Populism and Nationalism

Lord Watson of Richmond Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Richmond (LD)]

My Lords, four decades ago when we joined what was then the European Economic Community, I was working for the BBC and was asked to script and present a life story of Jean Monnet—“the father of Europe”, as he was then called. I got to know him pretty well. I found him not to be an ideological man but a rather optimistic pragmatist. His consistent theme, however—the right reverend Prelate the Bishop will note this; it is rather like Hobbes—was that he believed deeply that it was not natural for men or nations to unite, and that it would happen only under enormous pressure of necessity. For him, the enormous pressure of necessity that he had experienced in his own lifetime were the two world wars. He drew on that experience to argue his case and he was in many ways very successful.

I have spent a good deal of time over the last two years working on a history of Winston Churchill in 1946, and in particular the two great speeches he made during that year after he had lost office and when he was quite seriously depressed. The first was at Fulton, Missouri—the so-called “Iron Curtain” speech—and, six months later in Zurich, the “Europe arise!” speech. In both cases, rather similar to the Monnet experience, he was driven by a sense that unity and a degree of interdependence were essential not just as a theoretical ideal but in order to deal with overwhelming necessity. In the Fulton speech, he argued that the huge Russian preponderance in Europe and the malign intentions of Joseph Stalin necessitated an unprecedented degree of unity between the United Kingdom, the British Commonwealth, as it then was, and the United States, and that this had to provide a deterrent to Soviet power. He was remarkably successful in that argument, although it was hugely controversial at the time and he was attacked by a great number of people in the United States, including the whole of the Roosevelt family.

Six months later he made the second speech in Zurich. Again, he was driven by this sense of necessity—that unity had to occur because the alternatives were so grim. In particular, faced with the destruction and exhaustion of Europe, he believed that France and Germany had to be reconciled and that those two countries had to take the lead in building what he called a kind of United States of Europe. That first speech in effect triggered a process which led to the Berlin airlift, and certainly greatly facilitated it, and eventually to NATO. The second one was enormously important in enabling the Americans to make the generous initiative of the Marshall Plan and, later on, Jean Monnet with the Coal and Steel Community.

I have said that both those speeches ignited fury and intense opposition—the second one particularly from General de Gaulle. But after decades the habit of interdependence has sort of taken hold. It has also been taken for granted—and this is the cause of its great vulnerability. For today, this habit of interdependence has been, and is being, challenged as we have not seen in decades. As many noble Lords have observed, tomorrow Donald Trump will become President Trump. His intention and direction are towards deals that will, and can, erode the post-war international liberal order—for example, a deal to be forced on Mexico to build a wall and perhaps a deal with Russia that could destabilise the Baltic and erode NATO’s credibility. Whatever Brexit means, it must mean Britain opting out of the project to unite Europe. It will fundamentally challenge the assumption and aspiration of ever-greater unity, breaking a habit and direction of interdependence.

So what can follow from all this? First, division between competing national interests. Two weeks ago, the New Yorker magazine defined very accurately and rather intellectually what Trumpism was all about. It stated that he is about,

“secure borders, economic nationalism, interests-based foreign policy”—

the elements that, taken together, can corrode and erode and eventually destroy a liberal international order.

The second thing that follows is suspicion, distrust and a growing belligerence of language—and language is important. You have only to look at Boris Johnson’s latest verbal folly to understand the perils of inadequate control over language. But it is not just Boris Johnson; we should look at the headlines which sought to encapsulate the Prime Minister’s speech on Tuesday. I shall read out a few of them. The Times stated:

“May to EU: give us a fair deal or you’ll be crushed”.


The Telegraph stated:

“No deal is better than a bad deal”.


The Daily Mirror stated:

“Give us a deal … or we’ll walk”.


The Daily Mail referred to,

“an ultimatum to Brussels”.

The Daily Express stated:

“Deal or no deal … ‘We will leave’”.


The headlines are, of course, more belligerent, and their tonality sharper, than the words used by the Prime Minister. She was much more careful and was feeling and calling for a degree of understanding. But I feel that we have had a warning from what has happened this week and we must take careful note of it.

The third thing that can follow, therefore, is illusion and miscalculation. Let us take just one key example—the outcome on transitional arrangements for the City. Mark Boleat, the policy chairman of the City of London Corporation, said last week that if Britain leaves the EU with no deal, it will still be possible for London to retain its centrality in financial services. He added:

“But this will not just happen. It will require political and business leadership on a scale we have not seen in this country”.


I remind the House that Winston Churchill said in 1946 that we needed to learn the “bitter dear-bought experience” of two world wars and not throw it away. We are in danger now of casting away these lessons of bitter dear-bought experience. If we do so, we will rue it.