Brown on same wavelength as Blair

Pranay Sharma Delhi

On June 27, 2007, Tony Blair stepped down as Britain's prime minister after 10 years in office. He has been replaced by Gordon Brown, who till recently was head of the British exchequer. The British High Commissioner in India, Sir Michael Arthur, a career diplomat, would also be leaving New Delhi shortly after completing his four-year stint here. In an exclusive interview, he spoke at length  on Tony Blair's legacy, the challenges for the new British prime minister and the future of Indo-British relations.

Every prime minister expects to leave behind a legacy. And this is truer for those who have had a two-term in office. According to you, what is Tony Blair's legacy?

If you look at the domestic and international agenda, and Tony Blair has been prime minister for a decade, there has been a transformation in British society — the economy and the society. There is a view, especially among those who know London particularly well, that if you go back to the earlier time and now, it is a completely different place. The society is much more diverse, it has become very international and open. There is a big change in the way we usually run our country. There is an opening up and an internationalisation of our engagement, which is much more than before. There is a change and we now have a much more diverse society with strong economic strength. We have had the best decade of economic growth that we have had in living memory. And in doing that we have had a lot of people commuting in and out of Britain, which is transforming the nature of our place. We are becoming an international hub.

What other things could be part of the Blair legacy?

There has been very strong commitment to Europe on the part of Tony Blair. We are more central in the European debate now. Earlier, that was not the case. We had a lot of concepts about it and we were divided on the issue. As for Europe, there is a big change, also in a lot of other areas, particularly in the development areas. Also, during this decade, you can see the emergence of China and India. Blair was one of the first to recognise this happening, and thereby to turn our own relationship, UK-India relations, into what he and Dr Manmohan Singh called a 'Strategic Partnership'.

Despite all these achievements he would still be largely remembered for his Iraq policy. You think he could have acted differently?

I am not sure. I personally agree with your conclusion. I think that is what a lot of press is writing.

But Blair admitted that himself in his speech… 

I think given five to 10 years time that may not be the case. He believed very strongly that he couldn't act any differently than he did. It is very hard to sit and guess about decisions made by people who have been at the pinnacle of power. I think there have been a lot of difficulties and he would be the first one to recognise that there are continuing problems in Iraq and there is an awful lot of tragedy going on even as we speak. But there has also been progress in Iraq. If you look at it now you would find children going to school, power supply has been restored and a lot of construction and development work is happening. Britain has the responsibility for the South-East, the Basra area, which is different from Baghdad. There is much more stability there now. We have managed to train the Iraqi police and security forces and hand back security to them in three of the four provinces. And because of that we have been able to reduce the number of troops in Iraq quite significantly.

There is a feeling that Blair would be missed more in the United States than in Britain. Do you agree with that?

(Laughs). Of course, internationally, generally, he has had a very major impact. For 10 years, our press at home has been writing critical pieces about him rather than positive articles. But than that is the nature of domestic politics.

How different would Gordon Brown's foreign policy be from Tony Blair's?

One of the things that Blair has done is to break down the barrier between foreign and domestic policies. Many issues that happen in British domestic policies are now affected by or engaged with the world around us. The high commission that I run here doesn't really work for the foreign ministry. It works for the whole range of government. Things that happen in India matter to the British public. The economic and social policies we talked about in the last 10 years are as much Gordon Brown's creation as they are Blair's. They have been very close on this together. They have been friends for a generation. So there would be absolute continuity in that.

But Blair was very close to the US. Wouldn't Brown try and maintain a safe distance from Washington?

You are probably talking about perceptions rather than substance. Brown's intellectual mindset is engaged with the American economy. He spends his holidays in America and he likes to interact with American intellectuals and so on. America is a very important part of the framework within which he makes policy decisions. I don't see any weakening of that link. But the agenda is moving on a bit and Iraq for Brown would be much less of a central issue than it was for Blair.

Why? Is it because you are disengaging from Iraq?

Yes, because we are disengaging…

So the focus would be more on Afghanistan now?

Well, on many things. But these are not a zero-sum. They are different issues. Afghanistan is completely different than Iraq. But the Afghanistan challenge is growing and our engagement there is growing physically and also in terms of development. What is the big challenge that we see — it is global terrorism and the fulcrum of a lot of these global threats is the sort of the area that is Pakistan—Afghanistan and their borders. And the world has to do something about that and Brown is trying to do that. So that would be a central part of his policy.

You spoke about the framework where you would have to work closely with the Americans. But does the United Kingdom have a foreign policy that is independent of the US?

On some of the things we agree with America, because we have shared objectives and strongly shared values. On certain things, we strongly disagree with them. For example, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks— we are very strongly critical of American agricultural subsidies. We don't hesitate to say that. Take climate change. We have battled for years. The American government has not done the things that they should have. But there are ways that you deal with your allies, partners and friends. Being rude to them and shouting at them in public is not the right way. Persuasion and winning an intellectual argument is the right way to achieve results.

A lot of changes have taken place in Europe. You have a new president in France and before that you had a new chancellor in Germany. Would UK's relations with its European partners change?

Europe is more complicated than a few individuals' relationship. There are three new people who are the heads of their governments. I think we are entering a very interesting phase in European development, European history and now particularly so with 27 member-states. As Europe looks for its place in the globalising and changing world, Britain brings to Europe a much greater emphasis on international relationships, for example with India. We put a lot of effort when we had the presidency of the European Union (EU) on developing the EU-India partnership. So I think, in a year or two, in Europe's scheme, all this could be very important. Big issues like how we handle the Turkish membership, how we handle the continuing debate about constitutional reform and institutional reform.

High Commissioner, your stint in India is also coming to an end. How would you sum it up?

It has been the most fantastic four years of my professional career. I can't tell you how interesting it has been. You are lucky enough to be British high commissioner in India at any time in history. But in the last three or four years - our relations has just been stimulation and challenges from the beginning to the end. I would really miss India.

If you were to highlight two major achievements in Indo-British relations while you were here, what would they be?

The quality of inter-governmental and societal dialogue in the wider sense. We are just natural and very comfortable partners in every business that we are doing. And the range of government business that we are now doing is much wider than what it used to be. I hope we would go into a period where because of our shared analysis, shared legal system, we would find it easy to do business together in the widest sense of the term—business. Both our countries have now woken up to our international potential in the economic world. We are the second biggest investor here and you are the second biggest investor in Britain. There is a huge business partnership which has much more implications than business. These are investments where we are working together — mostly joint-ventures. And that interaction is significantly contributing to our changing society. Indians now—NRIs are two per cent of our population and five per cent of our GDP. All this is having a huge impact on how British society develops.

Why didn't Gordon Brown come to India until very recently?

Sheer pressure of diary. Brown has been interested in India for a long time. As the finance minister he has been driving to bring senior Indian leaders in the advisory committees. He has been very focused on India and very much part of what the British government is seeing as a new relationship with India in the global context. Brown has been driving that as much as Blair. He had a very successful visit in January and he would come back here again in autumn as prime minister for the summit.

So where do you see the relations heading under Brown?

I think more of the same. There is such a growth potential. Go back to some of the global challenges that we talk about. It's been the economic ones, but also trade policy; we obviously have a similar interest in that coming from different perspectives. That is the good thing and the strength. We are comfortable. Then we also have terrorism. We both face serious international challenges from terrorism. We need to talk about that and we are talking. As for climate changes, it's a sad fact that India gets disproportionately affected by global warming. And yet India didn't cause the problem in the first place and we acknowledge that and talk about this proportionate responsibility on western countries to help with solutions. These are three big areas of global challenge where we need to come together.