Murnaghan 4.11.12 Interview with Sir Nigel Sheinwald, former British Ambassador to the United States

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well know, if Mitt Romney does win the American election this week, how quickly can our government, the UK government, forge a relationship with the new administration? Joining me from London is Sir Nigel Sheinwald, he was Britain’s Ambassador in Washington until January this year and before that he was foreign policy advisor to Tony Blair. A very good morning to you, Sir Nigel. First of all let’s put this in the context of the special relationship, do you see there first of all being a special relationship between the UK and the US and that that relationship is able to transcend whoever is in power in America?

NIGEL SHEINWALD: Well clearly – morning Dermot – there is a very close relationship between Britain and America and the irony of Governor Romney’s unhappy visit to London during the Olympics is that he actually wanted to come here to say that he wanted that relationship to be an important part of his presidency if he is elected on the 6th November. So I think that the history shows that that relationship does transcend party politics and that people tend to reach across the party divide, as is happening today between David Cameron and Barack Obama and happened in the past between Tony Blair and George Bush. So party politics themselves aren’t the key, what matters is that mixture of personality, politics and policies, that’s really what makes a relationship important and productive.

DM: But did things cool a little bit under President Obama, there was the issue of the history it’s thought of his father and the colonial past in Kenya and the idea that America was going to look more to the core of Europe and to the Germans?

NS: Well it hasn’t worked out that way. I think the reality over the past four years is that the UK has had a very good relationship with the Obama administration and that came through for example when Barack Obama made his state visit to the UK in 2011 and in other contacts, many other contacts. So I think that warmth and closeness is there, what that means in practice is a great deal of intimacy and contact on foreign and defence policy and a very big and strong and largely unreported economic relationship which is still very, very important for both our countries, as well as all the cultural links which exist. So the reality is that in Europe Britain has been by far the most important and significant operational partner for the United States. Of course it’s true that Germany, as the leader of the eurozone, has been a very significant interlocutor for the American Treasury Secretary and the President on the issue of the euro, which has been economically the most important European issue over the past few years, but I don't think that means that overall the UK is anything other than very significant for the United States.

DM: I mean you mentioned, let’s just concentrate on that, Sir Nigel, you mentioned Mitt Romney’s, Governor Romney’s trip to the United Kingdom and those unfortunate comments about the Olympics before they actually happened. Would that mean, and then the comments, I suppose the jokes that were made by David Cameron, would that if it were to be President Romney, would that echo a bit or would they soon get over it?

NS: I’d be surprised if it made any difference. If Governor Romney wins and becomes President Elect Romney on Wednesday, if there is a clear result overnight, I’m sure the Prime Minister would want to congratulate him in person as soon as possible. What happens thereafter in our systems is that there is a two and a half month transition as you know in the United States, that’s a difficult period for really lengthy contacts between the two governments but there will be informal contacts and we’ll start to see the beginnings of the Romney administration as he makes his first appointments and then once the administration gets going after the inauguration, there will be a whole welter of contacts with the new team and of course I would imagine, a visit by the Prime Minister to Washington at some point. So this is what tends to happen is you build up contacts with a new President. If President Obama is re-elected, and I know that is not your focus today, there will inevitably be some need to do that because members of his team will change and it will be necessary to replenish those contacts but I think we will get the norm in US/UK relations is to hit the ground running, to use the contacts which have been made during the campaign and to try and forge as close an agreement as we can on the big issues of the day. The new President is going to have a number of issues like Iran, like Russia, like China, like handling Afghanistan and Pakistan over the next difficult couple of years, where he’ll want the advice of his allies and partners and the UK does have those global interests which make us an important player for him.

DM: Sir Nigel, just let me plug in to some of the experience and expertise you had of being on the inside of election night here in the United States and how it’s viewed or not viewed during the course of those hours, in the wee small hours in Britain, in Number Ten Downing Street. What does the Prime Minister actually do?

NS: Well I’ve only been in Ten Downing Street for one election and that was the 2004 election and on that occasion Tony Blair I think stayed in Downing Street and he went to bed on that night thinking that John Kerry had won the election because that was what all the exit polls and the early punditry was saying and woke up to find that George Bush was on the verge of a very important victory, so things can change overnight. I think what tends to happen is the Prime Ministers say in Downing Street, they watch the television, they talk to their advisors, they may talk to individuals that they know personally, although not the candidates themselves, in the United States to get a bearing on how it’s going and how it looks. Some American pollsters of course during the day in America produce their own exit polling, so there’s a buzz around who’s hearing what and what the likely result is but Prime Ministers tend to stay in Downing Street and tend to be listening out for the latest news and, as I said, it can change overnight and we’re clearly going to have another close election this time. As we go into the evening it will be very difficult to know whether we’ll have the same sort of mood swing as we saw in both 2000 and 2004.

DM: Sir Nigel, presumably the Ambassador, our man in Washington, can’t go to bed during the election.

NS: Well you have to go to bed some time but no, if it’s very, very close and it wasn’t the year that I was Ambassador, 2008, it was very clear who the victor was going to be and most of the networks in America were predicting an Obama victor really pretty much from the moments the polls closed so the actual result itself, by the time we got to election day, didn’t look to be in real doubt. The scale of it, the detail of it of course was open to a great deal of debate but of course if it is a very exciting evening, I would expect my successor in Washington to be out and about, giving advice back to London, giving information back to London to add to the information that’s available in departments in Whitehall.

DM: Fascinating stuff. Sir Nigel Sheinwald, thank you very much indeed.

NS: Thank you.