 I took a taxi here today and the taxi driver asked me what I was here for and I explained what I was talking about and he said it's blindingly obvious. He didn't quite say it like that, he said it in a rather more fruity fashion, shall we say a rather more forthright fashion. And he said it's blindingly obvious basically that the UK would suffer if it did decide to leave the European Union. I didn't disagree because I've learnt in the past that arguing with taxi drivers is a bit of a mistake. But you know, speaking to an audience in this country, a lot of what I'm going to say may seem blindingly obvious in the sense that the costs associated with a withdrawal from the EU for the UK's Foreign Security Policy are obvious. But I have to say that for a UK based audience they're perhaps not so obvious and the debate I think on this area in particular has only just got going. So I apologise in advance if some of this sounds a bit like teaching you to suck eggs. But as you're all aware, and I know there was a discussion here a couple of days ago, the British Prime Minister announced his intention to have an in-out referendum. That referendum is going to take place, he would hope by the end of 2017. And we've now got a fair sense of in outline what the issue areas are that the Prime Minister wants to have a discussion on. And that discussion at the moment is framed in terms of technical talks about what the substantive issues might be. And we'll I think be closer in December and at the December European Council having a good sense of what the debate or the terms of the debate might be or rather what the terms of the negotiations might be. And I'm really happy to talk about that at length if it's useful. But I wanted to focus on the foreign policy area for some reasons that I will make clear. It's an interesting area because I think it's one of the areas in which the UK government is not actually seeking to repatriate powers. Nothing that David Cameron has said so far or remembers of the British government can be read as a desire to alter the status quo when it comes to common foreign security policy or the common security and defence policy. So one could read that as a recognition of certainly on the part of the current government that it sees real benefits that derive from the UK from its engagement with this process. However, what the benefits are for the UK and how those benefits are understood is something which isn't really discussed or debated at length. And the UK Parliament has Commons Foreign Affairs Committee has just launched an inquiry into the cost and benefits for the UK of a Brexit. And it's done that in part because there isn't really a clear body of evidence which has been accumulated across time in the UK which makes a sort of clear here an argument for UK policy makers as to where the benefits do derive for the UK. And again, they may be obvious to everybody in this room, but I don't think they've been sort of codified or marshaled in a way that I think is yet digestible. So what I want to do is to divide my remarks up into several parts and they're divided up to look at first of all where I see the current benefits lying for the UK in the CFSP, CSDP. Secondly, what the costs would be to the UK for a Brexit, then to look at what some of the costs might be for the EU of the UK leaving. And finally, a whole series of timescale issues which I think are important in terms of acting as a preoccupation for British foreign policy if it does decide to go down the road of Brexit. And these issues are issues that I had the opportunity to discuss recently with the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. So they have been rehearsed previously, but they haven't been done so publicly. I think what's clear if you think about the benefits, and these hold for any Member State, these are not UK specific benefits, is that all aspects of foreign policy, if we widen foreign policy out to include trade and development policy, aspects of justice and home affairs even for the UK are embedded within and pursued through the European Union in such a way that it's quite difficult perhaps to disentangle what is UK national foreign policy and what is EU policy. And the UK is certainly, as other Member States have done, used its EU membership to enhance its international influence by using the EU to leverage and amplify national foreign policy. And that's perfectly on track with what other Member States have done. And I think the UK has really gained the best of both worlds through CFSP. On the one hand, it still has freedom of maneuver to pursue its own national foreign policy and obviously continues to do so and acts independently when it chooses to do so. But it also gets to act collaboratively and leverage common resources when it also has a preference to pursue that route. So I think that the foreign policy area is one that the UK has derived significant benefits from, and in particular a state like the UK as a state which has had a whole series of lengthy engagements internationally and has widespread commercial and other interests across the globe, it gives it a fantastic footprint and also a way to marshal its arguments with a group of other Member States. I think in a fairly efficient and effective way there are some real benefits I think in terms of the EU decision making mechanism or mechanisms on foreign policy for the UK to pursue its foreign security policy interests. And of course more broadly European integration has provided the UK with an unparalleled period of peace with its neighbouring states which historically the UK has not enjoyed. Alongside NATO it has played a really pivotal role in managing the transition of the continent from Cold War cleavage through to what we have today. Crucially a key British foreign policy objective end of the Cold War and onwards has been to pursue the integration of countries in central and eastern Europe in the western Balkans to get them as part of the European political mainstream and to realise key British foreign policy objectives. All of this I think is given and actually if I was the Foreign Secretary standing here that's probably what I would say in terms of what the benefits are that are derived to the UK. So let's raise the temperature a little bit and start to talk about what some of the potential costs would be for the UK of a Brexit. Well I think the first is that it would raise a broader set of questions for the UK as to what the orientation and objectives of its national foreign and security policy should be. The EU membership has been a key component of the UK's diplomacy and foreign policy since 1973. There are very few people now working in ministries in the UK who have had an experience of British foreign and security policy prior to the UK's EU accession. So the business of doing business with other member states has established some fairly harden arteries I would suggest in terms of the way that one communicates with other member states. Altering that status would take the UK into an unknown situation in terms of recalibrating its relationships with its European neighbours. And the fact that it's enjoyed significant efficiencies by operating through that system, the fact that it can do business with 27 other member states. And it's allowed to or able to engage in all sorts of resolution of interstate differences, ironing out problems, pursuing collective positions on issues of common concern. All of that has become the way in which the foreign office and other parts of government in the UK have been in operating mode since the UK joined a European political cooperation and obviously through its successor under the CFSP. It's recognised when you look at the words that the Prime Minister has added on the sanctions regime towards Russia, for example, where he makes very clear that these benefits derive for the UK because there is a real efficiency benefit from getting all of these countries onside. What, of course, the UK doesn't know is the cost in terms of the diplomatic and political bandwidths that would be required for an extended period, the extended period being unknown, and having an institutional preoccupation, which the UK doesn't like, doesn't like doing institutions, doesn't like talking about institutions, that would come as a consequence of an exit. And that would place an immense burden, I would suggest, on the existing infrastructure that the UK has for pursuing its foreign security and defence policy. So whatever other things the UK thinks that it might pursue outside of the EU, it's not going to be able to do so because there's going to be a real opportunity cost and I'll come back to that in a moment. And all of this, of course, is in a context in which there is the most uncertain environment, international environment, international security environment that the UK has faced since the middle of the 20th century. The combination of the broader structural shifts within international relations shifts in the balance of power together with the volatility that we've now got in the UK's European neighbourhood. And how you go about managing that change and complexity is enough in itself without reorganising, recalibrating, restructuring the relationship with one's neighbours which has been established and functioned in a particular way since the early 1970s. And of course, this also comes on the back of a period of time, recent history where the UK's austerity and its struggles as with other European countries to deal with a global financial crisis has already raised questions about the UK's place in international relations. What it can do, how it can do it, and particularly the resources that it's put into foreign and security policy issues. So you've got this massive security change environment, these broader struggles within international relations. This arc of crisis that runs within the UK's neighbourhood right from the east with Russia all the way through its southern borders, these multiple security challenges into the Middle East and so on and so on, things that people are familiar with here. And it's the combined magnitude of these challenges that will require multi-institutional and multinational responses and that the EU is going to be, whether the UK likes it or not, a central player and payer in mitigating those challenges. And so for the UK not to be a part of those arrangements clearly would be something of a loss. And if we sort of zoom in on some of the areas where the UK is currently active, you can see that the UK's engagement and interest, for example, someone like the Horn of Africa at the moment where it's made a considerable investment to try and get the situation stabilised on the ground. It now has an embassy in Mogadishu, where it's got FCO, MOD, DFID staff, all working to pursue UK foreign policy objectives, which are then leveraged to the EU's financial and technical resources. All of those projects, if you like, all of those specific policies which have been designed, developed and are being implemented as part of a broader or nested within part of a broader policy would come into question. So it's not just the macro issues, the kind of bigger, broader international relations issues and how those might be managed, or the neighbourhood issues, but it's also the regional and the sub-regional strategies and policies that the UK put into place, which would suddenly be left without the anchor that they have present. And of course, Member State Exit has no precedent. The UK has no way to assess accurately what the cost would be for its foreign security policy of departing from the EU. And I think it's going to be very difficult on the available evidence to calculate what those costs might be. Whether you calculate them financially, that's pretty difficult anyway to do when you evaluate foreign policy success. Whether you do that in terms of the perceptions of third countries, what people might think if the UK looked as if it was exiting. Whether you do that in terms of the impact on the British psyche in terms of people's willingness to engage within the world outside. All of those things, you know, it's difficult to calculate and got no reliable means to do so. The closest we've had is when the previous government, the previous coalition government that was in power between 2005 and 2015, ran the balance of competences exercise. And you may recall there are a whole series of reports produced on different aspects of EU policy. The idea being to look at, you know, whether the balance of competences were in favour of the nation or not in terms of the benefits that the UK derived. And one of the reports was on foreign policy. And amongst plenty of others I produced evidence that was submitted to that process and that report. And what was clear, and I quote from the report itself, which was a masterpiece of drafting by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and it says I quote that all the evidence suggests that it's generally strongly in the UK's interest to work through EU foreign policy. And I set out why that was the case in terms of greater influence over non-EU powers that derived from a position as being a leading EU country. Stress on the leading perhaps because that hasn't been as obvious in recent years. The international way of the single market again, perhaps an obvious point to make, and therefore the ability to deliver on trade and commercially beneficial and the ability to deliver on trade agreements. The reaching magnitude of the EU's financial resources and development and economic partnerships, the range of versatility of the EU's tools as compared with other international organisations and so on and so on. And it was clear from that exercise that the UK did not face obstacles to pursuing its foreign policy beyond those which were annoyances, shall we say, that come from the grit in the machine of decision making within the EU, which many people here I'm sure are more than familiar with. So there's no precedent for the exit, we don't really know what the costs would be for UK foreign and security policy. And of course the UK would also be going against the trend of contemporary European international relations. The enlargement has been the great project within Europe, the dual enlargement NATO and the European Union. And a key part of British diplomacy has been to advocate certain domestic reforms to countries to facilitate their admission to the European Union. And that advocacy continues in cases such as Bosnia and Serbia to pursue very painful economic and political reforms outside the EU. I think the UK argument that these things are worth doing would obviously have very little credence if there was one hand on the door of the exit. And I think that the Brexit itself would create a broader diplomatic crisis for the UK. It would have to, and its diplomats, and I know there are some here, would be working overtime, unpaid, I would hope, as a taxpayer, to counter the view that Britain would be shrinking in its international role and influence. And, as happened during the Scottish independence debate, where the membership of key bodies such as the UN Security Council and so on would be appropriate for a country that felt in some way to outsiders as being shrunk. And of course the United States, which has already expressed a clear preference for the UK to remain within the EU, would then face a UK which was in a position which is contrary to the position that successive US administrations have pursued, both Democrat and Republican, which is to seek a larger European Union and see a European Union as a key organising device for the security and stability of Europe. And the UK would no longer have the leverage that would come from being on the inside for future enlargements or that defence policies developed in a manner that might be compatible or strengthened rather than duplicating NATO. And I think from that we could obviously draw the conclusion that the UK would look diminished and would look less useful to the United States or future US administrations than would be the case in the current period. But I think the costs are not just on the UK side, but they are also on the EU side. The UK is a key participant in the EU's common finance security policy, its common security and defence policy. It hasn't always been the most enthusiastic when it's come to institutional innovation or development or deepening, but in terms of participation and in terms of its engagement with CSDP missions, both military and also civilian missions. It has been a significant player and has obviously brought considerable expertise to bear in terms of debates and discussions between the member states in areas that the UK cares about, but also in areas perhaps in which aren't, first, all the UK concerns, but it's been able to bring the perspective of a state which has a certain experience within foreign affairs. One thing I would say as an aside and I found rather peculiar is that the UK seemed to derive absolutely no benefit from providing the EU's first high representative under the Lisbon Treaty arrangements. I don't mean that in the sense that Baroness Lashdon was there as some kind of agent for the UK government, but I mean more about the British debate, about the value of CSDP. I think for her term of office as high rep, I don't think the quality of the British public debate, certainly the British elite debate outside the foreign office, actually improved in terms of realising what some of the benefits might be for CSDP and for CSDP, but others in this room may have an explanation as to why that is the case. If you look at the CSDP, I mean the UK has been and is enthusiastic for CSDP operations. If you look at Atalanta, it's obviously playing a leading role there in terms of the headquartering and directing from Northwood. It's also now made major commitments to the now for MED operation as well. If you take a look at the civilian missions of the CSDP, the UK has been present in a big way and has actually integrated CSDP missions, a participation in CSDP missions very much at the heart of its interesting capacity building in third countries. Beyond that, the UK has been rather enthusiastic for thinking about the CSDP as a route to build up European military capabilities. Push the idea of battle groups, maybe battle groups haven't become all that they could have become in terms of operational instrument for the EU, but I think it clearly demonstrated that the UK is not against CSDP developments, but it's against CSDP developments through a particular prism and is willing to push in some areas in which it feels that there is a benefit in terms of capabilities development. If you look more broadly to EU foreign policy to include development policy, again there was a balance of competence as a report that was written on development policy and to quote from the report, the close alignment of UK and EU development objectives and the EU's perceived political neutrality and global influence mean that the EU can act as a multiplier for the UK's priorities and influence. I think a recognition in those constituencies in the UK that the UK does get something out of engagement, but also equally the fact that the UK does play a key role in helping to develop development policy within the EU itself, bringing its own perspective and also crucially of course bringing its own significant national spend on foreign and security policy. Let me now just sort of turn in the last section of my remarks to what I'd call the timescale impact, which I alluded to at the start, that the impact of disentangling the UK from the EU's foreign security policy relationships will be extremely costly I think for all sides and with the outcome of that process completely uncertain. At present the UK is able to combine its national foreign policy assets with those of the EU in pursuing the objectives that it wants to pursue and only agreeing with or to collective action if other member states also agree on the action. But the UK has also or also faces at the moment another order challenge which is the austerity challenge. So at the moment in which we're talking about the UK possibly doing less within the European Union or dramatically less it was seeking an exit. This is also on the back of a period in which over the last five years we've seen a 16% cut in the foreign and commonwealth office budget. This is in real terms 19% cut in the defence budget and therefore there is a real interest on the part of the UK in cost effectively pooling diplomatic military capabilities further with its other partners and to have the European Union as a route to do that closed off I think would be an absolute tragedy. It would also I think complicate some of the key bilateral relationships that the UK has sought to move forward on over the last few years. And I'll just pick out one of those which are the Lancaster House agreements that have reached between Britain and France on defence in 2010. And the premise of those being that it would be closer cooperation between the UK and France to burden share to facilitate both in their ambitions for defence within the EU and NATO. And France to its credit I think it's persisted with the idea of this coordination and both sides think it worked hard at it even in a climate in which there has been a reticence on the part of recent British governments to develop or to deepen. EU defence policy and I think any prospect of a UK EU exit would raise questions over the rationale for that particular form of bilateral cooperation and it may make it attractive for France for example to see if it can develop more within the rhymar grouping of Poland and Germany as an alternative forum if the British can't be counted on as a future partner within a European defence. And of course there would be the cost to the UK of renegotiating all of the things that it currently gets from the EU by way of the existing corpus of agreements. Talking to an analyst yesterday he suggested that the EU currently has something in the order of 10,000 international agreements in place with third parties, give or take a thousand he said. And of course on a scenario we call the doomsday scenario in which the UK did seek to cut its links from the EU outside of an EEA type agreement there would be a need for the UK to recodify its relationships with many third countries. And clearly that would create a huge burden on the UK's diplomatic and political infrastructure to do so. And at the same time of course it would be renegotiating a major bilateral relationship between the EU and the UK of course which would be a demanding set of negotiations I would suggest. So in conclusion if we would see Brexit which of course I think you gather I would very much not like to see the UK could well be preoccupied for the best part of a decade in reorganising and reordering its foreign relations at the time in which it has major issues within international relations and within its neighbourhood to give attention to. And of course at the same time the UK would also find itself having to work as hard to try and influence the EU policy agenda from the outside as opposed to the inside which will probably create an additional bilateral diplomatic burden from the one that currently exists. So I think in conclusion the UK can choose a Brexit but its security will remain intertwined with the successes and failures of the EU anyway so it's going to be a major foreign policy preoccupation. And by the way perhaps more parochialy with the UK presidency the council do you in the second half of 2017. We've got to find a way and the UK government clearly has to find a way of ensuring that it does the business of the presidency which I'm sure it will do very well. It has done in the past but it will also do it whilst potentially engaged in a national debate about its future relationship with the EU. So I'm glad I'm not a diplomat and I'm only a humble analyst. But one of the things I'll be fascinated to hear is what the perspective is from this side of the water on whether you see the UK having a meaningful and credible future even on the worst doomsday Brexit scenario. And what the options might be for the UK because of course one of the things I haven't spoken about is what the alternative positioning might be. And I'd be happy to talk about some of the ideas that have done the rounds which have been alternative conceptualisations of the UK son EU. So thank you very much.