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.
The moment of our presentation approached, and my role was to kick it off with a short, off-the-cuff speech. I confessed to Prince William that I was nervous. He told me not to be – and just to imagine Chuck Blazer naked.
The three of us stood up and gave our pitch. We were followed by a video accompanied by Elbow’s ‘One Day Like This’. It was stirring stuff, and we got a strong ovation.
Our confidence grew. Six nations promised that they would vote for us in the first round: South Korea, Trinidad and Tobago, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, USA and England.
How many votes did we end up with? Two.
Russia, whose bid was fraught with problems including racism, won the chance to host the 2018 World Cup. Forty-degree Qatar, hardly a footballing hub, got 2022. Putin didn’t need to come. The fish had been bought and sold before we’d even got to the marketplace.
David Beckham was upset and angry. ‘I don’t mind people lying to me, but not to my prime minister and future king,’ he said. Blatter said we were just ‘bad losers’.
In the years that followed, a criminal investigation into the way the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups were chosen took place. Nine of the twenty-two members of the FIFA Executive Committee who awarded them have been punished, indicted or died before facing charges, including Chuck Blazer, who admitted fraud, money laundering and taking bribes on the 1998 and 2010 World Cups. For seventeen years Sepp Blatter presided over an organisation riddled with corruption. He has been banned from football for six years, and his plaque removed from FIFA headquarters.
One issue that proved to be more prevalent than I had expected before I became prime minister was corruption. I kept on seeing it for myself: from Omar al-Bashir’s refugee camps in Sudan to Blatter’s boardroom in Zürich. Those same forces that had denied Britain the World Cup – bribery, lack of transparency, collusion, fraud – were depriving people around the world of safer, healthier, wealthier lives.
At international summits we focused on everything – security, poverty, growth, aid, the environment. But we seldom said a word about one of the biggest drivers of these things: corruption. I resolved to spend my time in government – and after it – trying to change that.
14
Afghanistan and the Armed Forces
When I took office there were more than 10,000 British troops in Afghanistan, engaged in a conflict that had lasted nearly a decade. That made me the first prime minister to come to power from a different party when the country was at war since 1951 – the year Churchill replaced Attlee while British troops were fighting in Korea.
I spent more time on Afghanistan – visiting, reading, discussing, deliberating, and yes, worrying – than on any other issue. The burden weighed heavily upon me every single day until the final British combat soldier left Camp Bastion in 2014. I still care deeply about Afghanistan’s future today. And I will always remember the families of the fallen, and those living with life-changing injuries because of their service.
Many leaders have written about what it’s like to send brave men and women into battle. My reflections are about inheriting that responsibility and handling a conflict whose aim had become ambiguous and whose unpopularity was growing.
I supported the decision to send troops to help rebels overturn the Taliban government in 2001. The ‘invasion’ of Afghanistan was justified. The brutal Taliban regime, which controlled 90 per cent of the country, was harbouring al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11. It was continuing to train jihadists and plot attacks against the West. When asked to expel Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, it had refused. The US had no sensible choice but to act. And