Sophy Ridge on Sunday Interview with Tom Tugendhat Conservative MP

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SKY NEWS, SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY

SOPHY RIDGE: Earlier this morning wreaths were laid at the Delhi War Memorial and among those taking part in the ceremony was the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and the former Army officer, Tom Tugendhat, who joins us now. Hello, thank you for being with us this morning.

TOM TUGENDHAT: Good morning Sophy, how are you?

SR: I’m all right thank you, I’m good. Now I just mentioned that 1.5 million men from South Asia signed up to the British Army in World War One which is an incredible number of people really, they were Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus. Do you think we do enough to remember their sacrifice?

TOM TUGENDHAT: No, I don't think we do enough. We’ve got to remember these men who came from every village, from every community in the then undivided India, communities that are now of course in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, they came as volunteers. They volunteered, like other people who joined our armed forces in those days, they joined out a sense of duty, out of a sense of honour and of course young men for the spirit of adventure, very much similar reasons why people join our armed forces today. So I think it is right that we do much more to remember them and remember that at moments like the very early days in 1914 it was the Indians who held the line when the Germans nearly broke through to cut off the Channel ports.

SR: As you say, these are men who volunteered and yet they were under colonial rule, do you think the government should apologise to the Commonwealth leaders for some of the wrongs of the past?

TOM TUGENDHAT: Well I certainly think we should apologise for some of the wrongs that happened and Prime Minister David Cameron did apologise for some of the wrongs that happened but for all of us it is important to recognise that there were wrongs and but there’s also a lot that we’ve done together and it’s impossible today to talk about British history without speaking of India and it is impossible today to speak of Indian history without speaking of Britain. We really are two countries that have grown up together over the past two centuries and I think it’s very important that we wrote the stories together and with cooperation we can help shape the future together as well.

SR: Talking about shaping that future, do you think there is an opportunity with Brexit to reshape relationships with the Commonwealth?

TOM TUGENDHAT: I absolutely do. I think it’s extremely important that we use this moment to look hard at our relationships around the world and none more so than our relationship with India. I’ve been struck over the few days that I’ve been here at the warmth of the reception that I’ve received from Members of Parliament, from civic society, from people from all walks of life and the proximity of our relationship. Now we don’t agree on everything, that would be too much to expect of any country, but we have a very, very deep common understanding of the world as we see it. We share very strongly common values, we share those values of the rule of law, of democracy, of a free press that are not found in as many countries as we would like and certainly here in the Indo-Pacific region are absolutely vital to our future and so I look forward I hope to working very much more closely with the people of India at every level.

SR: Now yesterday Donald Trump missed a visit to the war cemetery because of bad weather. I just want to read you what Sir Nicholas Soames the Conservative MP and grandson of Winston Churchill said about that. He said, “They died with their face to the foe and that pathetic inadequate, Donald Trump, couldn’t even defy the weather to pay his respects to the fallen. He’s not fit to represent this great country.” Do you agree?

TOM TUGENDHAT: Well I’ll leave Nicholas to speak for himself but he has a certain way with words. All I’ll say is I spent four years in Afghanistan and I don’t remember operations being cancelled when it rained, I don’t remember them being cancelled for the cold, I don’t remember us not refusing to soldier because the weather was inclement. I seem to remember that in Iraq and Afghanistan when sometimes it was minus fifteen and sometimes it was fifty degrees in the shade, we soldiered on.

SR: How does you experience in Iraq and Afghanistan shape your politics because you’ve spoken about some pretty horrific things that happened, a suicide bomber for example blowing himself up in the courtyard of your office in Helmand. I mean that must have been an incredibly shaping experience for you.

TOM TUGENDHAT: Look, all of us who served had the privilege of meeting some of the most impressive men and women I think you are ever likely to meet and for me that’s what shapes my politics, it’s that sense of duty that I have to our country and to the people who have given so much. And it is recognising, I mean Sophy I’ve been blessed, I come from an incredibly strong and loving family and I’ve had the good fortune of economic stability all my life. Now I know that many of the men and women I have had the privilege to serve with did not have that and what I’ve got to do is make sure that as a politician that the benefits of our society, the good things in our society are spread as widely as possible and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do through the politics that I now practice. That’s where, to me, this is a continuation of a sense of duty.

SR: Let’s talk about that sense of duty. You said of your time in the army, “In Iraq I was one of many soldiers who questioned decision but obeyed the orders” and I just wonder if that would be your take on Brexit as well? How are you feeling about the deal that Theresa May is currently fighting for, is that something that you can support?

TOM TUGENDHAT: Well it’s very hard to know what the deal is. I’m afraid that unlike the two or possibly three people who are really in the room negotiating, I’m afraid none of us actually know what the Prime Minister is going to bring forward so until I know what the details are I find it very difficult to comment, I am just commenting in the dark and that’s why I am being very careful not to say too much on it because I’d just be guessing and what the people deserve now, the people of our country deserve now, is not more guesses from politicians as to what the future might hold but serious considered thought as to what the options are before us.

SR: We’ve got a pretty clear idea though haven’t we of the kind of thing that Theresa May is looking at, particularly with regards to the backstop – the whole of the UK staying in the customs union with the European Union, an effective customs union. Jo Johnson, your colleague, resigned this week and he said there has been a failure of British statecraft on a scale unseen since the Suez Crisis. Is he right?

TOM TUGENDHAT: Well Jo again has his own way of expressing things and there isn’t a Johnson in the land that doesn’t have a particularly colourful way of making their point clear so I’ll leave him to speak for himself but again I’m afraid I’m going to be difficult on this because I don’t know what the Prime Minister has got as the final negotiation and while the backstop does of course matter, the idea of the backstop is that it never is used so depending on what the Prime Minister brings forward, I will then know whether the backstop is important or not. So I’m waiting now to hear what the Prime Minister has to say and Jo is right in that this is an extremely important moment for the United Kingdom. This is a moment when we have decided to reset the relationship for the first time in forty years, to really change the strategy of the United Kingdom to one of proximity trade to one of remoter trade. Now that’s a really big call but we did discuss this for quite a long time before the referendum in 2016, this was a topic of much discussion around the country as we all remember and many of us were very clear in the way that we considered it best to speak about the questions. I had these debates in 2015 and I had them in 2016 so I am afraid this isn’t a huge surprise to me that the questions now before us are very difficult.

SR: I can see that you not going to be too drawn on Brexit. You have previously said that after Brexit it is time for a generational shift in the Conservative party, what did you mean by that?

TOM TUGENDHAT: Well what I meant by that is I’ve got a huge privilege to sit alongside some really impressive guys on the Conservative benches, people like Vicky Atkins who is the Home Office at the moment, is really one of the brightest and most able people of our generation. Kit Malthouse, who is doing amazing things with housing and doing it completely brilliantly, remembering the sense of place and identity that we all need and of course I can run through people like James Cleverly and Johnny Mercer and so on who really have fantastic ways of expressing and communicating so whether it’s that generation of Rishi Suvak and Lucy Fraser or whether it’s another generation just after us, people like Paul Masterton, I just think there is a hell of a lot of opportunity on the Conservative benches to really have some serious impact and some serious ideas to take the country forward.

SR: Someone once said to me that the list of people who weren’t running for the Conservative party leadership would end up being longer … Sorry, the list of people who are running for the Conservative party leadership would be longer than those who aren’t and I just wondered if it was something that you had considered putting your name to?

TOM TUGENDHAT: At the moment I am just waiting to see what deal the Prime Minister brings back. I haven’t made any great secret of the fact that I would consider running for my party leadership at some point but to me the whole point of this is not to run for the leadership, it’s to change the country. To me the whole point of this is not to be an individual but to be a team. If there’s one thing that soldiering taught me is that as individuals we don’t achieve very much but we have an amazing Conservative team. I’ve listed some names there and there are many others and if we get the right people in the team then actually the leadership becomes not academic but certainly an expression of that and that’s what we’ve got to get to, we’ve got to get a really strong Conservative team forward, arguing for the future of the country, arguing for a positive future, arguing for a future that includes everybody in our community and really values the work that so many do, from the young to the old. We have an amazingly dynamic society, sometimes I think we forget that and it’s a great shame because it leads us to despondency when actually we should be fully optimistic. So I am really focused on doing my bit to support a Conservative team and see where that gets us.

SR: It’s interesting to listen to you talking about the future there. The Conservatives have been in power for eight years, do you sometimes worry that the current administration, the current form of the Conservative party, is a bit tired, a little bit consumed by Brexit?

TOM TUGENDHAT: Well I think it’s the nature of any major struggle is that it consumes those who are engaged in it. We know this, whether you look at a merger or an acquisition or any sort of major operation in the military or whatever it is, you always find that those who have really focused in on it, who have really had to do nothing but that for a long period of time, tend to get a bit worn out and that’s hardly surprising but it’s a credit to those who are engaged in the debate at the moment that they are devoting every inch of energy, every moment of energy in order to try and bring forward the best outcome for the British people and I think that’s absolutely right. Now once that is done, will people look for a change? I suspect they will and I think it’s for the Conservative party to come forward and be that change and I think we can be. I think we have an amazing opportunity, as I’ve listed already, from the number of people and ideas on our benches, to come forward and make a fantastic change and bring the country forward.

SR: Okay, Tom Tugendhat, thank you very much.

TOM TUGENDHAT: Thank you Sophy.