ukraine is a war on the European mainland. In
Speaker 3: other words, this is something that we have to see
Speaker 3: from our perspective. We don't necessarily always share the same
Speaker 3: perspective that they do across the Atlantic. For them, because
Speaker 3: of their pacific reach, they have different priorities. Doesn't mean
Speaker 3: these are not priorities for us, but maybe they're a
Speaker 3: little bit lower down. But Ukraine is really really important.
Speaker 3: It's really important because of the consequences of what might
Speaker 3: happen in the future if Ukraine is not able to
Speaker 3: protect its sovereignty, not able to continue as a fully
Speaker 3: functioning state. Now, having said that, we know how important
Speaker 3: the US is to the capability in the capacity of
Speaker 3: Ukraine to pursue its objectives and to operate in this war.
Speaker 3: So it will be important to try and make sure
Speaker 3: that support happens. But as you know, well, it's not
Speaker 3: just about the President, it's also about Congress. And you know,
Speaker 3: I was up on the hill only a few weeks ago.
Speaker 3: It's really important to understand it may not be as
Speaker 3: simple as whatever the President or some of his advisors say.
Speaker 3: It's going to be about worthy American Congress, where the
Speaker 3: people are and so on. So there's an opportunity I
Speaker 3: think that we can take whoever's in the White House
Speaker 3: in November and beyond into January when they take office,
Speaker 3: to be able to try and influence what happens.
Speaker 2: Kathy, what made you go into diplomacy? Would you stand
Speaker 2: ready to serve if you were called to be UK
Speaker 2: ambassador to the US?
Speaker 3: Well, those who've read the book now I found myself
Speaker 3: going into diplomacy per se, almost as a kind of
Speaker 3: will certainly go into Brussels. I think the media knew
Speaker 3: long before I did, because I watched it on the television,
Speaker 3: going around on the chicker tape, thinking that's interesting, I
Speaker 3: wonder if it's real. And by the end of the
Speaker 3: day I was in Brussels, what I didn't know was
Speaker 3: it would be six years before I came home. So
Speaker 3: I believe in public service, let's put it that way.
Speaker 3: And if you believe in public service, if there's something
Speaker 3: you can usefully do, then of course you do it.
Speaker 3: But that doesn't mean that there isn't a fantastic team.
Speaker 3: They certainly don't need me, so let's see what happens.
Speaker 3: Katy Ashton, thank you so much, Thank you thanks for
Speaker 3: listening to this week's In the City from Bloomberg. This
Speaker 3: episode was hosted by Meat Frantz in Laque with a
Speaker 3: Legro Stratton. It was produced by Summersati production support and
Speaker 3: sound designed by Most sus Adam Brandon. Francis Newman is
Speaker 3: our executive producer. Sage Bauman is Head of Podcasts Special
Speaker 3: thanks to Kathy Ashton. Please subscribe, rate, and review wherever
Speaker 3: you listen to podcasts.