Paul Anderson, Chartist column, July-August 2001
The biggest surprise so far of Tony Blair’s second term has been the sacking of Robin Cook as foreign secretary and his replacement by Jack Straw. In the run-up to the election, all the supposedly informed press commentators had it that Cook would stay in place and Straw would get the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions.
Unsurprisingly, the move provoked a rash of speculation – not least because Straw has a reputation as a hard-line Eurosceptic. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was one of the most prominent rising stars in Labour’s anti-European wing, a protégé of Barbara Castle and Peter Shore (in whose two unsuccessful campaigns for the Labour leadership Straw played a key role). He was privately opposed to Britain signing the Maastricht treaty in 1991 and ever since, along with Margaret Beckett and David Blunkett, has been one of the strongest voices in the Labour leadership – albeit behind closed doors – for staying out of the single European currency. Notably, unlike Cook and most other currently senior Labour figures who were anti-European in the early 1980s, Straw has never publicly renounced his Eurosceptic views.
So why is he now foreign secretary – the position that carries most responsibility for our relations with Europe? One reason, undoubtedly, is that Gordon Brown wanted Cook, an enthusiast for early entry into the euro, out of the way.
As Cook’s former adviser, David Clark, made clear in a biting polemic in the Guardian immediately after the reshuffle, the chancellor could not bear Cook straying on to his territory by making warmly pro-euro speeches. Insiders say Brown made his feelings clear to Blair on several occasions, though it is not clear whether he actually demanded that Cook be replaced. Whatever, once Cook went, Straw was the only politician around of sufficient seniority who wanted the job.
Of course, it is just possible that this is all there is to the story – that Straw’s appointment is significant only in so far as it minimises the chances of public disagreements between the Foreign Office and the Treasury while the government assesses Brown’s “five economic tests” for euro membership.
In line with this, it is certainly true that Straw has not made public statements dissociating himself from the government’s “wait-and-see” position on the euro. And it is at least plausible that he has decided to abandon his erstwhile anti-Europeanism to the point of recommending euro membership when the time comes – even if it is rather difficult to imagine such a turnaround being convincingly executed.
But, particularly in the wake of Brown’s Mansion House speech, in which the chancellor declared for “pro-euro realism” -- with the emphasis on the “realism” – it is difficult to believe that Blair did not intend Straw’s elevation to signal a markedly more cautious approach to the euro. There has been no explicit statement from the government that Britain will not join the euro this parliament. Everything now suggests, however, that this is the government’s plan. It is hardly surprising that both the reshuffle – which also involved the appointment of another former Eurosceptic, Peter Hain, as Europe minister and the removal of the pro-euro Stephen Byers from the Department of Trade and Industry – and Brown’s speech have set alarm bells ringing throughout the euro-zone and won warm praise from the Murdoch press.
(They have also, incidentally, made a mess of the plans of the pro-euro lobby in Britain. After six months of masterful inactivity, the main organisation in it, Britain in Europe, largely funded by business but with some trade union support, had intended to relaunch itself with a big splash in the immediate wake of the election. The sacking of Cook and Brown’s hyper-cautious speech eclipsed its efforts, and it is now desperately trying to find out what exactly the government is up to.)
Europe is not, of course, the whole of the FO’s brief, and nor does Europe appear to be the only reason Cook was fired. Although he had a good working relationship with Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, he was an opponent of the American National Missile Defence scheme. As soon as it became clear that the Bush administration saw NMD as a central element of policy and was not prepared to listen to European concerns about its impact on the arms control regime, Cook’s position came into conflict with Blair’s determination to sustain the “special relationship” come what may (a determination shared, incidentally, by Brown, as he made clear in some little-noticed passages at the Mansion House).
Other things being equal, it is unlikely that this would have led to Cook’s demise: he would simply have had to buckle under when Blair insisted that Britain was backing NMD, just as he did on arms sales to Indonesia and on several other issues in the first term. But other things were not equal, and Cook went.
What Straw will be like as foreign secretary remains to be seen. His first weeks in post have been unremarkable apart from a shouting match with a television journalist – off camera – who accused him of being evasive during an interview on the fringes of the June European Council meeting in Gothenburg. That meeting hit the headlines because of rioting in the streets, but it was significant too for confirming an ambitious timetable for EU enlargement despite the Irish referendum rejecting the treaty of Nice.
Although it has been a major priority of the Blair government, enlargement has barely figured in the European debate in Britain – but it has the potential to become even more controversial than the euro. If all goes according to schedule (admittedly a big if), within three years the first applicant countries from east-central Europe will be admitted to the EU. That means several million people keen to share in western Europe’s riches, many of them prepared to come to work in the west – and many western governments are nervous about the prospect of a flood of economic migration and desperate to put major constraints on the EU’s new citizens’ freedom of movement.
As it happens, immigration and policing are the only aspects of EU policy in which Straw had significant experience as home secretary. Given his record, it is unlikely that he will be playing a very liberal role in the two years of gruelling negotiations that must take place if enlargement is to go ahead as planned. But then perhaps that is another reason Blair gave him the job.
