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Interview with William Hague

Published on the Spectator Website | The Spectator website

While writing William Hague’s biography a decade ago I was met by frequent incredulity; why on earth, people asked, would I want to write about HIM? But since standing down as Conservative leader, nine years ago, Hague has pulled off the Westminster equivalent of geek to chic, going from number one political nerd to national treasure. So the only surprise in the news that Hague would be a key face of the Tories’ election campaign was that it had not come sooner.

As a historian and author, business consultant, public speaker and keen amateur pianist William Hague’s packed post-leadership life has sometimes seemed his priority, leaving him outside David Cameron’s inner-most circle despite Cameron once describing him as his deputy “in all but name”. The description still applies, Hague confirms, albeit with a caveat, “If elected, the Party will have to see how it actually works out in practice”.

We met, shortly before the election was called, in his spacious Portcullis House corner office with its spectacular view of Parliament Square, the suite he has occupied since 2001 as a perk of his former leadership days. Hague’s fans often muse about the possibility of his future return to the top job but his emphatic denials of any such interest ring true given he so obviously relishes the life he has discovered outside politics. For now though the Foreign Office is William Hague’s likely destination. He could be Foreign Secretary in a matter of weeks. It is the job, indeed the only job he insists, he wanted in a Cameron government.

Does he covet any other role?

“No, no. What I wanted to do was exactly what David wanted me to do.”

I infer that the price of keeping William Hague on the front bench is that he will only do foreign affairs. But, surely, as a member of a team he has to do his leader’s bidding?

He pauses.

“Well, you do. Exactly. And that’s why I don’t give a categorical no but you can see, from the way I’m talking that, really, foreign affairs is what I’ve come back into it to do.

Whatever Hague’s intentions though the spectre of his leadership still occasionally impinges on that brief such as the renewed media storm over Lord Ashcroft, from which Hague had just emerged, not entirely unscathed. He politely but, I detect, a touch wearily refers me to the answers he gave the BBC in interviews designed to close the story down. One unintended consequence of the affair might be that a Conservative government embraces state funding of political parties. Hague offers no principled objection

“It might be desirable in the longer term on some sort of matching basis, but only as part of a thorough reform of a cap on donations”.

At this point in the political cycle the last time a change of government loomed, Hague’s equivalent, the late Robin Cook MP had given his brief a high profile with the distinct if trite sound bite formula of an “ethical foreign policy”.

Hague’s formulation, whilst less of a talking point, is reassuringly more complex. If he has a catchphrase at all it uses classic Conservative language for an approach shaped by “enlightened national interest” but he rejects the old Thatcherite suggestion that the Foreign Office has a culture of managing Britain’s decline.

“I think there is in the Labour Party a sense of that and, of course that infects the mood of officials but… I think there are some really good people there… It will be part of our plan to maintain and, where possible, extend British influence in the world. No one else is going to give us more protection, unless we’re prepared to do that ourselves.”

And so to Europe: In general his tone is more emollient than the ‘save the pound’ road-shows of nine years ago. Despite repeating the policies of a ‘referendum lock’ and repatriation of powers that the Conservatives were forced into after the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty Hague stresses his aim to engage positively on issues including the single market and energy liberalisation.

On the decision not to hold a referendum on the ratified Lisbon Treaty Hague chooses to reflect on his party, “It’s been a very good sign and a very good indicator of the Conservative Party’s readiness for government that they have accepted that.” Despite this realpolitik Hague does stick firmly by the contentious decision, most recently criticised by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, of Conservative MEPs to have left the established European Peoples’ Party in favour of a new alliance of more marginal parties.

“We are fully committed to the new grouping in the parliament.”

You don’t see any circumstances in which the EPP could make adjustments that that would make the Conservative party feel welcome again?

“No. No. The EPP has federalist aims, which we don’t share. We’re not contemplating any change. Now we’ve achieved that change, we will stick to it”.

As a new Foreign Secretary Hague plans to implement a security review with the Defence Secretary, expected to be Liam Fox, the shadow cabinet minister most sympathetic to the neo-cons. In his recent speeches Hague has advocated a ’liberal conservative’ approach to potential conflicts, which stresses the importance of working with the grain of local culture and tradition. I ask if this is not a renouncement of the neo-con so called ‘liberal interventionism’ that justified our move into Iraq. Not a renouncement he says but “a reflection that we have to be realistic….You can’t just drop democracy from 30,000 feet”.

So has the Iraq war made it impossible to ever use force against Iran? Hague stresses the urgent need for tougher sanctions but hawks can be reassured. “I don’t think we should take the possibility of military action off the table but we’re not advocating it”.

William Hague, always an energetic campaigner, was looking forward to the election dismissing, as one would expect, the narrowing polls that were a backdrop to our meeting. He will accept, when pushed, that he is generally well liked by the general public now. In 2010 that makes him a very unusual politician. Ironically, as Hague, the former precocious political obsessive, has become a more attractive figure seasoned by life beyond Westminster, he risks disappointing new political fans with his long term ambitions.

“I don’t intend to be a politician in my sixties”, he tells me. “I’ll be 49 this week, which leaves lots of time…, but in the long term I want to write books again. I don’t want to be a politician for so long that I don’t get to write books and do other things again.”

Actually in normal political cycles it leaves two parliaments at most so a very real possibility that William Hague, by common agreement our most talented parliamentarian, might leave Westminster in just a very few years time. Would he leave Britain too, perhaps for a ranch in one of his favourite travel destinations, Montana?

“I can’t see myself ever leaving Britain as the place I live. I would always want to live in Yorkshire or, if not in Yorkshire, in Wales, you know, those are the places I’m most at home in the world.”

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