Murnaghan 27.01.13 Interview with Jonathan Powell, former Chief of Staff to Tony Blair

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: We’re going to stay on the theme of Europe and we are joined by a man who has spent much of his life in diplomatic negotiations, he was listening in there to what Lord Lamont had to say. Many of the negotiations involving Europe, former diplomat and was the Chief of Staff to Tony Blair for his entire time as Prime Minister. If you haven’t worked it out by now, you should know it’s Jonathan Powell, a very good morning to you Mr Powell. As you were listening there to what Lord Lamont was saying, he was confident that many within the Conservative party and indeed people around the country are confident that we could go to the European Union over a period of time and say, look, we want a relationship with you, we want to remain within the EU but really some of the things you’re doing, not just to us but some of the things that the EU does are pretty ridiculous and you need to change.

JONATHAN POWELL: The thing is that I’ve been involved in an awful lot of diplomatic negotiations and quite often we are dealt a difficult hand, a weak hand by history. For the first time ever I’ve seen a Prime Minister deal himself a weak hand. If you go to Europe with an ultimatum and say unless you change we’re going to leave, they’re going to say well fine, go ahead and leave. What kind of ultimatum is that?

DM: Are they really going to say that or aren’t they saying perhaps it’s not a good time to be raising this, we’ve got much bigger fish to fry but you are a mighty economic power, not just within Europe but on the world stage, and you’d be much more value within the European Union than outside it?

JP: Of course they’d much rather we didn’t leave but they’re not going to pay a price for it, why should they pay a price? They have their own demands, they have things they want to get out of the European Union, why should they concede to us something if we want to cut off our nose to spite our face?

DM: But would it be a price if Britain says eventually, well we’ll sit slightly outside the major part of the EU but we’ll still trade with you as an open market?

JP: Well we’ll trade with the EU whatever happens, there’s no doubt about that, it’s just the terms on which we’ll trade. But if we really want to become a greater Cayman Islands where we leave outside and become a tax exile place, we can do that but that’s not been Britain’s role traditionally. Traditionally we have always wanted to be part of Europe, we have wanted to play a role in the decision making in Europe and to give up 200 years of history is absolutely extraordinary.

DM: But isn’t the key economic decision at the moment for these 17 members of the euro, how to fix that? We don’t want to be part of that, we don’t want to have any part to do it seems for certainly a long time into the future with the euro and we can say to them, get on with that and let us sit outside it.

JP: Well we have said that we’re outside the euro so we’re not making any of the decisions on the euro, that’s clear. The danger of what we’re doing now is we’re actually, even if we went along with David Cameron and he was successful in renegotiating our status in Europe, we’d then be in a position where we had no say in the decision making. Lord Lamont was saying well it doesn’t matter so much if we’re not in the decision making, it does matter. The Norwegian government about who he was just speaking, have had a study done on the position of the Norwegians relative to the EU and they concluded that it is a disastrous situation. They get their instructions by fax and they have to implement them, they have no say. They have to pay into the single market but they have no say in it, that’s not the position we want to be in. Now the Prime Minister says we don’t want to be Switzerland and we don’t want to be Norway but we do want to be in the single market so what’s the difference between the position of Sweden and … ? DM: Well what about their negotiating strategy? I mean do you think he has laid all his cards on the table face up already by saying ultimately I’m prepared to walk?

JP: Yes, I think really for short term political reasons within his party what he’s done is given his hand away. His position can only work if there is a new treaty of negotiation and so people are not going to walk into that trap now, they are not going to start a treaty of negotiation to give him the ability to do this. In any case, Angela Merkel doesn’t want a new treaty of negotiation because it wouldn’t just be referendums in Britain, there would be referendums in France and the Netherlands and they can be turned over again, she doesn’t want to get into that situation. So if there is no treaty of negotiation, there is no intergovernmental conference, how does he even start his negotiation? So we’re going in, as I say, revealing his hand in total and saying I’m a pre-out rather than a pre-in, why would anyone concede anything?

DM: So that we end up, in your book, with a form of almost guerrilla warfare over the course of time in the various summits that occur, there’s a small voice in the corner saying please, sir, I want to discuss our relationship with the EU and they’re going, not yet, we’re doing something else.

JP: What I fear is that it’s going to be back to the beef war. If you remember, at the end of John Major’s time in government he had this disastrous position where he was trying to re-open things on beef and he got nowhere, people just ignored him and that’s going to be Britain’s position as you say, we’ll be trying to make a difference from the outside. The EU works by building alliances, you’ve got to get people with you. If you go into the negotiations saying I’m a pre-out, I’m going to leave if you don’t do what I want, no one wants to be allied with you even if they agree with your ideas. David Cameron’s ideas on the EU focusing on competitiveness are absolutely right but no one respectable wants to be seen with him now, no one is going to be allied with him.

DM: But if I can ask you about that, a lot of what he said within the speech, his analysis of what’s going wrong with the EU would have a resonance in many of the other capitals in the EU.

JP: That’s what’s so distressing, the ideas he is proposing for the EU are absolutely right and Angela Merkel would agree with those ideas but no one is going to ally themselves with Britain if they’re saying at the same time we want to get out.

DL: How do you think that Labour should play it now? It seemed at the end of last year they were toying with the issue of a referendum, now it seems a fairly confused position at the moment in that they are saying okay, if there were any major transfer of powers to the European Union, there is legislation already to say that there would be a referendum but on this one now is not the time.

JP: It seems to me that what they’re saying is entirely rational. You’re saying why would you call a referendum now when you don’t even know what the referendum is going to be on? It is a bit bizarre calling a referendum for 2017 or 2018 when we don’t know what the situation will be then. You don’t know if you will need a referendum, you don’t know if it will be then or if it will be 2015 or 2025. The last time a treaty was renegotiated it took ten years so then we’d be having the referendum in 2023, so it is purely for domestic political reasons that Cameron has announced this now, there’s no international reason to announce a referendum. That said, it would be insane to be against a referendum in any circumstances and if there were to be treaty change there would have to be a referendum in Britain, that’s clear politically. When Tony Blair was in government we called a referendum.

DM: I remember that and it never happened.

JP: We never had to have it luckily because the French and the Dutch voted against it so it never came to the British voters to vote on it so no one is saying they are not going to have a referendum but you have to have something to have a referendum on. The bizarre thing about Cameron is he is proposing a referendum but saying not now.

DM: Hold on, are we a dog chasing its tail here because you would have something to have a referendum on, it would be the upshot of several years of negotiations, the British public, do you like this, is this enough or is it not?

JP: If there’s treaty change whether it’s going out or going in, you would have to have a referendum but there isn’t any treaty change at the moment and at the moment there is no prospect of treaty change so that’s why it is bizarre to announce a referendum now. First you’ve got to get your treaty change and then have your referendum.

DM: Okay, mentioning Tony Blair there, I notice he’s writing in the papers this morning on this very issue, do you think he’s ever going to make a proper come back in some way shape or form to these shores?

JP: Well I was hoping he’d be President of the European Council but it doesn’t look very likely at the moment if Britain’s leaving. We’re not going to have any positions in Europe, let alone that.

DM: Okay, well Jonathan Powell, very good to see you, thank you very much indeed.