Browse content similar to Tom Fletcher, British Ambassador to Lebanon, 2011-2015. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
Lebanon, Tom Fletcher, if traditional diplomacy is dead. | :00:00. | :00:00. | |
Welcome to HARDtalk with me, Stephen Sackur. | :00:07. | :00:11. | |
What is the point of the modern-day diplomat? | :00:12. | :00:17. | |
Theirs is a world of fortified embassies, chaffered | :00:18. | :00:22. | |
limousines and elaborate protocol, but in this globalised internet age, | :00:23. | :00:25. | |
My guest today has been addressing that very question. | :00:26. | :00:35. | |
Tom Fletcher was appointed British ambassador to Lebanon | :00:36. | :00:37. | |
Five years on, he's just written an operational review | :00:38. | :00:41. | |
diplomats are only as influential, as powerful, as | :00:42. | :01:23. | |
the nation states that they represent. | :01:24. | :01:26. | |
Right now, nation states as a whole, as a generalisation, are becoming | :01:27. | :01:29. | |
A lot of power is now being transferred away from | :01:30. | :01:46. | |
the nation state, away from hierarchies, away from traditional | :01:47. | :01:48. | |
sources of authority, towards individuals. | :01:49. | :01:49. | |
So diplomacy, that has always attached itself to | :01:50. | :01:52. | |
power, has got to adjust where it gets that power from. | :01:53. | :01:54. | |
Diplomacy changing, but isn't it time to acknowledge | :01:55. | :01:59. | |
that, actually, a lot of what a diplomat does, the traditional | :02:00. | :02:04. | |
stuff of diplomacy, is now irrelevant? | :02:05. | :02:05. | |
There is this image of diplomats that is sort of stuck in the public | :02:06. | :02:16. | |
consciousness, around the Ferrero Rocher | :02:17. | :02:18. | |
reception, the Rolls-Royce, the James Bond | :02:19. | :02:19. | |
All of that is as far removed from my experience of diplomacy | :02:20. | :02:26. | |
The reality is we have people out there in tough situations, | :02:27. | :02:30. | |
conflict situations, getting Brits out of trouble. | :02:31. | :02:32. | |
There is very little Ferrero Rocher involved. | :02:33. | :02:34. | |
Let's leave aside the chocolates and look at what you have reflected | :02:35. | :02:37. | |
You have written extensively about your time as ambassador in Lebanon. | :02:38. | :02:41. | |
You wrote, "I felt power draining through my fingers as an ambassador. | :02:42. | :02:45. | |
Governments becoming weaker compared to other sources of powers, | :02:46. | :02:49. | |
and within governments, diplomats are becoming weaker compared to | :02:50. | :02:51. | |
That suggests to me a deep level of frustration within you at the | :02:52. | :02:57. | |
I'm passionate about diplomacy, and believe strongly in our ability to | :02:58. | :03:04. | |
make the world a better place, and promote coexistence, which we have | :03:05. | :03:07. | |
been doing as diplomats since the first caveman put down a club and | :03:08. | :03:18. | |
started collaborating to work together for resource with another | :03:19. | :03:20. | |
We are competing with many other sources of influence. | :03:21. | :03:30. | |
Google has its own foreign policy, Microsoft has its own foreign | :03:31. | :03:33. | |
Big media corporations - the BBC has its own foreign policy, | :03:34. | :03:36. | |
dare I say, so we have to fight harder for that space. | :03:37. | :03:39. | |
It seems to me that your experience, both as a diplomat in the field and | :03:40. | :03:43. | |
based at Number 10 Downing Street representing or giving advice to the | :03:44. | :03:46. | |
Prime Minister, suggests that more and more, embassies, diplomats in | :03:47. | :03:48. | |
the field, don't really matter, because there is a centralisation of | :03:49. | :03:52. | |
power, and we see it in the White House, at Number 10 Downing Street, | :03:53. | :03:56. | |
in the Kremlin and Beijing, too, that the projection of the brand, | :03:57. | :04:00. | |
the message of a nation, comes from a centralised point | :04:01. | :04:03. | |
There have always been phases where people reckon that was the case. | :04:04. | :04:10. | |
You said at the time that you felt yourself to be essentially more spin | :04:11. | :04:18. | |
doctor than diplomat when you were in Number Ten. | :04:19. | :04:21. | |
I felt we were constrained by the demands of a 24/7 media. | :04:22. | :04:24. | |
But I also felt there were enormous amounts we could do | :04:25. | :04:29. | |
from Number Ten to promote British policy. | :04:30. | :04:31. | |
You still have in the foreign office and diplomatic network | :04:32. | :04:34. | |
an unparalleled network of people who can help you have a world view, | :04:35. | :04:37. | |
That's the strength of the organisation. | :04:38. | :04:40. | |
Yeah, I don't know whether you know him, but the New York Times recently | :04:41. | :04:49. | |
wrote a very interesting profile of a guy called Ben Rhodes, late 30s... | :04:50. | :04:52. | |
An extraordinary individual who is director | :04:53. | :04:58. | |
of strategic medications within the National Security Council inside | :04:59. | :05:01. | |
They said, in essence, he is the most powerful voice in US | :05:02. | :05:05. | |
foreign policy making outside the President himself. | :05:06. | :05:11. | |
And he said this recently, "Look at the reality of today. | :05:12. | :05:14. | |
US newspapers used to have foreign bureaus, now they don't. | :05:15. | :05:17. | |
Journalists call us to explain what is happening in Moscow and in Cairo. | :05:18. | :05:21. | |
Most outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. | :05:22. | :05:23. | |
The average reporter we talk to is barely out of their 20s | :05:24. | :05:27. | |
and they have very little experience. | :05:28. | :05:29. | |
Therefore, the White House feels it can shape | :05:30. | :05:31. | |
No. What you are trying to do is get in the story in the right way and | :05:32. | :05:43. | |
When I started we tried to get the right message on the ticker on the | :05:44. | :05:51. | |
bottom of the screen on the BBC. | :05:52. | :05:53. | |
By the time I left Number Ten, we were trying to get | :05:54. | :05:56. | |
the right tweet out there, define our policy in a tweet. | :05:57. | :05:59. | |
But you are still relying massively, especially in the field, | :06:00. | :06:01. | |
on journalists who know the situation on the ground, | :06:02. | :06:03. | |
So I don't think it's possible for anyone to shape the story in | :06:04. | :06:08. | |
the way that Ben was suggesting there. | :06:09. | :06:10. | |
If we think about social media platforms, | :06:11. | :06:16. | |
I can't think of any, certainly any British diplomat, maybe any | :06:17. | :06:19. | |
international diplomat, more assiduous in | :06:20. | :06:21. | |
You sent more than 10,000 tweets while you were in Lebanon. | :06:22. | :06:27. | |
It suggests to me you were more concerned with living a reality | :06:28. | :06:30. | |
diplomat life than you were doing any meaningful diplomacy. | :06:31. | :06:32. | |
For me, this was meaningful diplomacy. | :06:33. | :06:39. | |
If you look at the Middle East now, there is a massive battle for the | :06:40. | :06:42. | |
hearts and minds of people across the region. | :06:43. | :06:44. | |
That debate is happening on social media. | :06:45. | :06:46. | |
There are many risks to being there in the way you described. | :06:47. | :06:49. | |
One risk to me was that the smartphone I was engaging on was | :06:50. | :06:52. | |
also the device by which terrorists were | :06:53. | :06:54. | |
But you have to be in those arguments as a diplomat. | :06:55. | :06:58. | |
The biggest risk is to leave that space clear to our opponents. | :06:59. | :07:01. | |
You have to be in the arguments, you say, and you sort of suggest you | :07:02. | :07:07. | |
felt that your constant tweeting, and a lot of it was about frankly | :07:08. | :07:12. | |
the fun you are having, charity walks you were taking, flights with | :07:13. | :07:16. | |
the Red Arrow display team, all sorts of stuff | :07:17. | :07:18. | |
you were having fun with in Lebanon - | :07:19. | :07:22. | |
you seem to suggest that was presenting a different set of values | :07:23. | :07:25. | |
and alternative cultural political message from that posed by | :07:26. | :07:28. | |
extremists, including those from IS - as though your Twitter feed could | :07:29. | :07:33. | |
somehow counter the propaganda coming from Islamic State. | :07:34. | :07:35. | |
I won't claim that every single tweet I sent was taking on Daesh | :07:36. | :07:45. | |
directly, but I would like to say, if you add up those 10,000 tweets, | :07:46. | :07:49. | |
you'll get a strong sense of Britain's place in the world, our | :07:50. | :07:53. | |
prosperity offer, focus on stability, and our wider values | :07:54. | :07:56. | |
It was only by tweeting, in a hopefully entertaining way at times, | :07:57. | :08:01. | |
that I could connect with people in order to get our message across. | :08:02. | :08:04. | |
Let's be charitable and say some of those were Lebanese, | :08:05. | :08:08. | |
and even more charitable and say they weren't all articulate, | :08:09. | :08:11. | |
There is still absolutely no way whatsoever that the kind | :08:12. | :08:17. | |
of disaffected, alienated youth in Lebanon or anywhere in the Middle | :08:18. | :08:19. | |
East who might be considering the attractions of Islamic State, there | :08:20. | :08:22. | |
is no way they will see tweets from the British ambassador | :08:23. | :08:25. | |
in Lebanon and think, "I have changed my mind, I'm attracted | :08:26. | :08:28. | |
Actually, you can assess the number of | :08:29. | :08:35. | |
About 30,000 of my followers were from Lebanon. | :08:36. | :08:38. | |
They weren't all hanging out at embassy parties. | :08:39. | :08:40. | |
They were people I wouldn't have otherwise reached. | :08:41. | :08:44. | |
They were reading you in English, weren't they? | :08:45. | :08:47. | |
These were English speakers, as many are who are being | :08:48. | :08:52. | |
When the Iranian embassy was blown up in Beirut, we didn't | :08:53. | :08:56. | |
I could not go down there and express my condolences. | :08:57. | :09:07. | |
I'm not going to say there is a link between that and the Iran deal, | :09:08. | :09:15. | |
You're the Kim Kardashian of modern-day diplomacy. | :09:16. | :09:18. | |
You live a reality TV lifestyle, to a certain extent in Beirut. | :09:19. | :09:31. | |
But you are not really doing what diplomats have traditionally done | :09:32. | :09:34. | |
and seen as their most important work - | :09:35. | :09:36. | |
highly confidential, secret work on the most difficult issues to try to | :09:37. | :09:39. | |
The tweeting is the tip of the iceberg. | :09:40. | :09:46. | |
It doesn't replace that substantive work behind the scenes. | :09:47. | :09:48. | |
A lot of what I'm tweeting about is the work we did | :09:49. | :09:51. | |
on the border, building watchtowers that were keeping Islamic State | :09:52. | :09:53. | |
I was tweeting about the fact we got textbooks to every child in the | :09:54. | :09:59. | |
I was tweeting day by day about the controversial political | :10:00. | :10:04. | |
I use Twitter, not as assiduously as you - 140 characters - let's | :10:05. | :10:15. | |
not get carried away by the sorts of profound messages you can deliver | :10:16. | :10:18. | |
I want to quote you the words of Nicholas Carr, | :10:19. | :10:22. | |
who wrote a fascinating book, The Glass Cage. | :10:23. | :10:24. | |
He says, "Social media favours the bitty over the meaty, | :10:25. | :10:26. | |
cutting over the considered, and prizes emotion over reason. | :10:27. | :10:29. | |
The more visceral the message, the more quickly it circulates," | :10:30. | :10:36. | |
and that, I put it to you, is why Islamic State is always going to get | :10:37. | :10:40. | |
more out of social media and platforms | :10:41. | :10:42. | |
Social media does empower the bad guys and the outraged. | :10:43. | :10:47. | |
Those who have a simple and clear message. | :10:48. | :10:52. | |
Not the diplomats who confessed the world is complicated. | :10:53. | :10:54. | |
It suits people like Donald Trump, who just want to be | :10:55. | :10:57. | |
in every argument and whose answer is to just build a bigger wall. | :10:58. | :11:04. | |
He is the first real Twitter politician. | :11:05. | :11:06. | |
He has leveraged it to create an amazing national campaign. | :11:07. | :11:09. | |
People respond to what he says because they feel it's the real | :11:10. | :11:16. | |
Do you want to be a Donald Trump of diplomacy? | :11:17. | :11:19. | |
No, but I don't want to leave that space | :11:20. | :11:21. | |
Donald Trump has something like 5 million followers, you have 50,000. | :11:22. | :11:27. | |
I reckon I have more than he does in Lebanon. | :11:28. | :11:35. | |
Without being too grandiose, this is about the future of the world, about | :11:36. | :11:38. | |
how messages get out there and how people like you | :11:39. | :11:40. | |
who care - you want these guys who actually care about the world and | :11:41. | :11:44. | |
how we govern it, your approach to the message is never going to | :11:45. | :11:47. | |
compete with Donald Trump's, because you are too even-handed and he is | :11:48. | :11:50. | |
I'm not going to claim I will suddenly take on Donald Trump in | :11:51. | :12:00. | |
social media, but many are doing that, | :12:01. | :12:01. | |
They are journalists, in NGOs, individual campaigners, | :12:02. | :12:05. | |
they are in communities, and those voices are needed to | :12:06. | :12:07. | |
The problem is that too many of those people now are distracted by | :12:08. | :12:13. | |
cute cats or Justin Bieber's hair. | :12:14. | :12:17. | |
You have made a bit of a stir in the UK, you have written a book, which | :12:18. | :12:33. | |
talks about the digital approach to diplomacy. | :12:34. | :12:34. | |
There are those inside the Foreign Office and have recently left that | :12:35. | :12:37. | |
Just to quote one, and it is not personal, but he has considered | :12:38. | :12:44. | |
your message and doesn't agree with you - Oliver Miles, former | :12:45. | :12:47. | |
ambassador in Libya and I think Athens as well, | :12:48. | :12:49. | |
and he says, "We need to consider carefully what ambassadors are for. | :12:50. | :12:52. | |
They are not super journalists or blogging super agony aunts. | :12:53. | :12:55. | |
Their job is to advise government seriously on policy and to provide | :12:56. | :13:03. | |
- this is important - "discreet reliable channels of communication | :13:04. | :13:06. | |
And 90% of what I was doing in Lebanon was very discreet. | :13:07. | :13:19. | |
The conversations I was having with Lebanese warlords day in, day out, | :13:20. | :13:22. | |
and the advice I was giving on the Syria crisis was very discreet. | :13:23. | :13:25. | |
But you say everything has to be opened up to the public, and that | :13:26. | :13:30. | |
transparency and accountability means diplomats have to give more | :13:31. | :13:32. | |
I want a more honest way of talking to the public. | :13:33. | :13:36. | |
But there is still a place for that confidential channel. | :13:37. | :13:39. | |
That is a huge part of what diplomats do. | :13:40. | :13:41. | |
If there isn't that confidentiality and therefore mutual trust | :13:42. | :13:43. | |
between antagonistic parties, that neither will rat on the other and | :13:44. | :13:46. | |
spill the beans, then no difficult issue will ever be compromised on. | :13:47. | :13:51. | |
The Iran deal was done away from social media. | :13:52. | :14:00. | |
Until the news broke, carefully delivered, that the | :14:01. | :14:05. | |
Israelis and Palestinians had spent months, if not years, talking under | :14:06. | :14:08. | |
Norwegian auspices to get a deal on a two-state solution, and we are | :14:09. | :14:14. | |
talking 1992-3, many years ago, if the secrecy hadn't been there, | :14:15. | :14:19. | |
Perez, Arafat, they never would have gotten close to that deal. | :14:20. | :14:24. | |
And a huge part of what we do has to remain confidential. | :14:25. | :14:27. | |
Social media makes the public feel more engaged, and more involved | :14:28. | :14:29. | |
Let's go back to the beginning, and me talking about the extent to | :14:30. | :14:36. | |
which you feel that diplomats have haemorrhaged influence because | :14:37. | :14:39. | |
The truth is the influential, powerful states still invest | :14:40. | :14:46. | |
It is the hard power, the military power and the ability to impose | :14:47. | :14:55. | |
serious economic sanctions, that gives diplomats in difficult | :14:56. | :14:59. | |
That is why the 2% we are spending on defence is so important. | :15:00. | :15:05. | |
It is why the 0.7% we spend on development is important | :15:06. | :15:08. | |
as well, because that is how you project power. | :15:09. | :15:12. | |
But I would add to that the wider soft power we as the UK can deploy, | :15:13. | :15:16. | |
everything from James Bond to David Beckham to the royal family. | :15:17. | :15:19. | |
This is part of the toolkit of options you have as a diplomat. | :15:20. | :15:22. | |
Without the hard power, without the economic power, | :15:23. | :15:24. | |
So would you agree with another review, not your review of process | :15:25. | :15:32. | |
in the Foreign Office, but another review of Britain's reach in the | :15:33. | :15:36. | |
world, written by people like Sir Christopher Meyer, and Sir Richard | :15:37. | :15:39. | |
Dearlove, the former chief of internal | :15:40. | :15:48. | |
They concluded, and I am quoting, Britain is suffering a crisis | :15:49. | :15:52. | |
of confidence in foreign policy that leaves it, quote, | :15:53. | :15:54. | |
sidelined in Syria, ineffective in Ukraine, unwilling in Europe, | :15:55. | :15:56. | |
And I'm not going to be one more former diplomat going | :15:57. | :16:06. | |
around saying how good life would be by were still in charge. | :16:07. | :16:10. | |
Actually it is frank and truthful, and it sounds to me | :16:11. | :16:13. | |
like you are about to give a woolly answer saying that we are | :16:14. | :16:16. | |
Take our role in Lebanon, for example. | :16:17. | :16:23. | |
There is no way we were bystanders, onlookers in Lebanon. | :16:24. | :16:28. | |
We were fortifying the border, we were giving education in schools, | :16:29. | :16:31. | |
Ask 4 million Lebanese whether we have mattered over | :16:32. | :16:37. | |
the last ten years and you will get a very different answer. | :16:38. | :16:40. | |
You don't think that your perspective might be slightly | :16:41. | :16:43. | |
skewed, because you happened to be sitting in the very comfortable | :16:44. | :16:45. | |
I was very rarely sitting in our very comfortable British Embassy. | :16:46. | :16:49. | |
I was out and about, taking part in the very important | :16:50. | :16:52. | |
The point these people make is that, look at Ukraine. | :16:53. | :16:58. | |
Vladimir Putin challenges the European Union, the West, | :16:59. | :17:00. | |
We say to him, don't even think about moving | :17:01. | :17:05. | |
your troops into Crimea, and certainly don't think about | :17:06. | :17:12. | |
He basically calls the shots in eastern Ukraine. | :17:13. | :17:21. | |
We impose a few sanctions, which frankly are not as strong | :17:22. | :17:24. | |
as they could be, and we in the end have to accept his status quo. | :17:25. | :17:30. | |
Yes, I talk a lot about 21st-century diplomacy. | :17:31. | :17:32. | |
Putin is a kind of 19th-century statesman, and he is very effective. | :17:33. | :17:35. | |
He is the real 21st-century diplomat, because he understands | :17:36. | :17:37. | |
first the realities of hard power, and he understands that for all | :17:38. | :17:40. | |
of your tweeting about your entertaining and social life in | :17:41. | :17:47. | |
Lebanon, that actually propaganda is what matters, | :17:48. | :17:49. | |
and he has the most sophisticated centralised system of propaganda. | :17:50. | :17:54. | |
Well, a large part of that propaganda is the way that the | :17:55. | :17:57. | |
This is part of the weaponry for them. | :17:58. | :18:03. | |
But your kind of use of social media is not what Vladimir | :18:04. | :18:09. | |
Yours is slice-of-life stuff, and here is what I did yesterday. | :18:10. | :18:14. | |
His is much more thoroughly, one could say cynically, controlled to | :18:15. | :18:16. | |
I would hope that what we are doing on social media... | :18:17. | :18:26. | |
No, but one man's propaganda is another man's spin. | :18:27. | :18:38. | |
We are all trying to communicate our national message, our national rand. | :18:39. | :18:46. | |
-- brand. So you are not really honest | :18:47. | :18:47. | |
and frank. A minute ago you seemed to be | :18:48. | :18:49. | |
suggesting to me that there really was a chance for self-expression, | :18:50. | :18:52. | |
to be accountable and transparent. Now you are suggesting it is | :18:53. | :18:55. | |
driven by national interest. I don't think | :18:56. | :18:57. | |
the two things are incompatible. I feel very comfortable talking | :18:58. | :18:59. | |
about Britain's role in the world. I never thought there was | :19:00. | :19:02. | |
a contradiction between that What if you really did feel | :19:03. | :19:04. | |
there was a contradiction? What if you really felt that | :19:05. | :19:09. | |
something the British Government was doing, while you were in their | :19:10. | :19:11. | |
pay as an ambassador, was wrong? You would probably find | :19:12. | :19:14. | |
me being silent on it. So when you call yourself the Naked | :19:15. | :19:18. | |
Diplomat, with the implication I tell the truth, I don't cover things | :19:19. | :19:21. | |
up, I am the real deal, you are not. Yes, but ultimately you work | :19:22. | :19:25. | |
for a Government. You can't have everybody going | :19:26. | :19:27. | |
around basically spraying out their Don't call yourself a | :19:28. | :19:32. | |
Naked Diplomat, then. Don't give | :19:33. | :19:35. | |
the impression you are different. The Naked Diplomat is not | :19:36. | :19:37. | |
about being completely open It is about trying to move | :19:38. | :19:39. | |
the conversation somewhere more authentic, more engaging, | :19:40. | :19:44. | |
then we have been in the past. I wouldn't put tweets out saying I | :19:45. | :19:48. | |
feel grave concerns I would say that I am angry about | :19:49. | :19:54. | |
what Assad is doing to his people. I would try | :19:55. | :20:01. | |
and use the language everyone else And the decision a couple of years | :20:02. | :20:04. | |
ago by Britain not to engage in the bombing with the Americans, | :20:05. | :20:09. | |
would you tweet that out as well? I wouldn't tweet about something | :20:10. | :20:17. | |
on which I disagreed with the Government, because ultimately I am | :20:18. | :20:20. | |
a representative of the Government, and that after all is my role | :20:21. | :20:23. | |
as an ambassador, as a diplomat. It is interesting that you have now, | :20:24. | :20:27. | |
I believe, You have headed a review | :20:28. | :20:29. | |
of the Foreign Office's operational capabilities and its future, and the | :20:30. | :20:34. | |
UN want you to do the same for them. When you look at the way in which | :20:35. | :20:38. | |
the UN tries to wield influence and power in the international | :20:39. | :20:42. | |
arena today, do you see the UN being I am worried we have subcontracted | :20:43. | :20:45. | |
a huge number of these big, global problems to the UN, | :20:46. | :20:57. | |
and it is really struggling. I think its own people admit | :20:58. | :20:59. | |
that it is struggling. It has got too big, it is | :21:00. | :21:02. | |
incoherent, it is not sufficiently What we try and do in this review | :21:03. | :21:05. | |
is work out how we can use these new tools, this smartphone | :21:06. | :21:10. | |
superpower that we have now. The digital diplomacy | :21:11. | :21:12. | |
you talk about. To reconnect the UN to | :21:13. | :21:14. | |
its basic purpose. Isn't there something more basic | :21:15. | :21:20. | |
that is problematic at the UN, which is that the power centre is | :21:21. | :21:22. | |
the Security Council, and inside the Security Council you have | :21:23. | :21:25. | |
five permanent members, all of whom And because | :21:26. | :21:28. | |
of that the entire institution is, on the most difficult | :21:29. | :21:32. | |
and contentious issues, hamstrung. Yes, and you see that in the | :21:33. | :21:36. | |
Middle East. With Syria, Russia has wielded | :21:37. | :21:38. | |
its veto pretty much permanently. You see that on Palestine, | :21:39. | :21:41. | |
where the Americans wield Christopher Meyer, | :21:42. | :21:48. | |
to mention him again, says in key matters of war and peace the | :21:49. | :21:51. | |
UN has proved well nigh useless. You look at the way the UN is | :21:52. | :22:05. | |
running the humanitarian effort at the moment, you look at what | :22:06. | :22:10. | |
they are doing on education, there is a lot of amazing peacemaking | :22:11. | :22:13. | |
going on around the globe. But it is not as good | :22:14. | :22:16. | |
as it needs to be. It needs much stronger leadership, | :22:17. | :22:19. | |
and we are getting into a process now of selecting | :22:20. | :22:21. | |
the next Secretary-General, and it needs much more coherence, | :22:22. | :22:23. | |
it needs to work together much If I may say so, | :22:24. | :22:26. | |
that is sort of apple pie stuff. Nobody can disagree with a thought | :22:27. | :22:32. | |
that is not very specific. You are a former British diplomat | :22:33. | :22:36. | |
who is now looking at the Is it time to acknowledge that it | :22:37. | :22:39. | |
makes no sense for Britain to have one | :22:40. | :22:44. | |
of those permanent five seats, that Britain, as one relatively small, | :22:45. | :22:47. | |
medium-sized nation, shouldn't be Britain is not | :22:48. | :22:50. | |
a big veto wielder anyway. We are spending 2% on military, | :22:51. | :22:55. | |
0.7% on aid. If you look at the hearings, | :22:56. | :23:00. | |
the British ambassador is asking the right questions, | :23:01. | :23:03. | |
collecting ideas via Twitter. We are a major player in that space, | :23:04. | :23:04. | |
and people want us there. Yes, but even Sir John Major, | :23:05. | :23:11. | |
former British prime minister, says away the Security Council | :23:12. | :23:13. | |
as configured at the moment is Well, I think you could argue that | :23:14. | :23:16. | |
it is not fit for purpose, it is not doing the things they are | :23:17. | :23:21. | |
supposed to be doing. That Britain and France have two | :23:22. | :23:32. | |
of the five seats is indicative I think it is much more | :23:33. | :23:35. | |
about how Russia But Russia is still | :23:36. | :23:38. | |
a nuclear superpower. We and France have nuclear weapons, | :23:39. | :23:42. | |
and let's leave Britain and Brexit aside, we are two medium-sized | :23:43. | :23:45. | |
European states. Are you saying the Security Council | :23:46. | :23:48. | |
doesn't need I'm sure we need to hear from | :23:49. | :23:51. | |
South America, from Africa, But I don't think that means the UK | :23:52. | :24:00. | |
giving up the position that they | :24:01. | :24:06. |