policy began with what I suppose might be called a patriot’s view of British history: not one that ignored its flaws, but nevertheless one that felt great pride in our role and contribution. I didn’t accept the idea that Britain was facing inevitable relative decline. Previous predictions of our demise in the 1960s and 70s had been defied by the economic success of the Thatcher years, with their global exports of privatisation, shareholder capitalism and the rule of law.
It saddened me to see some commentators talk about an inexorable waning of our influence. I understood that with the rise of India and China power was moving south and east, but I didn’t accept that Britain couldn’t forge its own important role in the world.
We still had some great advantages: our time zone placing us between Asia and the Americas, English as the global language, our universities and science base, expertise in aid and diplomacy, widely respected armed forces and an unequalled network of global alliances, including NATO, the EU, the Commonwealth, the G8, G20, IMF, and permanent membership of the UN Security Council.
The Labour governments had had some foreign policy successes. There had been the actions to save Sierra Leone and Kosovo, and Gordon Brown had used the G20 effectively to help coordinate action after the global economic crisis. But at the same time their foreign policy had been disproportionately defined by two relationships: with the US and the EU. Elsewhere, they had closed embassies and downgraded the importance of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Far too many old alliances had been allowed to slide.
It was clear to me that, alongside our economic rescue, reasserting Britain’s global status would be one of our biggest missions in government. In fact, the two were intertwined. Building a stronger economy relied upon the goods and services we sold abroad and the investment we attracted at home. And our global reputation rested upon our ability to fix our economy.
I approached our foreign policy challenges as a ‘liberal conservative’, not a ‘neo-conservative’. While I understood and sympathised with the doctrine of Bush and Blair – that spreading democracy around the world helped peace and prosperity – I felt that their rhetoric and actions didn’t reflect the difficulties of achieving such change. I wanted a foreign policy that was practical, hard-headed and realistic.
My practical approach made me sceptical of the view of some in Whitehall that the job of the politicians was simply to set the overall strategy and leave its implementation to officials. Some of the military top brass were particularly keen on this, and thoroughly disliked it when I interfered in deployments of ships, troops or submarines. But you cannot always separate tactics and strategy: the politicians need to be intricately involved in both.
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