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The hard-headedness came from my belief that we should never be ashamed of using foreign policy to help generate prosperity at home. For too long, the FCO had neglected its economic responsibilities. India was one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, yet we had fallen from their fourth biggest source of imports to their eighteenth in just one decade. We still exported more to Ireland than to the BRICS economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
I saw an opportunity to reposition our diplomatic network as a generator of trade and inward investment. Some sneered at ‘commercial diplomacy’; I made it a key plank of my foreign policy. We had a presence in 196 countries across the world. That was 196 potential shop windows in which to advertise Britain.
The realism was evident in our recognition that democracy wouldn’t take root at the drop of a hat – or bomb. Its components – the rule of law, a fair judiciary, property rights, a free press – take time to embed. This was not a disavowal of military action. Instead, I saw it as a course correction from the excessive interventionism of the New Labour years.
I admired Tony Blair’s passion for trying to solve problems and to intervene in difficult situations. But his foreign-policy actions lacked the consideration of a good driver – too keen to keep his foot on the accelerator and insufficient in his use of either brakes or rear-view mirror. At the same time, what I didn’t want was for the pendulum to swing too far in the other direction and rule out intervention altogether. There are occasions when you have to intervene. The failure to intervene in Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s influenced the rush to intervene in Iraq. I didn’t want Iraq to stop us intervening somewhere that it was desperately needed in the future. Every case and conflict is different.
When it came to the ‘special relationship’ with the USA, I had always felt it was special to me personally: I had huge admiration for the United States, loved spending time there, and as a child of the Cold War I was clear that it was our best friend and ally. It seemed obvious that we should want to maintain, and where possible enhance, the special relationship. And I believe that word – ‘special’ – is merited. In my view, the intensity of the partnership between our intelligence services justifies the title on its own, quite aside from the powerful ties of history, language, culture, trade and values.
But it shouldn’t be our only special relationship. I wanted to carve out privileged partnerships with global giants like China and India, and to restore bonds which I felt had been weakened with Australia, Canada, New Zealand (no recent Labour foreign secretary had been to Australia, for example) and our other Commonwealth allies, like Malaysia and Singapore.
In the Gulf there was a whole series of countries that saw Britain as their oldest ally and friend – we needed to show that meant something to us too. Then there were the South American countries, many of which had long-standing historical relationships with Britain, such as Chile and Colombia, which were on the rise again, but with which Britain was not engaging properly.
The relationship-building with foreign leaders starts with the phone calls. The call with President Obama was followed by calls from all the foreign leaders over the next few days. Such conversations are useful, but it is the one-on-ones you have in which relationships are really cemented. I look back on those meetings now, and on what I was trying to achieve, and I can see them falling into four categories.
There are the agendas you began and which yielded real and lasting results. There are those you started but which got nowhere. There are those you wish you had pushed harder. And there are some you wish you had never started at all.
My first visit – and it is important which country you pick first – would be to France. With the Entente Cordiale and the fact that I knew Nicolas Sarkozy, it made sense.
There was one man who would prove essential to all this: my foreign affairs private secretary, Tom Fletcher. Tom had worked for Gordon Brown, and became my support, sounding board and source of information about virtually every country on Earth. He correctly warned me before this first trip that Sarko would be my ‘best friend and biggest rival’.
Sarkozy made great statements publicly and privately about our friendship and how well we would work together. Knowing my love of tennis, he presented me with two state-of-the-art Babolat racquets, one yellow, one blue, reflecting the coalition colours.
The truth of our relationship was slightly different. Although we were both conservative politicians, and similar in many ways, even at this early meeting I could see how divergent some of our ideas were. His criticisms of the European Union tended to be that it wasn’t doing enough, whereas in most areas I thought it was doing too much. He had the traditional Gallic and Gaullist distrust of finance and a suspicion of the City of London. I wanted a more balanced economy, for sure, but was totally opposed to harming what was a vital British asset, or sanctioning even more European action in this area.
With the warm atmospherics but the more difficult policy obstacles, I saw that our relationship was going to be strongest in terms of defence, security and countering terrorism – and therefore that we should focus as much as possible on those things. The ‘Lancaster House Agreement’ we would sign within the year was a step change in defence and security cooperation between the UK and France, including collaboration over the most sensitive of all issues, our nuclear deterrents. But this is an agenda where I wish we had gone even further.
France and Britain both share a global reach and a global ambition. We are Europe’s only nuclear powers, and have Europe’s only two properly capable armed forces. We’re both permanent members of the UN Security Council. Our relationship within NATO became stronger with Sarkozy’s brave decision to take France back into the alliance as a full political and military member. If we could bury some of the mutual suspicions about each other, the military and security cooperation could be far deeper, and could lead to great economies of scale.
Relations between us, having started so strongly, would dip during my first European Council meeting the following month. Sarko was complaining about the lack of effective action in the EU, whereas when it came to my turn to speak, I bemoaned the ongoing transfer of powers to Brussels. I could feel the room collectively sighing – particularly Sarko. It was a taste of things to come.
Contrast this with the bonhomie on display when he came to visit us later at No. 10 with his wife, the model and singer Carla Bruni. Waiting behind the famous black door before their arrival, I asked Tom, protocol-wise, whether I should kiss Carla. ‘Definitely,’ he replied. ‘How many times?’ I asked. He left his answer until the moment the door opened: ‘As many times as you can get away with, Prime Minister.’ I met them both with a huge smile on my face.
With Angela Merkel, the tone was less emotionally charged, though she put on a full military welcome for my first visit to Berlin as PM, straight after I’d been to Paris. I found her logical, sensible and focused – clear about what you wanted and what she wanted. But at the same time she was fun, and often had a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
Although we had made up over the EPP, it was still an issue of concern for her. She wanted the strongest possible conservative bloc in the European Parliament. I responded (again) that my new group would be allies rather than enemies of the EPP on most issues, while taking a different view on EU integration.
In the end, I would have a much better relationship with Merkel than with Sarkozy. I was fascinated by the dynamic between them. Despite their nickname, ‘Merkozy’ – a press confection expressing the idea that theirs was a close alliance – her real attitude to him seemed to me a mild, eye-rolling disdain. I remember suggesting to her that the three of us should do something on promoting more free-trade deals between the EU and other countries and regions. She said, ‘Let’s do that together and let’s get Nicolas along later, because he can be quite histrionic.’
A few months later at the G8 and G20 Merkel and I spent most of our time sitting next to each other. That’s where the relationship grew stronger. During one of the economic sessions at the G20 in Toronto, England and Germany were playing in the World Cup. She was getting regular text updates about the game from her team, while I was pushing the ‘refresh’ button on the BBC Sport website and getting frustrated at the slow wi-fi. At one point she leaned over and whispered, ‘I’m very sorry, David, but you’re 2–0 down.’
After the meeting broke up, we agreed to go and watch the second half together, along with our teams of advisers. We drank beer and chatted, with one or two moments relieving the gloom of the result (Germany won 4–1). At one stage the commentator said, ‘And now England makes an aggressive assault on the German defences,’ and Angela turned to me, smiling, and said, ‘We’re never allowed to say things like that at home.’
While I was to build a strong and trusting relationship with Merkel, I would also put this down as an agenda I didn’t carry far enough. Together we would chalk up some important collaborations, opposing attempts to allow protectionism at the G20, fighting off attacks on the need to cut budget deficits and achieving what many saw as impossible: cutting the EU budget. But in the end the relationship didn’t deliver everything I needed.
One diplomatic relationship that never even began was my attempt to appoint a new ambassador to the Vatican, as the current one was retiring. Who better, I thought, than Ann Widdecombe, a former Tory MP and one of Britain’s most prominent Catholics?
But when I called her from my office in No. 10, she didn’t believe it was me, and said, ‘I think this is a hoax call.’ On and on I went, trying to convince her. When she finally conceded that it was probably the PM she was speaking to, I began to tell her about the appointment I had in mind. But just as I thought I was winning her round, she apologised and said she couldn’t – she had committed to take part in Strictly Come Dancing.
Diplomatic relationships are also made and nurtured at multilateral gatherings, and there were two major ones during my earliest weeks in office. The annual summit of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK, the US and the European Union – the Group of Eight, or G8 – was held in Muskoka, Ontario, in June 2010, followed by the G20 in Toronto.
My overriding aims for my debut on the world stage were simple. I wanted backing for our economic strategy at home, and to defuse the ‘fiscal stimulus versus deficit reduction’ row that was brewing between the big nations. My view was straightforward: fiscal stimulus – i.e. unfunded tax cuts or additional spending paid for by more borrowing – was fine for those countries that could afford it. Britain couldn’t. The stimulus we needed was the monetary boost being provided by the Bank of England and pro-enterprise policies, as well as support for free trade and opposition to protectionist moves internationally.
The discussion I remember best from that G8 is actually a minor bust-up I caused, which had the side effect of reminding the Americans that we were their closest allies. I mentioned that part of the answer to all the things we had been talking about – the Middle East peace process, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan – was a stronger relationship with Turkey, and harnessing its support as an EU ally as well as a NATO ally.
Turkey. It sent Sarkozy off. Merkel backed Sarkozy, I think because she felt she had to. Obama backed me.
The scenery in Muskoka was incredibly beautiful – pine forests dotted with deep lakes. I have always been an enthusiastic open-water swimmer, and my prime ministerial wild-swimming career would take me – and Liz, who always joined me – from the Shetland Islands to Australia. On day one of my first G8 I started with a swim before breakfast, with two speedboats full of police bobbing around at either end of the lake.
Berlusconi got to hear of my swim and, determined not to be outdone, turned up at one of our first group meetings showing off pictures of him in his twenties standing on the shore of the Mediterranean in swimming trunks. Obama and Merkel looked perplexed, but were polite. ‘Very nice, Silvio,’ everyone was saying.
As we all prepared to leave the G8 for the far more urban setting of the G20, I was told that bad weather had grounded our helicopter, which would mean a three-hour car journey instead. My team immediately pulled some strings to get me a lift with Obama in his more robust helicopter, Marine One.
I was driven to the helipad with his team, and I used the time to explain my reasons for setting a deadline for bringing combat troops out of Afghanistan (which I’ll discuss in the next chapter). The reaction from one of Obama’s advisers was, ‘Oh, Afghanistan – we’re done with that.’
Once we were on board, Obama and I swapped stories about family and work life. He was fascinated by the fact that we were in coalition. At one stage he said, ‘David, if you were an American politician I think you would be on the soft right of the Democrat Party.’ I had been a strong supporter of George Bush Senior and a fan of Ronald Reagan. But with the changes in US politics – and the emphasis on ‘guns, gays and God’ in so much of the Republican Party – I wasn’t sure I could disagree.
In many ways the G20 is the more important of the two gatherings, bringing together the G8 nations with the new and rising giants, China and India. But with the extra size comes more formality and the tiresome reading of prepared speeches. Genuine dialogue, interaction and argument have to find their place on the ‘margins’ of the meeting, where much of the real business is done in bilateral or informal gatherings.
There was one such moment in those margins when Obama, Merkel and I were discussing the handing over of European travel data to the Americans to help in the fight against terrorism, which was being delayed by the fact that a required EU directive was being blocked by the Parliament. Merkel uttered the immortal words to Obama: ‘Well, of course we’ve given the European Parliament far too much power.’
The strength of the G20 has been (and to some extent remains) as a mechanism to agree and process better financial regulation. As with the G8, much of the discussion concerned how we should deal with the financial crisis.
I talked about the importance in our case of getting the budget deficit down, and I found lots of people willing to listen. Britain was blazing something of a trail – and this formed part of the wider debate at the G20, indeed the wider debate across the world, about deficit reduction versus stimulus.
However, the idea that there was some great division about this at the G20 was overblown. The IMF approach was clear: those countries with high budget deficits whose stability looked under threat needed to deal with their deficits; those that could afford stimulus should consider it. The IMF was more focused on trading imbalances between countries, and indeed between regions of the world.
In a meeting that brought together China, Saudi Arabia and Germany on the one hand with their enormous trade and financial surpluses, and the United States, Britain and much of Europe on the other with their significant trade deficits, it was possible to have a serious conversation about the scale of the financial imbalances in the world. To some extent these imbalances lay behind the financial crisis. The huge build-up of financial surpluses in the creditor nations, combined with the long period of low interest rates globally, had led to the ‘search for yield’ in which huge risks were taken.
Regulation of banks had become too lax, and leverage ratios too high (i.e. too much lending allowed against too little capital). This had led to the creation of too many inappropriate financial instruments, like the subprime mortgage bonds. When they turned out to be worth so much less than advertised, the world teetered on the edge of financial collapse. From this it followed that we needed, yes, to improve regulation and to ensure that banks had adequate levels of capital; but we should also deal with the underlying problem: the imbalances.
The regulatory changes that followed were sensible, but what I felt was still missing was the need for the IMF when it came to identifying financial imbalances, and for the WTO, when it came to calling out protectionist moves, to act with more vigour. They should lead the debate, and not be frightened to judge countries that were dragging their feet or heading in the wrong direction.
There was also an opportunity in this forum to build a reputation for Britain as the country that is always championing and facilitating free trade. The French were pushing back. The Indians were defensive. The Americans were saying that the Doha Round, the ongoing attempt to reduce global barriers, wouldn’t benefit them by any significant margin.
But even if we weren’t making the progress I wanted, my idea was to mark us out as the most open, globalised, free-trading, anti-protectionist nation on Earth. I was forming alliances with the Germans, Turks and Mexicans. (The full Doha package never made it, but parts of it were carved out into a Trade Facilitation Agreement that Britain championed and helped to get across the line years later, in 2014.)
Generally the summits had fallen into the ‘yielding results’ category, though there was one moment of farce, involving the colourful and volatile president of Argentina, Cristina Kirchner. Officials were worried that she was going to corner me at a drinks party and harangue me about the Falklands, and warned me that I should be robust about my deep belief in the islanders’ right to self-determination.
But when we came to meet, she didn’t even mention the British territory. ‘How can you be tough on Latin American countries’ budgets when your deficit is so high?’ was her line of attack. The only thing she seemed intent on invading was my personal space. We were locked in this Argentine tango where I kept moving backwards as she got closer and closer.
Gabby had already briefed our lobby pack that I would kick back very hard against Argentina if it raised the future of the Falkland Islands. ‘Would’ became ‘did’ as the press hurried to hit their deadlines, and the next day the Sunday Express splashed with ‘Cameron … Tells Argies: Hands Off Falklands’.
It was one occasion where, following a complete falsehood, neither I nor the press wanted to correct the record. We were genuinely all in it together.
Then, in July 2010, came my first trip to America as prime minister.
I knew that getting my relationship right with Barack Obama was essential. So many of the things I wanted to achieve in foreign policy – from bringing an end to the conflict in Afghanistan to pushing for progress on climate change – would depend on the approach taken by the US.
I had met Obama when he was a senator, and we had got on well. I remember asking him if he thought he was going to win the 2008 presidential election. He said he hoped so, but he thought he had a lot of things to get over – the ‘inexperience thing’, the ‘black thing’, the ‘Muslim thing’. I admired his frankness and candour, and we had built on our bond at the recent G8 and G20.
The protocol – bilaterals, meetings of our teams, press conferences – of that visit all went to plan, and Obama insisted on giving me a personal tour of his garden and the private apartments at the White House. He described the place as a ‘beautiful cage – but still a cage’ and showed me a bust of Churchill he had put in pride of place outside his bedroom.
The relationship was plain for all to see in the easy and instant connection we forged – one that was rooted in the values we shared.
Yes, he was a Democrat and I was a Conservative. But when it came to the issues in front of us, we didn’t need time to reach agreement. We were both committed to the defeat of the Taliban, but believed the war in Afghanistan shouldn’t go on forever. We agreed that lethal force should be used to defeat terrorism, and were passionate about progress on climate change and development. We were also pro-free trade, and wanted to counter the forces of protectionism that risked dangerous trade wars. Indeed, I always sensed that Obama was envious of our political system. I was in coalition, but still had the freedom and power to go further on these issues than he could.
My impressions on that visit were that he was a likeable, decent man with a great sense of humour and, as a former law professor, the ability to provide a brilliant analysis of the most complex situations. What a relief it was, I thought, that someone with good values and buckets of common sense was in the White House, in the most powerful job in the world.
The strength of the relationship also mattered at that first meeting, as there were some particularly tricky bilateral issues to deal with, including the horrific oil spill from BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. This was being billed as a showdown between the US and the UK, between Obama and me. US officials continued to refer to the company as ‘British Petroleum’, though it had dropped the name in 2000 after a series of mergers and had, as I pointed out to Barack, the same percentage of American shareholders as British ones.
I accepted – as did the company – that it would pay a hefty fine in compensation, but the US system seemed to be hell-bent on breaking the business altogether. Not only would that threaten the livelihoods and pensions of many people – British and American – it would also leave this important company weak and susceptible to takeover, perhaps by a state-owned or state-controlled business from Russia or China. How could that be in our interests?
There was also an issue of basic fairness. When US-based companies – like Halliburton, which was one of the three companies involved in Deepwater Horizon’s operation – were not paying unlimited damages, why should a British-based one be singled out for such treatment?
I made all these points, but it was initially hard to tell how much impact they had. At least Obama could see how strongly we felt about the issue.
The most significant question we discussed in Washington was whether and how to talk to the Taliban. Though I was to make progress on this in the following years, it was another of the agendas I wish I had pushed harder.
After the summits and America came Turkey – not a country that is usually found on the itinerary of new prime ministers’ Grand Tours. But I was eager to change that. In a bid to reach out to the powers of the future, I wanted to go there as early as possible.
I had always believed Turkey’s success was important. It was a potentially powerful ally to Britain – vital to the Middle East peace process and in halting a nuclear Iran. It was a fast-growing economy of considerable size – ‘our Brazil’, I called it. But above all, it is one of the world’s most prosperous Muslim countries, proof that Muslim democracies and Muslim market economies can work.
For these reasons I believed that, in the long term, Turkey ought to be in the European Union. As I had said in my G8 speech – which apparently drove Sarkozy almost mad – I wanted to ‘pave the road from Ankara to Brussels’. I wasn’t saying that millions of Turks should automatically be allowed free movement across Europe (a stick I was to be thoroughly beaten with later). I was saying that in a flexible, multi-speed Europe, where membership meant different things for different countries – the Europe we wanted and would argue for – Turkey should be inside the wider tent. The EU should not be reserved for Western Christendom alone. (Incidentally, Boris Johnson thought this too.)
I spent a lot of time with prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He was canny and easy to get along with, and I was as frank as I could be. I told him I thought the Turks were in danger of going in the wrong direction. That there was a growth of Islamist sentiment which his party seemed to promote and appease, rather than challenge. If we genuinely wanted to move Turkey closer to Europe, he needed to help his friends by demonstrating the extent of reform and concern for democratic and human rights. And while Turkey had been one of the few Muslim countries to have a good dialogue with Israel, it was now leading the verbal onslaught against it.
Enhancing the British–Turkish relationship was an example of an agenda that ran into the ground. The trade issues progressed well, but the fact was that the mood in Europe was turning against any form of Turkish membership – and Erdoğan’s real ambitions were heading in a different direction.
From Ankara I flew to India to lead my first-ever trade delegation. I loaded up a plane with CEOs, cabinet ministers, top officials, heads of museums and galleries, even Olympians Kelly Holmes and Steve Redgrave.
This was commercial diplomacy in practice – and it was an agenda that yielded enormous results. We more than doubled exports to China and South Korea, and became the foreign investment capital of Europe, something that would be a key driver of the explosion in private sector jobs in the years that followed.
When it came to India, I argued that we needed a modern partnership – not one tinged with colonial guilt, but alive to the possibilities of the world’s oldest democracy and the world’s largest democracy. Many of Britain’s most successful business leaders and cultural figures are from the Indian diaspora community and would be our greatest weapons in that endeavour. I was proud to have many of them, like Priti Patel, Shailesh Vara, Alok Shama and Paul Uppal, on the Conservative benches in the House of Commons.
I got on well with prime minister Manmohan Singh. He was a saintly man, but he was robust on the threats India faced. On a later visit he told me that another terrorist attack like that in Mumbai in July 2011, and India would have to take military action against Pakistan.
Then came my curveball: Italy.
‘What’s the dress code for dinner?’ I asked one of my team before we set off for Rome. ‘A thong,’ he replied.
What a dinner it was. Everything was tricolour – mozzarella, avocado and tomato for the first course, then white, green and red pasta to follow. And so it went on. As did Berlusconi. Outrageous joke after outrageous joke – none of them funny.
Italian politics was a riddle to me. What did they see in a billionaire playboy with apparently no filter on what he said – or did? He once interrupted a long night at an EU Council by pushing the button on his microphone and announcing to the other twenty-six leaders that if the meetings were going to run on like this, ‘you should all do the same as me – and take a mistress in Brussels’.
On another occasion he walked into the room where we held the interminable meetings to find me chatting with the prime minister of one of the smaller countries whom he clearly didn’t know. When I introduced them he said, ‘You must come to Rome and meet my wife – you look just like her lover.’ That one, I confess, did make me laugh.
Over time I came to realise that, far from putting people off, Berlusconi’s unscripted brashness was part of the attraction. Italy had suffered so much from corruption in its political system that his eccentricities were a permanent reminder that he was different.
For all his loucheness, Berlusconi shared some values with me: he was pro-free market, pro-enterprise and anti-regulation. We tried to unblock a lot of foreign investments, including a BP gas terminal in Italy that had been in limbo for twenty years.
Italy was the fourth-largest European economy, a net contributor to the EU budget and a major player when it came to security. Yet it was often left out of discussions between the ‘big three’ – Germany, France and the UK. I thought we could rectify that, making Italy a big ally on NATO and on building a more flexible Europe.
There were four Italian PMs while I was in office, and I was much closer to Enrico Letta and Matteo Renzi, who followed Berlusconi and Mario Monti. But I have to accept that, while Italy was a strong NATO ally and helpful during the Libya intervention, my attempt to put rocket boosters under the Anglo–Italian relationship was an example of an agenda that didn’t get very far.
Another agenda I hoped would produce real and lasting results was China.
The country had gone from the world’s eleventh-biggest economy to the second-biggest in just twenty-one years. Eight hundred million people had been lifted out of poverty – all because this communist country had embraced the capitalist principle of liberal economics.
Not that ours was a likely alliance. For them, we were still their oppressors from the nineteenth-century Opium Wars, and awkward neighbours during the years when Hong Kong was a British territory. For us, no matter how liberal China’s economics, it was still a one-party, authoritarian, communist state, with a woeful record on human rights and a tendency to rip off intellectual property, keep its markets closed where we opened ours, censor the internet and spy on just about everyone.
Yet the advantages of a deeper connection were undeniable. Thousands of Chinese students and tourists flocked to Britain each year. Chinese people loved our history and culture. With a burgeoning Chinese middle class, there was a massive potential market there, and although Labour had made some inroads, it remained largely untapped.
So, China: opportunity or risk? The coalition was split. Nick had been campaigning on the human-rights issues for years. And William was sceptical about the Communist Party’s intentions. He wrote me a letter during our first month in office with a stark warning about China ‘free-riding on wider global public goods’ – obstructing international action if it conflicted with its own domestic imperatives.
My stance – and George’s – was more pragmatic. It wasn’t, of course, that I didn’t care about human rights, or that I trusted a party which appointed one ‘paramount leader’ every five years. It was just that I thought there was a longer game to play, and a better way of getting what we wanted.
Yes, our ambition was largely economic, but an essential outcome of that economic partnership would be the greater political leverage it would give us. In other words, the trust that we could build from doing business together could lead to trust across a whole range of areas.
Naturally, we would always be vigilant when it came to China. We were hard-headed about the threat it posed, instructing our security services to map and counter the Chinese threat. Only by understanding and guarding against that could we trade with the country.
This would be the best, the safest, way to bring China into the rules-based international system – through rules on trade, but also rules on climate change, terrorism and human rights. The more it was part of the UN, the WTO, the G20, the more cooperative our relationship would be. We could influence its views on everything from climate change to Burma to North Korea. Which was vital – China would be a linchpin in all these matters.
On my first visit to China as prime minister in November 2010, with four cabinet ministers and forty-three business leaders, I knew I’d have to walk a tightrope, on the one hand trying to strike trade deals and showcase what we had to offer investors, and on the other raising issues around human rights and democracy.
Nothing was going to stop the Chinese in their pursuit of growth – getting people out of the countryside into the cities, into employment and out of poverty. If you were useful – if you could supply inward investment, exports and scientific knowledge, as we could – then you were considered a partner. ‘Transactional’ is the FCO jargon for that sort of relationship.
But there was still a tightrope to walk. So, when I went to Beijing University, I decided to make a more wide-ranging speech, focusing on the importance of democracy and the rule of law. Given that you can be locked up in China for so much as criticising the socialist state, going further than most Western leaders in promoting democracy would, I reasoned, more than offset any perceived obsequiousness in our economic dealings.
I didn’t quite stir a revolution. But I did provoke something when I said: ‘The rise in economic freedom in China in recent years has been hugely beneficial to China and to the world. I hope that in time this will lead to a greater political opening.’ The first question from a student after my speech was about what advice I’d give to the Communist Party in China in an age when more countries were having plural politics. An amazing noise went around the room, half admiration and half shock. I gave a measured answer about our countries having two very different systems. But as I looked around at the sea of faces I thought: is this system really going to last? My conclusion was that, in its current form, it couldn’t. After all, surely this was now a consumer society in which people had increasing amounts of choice over their lives. How could the ruling party frustrate that when it came to politics?
While my fundamental view hasn’t altered – change, in some form, will come – multiple visits to China have led me to a more nuanced view. The primacy given by both government and people to economic growth. The fierce sense of pride and exceptionalism. The attention given by the nation’s rulers to emerging trends and problems across the country. All these things mean that China’s path to greater pluralism may be a very long one, with a different destination to our own.
Given that so many other countries were trying to align themselves economically with China, this incident, and the unfortunate poppy set-to, which happened on the same visit, weren’t exactly welcome. A three-day visit to the UK by Li Keqiang, who was heavily tipped to replace Wen Jiabao as premier, gave us a chance to up our game. Li, who received red-carpet treatment, made it clear that some of my comments had not been welcome. But despite that we would make real inroads.
Finally, there is an agenda I really wish I had never started. That was the British bid to host the 2018 World Cup.
Britain had a strong case: the best stadia, the most enthusiastic supporters, club teams that are followed across the world, and a football-mad culture. We had also learned a lot from our successful bid for the 2012 Olympics.
The biggest barrier to bringing the tournament home for the first time since 1966 was the notorious world football governing body, FIFA, and its susceptibility to corruption. The bid also pitched us against Russia, a country with a government quite prepared to do whatever it took to win.
We threw everything into beating Russia – and Belgium and the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain – to host the 2018 Cup. I had the FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, to No. 10. He even got to hold Florence – a privilege reserved for presidents and monarchs, I joked at the time. Looking back, knowing what I know now, it makes me wince.
Then, in December 2010, I spent three days in Zürich, where the bidding process was taking place for both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. With Prince William and David Beckham by my side, my confidence grew. We had the best bid – and a dream team to bring it home.
The process was rather like speed dating, with an allotted amount of time with each voting nation’s representatives to try to persuade them to back our bid. The three of us pleaded with people from Cyprus to Paraguay. America’s representative, a man called Chuck Blazer, was so enormous that as he got up to leave, his chair went with him.
The corrupt undertones were all there, but, typically British, we gave it our best and got through it with jokes. Vladimir Putin’s approach was classic. He suddenly cancelled his appearance, claiming that the whole competition was riddled with corruption.
