 My name is Thio Kallig. I'm chair of the UK group in the Institute for International and European Affairs and it's my very great pleasure to welcome you this afternoon to a webinar with Philip Stevens. Philip Stevens, who is of Irish origin from County Mayo, is the chief political commentator for the Financial Times, a very influential journalist in the UK for well over 30 years and it really is a very great pleasure for me to welcome him. The webinar is public, it's on the record and if you have questions as you go along you can put them and send them to us and we will put them to Philip afterwards. The format will be Philip will talk for 10-15 minutes and then he and I will have a discussion for maybe 10 minutes or so and then we'll open up for questions. So Philip the floor is yours, you're most welcome. Thank you so much for inviting me and thank you for everyone who's tuned in. My only wish is that we were, I was physically in Dublin as opposed to talking to you all through the screens. Well to promote my book it's called Britain Alone, The Path from Suez to Brexit and I wrote it because I thought it was important that Brexit, this sort of decision in some respects out of nowhere in 2016 needed to be seen at least in British terms but also internationally in a wider longer context because Brexit really is a bookend in the story of Britain's struggle to find itself, to find its place in the world after since the end of the Second World War. I mean my contention is that for 75 years now Britain has been trying to work out what sort of country, what sort of nation it should be, what it should contribute, what it should expect from the international, from its international role and many of you will have heard this famous remark made by Dean Atchison who was Secretary of State to Truman at the end of the war but also advised Kennedy at the beginning of the 60s and famously in 1962 Atchison rather rebuked Harold Macmillan's government to talk what he talked about Britain as a nation that had lost an empire but failed to find a role. So looking for a role has been I think the story and there have been two, I think consistent threads in that story. The first I think has been the tension between what one might say is Britain's exalted ambition and the realities of its new post-war economic and political position. Britain won the war at least that's what we told ourselves we might have given a war-con part to the Americans and the Soviet Union but it'd been Britain. We had stood alone against Hitler and won the war so we should expect to be a remain a great power that was obvious but the reality of course was that the war had bankrupted us. America had prospered, grown mightily, the Soviet Union had emerged as the other superpower and we while still a significant nation in Europe, a big economy, a big industrial base, we had been much diminished by the war, relatively speaking at least to the United States and the Soviet Union. So here was this first collision between our image of ourselves that we had of ourselves and the realities of the world, the world beyond and the second collision I think has been one between a sense of where we physically, almost geographically, sit in the world. Are we a European nation or are we and you all have heard Boris Johnson talking about global Britain, are we a world power, are we European or are we Atlanticists should our main ally be the United States or should we as Edward Heath wanted to do in the 1970s go full-hearted into the European common market or communities it was then and the Union and those tensions are rubbed up against each other all the way through and at points we found a certain balance and I would argue during our membership of the EU we found a long period of balance but the tensions have always been apparent in this in the swings and you know one of the things that struck me as I wrote the book and I have a chapter on this is the part of our economic history since the war is a procession of sterling crises and against those sterling crises you couldn't map our retreat from our overseas first from empire but then from the Commonwealth and then from the military bases that until the end of the 1960s we had in places far away as Singapore, Malaya, etc and I in trying to write this story I suppose I divide the period up into three parts the first part is from 1945 to Suez in 1956 and Suez by Suez I mean the Anglo-French operation expedition ill-fated misjudged expedition to try and reclaim the Suez Canal from the Egyptian leader Nasser in 56 and during that period from 45 to 56 this was the age I think of delusion or illusion delusion when we still imagined we were an empire and that the setbacks we'd faced economically in the war were setbacks and that we would bounce back and you know Church had sat down with them with Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta to map the Europe after the war he'd sat down with Truman and Stalin at Potsdam we were one and this was a favorite phrase of the times we were one of the big three we were a great power and we imagined you know as I said that you know even after we gave independence to India in 47 that really you know our ingenuity our industrial strengths would bring us back to the top table and the danger I start the book with my favorite quote from the whole period and this was from a scientist in Whitehall a chap called Henry Tizard who'd worked for Churchill during the war and in 1949 he gave a warning to his colleagues and it's a warning that should be echoing around Whitehall even as we speak and I'm going to look to quote it now he what Tizard said he wrote in a minute he said we're not a great power and we never will be again we are a great nation but if we continue to behave like a great power we will cease to be a great nation and there I think in that quote you have this central tension between our not being not being able to give up our history history is a global imperial power and face the future now that period came to an abrupt end with Suez and to the Eden then prime minister and his some French counterpart sent in the troops militarily it was quite successful the trouble is that we hadn't told the Americans in fact we'd lied to the Americans about it in fact Eden had lied to most of his own party and to the House of Commons about the whole thing the Americans told us to stop they voted for the only time in the second in second in history with the Soviet Union in the United Nations against Britain the whole world united against Britain and France and the Americans showed demonstrated their power by basically blocking off access to foreign currency assets to the British government and Sterling began to fall and the Americans blocked off access to central bank and IMF funding and we ran away we had to surrender and we came back and that was the period that we that was the point where most people not everyone but most people thought look we need to think about a slightly more modest place in the world rather than our old imperial role and so we got to the second phase in this some in this period where we said okay well throw our lot in with the Americans and Macmillan who'd actually who took over from Eden who was forced to resign had served with Eisenhower in North Africa in the Second World War and he coined then this phrase about Britain should act as Greece to America's Rome and what that meant which is a rather it's a very rather self-serving and rather condescending phrase it meant that we will be the smart Greeks who understand how the world works they will be the rather dumb Romans and we will exercise our power by being the closest ally of the US and whispering in the ear of US presidents about really what they should do and this is what Macmillan decided when he became Prime Minister in 57 we would rebuild something something that Churchill had evoked in his famous Iron Curtain speech after the Second World War the special relationship with the US and we dress this up with all sorts of emotional baggage you know the ties of kitten kin culture history language and for a few years this was the and it was this decision that made us rather turn our noses up at the idea of a common market when leaders of the six met or representatives of six met first in Messina and then in Brussels in 1955 and 56 to create the common market Churchill had said rather pejoratively of the rest of Europe that of course we are with Europe um but we're not of it uh the idea was that we could stand one step apart uh so we ignored um ignored the common market set up our own alternative European free trade area after uh with small and uh Scandinavian countries now this worked in in the in respect in respect that we did build a very close relationship with the US carrying on the relationship from the from the war and the very close links in our intelligence services and militaries and if you like it was cemented by a deal in 1962 under which Kennedy agreed to sell us Polaris nuclear missile or the nuclear missiles for our nuclear warheads a deal that has survived since and you know our nuclear deterrent now is the is Trident which is basically the follow-through from Polaris so we built this nuclear relationship now we call it an independent deterrent um anyone who reads my book will discover that it's not quite independent at all um but uh uh it's it cemented the relationship with the US but as we did that we had to realise that this common market in the French and the Germans were doing rather well uh the German economy had recovered enormously fast the French economy was growing very fast um and the Italian economy industrially was growing very fast and um it became obvious that um we might be left behind in Europe, Macmillan's the best and the brightest in Macmillan's government uh decided that um uh being frozen out of this common market in the long term would mean we were left aside from the main power blocks back then the power blocks were seen as the Soviet Union the United States China even then was seen as an emerging power block and it now looked as if the common market would join them and the British having decided we were above the Europeans now thought we had to join them that took 10 years because the goal um blocked us twice uh charging that we were um a Trojan horse for the Americans but by 73 we were in and I would argue this actually answered Atchison's question in a way we'd found a role and the role was that we would be America's closest ally and rely on America for our security but we would also play an active economic and political role uh in Europe in our own continent and that seemed to me those two pillars seemed to me to create a decent architecture for our foreign policy uh and that architecture lasted until Brexit I mean it was very it wasn't terribly stable sometimes we had prime ministers who railed against um Europe Margaret Thatcher wanted her money back um and we had the row of a Maastricht as Europe pressed ahead with the single currency uh and we had all the way through this sense of from exceptionalism uh this worry about sovereignty that other countries uh didn't have and politically being part of the European Union was always more difficult for us than most other nations because there was never really a political consensus across both parties if you look at the history of our membership when one of the main parties was pro-Europe the other tended to be anti so it became an issue of contention at general elections and the like but again I would say here was a here was a structure that basically worked we were much more influential one of again than one of the tragedies of our of our European journey was that we never really recognized how influential we were in Brussels a single market of course was pushed very hard by Thatcher's government enlargement of the EU was very much a British project during the 1990s uniting you know Thatcher, Major and Tony Blair but we never really claimed these as victories we were too busy we had a media um that uh really uh couldn't accept a European destiny for us and we had Rupert Murdoch constantly sniping and attacking governments who were seemed to be giving in to the Europeans and we had this essentially difficult period I would argue that I'm not going to go into the sort of run up to brexit I would have I would argue strongly that with a bit of more political leadership we could have whether the particular storms but we didn't and we left and now we have left we are back to where we were in 1962 when Atchison stood up at the West Point Military Academy and said Britain has lost an empire and failed to find a role because Boris Johnson told us we're now part of global Britain and it's a meaningless phrase it has as much meaning as when Theresa May when she became Prime Minister said brexit means brexit global Britain means nothing unless we are going to reimagine the post imperial world and and if we conjure up resources that have never been available for us since the war then we are going to have to recognize the realities of Britain and the world and those realities are very simple we are part of Europe geographically and economically and politically we should be and are in strong alliance with the United States and we should and will I hope have a global perspective which takes into account our history but we can't be as Tizar the civil servant I mentioned we can't be a great power again and as long as we keep trying to be a great power global Britain the best of in the world we will risk seeking to be a great nation and I'll end there I hope that makes sense of the book thank you very much indeed Philip that was very wide-ranging and very stimulating and interesting you mentioned at various stages you mentioned the names of various people it's always I was struck at the time I was in the UK when Britain was playing a very big role in the treaty which eventually emerged in that decade a very big role indeed and yet British politicians including the then prime minister Tony Blair they never claimed the victories I mean Britain had a huge role in things like as you mentioned yourself the single market in pressing for enlargement but it always seemed to me that when British politicians came back from meetings in which they had been successful they never claimed successes they always pointed out the little bits that they didn't get so how do you explain that I don't know there were sort of two currents in our relationship with with with the with Europe one is a sense of superiority we're better than they are and this other this sense of what you're you're you're mentioning is insecurity you know they're out they're going to gang up on us they're out to do us down they're out to rob us of our you know sovereignty and freedom and I think you know I think in significant part it was because it's because of you know our perception of ourselves as different also because it's been a political as I said football also I think probably what marks us out as different and we are you know there are real differences between Britain and other particularly continental um the other continental members is that while most countries join the EU with with a real purpose in mind if you're French or German it was about reconciliation with German it was about legitimate reestablishing legitimacy if you're French it was about reestablishing French political leadership um we joined because we felt we had to sort of we took a rather instrumentalist view of it we didn't join with any great enthusiasm we joined because if we didn't join we'd be left out uh and I you know in the book I say I think there are two big moments where where the opportunity was lost to to change that one was in 79 um when Thatcher won won a big majority um she could have uh sat down with Giscard and Schmidt as the two were and said okay let's the three of us run this show you know let's establish this as a and she could have cemented I think um Britain into a sort of into a sort of troika at the top of the EU and I think Tony Blair could have done exactly the same in 97 and in fact he Thatcher didn't she decided she wanted to get the money back um argue the the budget she argued about the budget for four years um Blair I think in 97 did think in terms of you know let's make us a really influential player who can claim which that can claim successes um but that ran into the sad I'm afraid with um with you know 9 11 Iraq uh and the rest of it and that was I think that that was probably the biggest lost opportunity because here was a prime minister with a huge majority um with the personality and political presence to change her weather he could have said look all this being defensive about your stuff is nonsense we have to be you know we have to sing our successes and we have to do these things uh and in the end he was pulled by the Americans and he you know there was this false choice again you know do I go with with George W Bush or do I go with the Europeans and um in the end he um I remember him saying to this to me personally you know it's my duty uh to be with the Americans yeah yeah difficult choices do you have any idea as to why David Cameron didn't really um put his heart into the yes referendum the the the impetus was with the the leave group from the very beginning and there seemed to be no campaign or no serious campaign on the remain site why why did why did he do that I think um one of his officials said to me about Cameron um soon after he became um prime minister the two things actually um one of which was that um it's very disappointing it's not really out of a out of an episode of um yes minister that Cameron had been um prime minister for three four months by then and we were having lunch with an official and I I was just asking him about how Cameron worked you know what was the rhythm of the number 10 you know there's no great secrets being exchanged at this lunch and then I said at one point um what does Cameron think about the world and this um very English uh civil servant looked at me and said well I'm afraid the prime minister thinks the world is somewhere where you go on holiday which is about the most damning thing you could say I didn't use it but I thought it was I thought it was so actually turned out to be true he had no interest in the world foreign affairs you know he had his little run with Sarkozy and Libya and whatever but he he's absolutely uninterested in the world and that tells the other part of the story the same official told me was that he'd never failed anything in his life Cameron went to you know he was born in a wealthy family went to a smart prep school where he succeeded where he got into Eaton where he succeeded got into Oxford got a first class degree got a job as a conservative party advisor straight away for successful as a ministerial advisor got got a job in the commercial sector which was arranged you know these things are arranged successful as that but so every part and he had come to believe that if you wanted to do something he could do it you know it's the Scottish referendum was the same you know 2014 he had sort of you know well don't worry you know we'll get through it and actually there was one week where he realized that they might not and they had to actually do something and I'm sure with and I've talked to people who were there he just thought you know in the end you know the British people will listen to sensible people like me and vote to stay and now the there were other complications in this you know in that you had a a Labour Party leader who was actually probably more on the leave side than on the remain side and you had some miscalculations that Cameron made about Johnson and Gove and but the basic basic I would say thought was to just assume I can wing it you know I've always done it before you know it's the sort of midnight essay I'll start the you know I'll do it it'll be fine I was very taken by Craig Oliver's book about the about the campaign where there's hardly a mention of either Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland