Murnaghan 1.12.13 Interview with Douglas Alexander, Shadow Foreign Secretary

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: I want to talk now to Douglas Alexander who is Shadow Foreign Secretary, the most senior Scottish MP in the Shadow Cabinet and, as you see, grim faced after witnessing those scenes over the last 36 hours and you were born a stone’s throw away weren’t you?

DOUGLAS ALEXANDER: About a hundred yards away was the first home that I lived in in Clyde Street in Glasgow, it’s a part of the town everybody knows and it is a very popular local venue, many of us have been into the pub and so we were just devastated when the news came through on Friday evening. The only small consolation I suppose is amidst the horror of Friday evening there was such incredible heroism shown by the citizens of Glasgow and I hope that proves some comfort for people today when at eleven o’clock in Glasgow Cathedral people will gather to express that grief, to express that shock and to find strength from each other.

DM: Just tell me about the moment when it came through to you, when you found out about it – I don't know how you found out about it – on Friday night, were you instantly scrabbling around to get in touch with people? I mean it is just one of those stories where you think, could this really be possible/

DOUGLAS ALEXANDER: I was just stunned to be honest. It was on Twitter which I suppose is one of the modern ways that people find out news. When my friend and parliamentary neighbour and colleague Jim Murphy tweeted that a helicopter had crashed in a pub in Glasgow and as it turn out, Jim himself was directly involved in the efforts to rescue people and my heart went out to him and I got in touch with him immediately but for people all across the west of Scotland, it was very, very close and very, very personal. It has emerged overnight that one of the first identified victims comes from Paisley, I’m the representative of that community so I think it’s been a time when many of us have just been stunned and shocked by what’s happened. There will be a task now beyond thanking the emergency services for the extraordinary work that they have done, to begin the task of trying to get answers as to what actually happened but for today I think it is a time for the city to come together, it is a city in mourning this morning and I hope that those that have lost friends and family will find some comfort from the fact that transparently the city is coming together today.

DM: And that coming together symbolised by the service, I know prayers are being said up and down the country, throughout Scotland, throughout other countries as well of course but the focus, we’re going to have the focus on Glasgow Cathedral in about forty, fifty minutes time.

DOUGLAS ALEXANDER: Well Glasgow Cathedral is in many ways the obvious place for an event of this scale and significance. It was the venue I remember for Donald Dewar’s funeral, my father actually took that funeral in Glasgow Cathedral and it is I think a fitting setting for the whole of the city to come together. I’ve been hugely encouraged and felt great pride if I’m honest, as somebody born in the city, the way that transparently the people have come together. The Glasgow Mosque tweeted yesterday if there is anything that we can do to help, please let us know. The Archdiocese of Glasgow immediately out there saying listen, this is a problem that the whole city is going to come together to deal with. We’ll see that again today with the service at Glasgow Cathedral but it is one of those moments where the strength of the community is seen underneath the horror that all of us have viewed.

DM: Much further down the line, and it is further down the line of course as I was saying there, we have got to establish what exactly went on here but there are questions being asked, questions have been asked about helicopters, their safety records, what parts of built up areas they fly over. Now clearly a police helicopter has to over-fly built up areas, that’s what it’s there to do but there are questions to be looked at aren’t there?

DOUGLAS ALEXANDER: Well all of us who know Glasgow, know that helicopter. Any time that you’re in the BBC studios in Glasgow, the helicopter tends to be landing just when you’re trying to do an interview. It flies up and down the Clyde, it’s just a bit further down from Clyde Street so it’s a well-known feature of Glasgow life and we rely on the police, not just when there are major football events but in all kinds of events taking place. I did the Great Scottish Run just a few weeks ago, in fact I ran past the pub and the helicopter was flying overhead at a time of a great big civic event like that, so in that sense of course there are questions that are going to be asked and there are answers that will need to be provided but as of today I think it is a time for mourning, it is a time for people to come together in their shock and their bereavement. There will be plenty of time for those questions to be answered.

DM: Well said and we have to establish the facts, that’s the main thing, and as you say there, all eyes will be on – I’m just going to remind you again – Glasgow Cathedral at eleven o’clock, that service, we will be bringing you as much of that live as we can and you can watch it right here on Sky News. I am keeping Douglas Alexander here with me because we also want to discuss the issue of China. The Prime Minister is leading a major trade and business delegation after leaving for China almost as we speak there, to try and do business with that might economy. It follows hard on the heels of a visit there, you may remember, last month by the Chancellor and the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. Yet again, the same question is being posed – of course relations between our two countries were damaged when the Prime Minister met the Dalai Lama in May of last year and of course the Chinese took that all rather badly and that’s very much still an issue, Douglas Alexander, is how much can we afford in the UK to question the Chinese about their human rights record? We’ve got to do business with them.

DOUGLAS ALEXANDER: Of course we’ve got to do business with them but if we have a broader strategic relationship with China we should be able to talk about human rights, secure and look for new economic opportunities, build and strengthen educational opportunities. You’re right to say that Britain has been in the diplomatic deep-freeze, this is the first visit by a British Prime Minister in almost three years and in that sense I do fear that David Cameron has both misjudged and misdirected himself in relation to China …

DM: What, he shouldn’t have met the Dalai Lama or he should have apologised more forcefully for it?

DOUGLAS ALEXANDER: No, he should have better understood the consequences and the way to deal with that. Remember, Gordon Brown met the Dalai Lama and four months later was in Beijing. Remember Bill Clinton and George Bush were able to meet the Dalai Lama and …

DM: So Gordon Brown set the standard for it?

DOUGLAS ALEXANDER: I have to say, it does beg some pretty fundamental questions as to why David Cameron said this is going to be a big feature of my foreign policy and yet he has ended up making this trip this week trying to make up for so much lost ground. I think if he had had a more strategic approach he would certainly have engaged on issues of human rights, he is certainly perfectly entitled to meet a spiritual leader like the Dalai Lama, but he would if you like have done the difficult and important diplomatic groundwork so as not to take the relationship off the …

DM: Translate that for us, what you are saying is he shouldn’t have supported the Dalai Lama so fulsomely and then had to basically …

DOUGLAS ALEXANDER: He should have strengthened his relationships with the Chinese leadership so he should have explained to them both the basis on which the meeting took place and his commitment to sustaining the dialogue. There is a certain government by crisis feel to the way that …

DM: So what you are saying is he says through the back channels, look, I’ve got to meet this guy because for domestic consumption they’ve got to see me being concerned about human rights but in reality we want to do a lot of business with you, we’ll do whatever you say, is that the real way you see these things?

DOUGLAS ALEXANDER: My sense is that the Chinese government don’t like surprises and …

DM: That’s for sure.

DOUGLAS ALEXANDER: … so it is a responsible course for a British Prime Minister to have a completely open dialogue with them on the issue of human rights but at the same time have a broader strategic dialogue on trade, on economic opportunities and on education and I just don’t get the sense that the government has done the groundwork. I visited China every year as Shadow Foreign Secretary and I sincerely wish the British Prime Minister had been able to visit China every year as British Prime Minister, because have no doubt, this is a this is a rising power with rising influence and it doesn’t …

DM: So you are effectively saying is that he should slightly abandon the moral high ground, there are no moral absolutes here?

DOUGLAS ALEXANDER: It is not an either/or. Take the example of Gordon Brown, why was Gordon able to meet the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader and be in Beijing yet for Britain to be in the diplomatic deep freeze for three years? What’s different is the approach that’s been taken. We established what was called a strategic dialogue with China in which human rights were absolutely central but at the same time we talked about other issues. As I say, it is now three years since a British Prime Minister has visited China, that is as a consequence of the fact that there has been a pretty slapdash approach to the relationship and I’m afraid Britain may well have paid a price as a consequence.

DM: And if it was a Labour Prime Minister who you were accompanying there, would you say don’t mention the Dalai Lama while you’re there or isn’t this an opportunity to raise those fundamental issues with the whole …

DOUGLAS ALEXANDER: Absolutely. I am afraid over the last three years David Cameron has neither been effective in raising the issue of human rights or concerns about Tibet or the interests of British business and British exporters. Frankly there need to be that dialogue and I just wish that we had a government that had been more careful in making sure we had the opportunity to talk not just about human rights but also economic opportunities as well.

DM: Just one last point I wanted to ask you about economic opportunities, the domestic political scene, we’ve seen over the last week it’s seen as the government stealing an awful lot of your ideas, Labour’s ideas. How do you feel about that when it comes to energy, payday lenders, plain packaging on cigarettes? You were criticised in the Labour party an awful lot during the first three years of this government and we in the media would say give us some ideas, give us some policies – you’ve given them and they’ve all been stolen.

DOUGLAS ALEXANDER: Even our fiercest critics would accept that Labour has been setting the agenda over the last few months in British politics and it seemed to me that this was a week when the government gave up any pretence of leading and just accepted that they were following. Now the truth is, if you look at what George Osborne announced earlier this morning in relation to energy prices, it is too little and it is too late. They haven’t gone for the freeze that we would commit to or indeed the fundamental resetting of the market but frankly it does speak to the fact that this is a government three years in without an animating defining political purpose, that they find themselves scrabbling around trying to find policies elsewhere to make sense of why they’re still in power.

DM: Okay, Douglas Alexander, thank you very much indeed and thanks first and foremost for your personal memories and knowledge of Glasgow and the Clutha Pub in particular.