Murnaghan 20.07.14 Paper Review with Sir Christopher Meyer, Clare Short & Anne Applebaum

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Joining me now to take a look through the Sunday papers are the former British Ambassador to America, Sir Christopher Meyer, the Washington Post columnist and director at the Legatum Institute, Anne Applebaum and Clare Short, who was of course Secretary of State for International Development for six years under Tony Blair, a very good morning to you all and a lot of sombre stuff to discuss particularly coming from all the front pages today.  Sir Christopher, the Mail on Sunday  puts it rather succinctly, ‘Putin the Terrorist’. 

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: Well I think almost nobody outside the Kremlin is in doubt that the Russians bear a very direct responsibility for this atrocity and given that all the human interest stories that are coming out of this tragedy, such as “Two British families killed by Putin the Terrorist” are stoking a vast wave of indignation all around the world and particularly in those countries that have lost lots of people and what one sees here among many other geopolitical consequences is that this is the end of Putin’s grand project, to restore the grandeur and reputation of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union … just let me finish.  All he has succeeded in doing is heaping shame on …

DM: We’ve got to get to base one of course first, Clare Short, and that is establishing that Russia has this responsibility to bear.  Given the propaganda that is coming out of Russia about there were dead bodies on the plane already, that they shot it down themselves …

CLARE SHORT: I mean Russia has been supporting the troublemakers in the East but Russia didn’t authorise this attack, they’re not that stupid.

DM: No, but they supplied the weaponry. 

CLARE SHORT: Well no, I mean in this FT piece is how the rebels got the missiles from a Ukrainian military centre that they overtook and my question is, and there is no doubt that Putin brings himself into total disrepute and it’s a horrible regime and he’s a bad man, but what’s the solution?  I mean there are lots and lots of threats but surely we need some kind of deal with him to stabilise the East. 

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: That’s another subject.

CLARE SHORT: No, but if you hype everyone up and you don’t say where are we trying to go …

SIR CHRISPHER MEYER: How do you un-hype people after something like this?  The fact of the matter is that he fomented a rebellion in Eastern Ukraine and this is the classic fall out from it. 

DM: Anne Applebaum, come in here because we refer to your front page as well, David Cameron saying that something must come out of this, we  don’t know what specific action. 

ANNE APPLEBAUM: Well there were two world leaders writing in the papers this weekend, one was Cameron and one was Bildt and what’s interesting is Bildt who has been following this all along and has been saying much of this all along, Cameron is much more new to this analysis, the point is that Putin deliberately created a zone of lawlessness, that was actually his goal, he was trying to delegitimise the Ukrainian state, he put in his guys.  The people who run Eastern Ukraine are mostly not Ukrainians, they are Russians, they were put there deliberately, they are people who fought in other wars, they fought in Chechnya, they fought in Georgia and they are people who bear no responsibility, they owe nothing to anybody.  He then into this cauldron of chaos that he created and wanted to create, he has been sending heavy weapons of a very sophisticated nature along with the technologists who know how to shoot them. 

CLARE SHORT: Well the FT said that he got the weapons from a Ukrainian…

DM: Isn’t that rather irrelevant where the weapons come from, it’s how they were used. 

[All talking at the same time]

DM: Anne, just make your final point and then we’ll get Clare Short’s response.

ANNE APPLEBAUM: The point is, the conversation has to start with recognising what has happened and actually until now, literally until today, there has been nobody in Britain and mostly nobody in Europe with the exception of Bildt and a few others, who have put this clearly, who have understood that this is what is happening in Eastern Ukraine and now we understand what’s happening we can begin to react, we can begin to eliminate Russia from its influence on our economy and its on our politics. 

DM: So if I can just ask Clare Short there, why does it matter where the missiles might have come from, we know who used them?

CLARE SHORT: Because the hype is that Putin personally authorised it.  We need to calm down and say where do we want to go?  A third of our energy in Europe comes from Russia, if these rebels are completely out of control we need some kind of deal involving Putin to calm the whole of Eastern Ukraine down. 

ANNE APPLEBAUM: Putin has no interest in controlling them.

CLARE SHORT: Excuse me.  Also I think it was provocative of the West to take NATO right up to the Russian borders, that’s made them paranoid.  What do we want in the long term, if we squeeze the Russian economy, provoke more and more military spending that will hurt the EU economy.  We haven’t got a long-term plan thought through.

DM: It sounds like a form of appeasement in a way or is it not time to stand up to Putin and say you messed up here and you know you’ve messed up?

CLARE SHORT: For what, have a war?

ANNE APPLEBAUM: No one is talking about a war.

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: Can I just say, the best memorial to the victims of this tragedy is to construct a stable and fair peace in Ukraine.  That does require the participation of Russia because you won’t have anything stable unless the Russians are engaged but at the same time, based on what Anne has just said and I absolutely agree with her, he needs not only carrots to get him into this kind of negotiation, he needs sticks and that is why the United States and Western Europe, NATO, the EU, whatever you like to call it, need to make Putin aware that the sanctions that would follow are going to be far more severe than they have been so far and after the Korean airliner was shot down by the Russians in 1983 I think the United States shut their airspace to Aeroflot. 

DM: Listen, this isn’t the only discussion we’re going to have here, and we are going to be discussing this issue throughout the programme, this is a paper review and I think we are only going to have time for the other main story around today and Clare, bring it to us, the Palestinian death toll rises as the world protests.  You might have just heard my interview with Naftali Bennett, the Minister from Israel who is claiming that it’s Israel of course responding to a threat to its citizens.

CLARE SHORT: I think what is awful about this the death toll is almost the same and the imbalance in the mourning loss of life of the Gazan people compared with the people who were on the aeroplane.  These are all human beings and I think to suggest that this is Israel simply responding to rockets is not a truthful account of what happened historically.  Gaza is Israeli occupied territory, it’s as though Britain …

DM: Israeli contained territory.

CLARE SHORT: It’s occupied in international law because they’ve been told the whole of everything, the sky, the sea, the borders.  It is like after a bomb in London that Britain had bombed East Belfast and said, there are some people who support Sinn Fein there, we’ll knock out that house.   It is collective punishments, it is illegal in international law, it is provoking more and more anger, no doubt acting as a recruiting sergeant for young people to join up to extreme jihadist groups, further destabilising the Middle East.  Israel needs a holding to international law and neither the EU nor the US will do that.

DM: What do you think, Anne Applebaum, talk about disproportionate responses, is there a sense of here we go again with Gaza, is that what’s happened in terms of Clare Short’s point about the media response?

ANNE APPLEBAUM: It is a disproportionate response because Israel is not doing what Hamas does which is lob primitive rockets over the border to hit whoever they can possibly hit, it’s a much bigger operation and it’s much more careful but the fact is if Hamas didn’t have rockets and if Hamas wasn’t constantly trying to destabilise Israel then we wouldn’t be in this place to begin with.

CLARE SHORT: Israel is one of the greatest military powers in the world …

DM: Well somebody has got to blink.  I am just hearing that by the way Hamas say they have accepted, on one of the news wires, a three hour ceasefire which could be for humanitarian reasons rather than anything more significant than that.  You were going to say, Sir Christopher?

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER:  People who are supporters of Israel have to understand one thing, if you want your neighbour to be peaceful and friendly, don’t make him thin and angry, make him fat and prosperous.  The reality is that the Gazans are cooped up, almost two million of them, in a hell hole, in a hell hole largely of Israel’s making and if only the Israelis would allow normal trade and commerce to cross the borders between Gaza and elsewhere, you could start to make the Gazan Palestinians plump and prosperous and they would be much less angry.

DM: And it does beggar belief, Anne Applebaum, doesn’t it, this argument from Israel that the civilians, the collateral damage which they partially admit to, are being used as human shields?

ANNE APPLEBAUM: Well I’m sorry to say that there is a long record of the use of human shields in that part of the world so I don't know if beggars belief is really the correct description.

CLARE SHORT: It is one of the most densely occupied places on earth, it is 25 miles by six with two million people in it, there are no places with separate military encampments, it is just crowded, crowded …

ANNE APPLEBAUM: Then why do they have military installations there at all? 

CLARE SHORT: Because they are being oppressed and suppressed and people resist when that happens to them.  Israel is killing far more Palestinians than even any … don’t be so unbalanced in your concern for human beings.  This is the US position and it is part of the problem of the Middle East, it’s so unfair. 

ANNE APPLEBAUM: It’s so unfair because one side … sorry, I can’t accept that. 

CLARE SHORT: Well, there you go.  That is the problem of the world, the US position is so unbalanced. 

ANNE APPLEBAUM: How did we get on to the US actually?

CLARE SHORT: Well I thought you were from the US.

ANNE APPLEBAUM: I don’t live in the US, I  don’t speak for the US.

DM: What we do agree on is that somehow, some way the violence has to stop and the talking has to begin.  Sir Christopher’s fat and prosperous element has to take control in some way.

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: There was an Arab-Israel dispute throughout the entire 37 years of my diplomatic career and I cannot count the number of initiatives that were undertaken to try and stop the conflict and they all failed.  We go on and on … Let me finish.  We go on and on letting history repeat itself and it is even worse than it was 37 years ago.

DM: Okay, let’s move on to domestic politics, the reshuffle.  Sir Christopher, you’ve got this, ‘You can sack me’, Owen Patterson says in the reshuffle, apparently he didn’t take it very well did he, the former Environment Secretary.

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: No, there is some great stuff in the Mail on Sunday about what happened, what was said between David Cameron and firstly Owen Patterson and then Liam Fox, I don't know whether this is true or not but it makes good reading.  Owen Patterson argues very, very forcefully apparently about how stupid it would be to sack him because he’s done great things for the countryside and he apparently asked the Prime Minister at the end of the meeting, ‘Do you want to lose the next election?’  Liam Fox, offered Minister of State at the Foreign Office, says ‘You must be bloody joking, Foreign Minister, and by the way is the Ambassadorship to the Moon available?’  I think this is terrific stuff but it does illustrate a rather more important point which is has this reshuffle which seems to have been done for essentially presentational political reasons been a good move or a bad move?  Opinion is absolutely split because the guys who have fallen on their swords, Michael Gove and Owen Patterson, are actually serious politicians doing serious stuff and suddenly the serious guys go, how is the electorate going to react, if it notices this at all?

CLARE SHORT: But this is every reshuffle.  The political diarists and the Westminster hub think this is really important, the public don’t much care. 

DM: In surveys, when you survey the public and show them pictures of member of the Cabinet, you were there Clare Short, you know we take these pictures around the street and they go we’ve never heard of them, we’ve never seen them. 

CLARE SHORT: When you have been there a long time they recognise you. If you remember Gordon Brown suddenly brought in a lot of new ones thinking I’ll refresh it like it’s a new government and it was [a mistake] …

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: You are right but the pundits in the Westminster bubble will pore over this and they can’t make up their minds but I’m sure the people can’t give a flying …

DM: Anne Applebaum, the big analysis of the shift is that it might have brought more women, slightly more women into the Cabinet but it is also about Euroscepticism as well, it has bolstered the right of the party.

ANNE APPLEBAUM: I can’t comment on what goes on inside the Tory party.  It’s true that the Tories have had a great deal of trouble in shaping their European policy and defining it and trying to make it work and trying to sell it in Europe which so far they have been unable to do and if this is another attempt to do that, well God bless them. 

CLARE SHORT: And Hague was a Eurosceptic.

DM: He seemed to change over time, he seemed to soften his stance. 

CLARE SHORT: He was getting older!

ANNE APPLEBAUM: Hague was one of the people who began to understand that for example in dealing with subjects like Ukraine, there is no British solution, there is only a European solution. 

CLARE SHORT: That’s right.

ANNE APPLEBAUM: And he understood that and it may be that that was one of the reasons he wanted to leave because he understood this is the solution, it is not supported back home.

CLARE SHORT: I think he just got … He’s been the leader, where is he supposed to go next?

DM: Clare, bring in your Observer front page, another man who wanted to be leader at one point of the Conservative party, actually at several points, he never got it, we’re talking about the former Chancellor, many other jobs he had as well, Ken Clarke and he has been talking about the economy, what’s he saying?

CLARE SHORT: He’s says that the British economic recovery is very frail.  This is a man of great experience and a former Chancellor and indeed a Tory and the rebalancing of the British economy hasn’t happened.  Of course here we are pre-election, the economy has recovered and everything is fine and this big hitter says no, it isn’t.  House price constant booms and bust are not good for the economy, where’s manufacturing?

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: David Cameron must be pleased!

DM: That is presumably one of the reasons why he got removed from the Cabinet.  One of the joys of Ken Clarke wasn’t it was that he spoke his mind?

CLARE SHORT: When you go in the inside page he says ‘I disagreed with Number Ten all the time, they tried to keep me off the airwaves all the time’ and now of course he is free to speak and one thing he is dedicated to is Europe so as they manufacture an anti-EU position for the pre-election period, Ken Clarke is going to keep popping up saying …

DM: I didn’t get your take on this, Sir Christopher, he is one of the key Europhiles removed from the Cabinet, do you see it that way, as a big shift to the Eurosceptic wing?

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: No, I don’t think it’s a big shift to the Eurosceptics and I also thought that he was getting too awkward for David Cameron to want to have him around for an election because if he shoots his mouth off like that the week before an election he could do some serious damage.   When I used to work with John Major in the 1990s in Downing Street, Ken was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, now the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister are supposed to work very closely together but he was always an awkward cuss with an independent take.  You’d think you had a strategy worked out for a couple of weeks or whatever but suddenly Ken would go flying off in another direction in the microphone.  He is a great figure in British politics and we mourn his passing but by God he has been his own man all the way through and it has been awkward for a succession of Conservative Prime Ministers.

CLARE SHORT: He can speak out more now.

ANNE APPLEBAUM: Politicians, we mourn this when they’re gone and Ken Clarke specifically, but the fact that politics has less and less space for independent thinkers and independent minds and people who stick to their values is really a great tragedy.

CLARE SHORT: That’s not just in Britain. 

SIR CHRISTPHER MEYER: The homogenisation of politics. 

CLARE SHORT: And he’s going to speak out more now he’s outside the centre. 

DM: Well absolutely.  We’ll cut it off there, Sir Christopher, Clare Short and Anne Applebaum very good to see you, thank you very much indeed for conducting the newspaper review for me.