Lord Owen interview

Will Barber-Taylor: Hello, and welcome to the Centre Think Tank interview series. As always, I am your host, Will Barber-Taylor. And in this episode, I am delighted to be joined by Lord Owen, who has served as leader of the Social Democratic Party and as foreign secretary. Welcome to the interview, Lord Owen.

Lord Owen: I am glad to be here.

Will Barber-Taylor: It is great to have you here. Now, the first question that I would like to ask is, since we last spoke, there has been a change of prime minister. We have a new prime minister, a new cabinet. You, of course, have served in cabinets that have gone through difficult times, that have led Britain in times when the economy has had issues, and there have been great changes in geopolitics and world politics. What is your assessment of how Liz Truss and her cabinet have done so far?

Lord Owen: They made a very crucial mistake. This makes sense, but could flow slightly better as “They made major financial announcements without ensuring they had the confidence of world markets.” And that was really a very serious error. It is extraordinary that they should have done that. The new Chancellor of the Exchequer must obviously take the main burden of blame for it. And that is his job, to basically ensure that announcements about the British economy carry confidence with the people who are going to be most affected. And in this case, the markets showed that they did not think they had done their homework. And I think it was pretty obvious they had not.

Will Barber-Taylor: Quickly, do you think they can rectify it?

Lord Owen: Oh, I think pretty quickly. I think these things happen, and he will have to demonstrate that. Basic things like arithmetic. Simply adding up.

Will Barber-Taylor: Do you think that the internal pressures that the Chancellor and the Prime Minister are facing will mean that the Chancellor will be able to rectify his mistakes, as it were, before he is perhaps forced out? Because there has been a lot of discussion internally and externally about whether the prime minister should change who is Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Lord Owen: It is very difficult to replace a new Chancellor of the Exchequer who is also known to be a friend and ally of the Prime Minister. I think basically we just have to live with this error and expect it to be put right in the next few days and weeks. It is better not to have happened. It costs a certain amount of confidence in the markets, and it will probably mean they have to change the structure they were aiming for. They have already made one big change in dropping the plan to abolish the 45% top rate of income tax. They may have to make more changes.

But look, this is a small change in British politics. And I thought we were going to talk about rather deeper things than that.

Will Barber-Taylor: Yes, no, we are. But I just thought it would be worth hearing from you what your particular thoughts were on current events. I would like to turn back now to your time as leader of the Social Democratic Party. Because when you were the leader of the Social Democratic Party, you opposed the merger with the Liberal Party. And you never joined the Liberal Democrats. Why did you think at the time that the Social Democratic Party and social democracy needed their own party, separate from a merger with the Liberals?

Lord Owen: It was obvious the opinion polls wanted a new party. They told us very clearly that if we wanted to do well, we should stay on our own, establish our own identity and sell ourselves to the British public as a new political force. It was obvious that that was what we should do. But unfortunately, some of our colleagues thought differently and thought the only way to move ahead was to join with the Liberals.

Will Barber-Taylor: What do you think was the reasoning from their point of view behind that?

Lord Owen: Solely? I think it was quite obvious in the case of Roy Jenkins that he was an older man and thought that we could become the government of the country in one full sweep. It was obviously ridiculous. You do not form a new party and become the government straight away. You have to earn your position, earn respect, and establish that your policies are both new and credible. And that takes time. So we tried to jump all our fences at once, and it was very regrettable, but there we are. It happened, and it is no good complaining. Everybody knows the story, and I do not think it makes much difference except to warn people that if you are going to establish a new party, you will be in it for the long haul, keep your identity and develop new credible policies. After all, that is what people want.

At the moment, they look around, and they see every single political party deeply compromised, and not a very happy position. Whether it is the government Conservative Party or the Labour Party opposition, the Liberal Party, or the various other regional parties. I do not think the Scottish National Party, funnily enough, is in a very good position at the moment. And I think they are beginning to lose some of their dynamism.

Will Barber-Taylor: Had you stayed the course, you said there that it would have taken a certain amount of time to establish the Social Democratic Party as a party of government. In your mind at the time, did you have a timescale as to how long you thought it would take? Did you think it would take 10 years, 15 years, or a shorter amount of time?

Lord Owen: The first task was to establish yourself in the first coming election. And that was within two years, likely two years. We did not know that the Falklands War would take place and that it would make it much easier for Margaret Thatcher to do well. But I do not think we should make that an excuse. It was a factor which made it a little more difficult. But we, in the case of the Social Democratic Party, supported the government’s position very strongly in the House of Commons. And I do not think it cost us a lot. But it definitely improved Margaret Thatcher’s chances of winning the 1983 election.

So once it happened, which in many ways was a failure of the government to handle the situation and revealed by Margaret Thatcher when asked by the then First Sea Lord to send the task force, she said, How long will it take to get there? Three or four days? And he said, No, Prime Minister, three weeks, which showed that she had not understood all the arguments leading up to the Argentinian invasion, that you have to have a capacity in place. You cannot suddenly generate it. And she simply had no idea of the geography of the world, or the world position of the Falkland Islands. Very revealing. But there we are. The world likes a winner. We won the war. The armed services won it for us, and that is the truth. And then the benefit came to the prime minister of the day. That is the way. She conducted herself well during the war, but she conducted herself very badly in the run-up to the war, and it was a war that should never have occurred.

Will Barber-Taylor: Thinking back to over a decade ago, there was the alternative vote referendum, and you were opposed to A.V. but instead preferred proportional representation. How do you think we can reach the eventual goal of Proportional Representation, and do you think we will ever change the voting system?

Lord Owen: Not unless you Liberals develop a clear policy, and when you go, if you ever again go into coalition, you have got to know what you want and fight for it. To come up with the Alternative Vote was ridiculous. What on earth have we been about as a smaller party? The Social Democratic Party and Liberals did actually establish a working party of which I was a member, and we rejected the Alternative Vote. And so when the only time you get into government and the Tories offer you the chance of legislating, which you were offered, you come up with the Alternative Vote. It is ridiculous. It is not a proportional system. Of course, it is a better, some people say, but it can produce freak results. And if you have an unfair freak result, then it really calls into question the whole reason for changing the voting system.

The greatest advantage of proportional representation to the average person is that it is a fairer system. Do not come up with an unfair, potentially unfair system, which the Alternative Vote is. It broadly gives you a fairer result, but why on earth drop the very policy that Liberals have been fighting for, for years? On the central task of changing the voting system, they completely sold out.

Will Barber-Taylor: In terms of the difference, why do you think the Liberal Democrats advocated for that system? As you make the argument, it is clearly unpopular and open to a great deal of easy attacks.

Lord Owen: I have not a clue.

Lord Owen: I am not a Liberal Democrat, never have been, never will be. So I cannot help you on that. All I know is that when the Social Democratic Party and the Liberals worked together, which was not an unreasonable thing to do, we established a policy for changing the voting system unanimously. And then when you actually came, or when they came, into government, they dropped it. I have no clue why they did.

I am not the right person to ask about any issue with the Liberals because I am not a Liberal, and I actually have not got much sympathy for them. It seems to me they have had their chance in historical terms, and they have blown it, except for having, probably, the best prime minister in our history, Lloyd George. But I do not see any progress really, the Liberals are making until they can get their act together and demonstrate. They also provided an appalling example during the coalition government when they agreed with Andrew Lansley’s reform of the NHS. Most of the things that are wrong with the NHS at the moment are at the core of the Andrew Lansley reform. It is absolutely staggering that they allowed that to go through. And even David Cameron later said it was the biggest mistake of his government.

I think he expected Nick Clegg to demand that the Andrew Lansley proposals be dropped. They actually supported them both in the House of Commons and Shirley Williams in the House of Lords.

Will Barber-Taylor: In terms of the space that the Liberal Democrats occupy, how much do you think that their lack of support at the moment is due to changes in the Liberal Democrats’ policy regarding Brexit? Because at one point, of course, they were seen as the premier Remain party, whereas now the position that Ed Davey has is somewhat more of a constructed disagreement, that “Oh, we have to accept the result, but we are not necessarily looking to rejoin anytime soon.” Do you think that the inability to have a concrete position on policy that so many people over the past few years have identified with the Liberal Democrats is what is really harming them at the moment?

Lord Owen: At various times Liberals did float the idea of a referendum and they showed some sensitivity to the fact that the general public were getting more and more restless about EU membership and more and more unsatisfied about it, and particularly the handling of the Euro currency and the European Central Bank, which many people did not want us to join and would obviously, eventually, we would have to join if we stayed.

This, really, the referendum, I think, was certainly supported by Liberal Members of Parliament. After all, you do not get a referendum unless it passes Parliament. And the referendum passed Parliament with, as I remember it, Liberal support, Conservative support and others. Once you have a referendum and lose it, a referendum is not just for a weekend. It is for a generation at the very least. And probably it is as big a change in a way as the Reformation, when we rejected Rome on religious grounds to some extent. Now we were rejecting the idea of Europe in the wish to remain a self-governing nation.

I personally think the present leader of the Liberal Democrats has no alternative but to recognise that you cannot fight an election based on rejecting the referendum.

They tried to do that, of course, under the miserable period of two or three years when the House of Commons could not make up its mind on what it wanted to do. And it tried, the Liberal Democrats with the Labour Party and a few dissident Conservative Party members, to get a second vote. And it was the reason that Boris Johnson had a landslide victory. The electorate thought, “Are these people crazy?” They agree to a referendum, lose it, and then try to change it. And that House of Commons was a perfect disgrace, with a speaker who had lost his grip on the reality of what the position of a speaker is. He was an active partisan in trying to get the referendum rejected.

It did the Liberals a certain amount of harm. But people who support the Liberal Party tend to be people who are committed to it for other reasons, good reasons like wanting a more libertarian society and not wanting a government that spends the whole time telling everybody what to do. And so, general basic Liberal principles, which are very good. And so it rumbles along with a small level of support, a fringe influence on British politics like it always has done in my lifetime.

Will Barber-Taylor: Yes, absolutely. Returning to the referendum and our current relationship with the EU, how do you feel about the current deal that we have? And do you think it is something that can be improved upon?

Lord Owen: Non-stop throughout the whole negotiations, I had a correspondence with the then Prime Minister, Theresa May, and made many suggestions on how the deal could be improved. She gave me the courtesy of replying in full to most of the points that I raised. But she never really came up with any better alternatives that she could carry through Parliament. I think in fairness to her, she tried, but she misunderstood. She used this word, Brexit means Brexit. I was on the campaign for Brexit, but I never campaigned on a specific way of coming out.

That was preempted by Cameron, the Prime Minister, who refused to allow the civil service to come up with any propositions, even during the referendum, to do the work so that when Theresa May replaced him, she would have alternatives of what to do. And so a small group of Members of Parliament who had definite views about what the referendum meant and what to do carried the day. They were a group of about 50 to 60 Tory Members of Parliament, but they bullied, pressured and argued, sometimes very effectively, and won the most extreme exit that you could have. They wanted to get out as quickly as possible and totally.

There were consequences of doing that, and there were short-term disadvantages with long-term arguable advantages. And so the short term won, and there were no compromises. Once the European Union saw that was how they wanted it, they gave it to them. I think we are pretty surprised that that was what they would demand.

There were small edges and minor changes, but nothing very central.

Will Barber-Taylor: Regarding Northern Ireland, of course, one of the issues with the deal is the position that it has placed Northern Ireland in. If there is no resolution to the position Northern Ireland is in regarding the deal, how much do you think that is going to be used by Irish reunification parties to argue that there should be a referendum, a border poll, and Northern Ireland should rejoin the Republic of Ireland?

Lord Owen: Even Sinn Féin has said they do not think there will be a border poll for up to 20 years. What is the point of putting that forward? And now there is no wish for it, even in Sinn Féin. Very sensibly, they know that it is a better issue to postpone and get people acclimatised to having closer relationship with the Republic before they put, which is the right of, which was conceded by Ted Heath a long time ago, that there could be a border poll, as you call it, and it has to be agreed by the government and there has to be an obvious transparent wish for it. But it will probably come. I do not know whether it will or not. I would say the chances of there being a border poll are much greater now than before. But there is a lot of resistance to it. And to be frank, there are quite a lot of people in Dublin who are none too keen for it. It costs them quite a lot of money to absorb Northern Ireland, but that is for the future. It is not on our immediate agenda, but it is certainly there, and as Democrats, we have to stand by the commitment that Ted Heath made in 1972, if I remember, or 73. And I thought it was not a very wise commitment, but it was made, and it stands, and we have to be ready for it.

Just as if the pressure in Scotland comes on for what I would call a generation, then there will be another border poll about Scotland and whether or not the Scottish National Party’s wish will be supported. What you cannot do is have these sorts of polls every three or four years when the opinion polls look as if you might take advantage of them. In that respect, Sinn Féin is showing itself to be rather more sensible than the Scottish National Party in Scotland.

Will Barber-Taylor: Regarding issues that we are currently facing, obviously, one of the main crises that is dominating the headlines and influencing British and international politics is the crisis in Ukraine. Now, of course, you served as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. If you were in charge of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office now, how would you deal with the Ukrainian crisis in terms of military support to Ukraine and energy security for Britain?

Lord Owen: I have no criticism of the government policy started under Boris Johnson, and it looks like it is continuing in every respect the same policy under Liz Truss. I am fully supportive. It is rather nice, on a major issue of foreign policy, to be completely in agreement with the government’s policy. I have no criticism.

Will Barber-Taylor: President Biden recently compared the crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which, of course, happened nearly 60 years ago this month, saying it is one of the most dangerous instances regarding possible nuclear exchange. How do you think Ukraine compares to the Cuban Missile Crisis? And how do you think the main actors in this crisis compare to their predecessors during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Lord Owen: I think that is a question you should ask President Biden.

Personally, I have been a student of the Cuban Missile Crisis and have written about it quite extensively in various books. And I do not see very many similarities.

Will Barber-Taylor: Would you say then that President Biden was merely airing it because, for an American domestic audience and for an international audience, it is a very handy example of how things can become perilous in terms of possible nuclear exchange, that he was merely using it as a possible comparison point without thinking too much about any real comparative factors?

Lord Owen: I am just not in the business of criticising allies and friends. They make their own speeches; they must defend them. If you ask me a question, I will give you the answer. I do not personally see very many similarities to it.

But I think that the obvious similarity is that Nikita Khrushchev put nuclear warheads into Cuba. It appears that President Vladimir Putin is contemplating the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the engagement after his second invasion of Ukraine. It is totally unacceptable to the world. And I say the world, I think to certainly include the biggest democracy in the world, India, and I would say probably the largest country in the world, China, is unacceptable to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. And I think Russia will be hit by a level of worldwide condemnation that Vladimir Putin obviously has not calculated on.

I think it would be an act of folly. As to how you would deal with it, I think the best thing is to say very little about that. We have a number of options, but it will meet fierce resistance, militarily and politically. We are not about to repeat the history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That was a warning to the world never to use nuclear weapons. And I remain implacably opposed to them. And I believe that they must never be used.

And so this idea of a tactical nuclear exchange is very dangerous for Russia. It is part of their policy that you can have an exchange of tactical nuclear weapons without escalation to the megatonnage of strategic nuclear weapons that would be used. I do not believe that. I think it has an inbuilt escalator. You break a taboo by using nuclear weapons, and as you break that taboo, you will find that there are no rules that can contain the engagement. And therefore, I think it is devastatingly dangerous and not tolerable.

I think the world knows how to deal with it. And I think it will be a world response. This will not be anywhere near the same level of criticism of Russia that they are experiencing at the moment. There are pretty big minorities in the world in their conduct and their two invasions of Ukraine. But that is nothing compared to what would happen if they used nuclear devices.

Will Barber-Taylor: As it is the 60th, coming up to the 60th, anniversary, leaving aside the comparison to Ukraine, the Cuban Missile Crisis was a fundamentally pivotal moment in the 20th century. How much do you think we can learn about it, reflecting on the actions of both Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy, in how to deal with the threat of war without, in fact, going to war?

Lord Owen: You need to be calm. You need to take no escalatory action. You need, as far as possible, a back channel. And there needs to be no doubt about what happens if you do certain things. I do not think that Vladimir Putin is unaware of what would be President Biden’s response. I think we can safely assume that the Americans have let Vladimir Putin know in no uncertain terms what the consequences will be of using nuclear weapons.

Will Barber-Taylor: We are coming towards the end of the interview, Lord Owen, and I do have one final question for you. Now, the name of the think tank that we are recording this Interview for is Centre Think Tank.

And the concept of the centre has changed, or the perception of it has changed radically for some people over the past few decades, over the past few years. When Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote The Vital Centre, his description of the centre might be seen as quite different to that which is expressed by a lot of people as the centre now. In terms of defining the centre of politics, the middle ground of politics, do you think that this is something that we can have an eternal, permanent definition for? Or do you think that as people change and as society changes, so the centre itself shifts and definitions change as well?

Lord Owen: I think definitions do change. I think the world is constantly moving, and I think, therefore, it is legitimate for political parties to change their approach and to use the term “modernise” in a sensible way. I think that there is a role for different attitudes toward any of the political parties that are currently holding office. I think they are all, in their own ways, disgraced themselves in recent memory. And it is very difficult to wipe that out. You do not put your confidence in people whose behaviour you thoroughly disapproved of four or five years ago, and suddenly think they will become a good government. At least I think that is the attitude of a lot of people. Whether they are in the centre or not, I think there are millions of people at the moment in this country who are very unsatisfied with the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, and the Liberal Democrats.

Now, will anything happen? I do not know. I still think that the case that I made as leader of the Social Democratic Party in ‘83, for what I called An Agenda for Competitiveness and Compassion. And I wrote that article, a long article, deliberately in the journal of the Institute of Economic Affairs at the time. I wanted to challenge the Tory view that only they understood how to grow the economy, how to make it competitive, and to do so while remaining compassionate in how you utilise the rewards of a successful economy in a compassionate way and in a way that helps some people who simply cannot help themselves for a variety of reasons, illness and other factors, and need help, who are people who are on inadequate incomes, living in inadequate housing, and generally facing a tough life and who need to have a government who is sympathetic and understanding in helping them.

I think the message of social democracy is as strong as it ever was. Now, unfortunately, the Social Democratic Party did not; it rose like a rocket, but it blew it, largely because it got into bed with the Liberals.

Maybe there’ll come a new party with the same basic principles of social democracy in English politics. I can see it, the embers of social democracy are beginning to become flames, and people are writing articles and talking about it. Good luck to them, is what I say. I am too old to be able to dream of leading such a movement myself. But I believe that there is a deep dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction I should say, a deep dissatisfaction with all the present political parties. We have seen their record now. We have seen the Liberals in government with the Conservatives, and we have seen the Labour Party in its attempt to improve its record after the disgraceful performance of all the political parties in their reaction to the referendum.

The fundamental point is that a vast number of people in all three existing political parties, as represented in Parliament, spent two to three years trying to overturn the results of the referendum and using various devices to do so. During that time, I think they deserved and got the contempt of a great number of people. So the scene is open for another political party.

The Social Democratic Party did not succeed. It went up like a rocket. It was clearly what a lot of people wanted. It then got into bed with the Liberals, and suddenly it looked like the old parties all together again. And you have to also be ready to fight for your political views. It is no use holding them. This is not a tea party. This is a very democratic, tough struggle to win over votes and to sustain their support. And that is a challenge. I think British politics is in a mood for change, but it cannot see how it can emerge. And of course, the vested interests of the old parties are that they get together and they are hugely opposed, and they try to stop them.

Now, the party that has got the nearest to doing this, let us be honest about it, is the Scottish National Party. The movement for Scottish independence is very strong, and they have still managed to hold their support. And you cannot help but admire that. I do not agree with them, but they have the right to eventually have another referendum. They cannot have one every five or six years. It has to be an interval of 15 years, say, between referendums, but there will be another referendum on Scottish independence. And on the present course, until the politicians treat devolution of power and the different centres of the nations that make up the UK with proper deference and commitment to their rights, you will have a dissatisfied union.

The Scottish National Party is an example of what you can do and sustain. And it may have, in my view, been needed, UK-wide. There will come a new party in British politics. I will probably be dead before it arrives. But I am confident that the present lot are not capable of adapting to a new world and do not have the vision and understanding of it.

Just look at the way the political parties reacted to the first invasion of Ukraine by Russia. We appeased it. We acquiesced in the French and Germans coming together with Ukraine and Russia in the so-called Minsk negotiations. It was basically appeasement. There was nobody who really raised their voice in British politics. I was not even in politics. I was in business in Russia. But when that first invasion happened, I withdrew from Russia. I was chairman of the company. I had to get the company out. And by 2015, we were out of business in Russia. It was clear that the government that could invade Ukraine was not a government you could do business with.

The situation for business had been deteriorating. Even a little bit. Initially, it looked as if Vladimir Putin might be quite good for the Russian economy. He came over here, you may remember, in 2003 and stayed at Buckingham Palace. But even then, there were signs of difficulty, and that the Boris Yeltsin model was being eroded. But of course, we now have a single power structure.

The Communist Party is gone. There is not even the Politburo. It is a very, very sad transition of hope under Mikhail Gorbachev, of some achievement under Boris Yeltsin, some reasonable grounds for hoping that Vladimir Putin might be good, and now ending up in a single dictatorship. It is very depressing. Very depressing.

Will Barber-Taylor: It is indeed. Thank you for taking the time to speak to me, Lord Owen. I greatly appreciate your taking the time to answer my questions.

Lord Owen: If you are looking for new ideas and trying to evolve new thinking, good luck to you. We need it.

Good luck, think hard and learn lessons quicker than we are learning them and rally the younger people and give them the confidence to have new ideas and new thinking. And do not feel that we are stuck in the present mire of British politics, which is extremely unappetising.

We have been very badly led for quite a long period of time.

Note: This interview has been edited for grammar, clarity, and flow. The original recording is the final and definitive version.