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- [00:06]
A
What does it feel like to govern as one world order dies and another begins to be born? Sir Jeremy Hunt knows the question better than most. Between 2010 and 2024, he occupied four of the most consequential offices in British government. Culture Secretary during the London Olympics, Health Secretary through the austerity years, Chancellor after the shocks of COVID and Liz Truss. And most important for US Foreign Secretary, Hunt is in many ways a product of the old order, a family story rooted in Empire, the Royal Navy and Cold War Britain. Yet in office, he found himself confronting a new order that was replaced, replacing the old one. In this conversation, we focus on his year leading the Foreign Office. Russia after Salisbury, Trump and NATO, Brexit and global Britain. Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia after Khashoggi and the return of great power rivalry. So, not yesterday's news at all, but today's crises in embryo. I'm Thomas Small. This is my Conflicted Conversation with Sir Jeremy Hunt. Sir Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on Conflicted. I have to say, sir, it's a great honor, a privilege to have you on the show. I don't think we've ever had anyone who has experienced, well, really power to the degree that you have. So thank you so much.
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B
It's a pleasure and looking forward to our discussion very much. Thomas.
- [01:58]
A
I have to confess at the outset, sir, that I'm nervous about this conference conversation. Not because you're frightening, you're clearly a very friendly person, but because you're a politician. And here on Conflicted, we like things to be congenial and open, and politicians have a reputation for not always answering a question with great honesty, if you know what I mean. Always kind of putting a certain shine on things. And so I'm nervous about it because I don't do gotcha journalism. I just like people to speak for freely. So I hope we're going to have that kind of a conversation.
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B
I'm sure we will. And I think, by the way, the gotcha journalists tend to get more defensive answers than people who want to have open conversations. So hopefully it'll be like that with us.
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A
Yes, I certainly hope so. So, because we're a global podcast, it may be that some of our listeners aren't quite aware of just how illustrious your political career has been. So, dear listeners, Sir Jeremy Hunt, currently a backbench Conservative MP, was for basically 14 years in the Cabinet with, I think, a brief spell outside of it. So you started in 2010 as culture secretary, and this coincided with London hosting the Olympics in 2012. So that was quite an amazing first kind of entry into frontbench politics. And. And then you were appointed the Secretary or Minister of Health for the United Kingdom, overseeing the massive nhs. I think probably the most poisoned chalice in politics, given how controversial and how polarizing the NHS is as a topic. And you must have known going into it that you were in for a lot of stick. You certainly received a lot. And then in 2018, you were foreign Secretary for an extremely eventful year, which is what this conversation will want mainly to focus on. And finally, Chancellor of the Exchequer, of all things, for nearly two years. All of this during an incredibly fervent time in British politics, in world politics, in world history. So it's really, as I say, a great pleasure to have you in the chair. How would you characterize that, you know, the last 15 years for us? At the outset, you were there at a very high place, watching it unfold at every moment. Nothing happened as expected. The Tories came to power in the wake of the great financial crisis. But then we had riots in London, we had Brexit, we had a Scottish referendum. Before that, no one knew how it was going to go. We had Trump, we had the rise of China, we had Covid, all of these things. What a time to be a politician. So how would you, in retrospect, now characterize those 15 years?
- [04:53]
B
Well, I think it's really interesting because we tend to focus on the big changes that are happening. And often this is something I heard Alexander Stubb, the President of Finland, say recently. We often over dramatize what's happening in the present because we read the headlines every day. But actually, I don't think it's possible to over dramatize the changes in the last 15 years, because we typically, in our lifetimes, you have one or two big shocks. But in the last 15 years, we've had the global financial crisis, we've had Covid, we've had Ukraine, and now we've got Iran. And that is a much quicker succession of global crises than we've ever had. But the strange thing is that although there's endless discussion about the unraveling of the global order and the big transition from one global order to a new one, there's also this strange circularity in history. And I grew up in the 1980s, you know, the days of the campaign for nuclear disarmament, the Cold War, worries about nuclear Armageddon, and, you know, the big argument in the 1970s and 80s, the big global argument was between democracy and autocracy. And we felt we couldn't take democracy for granted because we had the Soviet Union. And I actually think stepping back, we're actually ending up in the 21st century with exactly the same big global debate unfolding. And I have no doubt, actually, and we can discuss it if it's of interest to you, Thomas, but I have no doubt democracy and freedom will win this century. But I think the, the challenge is that in the last century it took us two world wars, a Cold War and a holocaust to get there. Are we going to have to go through the same pain this century if we are going to make sure that open societies prevail or can we find a smarter way for humanity to get there?
- [07:05]
A
Well, it was a bit of optimism followed immediately by possible pessimism. But that's the world that we're living in. I mean, you talk about cycles here on Conflicted. We do something sometimes like to indulge in big historical cycles. We have talked a lot about the last, let's say 300, 400 years of history, the rise of the British Empire, the consolidation of the Atlantic World Order, the British Empire's decline, the handing over of that world order, if you like, to the United States. And now that world order being contested, being a bit fragile. And as I was researching your own family background, I realized that you, Sir Jeremy Hunt, your family basically traces that whole story. You know, I found an ancestor, sir strainsham Master, a 17th century East India Company official who was something like a governor of Madras. So that's a long time ago. And then as the centuries unfolded, there's some clergymen in there, there's some military men in there who served in India in the First World War, I think served in Mesopotamia. And then your own father, a naval admiral in the post war period, basically his career coterminous with the British Empire which had ruled the waves, declining. So you sort of yourself in your ancestry, as it were, seen that massive arc. Growing up, were you aware of that story, that family story?
- [08:38]
B
I wasn't, but I had a strong sense of coming from a military family because my father, as you mentioned, was in the Royal Navy and my grandfather served in the Indian army and he was in Singapore and Mesopotamia in the Second World War. But I did grow up with that strong sense that the British Empire was a civilizing force across the world. And I, I probably didn't hear the other side of the argument on that, if I'm completely honest.
- [09:15]
A
They weren't giving the left wing view at Charterhouse.
- [09:17]
B
We didn't, we, we probably had a token left wing economics teacher but you're right, this was a fairly a sheltered upbringing and we. We didn't really hear very much of the other side of the story there. But I would say this, though. When I was Foreign Secretary that year you mentioned I was Foreign secretary, I visited 29 countries and I was always struck that other countries have a much more positive view of Britain than we tend to have of ourselves. And I asked myself many times on these trips, why is that? And by the way, particularly in the Middle east, which I know is a special area of interest, and I think there's a couple of reasons. I think the first is that after the Second World War, when Britain was still a lot more powerful than it is today, it was really Britain and America, Churchill, Roosevelt and Truman, who, between them laid the foundations for the current global order, which, for all its failures and, you know, goodness me, doesn't trump talk about them a lot, has led to more prosperity and more freedom for more human beings than ever before in the history of mankind. And I think there is a recognition that Britain played a big role in that. And then I think the second thing I would say, having been possibly a little bit blinkered about the. The bad sides of the British Empire when I was growing up, I did realise we were pretty much the first empire ever to dismantle itself completely voluntarily after the war. And actually, in a way that really was genuinely designed to try and leave the former colonies with the right foundations for the future. We didn't succeed in every case by any means. But it is really interesting if you sort of take something that's quite fundamental to our democracy and our culture, the idea that it's a good thing to have open public debate about whether your leaders are doing a good job or a bad job. You can travel pretty much anywhere in Africa and people get that in a way that they don't get in China. My wife's Chinese and I'm very familiar with Chinese culture, but there isn't this sort of understanding that it's just. You get it in India. It's amazing. Go to India and you can have a debate about politics that's really very similar to the kind of debates you would have in the UK and the us. And that, for me, is a fascinating thing.
- [12:04]
A
Also, you know, as you say, the British Empire is a tricky, difficult, complicated beast. And, you know, my own instincts tend to be, you know, quite positive about it. I'm not, certainly not a leftist or anything. You know, it is remarkable as an empire, how it always more or less oriented itself towards, in the end granting the areas under its control, something like self determination. It was a sort of inbuilt assumption of that particular imperial project, that its civilizing mission was oriented towards self governance in some way. I mean, I know that's a total simplification. The United States, especially around the end of the First World War, had a big influence on compelling the empire to develop in that way. So we could get into the weeds on this. But in general, as you say, it is a unique empire from that point of view. Nonetheless, it left in its wake a lot of problems, which I think we're still sorting out right now. The problems are myriad, as they were when you became Foreign Secretary on 9th July 2018. Now, when I read the list of crises that were on your desk over the course of those 12 months, not only is it amazing, I can't imagine having to deal with it, especially coming from sort of the Health Department, which is a massive headache, no doubt, but it's sort of contained. It's in Britain, you know, and then suddenly you have the whole world before you, a world that must have seemed like it was falling apart. Russia poisoning people in Britain. You inherited your post soon after that happened. The Iran situation boiling over, the Yemen situation boiling over. Saudi Arabia, the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi upsetting a very important strategic alliance. The Red Sea, you know, always being contested. Brexit, ongoing Trump, China. You know, not only are these amazing, this list of crises you had to handle, but they also could be from today's headlines. It's like all the same subjects are still there. So put us in your shoes as you walk in to the Foreign Office on the first day that you become minister, what was it like? You must have thought, oh, my goodness, this is a huge responsibility.
- [14:20]
B
Well, what I'm going to tell you is going to sound very much like Groundhog Day to you, Thomas, because you're absolutely right. All those things were bubbling over, and I don't think I'd heard it at the time, but I have subsequently heard a brilliant saying by Bill Clinton. He said, deal with the headlines, but never forget the trend lines. And for me, on literally my third day as Foreign Secretary, I went to the infamous NATO summit in Brussels, where Trump nearly pulled America out of NATO and his chief of staff had to fly over from Washington in a huge hurry to talk him out of it. He had a huge showdown with Angela Merkel. And that was my third day. It was a terrifying moment. And I remember from that moment on thinking that we've got problems in the Middle east, we've got the rise of China, we've got Brexit. But actually, one of the most important things is to keep America anchored into the family of democracies. And if we're going to do that, we have to be honest about. For all we may dislike some of the language Trump uses, his contempt for Democratic leaders, his reverence for autocratic leaders, for all that might cause despair. On one fundamental point, he's actually right, and that is that it is not fair that US taxpayers pay for around a third of the cost of defending Europe. So in the end, if we want America to continue to be the world's leading advocate for democratic values, we have to address that. And so I set about working out how we could increase defense spending. It's something that I was able to deliver as chancellor. It's something that still has not been addressed today, although now Europe is paying lip service to it, but we've yet to see it delivered. But my basic point on this is that, yes, the Western alliance and many other alliances are in a state of flux, but the outcome is not yet determined. And there is actually a world in which Europe really does increase its defence spending and over the next five to ten years stands on its own two feet in terms of defence. That deters Putin, that secures the future of Ukraine, and actually makes the alliance with the United States even stronger, because instead of feeling exploited, America starts to look at Europe, including the uk, as essential partners in that global debate argument battle that we're having for democratic values.
- [17:15]
A
So when you say that Clinton advised, in addition to the headlines, keeping track of the trend lines, what do you mean by that? The trend, let's say in 2018, the trend line that you were going to try to determine was what?
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B
Well, the trend line is, first of all, is that we have a China that, contrary to when I came into government the first time, when I arrived in office in 2010, you know, not that I was foreign minister, but I was talking constantly to leaders in the Chinese government because I was responsible for the British end of numerous diplomatic exchanges with, with China, partly because my wife is Chinese, so I have a special interest. But back in 2010, Chinese government officials would regularly say, you know, we're on the same path as you, and one day we'll become democratic. We're prioritizing economic rights ahead of political rights, but the political rights will come.
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A
They would actually say that to you, would they?
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B
They would absolutely say that to me.
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A
Well, that is interesting, Jeremy, because, you know, you hear that, that's what Western policymakers assumed would happen. And now they realize, oh, that didn't happen. Economic liberalization didn't result in democratization. But you're saying the Chinese themselves were
- [18:34]
B
saying that they would say that, and then Xi Jinping becomes president in 2012, and that changes. And I think the mistake we make often is to say that is because he's naturally a kind of dictator who wants to consolidate power around him. For sure, there'll be an element of that. But he is also someone who genuinely believes autocracies are better systems. They get things done, they make faster progress, they are more robust systems. And so that's changed things. And alongside that change in philosophy from China has come an enormous growth in China's economic strength, which has then funded China developing the world's largest military, the world's largest navy. And that has fundamentally altered the geostrategic balance. And the big difference, I mean, I talked about the circularity of going back to the Cold War, but there is, of course, a really big difference, which is that the Soviet Union was slowly going bankrupt, whereas China is gradually getting richer. And so that makes this a much more complex battle.
- [19:51]
A
To go back to that meeting in Brussels three days after you became foreign minister, did you have an opportunity then to meet President Trump?
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B
I shook his hand and Theresa May said, this is my new foreign secretary. And he said, nice to meet you. I've heard great things about you. And I thought, I'm sure you haven't heard anything about me at all. But anyway, I'll take the compliment from the leader of the free world, because they don't come too often. And then I had a bilateral meeting with him two days after that at Checkers, the prime minister's country residence. And there were probably about 8 or 10 of us in that meeting. And I saw him close up.
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A
And what was your impression? What was he like?
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B
I think the way to understand President Trump is that he is first and foremost a businessman rather than a statesman. That's not just about, you know, wanting to get rich and all those criticisms that you hear of him quite regularly, but it's more his outlook and his approach. He is a lot more decisive, a lot more interested in outcomes, a lot more willing to take risks than normal political leaders. I mean, I'll give you an example. We had one or two awkward silences in that meeting, and I figured, I'm foreign Secretary, I need to try and oil the wheels of this meeting a bit. And in one of those gaps, we were talking about the Middle east, as it happens, in One of those gaps, just to try and fill the silence, I said, Mr. President, if Assad wins the civil war in Syria, we need to think about what happens to the White Helmets, these humanitarian workers who very bravely rescue women and children from buildings that have been bombed by Assad. And we were supporting them, and we were worried that they could get butchered by Assad if he won the civil war. And, you know, a short discussion, and Trump said, well, if they're good guys, we should get them out. And John Bolton was next to him and said, well, I'll square off the Israelis because they had to come over the Israeli border. And two weeks later, 411 Syrians were airlifted out of Syria. And my proudest possession. I don't know if you can get this on the video.
- [22:13]
A
Oh, you have a white helmet right there.
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B
Wow. My entire time as Foreign Secretary was a white. Not a. You know, I got lots of glittering presents from other people, but this is actually the one I'm the most proud of because they came to see me after to thank me. But the interesting thing about that was the decisiveness. And it's very normal to hear lots of criticisms of Trump. And, you know, Iran is an example, I think, where decisiveness has gone wrong, actually. But the interesting thing is any other world leader would have said to me in that situation, that sounds like a really important problem to address. Foreign Secretary, I'll get my guys to go and have a look at it, and we'll see if there's anything that can be done with Trump. Let's get him out. Let's sort it out. Let's do it.
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A
Interesting.
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B
And that is not just a big change to typical world leaders, but it's also part of the formula because it makes him incredibly newsworthy, because politicians are actually prepared to do things, provide journalists with endless copy to write about.
- [23:17]
A
Well, before we continue really discussing that year when you were a foreign minister, I just want to at least briefly talk about the domestic political scene that really led to you becoming appointed foreign minister, because Boris Johnson was your predecessor in that post. He resigned over Theresa May's Checkers Brexit plan. I mean, my mind already starts turning to mush when I go back to thinking of those heady days after the Brexit referendum when Parliament kind of seemed to lose its marbles. And there was a constant, very confusing for a layman like myself, constant flurry of propositions and proposals and ideas and plans and counter plans. It was impossible to understand really what was going on. But in the midst of It Boris Johnson resigns, we now know, as a part of a political move, and he eventually became Prime Minister. You were appointed Foreign Secretary in his place. But tell us a bit now, in retrospect. We're approaching the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum. You supported the Remain side in that referendum originally, although you are on record as saying that following that, a few years later, you kind of had a conversion moment or something. You can put that in your own words. But how do you, thinking back now, looking back at those years, how do you remember them? How do you make sense of them?
- [24:42]
B
Well, I think that there were lots of different currents. Let's deal with the issue itself. And I think the truth is that it is a debate that poisoned British politics and is still poisoning British politics, because the 52% of people who voted to leave the EU have not found that we have entered the land of milk and honey as they were expecting. So they're pretty cross. And the 48% who didn't want to leave the EU are extremely angry that we have actually left the eu, so they're pretty cross. So there's a kind of anger across the spectrum in British politics, which makes most people pretty pissed off, to use the British phrase. So that's one thing that's happened. I voted to remain because I was worried that if we left, we might end up with a constitutional crisis, which we very nearly did. But I've always believed that a country the size of Britain, there's nothing to stop us flourishing in the way that a Canada or an Australia does over time.
- [25:58]
A
And there was, it turned out, nothing to stop a country like Germany also struggling over the same years, despite being in the eu. So the questions are bigger than just the EU or inside or outside.
- [26:10]
B
My nervousness about the EU is the sort of structural paralysis of decision making. I think, in the end, if we're going to win this argument for democracy, then all US democracies are going to have to sort out our economies and unlock economic growth. And I think that would be much harder for us. Yes, we'd have the benefits of the single market, but it's so hard getting decisions made inside the eu. And I think we'll probably find it easier if we have the nimbleness of an Israel or a Taiwan or a South Korea going forward. But then there's the sort of bigger question which is sometimes framed as, is this an example of the rise of populism? And I think that that is a dangerous way of looking at it. I prefer to think of it as the failure of centrist politics. If centrist politicians had properly addressed people's concerns about migration, I don't think the Brexit vote would have gone the way it did. And I speak as someone, by the way, who's a big supporter of the positive role of migration in society. I'm married to an immigrant, and I think that Britain has always flourished because we've been open to the brightest and best from all over the world for centuries. And that's been the heart of our success and our appeal as a country,
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A
not to mention the imperial legacy of Britain being global in its very nature. Britain is a global reality, whether ordinary British people like it or not.
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B
Yes, but I worry that if you don't control migration, we will lose the basis of that social contract, which says that we have actually overall benefited from our openness. And there was a failure by politicians from both parties to understand that. And I think we need to recognize that. And we need to recognize more broadly that because of the economic pressure since the global financial crisis, people are feeling a lot more gloomy about their futures, and they don't have confidence that the politicians they elect are actually able to sort out those big economic challenges. And that's the root cause of the problem. I mean, you can point to populist politicians here and there who you may not like, and I certainly worry about the way divisiveness has become a political tool, because I think fundamentally that's very, very unhealthy. But that's not the root cause of the problem. That's a symptom of the problem that we have not been as effective as we need to be at solving the big problems that people worry about.
- [29:05]
A
Well, Jeremy, you know, I have to confess, as I listen to you answer there, I have the voices of friends in my head, you know, left wing friends suddenly getting very agitated and saying, but you were in power for 14 years. You people introduced austerity in the face of the financial crisis. You did not invest when interest rates were low. You know, all of the. All that sort of thing. And then I have the sort of right wing voice saying, but you people opened the floodgates to immigration. We had more immigration than ever. The Boris wave. You talk a good talk, but you don't. I mean, I don't want this conversation to be about British domestic politics, but I can't but ask you, you must know that these voices are shouting at Tory politicians like yourself who were in power for all those years and it seems today didn't leave the country in the best State. I mean, I don't know. How do you answer those criticism?
- [30:18]
B
Look, the first thing I'm going to say is that I think it's really important for politicians who've been in office to be able to reflect openly and honestly about what they got right and what they got wrong and not to have to do so in a defensive way.
- [30:35]
A
Great.
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B
I mean, you know, these are really big and complicated jobs and you get something's right and you get something's wrong. So I think it's much better if politicians speak out about what they think really happened. Then I can give the case for the defense, which was that that government arrived in 2010 when the previous government, in its own words, had completely run out of money, mainly because of the global financial crisis, which wasn't their fault, but there was a 10% deficit. That basically meant, by the way, that the government was borrowing £1 in every four that we spent. Completely unsustainable. And we made major cuts in spending. I think the economy became the fastest growing in the G7 over that period. Britain became a tech powerhouse, 4 million jobs created. But there were things that we didn't do. And I can look back on my time as Chancellor and I wish we'd gone further and faster on welfare reform, which is becoming completely unaffordable. I wish we'd ramped up defence spending sooner. But overall, I'd look at that period, I would say, did we do the single thing that you want from Conservative governments, which is to take the tough decisions necessary to get the economy back on its feet after a crisis? Well, we had three of those global crises. We had the global financial crisis, Covid and Ukraine, and I think unequivocally, yes, but it wasn't enough. And this is the point I'm trying to make, Thomas. People felt at the end of that period that they'd had a lot of pain, a lot of difficult decisions taken, but they couldn't see that we had really got Britain out of that low growth trap.
- [32:27]
A
Well, we hadn't. I suppose we are still in it.
- [32:30]
B
You know, I would obviously make the case that if we'd been patient, I think we would have got there and we were on the right track. But that's not the purpose of this podcast. I just want to explain why it is that this is so significant. So before 2008, we were growing alongside most other advanced economies by about 2.5% a year. Now, if you compound that out, if you check out on ChatGPT, how many years do you need to grow at 2.5% a year before the economy doubles in size. The answer is 28 years. And that's quite significant because 28 is the kind of age that people start to have children. In other words, basically the economy was doubling in size every generation. And that gave people tremendous hope that whatever else might be going wrong in the world, they were at least going to be wealthier, more prosperous and have more opportunities than their parents or certainly than their grandparents. When the economy is growing at 1% a year, which is kind of where we're at now, it takes 70 years for GDP to double. That is so slow you can hardly notice it. And that's why young people now are worried that for the first time they might be the generation that are not going to be better off than their parents.
- [33:56]
A
Even not so young people, maybe 47 year olds, are worried.
- [33:59]
B
Yes, yes, indeed. And that's why I think this has become such an important issue. We have got to find a way. The two global hubs for democracy are North America and Europe. And also there are of course some very important places outside Japan, Australia, South Korea. But North America and Europe are the two places. And one of those, Europe is stuck in this low growth trap where its own people have lost confidence in their political leadership. And that is why it is so important that we address this.
- [34:41]
A
Well, I suppose you should then address that right wing voice shouting at me about the immigration floodgates that were opened by the Tories in the last five years and which has landed the labor government in political muck, frankly. So what about that decision?
- [34:59]
B
Well, with the benefit of hindsight, it was a mistake. I think what happened was that In January of 2020, we finally left the single market as part of the Brexit process. And Boris Johnson, to his great credit, basically resolved Brexit. And that was, for me, it was a great relief that in the 2024 election we weren't still debating Brexit, but he was obviously nervous that businesses might find it difficult to get the workers they needed, not being able to tap into the single market. And so when we had Hong Kong, Afghanistan and Ukraine, he put in place very generous resettlement schemes. And I think that none of us predicted that it was going to see such a large uptake as we ended up seeing as a result. So it was a mistake. I think it was done for actually quite honorable reasons. And yes, we paid a huge price. I mean, that was why in 2024 we saw the surge of the reform vote. And that is causing us difficulties at the moment as well.
- [36:14]
A
Well, let's go back to the Foreign Ministry year that you were there. I mean, I would love to pick your brains, talk, maybe push back a bit. I mean, when you talk about the last 40 years or the, you know, the post Cold War era of, you know, global neo neol and all of these things and all of the downstream consequences of many policy decisions that many countries made and the international community working in big international institutions made you just sort of wonder to what extent any of these consequences were within the powers of national governments to do anything about. I mean, I would love to talk about that. We can't. When you get into the Foreign Ministry, you are facing the prospect of a post Brexit Britain. A Britain that is no longer in the EU may suffer some economic shock as a result of that. No one knows, but still wants to, as it were, punch above its weight. So you're trying to reposition a newly independent of the EU Britain to maintain its geopolitical clout. And you give a speech, I believe, in which you say that you see Britain as being a, quote, invisible chain linking the world's democracies, a kind of democratic mediator or power broker or something. But in general, what was going through your mind as you were thinking, how is Britain going to situate itself in this new reality?
- [37:47]
B
Well, I think, first of all, Brits really underestimate how other countries see us. And I was looking at a poll. Here's the paradox, Thomas. According to one poll I saw, one third of young British people think that they would have better opportunities if they moved abroad. One third, that's really bad. But the British Council did a poll of young people across the G20. So the world's 20 largest economies, the 20 most powerful countries in the world, effectively asking them what they thought about all the other G20 countries. And when you ask young people from China to America to Saudi Arabia to France to Australia, which of the G20 countries you admire the most? Britain came third. Which do you trust the most? Britain came second. And which do you think is the biggest force for good in the world? Britain came top. Wow. And I think the. The truth is that we have good foundations if we want to be a force for good in the world. But it's going to need two things to be sorted out if we really want to continue to do this. And I came to understand this when I was Foreign Secretary and I. I feel it even more strongly now. I mean, the first is that we have to invest in defense, because one of the biggest things that we have to offer the world is the formidable reputation of the UK armed forces. And we are one of only a handful of countries that has shown itself willing to project force outside its own geographical region. They're in a sorry state at the moment. So this is something that. Where a lot of things need to be.
- [39:41]
A
Yeah, I was going to say I'm not sure this is, is the time to be talking about this. I see every day Andrew Neal's tweets in which he just lists the sorry state, especially of the British Navy, which must be a heartbreak for you personally.
- [39:55]
B
It is. But I also think that some of that is overdone as well. I think actually Britain still has an absolutely formidable military, but it needs nourishing and modernizing and we need to take advantage of the huge new changes in technology. But the second thing that goes with that is to sort out the economy, because in the end, the only way you can pay for a military and fund a military is by having a strong economy. So those two things are the absolutely necessary conditions for Britain punching above its weight in this century in the way that it did in the last century.
- [40:32]
A
Well, you were foreign minister for just a year. As I said, there were so many files on your desk. We could talk at length about lots of them. But I really want to to use the time that's remaining to us to talk about one of them in particular. And this is the Yemen situation and the Stockholm agreement. Now, listeners of Conflicted are aware of this situation, of this episode of this topic because we've covered the Yemen civil war very, very closely and in great detail. And we've had Yemenis on the program who are anti Houthi, pro UN recognized government Yemenis who quite frankly, Jeremy, hate the Stockholm agreement and blame it for the current very bad situation that Yemen remains in and that the whole Red Sea area finds itself in. They have been very sharply critical of it. I would like to know, and as much as you feel able to do, I would love for you to narrate from your perspective the decisions that were taken that led to the Stockholm agreement. So just to remind the listeners and to set the scene, for three years by that point Yemen was in a civil war. The Saudis with a ultimately UN authorized coalition had intervened on the side of the legitimate government who was trying to retake the capital which had been taken by the Houthis, an Iran affiliated non state actor. Very bad. The civil war was raging. It was extremely, remains extremely complicated. The coalition, which the two biggest players of which were the UAE and the Saudis, were already by that time, not seeing eye to eye. We now know they certainly ended up not seeing eye to eye. We've talked all about on the show now at that time. So this is spring into summer 2018. With the support largely of the UAE, Yemeni ground forces loyal to the UN recognized government, were pushing up the west coast and were mere kilometers from taking the strategically vital port of Hodeida, at which point a vast apparatus of UN and non un, humanitarian and diplomatic kind of channels opened up to put a halt to that military advance, to prevent the government, the Yemeni government, from capturing Hodeida. Why?
- [43:12]
B
Well, that wasn't how I saw the situation at the time. But let me say this. One of the people who I was privileged to meet early on as Foreign Secretary, and he mentored me a lot during that period was Henry Kissinger. And it was a huge privilege to see him every time I went to the us and he taught me the importance of looking at the world as it is, not how you want it to be. And he thought that good ideas that are not grounded in reality can cause chaos and tragedy. And what we had in Yemen at that time was a humanitarian crisis, the worst humanitarian crisis in the world at that time. I think perhaps the equivalent today would be what's happening in Sudan. It was kind of like a humanitarian crisis that no one was talking about people starving, people dying, the most horrific human catastrophe. And then we had a civil war, which there was really no prospect of a decisive outcome because you had the Houthis backed by Iran, you had the legitimate Yemeni government backed by Saudi Arabia and the uae. And so because you had bigger players behind different factions, this was a war that had the prospect of carrying on indefinitely. So Britain really didn't have any strategic interest of its own in this because, you know, we're not trading with Yemen. We just have a broader strategic interest for the world to try and bring peace. And it was one of those situations where if you could get a ceasefire and get a ceasefire to take hold, then maybe over time that would create the conditions for a lasting peace. Even if you can't agree to dot the I's and cross the T's. I don't know if you're looking about a comparison, maybe something like the DMZ in Korea where, you know, you have a ceasefire, it's not actually settling issues of sovereignty, but it's creating peace. Now, in some ways, I think that's what we may end up with in the Straits of Hormuz today, with the conflict that we've got Between, God help us, God help us, Iran and the United States, where I think it's very unlikely we'd find an agreement that both Iran and the US could sign up to, which covered all the areas of dispute between the two countries. But what you might do is get an agreement to have a ceasefire that reopens the Strait of Hormuz. So that was what we were trying to do in that situation. We weren't trying to endorse the Houthis. But I don't agree that it was a reasonable judgment at the time that had we not done that, there would have been a victory for the Saudi backed, UAE backed forces. In fact, the contrary, I think that the Saudis and the UAE were finding it extremely challenging. You know, the Saudis believed that they were going to have a very quick military victory and they found that that was not happening. And so I think it was an attempt to try and stop a humanitarian crisis unfolding.
- [46:50]
A
I know that was what was underlying the effort. But I would be surprised if at the time, certainly, the Saudis were anxious for that particular ceasefire and for the port of Hodeida to remain under Houthi control. Now, I know the Stockholm agreement was intended to put the port of Hodeida in some kind of like, neutral position where neither side controlled it. The Houthis pretended to go along with that. But extremely quickly it became clear that in the same way that Iran does today, that they actually have no intention whatsoever of doing that. They were just using this diplomatic process to stay in power, to buy themselves time to entrench their power, which they did. And they're able, and have been able to use their position there on the west coast to attack Red Sea shipping, to project their power into the Horn of Africa. It strikes me, and I say this with respect, it just strikes me as a really unfortunate thing that happened. But the Saudis, surely, what I'd like to know from you, really, because the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi occurred just as this stockholm process was getting off the ground. The Saudis were in the diplomatic kind of knotty corner for sure. I guess that would have given you and Martin Griffiths, the man who was overseeing for the UN this process, leverage to kind of compel them to step in line a bit. I mean, the Yemenis that I've talked to, who really know, they've talked to all the. No, they're highly placed. They say that, that to get Stockholm across the line, Britain drew on its entire arsenal of diplomatic power, that they just did everything they could to get this ceasefire Agreed in December of 2018. What was that arsenal at the time? What lengths did you go to to get the Saudis to sign, to get the Yemenis to sign, the Yemenis on the side of the official government and the Emiratis to sign?
- [48:53]
B
Well, you know, we had some. We have deep strategic relations with both Saudi and the uae. And yeah, Saudi was slightly on the back foot after the Khashoggi thing for sure. I was the first Western foreign minister to visit Saudi after that happened. And it was a very difficult visit. But these are, you know, very competent, wealthy countries who in the end will only do what is in their national interest. And I think that that is to overstate the role of Britain's, you know, diplomatic arsenal on, on this issue. I think that, yes, Britain was trying to get a ceasefire, but I think also going through the mind of the Saudi government was that they had been told by general after general in the Saudi army that this was going to be done and dusted in a matter of days and they'd found that actually it wasn't. And certainly we didn't have any influence in that kind of way over the uae. They were also finding themselves getting sucked into a conflict which they were not sure where it was going to end up ultimately. So I think there was a willingness to try something different. And yet we absolutely wanted to relieve a humanitarian catastrophe and capitalized on that. But there had to be some willingness by the participants and some sense that this could be in their interests as well.
- [50:34]
A
I suppose. I think that in that case and in so many cases, including now, we see with the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, there seems to be, and maybe this is linked to what you say Henry Kissinger told you about seeing the world as it is. Because I think it's hard to know exactly when you're being idealistic and when you're being realistic. And often it can seem to me at least that the more humanitarian oriented perspective which sees war as something like an inherent evil that should be stopped, that it doesn't serve the interests of peace, that war is the opposite of peace in a way and not sometimes a mechanism of re establishing peace and justice when those have been upset. I'm just trying to think of a world in which instead of conceiving of Yemen at that time as ideally a place where a ceasefire would be put in place, where the Houthis would be regarded as a legitimate player that needed to be dealt with on equal terms, instead, if the world had just said, no, let's take from this Non state actor, this very strategically important thing that they have this port through which Iran can smuggle in weapons and which has this incredible, you know, military apparatus that they inherited from the previous regime. If we can just get it and weaken them, then we'll be further towards peace because they're the cause of the injustice, they're the cause of the problem. I just wonder if. And again, as foreign minister, you must have dealt with this because you have two basically diametrically opposite views of how peace is best established. Whether you could use the military to establish peace as we did in the Second World War, or whether humanitarian, diplomatic means are best. I don't know if you get what I'm getting at here. But right now with Iran, it seems like maybe America is also going to stop. Stop the military side and then keep things in an awkward stasis. So how do you know when to get that right?
- [53:01]
B
The one thing I would say is that this was not a process driven out of some kind of idealism that says that all war is bad. I mean, I have always believed, throughout my whole lifetime in peace through strength. I gave a speech saying that it was our failure to react to Putin's invasion of Georgia and Crimea that was leading to more aggression by Putin. This was, by the way, before the Ukraine conflict proper started. So it's certainly not my ideological starting point. But I think the reason why that description is wrong is because that is exactly what the Saudis and Emirates have been trying for several years ahead of the Stockholm agreements. And it was their recognition that they weren't achieving the results that they wanted that led them to be party to that agreement. And I think that the reality is the Houthis were just stronger than they had anticipated, more determined, getting more support from Iran. And that's why we had to be realistic that there was going to have to be some kind of deal if the civil war was ultimately to stop,
- [54:26]
A
well, to continue in the Middle East. What about Iran? What are your feelings? President Trump withdrew from the jcpoa, I think, shortly before you became foreign minister, or maybe when you were foreign minister. Yeah, just before. So you inherited that situation. But Iran, as a sort of difficult to bad actor, was very present. British citizens were being, you know, held in, being detained by Iran. There was some chicanery inside in the Persian Gulf about tankers and things. It's very similar again to what we see today. So what is your overall sense of Iran, its place in the world and the current situation as the United States pretty much alone, you know, with Israel, of Course, with the gcc, though, that's under strain, trying to do something quite radical to solve the problem of Iran.
- [55:21]
B
Well, I think Iran is an evil regime. And, you know, the reality is that they are not only a strategic ally of Russia and China, but they are absolutely determined to create instability through their proxies. We've been talking about Yemen, but the same is true in Lebanon, in Iraq. I personally thought that it was absolutely reprehensible the way they just captured innocent citizens from other countries and used them as hostages to try and extract concessions. And I personally flew to Tehran to try and secure the release of Nazanin Zagari, Ratcliffe and Anoush Eshuri, and was given the runaround by the Iranian regime. So I have no, no time for this regime at all. And I would love it if it was gone.
- [56:12]
A
Oh, wouldn't we all?
- [56:13]
B
Goodness, yeah. But the truth is that, you know, Iran is also a big country and it's not going anywhere. And, you know, it's a bit like, you know, the feelings I have about China. You know, no one dislikes the Communist regime more than I do in terms of the appalling way it treats its own citizens, the removal of democratic freedoms in Hong Kong and so on and so forth. But China isn't going anywhere, and so we have to find a way to coexist. And I think the action we've seen in Iran under President Trump in the last couple of months has been very misconceived because he underestimated the strength and resilience of an evil regime. And they have discovered that they had leverage they didn't know they had before in terms of their ability to close the Straits of Hormuz. And that will actually be, for them, almost as powerful as having their own nuclear weapon. And so we've managed to make the situation worse. We've made them more determined to build a nuclear weapon because they're figuring that the one way we can avoid being pushed around like, you know, is to be like North Korea, have our own nuclear weapon that makes everyone sit up and take care. And secondly, we've got this leverage over the Straits of Hormuz, which we didn't know we had. So, in the end, this is a situation that is only going to happen, I think, by negotiation and compromise. And I suspect that's what we'll actually see from the United States, although I imagine that Trump will find a very clever way to spin it as one of his greatest ever victories. But the reality is, I think we will end up with Somewhere considerably less favorable than the original JCPOA agreement that he ripped up.
- [58:14]
A
Is it possible though as well, that American led Western power is simply in decline? That the project, the kind of experiment of that maritime global order which could create something like an imperium, an order that has force behind it, but didn't require conquest, didn't require direct rule over huge parts of the world, but could, through alliances and economic incentives and yes, the odd gunboat every now and then keep people in line. Is it possible that that experiment is just now not going to succeed or will no longer succeed? Maybe because the economic rise of China and India, rebalancing, you know, the economic realities of the globe after a couple of centuries of Western preponderance, whether it's because of the invention of new technologies, I don't know, smartphones, et cetera, just empowering citizens in a way that makes them harder to control. Is that possible? I was talking to someone whose husband works very high up in the Pentagon and she revealed to me that a lot of the officers at the top there are very concerned that actually it's kind of game over for the Atlantic world order. You are an optimist, Jeremy. You're a bright and sunny guy, so you're probably going to push back at it. But what if it's just possible that that that experiment which your family participated in building, you know, is coming to an end?
- [59:51]
B
Well, let me tell you what I honestly believe. It is up to us. It is up to us. So the reason that I don't think it's all over or it doesn't have to all be over is partly because I think China's economic rise is sometimes overstated. I mean, at the moment it will at the earliest be not until the mid-2050s before China's economy overtakes that of the United States in dollar terms, although it's already done so, purchasing power, parity terms. But it's mainly because what do human beings want? I think they want security, prosperity and freedom. They want all of those things. And that's the same whether you're British or American or Chinese. And the American led international order that we've had since the Second World War has actually been one of the most big hearted, generous, spirited international orders that we've ever had. America has not been an international, you know, behaved in the way of typical imperial hegemon. It's just said, look, how countries run their affairs is up to them. We're going to give gentle support for democracy here and there because we happen to like it better, but in the end, it's for countries to decide how they're run. But we are going to make sure there's freedom of navigation, and we're going to try and do everything we can to make sure the big countries aren't able just to invade smaller countries, as happened the whole time in the 19th century. And there is a lot of support for a world that operated along those lines. And China doesn't have that commitment. It supported Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, which has caused a huge amount of damage to China's relationship with Europe because that is, for us, a core strategic interest. So, you know, and then I look at global migration flows, people aren't banging down the doors to go and live in China or go and live in Russia or go and live in Iran. They want to live in North America or Europe or Australia or Japan. And so I think that it is up to us. But if we are going to construct a new global order based on the realities of the 21st century rather than the 20th century, then first of all, we've got to recognize that we will need all of us, all of us in the democracies, to invest in our armed forces in order to prevent opportunistic conflicts, that's to say, conflicts that autocrats start because they think they can get away with it. Secondly, we're going to need to be a little bit smarter in the conflicts that we get involved in. You know, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iran have not been strategically thought through. And we need to be a bit better at learning the lessons. But, you know, for all the criticisms of what happened in Afghanistan and what happened in Iraq, they were never colonial projects. It was always a plan to go in, get rid of a bad government and leave it with a better government. We just failed. And we need to learn those lessons. We need to sort out our economies. And that's essential because in the end, particularly outside North America, lack of economic growth is meaning that our own populations are losing confidence in our own model. And if we don't really believe in our own model, we're not going to persuade other people to adopt it as well. So there's, I suppose, quite a long list of things that we need to sort out. But I do think that in the end, liberal democratic societies have found the best balance of security, prosperity and liberty. And we would be absolutely crazy to give up the ghost now just because we've been going through a rocky patch.
- [64:07]
A
Well, I hope not. Jeremy, one more question for you and then I'll let you go. Thank you. For giving us so much of your time. It's been a great conversation. You spent so many years very, very, very near the very, very top of British power, in many different chairs health, culture, foreign affairs and finally finance. So what would you wish voters to understand about the reality of power, of the actual human reality, of waking up every day and governing a 21st century nation state, a 21st century liberal democracy? What do you know now about power that you wish voters better understood when they judged the capabilities of or the qualities of their politicians?
- [65:03]
B
I don't think I want to point the finger at voters for not understanding the realities of power better. I think it's us politicians who need to be rather better at explaining the realities and trade offs than we perhaps have been. I think that right now, the argument that I think we need to win is that unlocking economic growth is the start of how we get out of our current malaise. But that involves trade offs. It's not straightforward. It involves big reforms to our welfare system, big reforms to the way we run public services. We need to get back on the path to reducing tax backing, enterprise supporting people who want to set up their own business. Some basics there. And I think the one thing that I discovered when I was Chancellor, which I didn't fully understand the day I took up the job, is that most economic reforms tend to take four or five years before you can start seeing them feed through. And that's the fundamental challenge for politicians, because that's often outside the electoral cycle.
- [66:21]
A
Big problem with electoral politics.
- [66:23]
B
Yeah. So I think we have to explain to people, look, these are the big reforms, these are going to solve the problem. There's no rocket science about this. We can point to other countries that have done this. There's a time lag, but it's the right thing we do. And if we want to give young people hope about the future, and the same hope that you and I had, Thomas, when we were growing up, that confidence we had that we were going to have a better life than our parents and grandparents, then that's the path we need to embark on. And it's also the path, if we do it alongside our fellow democracies, that is more likely to secure democracy and freedom at the end of this century in the way we did at the end of the last one.
- [67:03]
A
Sir Jeremy Hunt, thank you so much for coming on Conflicted. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you.
- [67:08]
B
My pleasure. Thank you so much, Thomas.
- [67:12]
A
That was Sir Jeremy Hunt, backbench Tory MP and former British Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Remember, for deeper dives into the ideas we explore on this show, including extended conversations and Q&As with my CO host Eamon Dean. Check the show notes for details on how to join the conflicted community. I'm Thomas Small. Conflicted is a Message Heard Production Our executive producers are Jake Warren and Max Warren. This episode was produced by Thomas Small and Ross Field and edited by Mariana Ramirez Zabla.