The Campaign Against William Hague

Peter Oborne writes:

Every so often in British politics the sharks smell blood, circle and move in for the kill. This is happening now, and the target is William Hague. The critics claim that he has lost interest in his job, and that as a result he has made a series of mistakes. In particular, they say, the crisis in the Middle East has been grotesquely mishandled. Some say Hague’s finished.

Sometimes, when the sharks circle, there really has been gross negligence, lying or deceit. But I don’t believe that this is the case with Hague. On the contrary, I believe that he has handled recent events reasonably well. Let’s examine the charge sheet.

The biggest criticism concerns the capture of six SAS soldiers and two British “diplomats” in Libya last week. All serious politicians and journalists are in sombre agreement that the Foreign Secretary was badly at fault. They assert that he should never have allowed this operation to take place, and in this they have been boosted by the fact that Hague has publicly accepted the blame for what went wrong.

This is nonsensical. It needs to be borne in mind that we do not have the faintest idea what this little band of SAS soldiers and British officials were really doing, although we can feel confident that the official version of events, namely that attempts were being made to contact the Libyan rebels, is false.

On one point, however, there is no doubt. This was an operation conceived and organised at the Vauxhall headquarters of MI6 and the SAS HQ in Hereford, and emphatically not inside the Foreign Office. When these operations go wrong, something that is bound to happen from time to time, it is the constitutional duty of the British foreign secretary to take responsibility, as Hague has done.

When all goes well, it is worth noting, it is the SAS that tends to get the credit; usually, when a version of events comes to light later on in some self-serving memoir or newspaper report.

So, on balance, Hague handled this incident with dignity – and so, indeed, did the SAS. It is an especial matter of congratulation and indeed national pride that, when our soldiers found themselves surrounded, they did not shoot their way out of trouble, as their recent record suggests US special forces might have done in similar circumstances. Instead, these British servicemen showed common sense and humanity in laying down their arms, thus avoiding the loss of innocent life and what might well have become a genuine international crisis.

This brings us to the second allegation made against Hague, namely that the Foreign Office bungled the evacuation of British nationals. It should first of all be noted that the modern doctrine that it is a government obligation to arrange safe passage for expatriates is in need of urgent re-examination. Oilmen and other Britons earn fat, tax-free salaries when they go to work in countries such as Libya. They should do so open-eyed, and make arrangements for their own security. Their tearful recent lamentations on the Today programme and other broadcasting outlets come as further confirmation that the British are no longer the stoical, independent and resourceful people we used to be.

Be that as it may, Hague’s Foreign Office did eventually come to the rescue of these whingeing and ungrateful expatriates. Not a life was lost. There were certainly operational problems, but I have seen no evidence that the Foreign Office was to blame. If anything, it was the Ministry of Defence that procrastinated. I am told, for example, that at one stage an MoD official was characteristically citing “health and safety” concerns as a reason not to send HMS Cumberland to the Libyan coast.

I judge that historians will rank William Hague as one of our better post-war foreign secretaries. Though he has been in his job for less than one year, he has already gone some distance towards constructing a more mature foreign policy – furthermore, one founded on the national interest – than we have seen for many years.

He has sought, though with only partial success, to break away from the naked partisanship towards Israel that made such a nonsense of British Middle Eastern policy during the Blair years. He is cooler towards the United States and (coached by the excellent Lord Howell, one of his ablest ministers of state) is the first foreign secretary in many years to understand that the Commonwealth is a valuable institution. Intellectually, Hague is first-rate. He badly needs to be, because of the damage 13 years of New Labour, with its cult of the special adviser and contempt for traditional methods of diplomacy, did to the Foreign Office as an institution.

He is not excitable, and this quality of dispassionate calm is starting to count against him. Many of his back-bench supporters remembered his eloquent and powerful denunciations of Europe when he was Tory leader 10 years ago, and hoped for more of the same. But Hague has learnt from that experience. As Foreign Secretary, he has not encouraged confrontation. Instead, he has sought to get his way much more softly. For example, his European Union Bill quietly went through the Commons last Tuesday – a real achievement which nobody noticed. This lack of noise and passion may be one of the reasons why so many of his enemies assert that he has lost what they call his “mojo”. More friendly observers might say that Hague has simply grown older and more statesmanlike.

So why all the fuss? Before dealing with this question, it is important to recollect the very first rules of reporting politics: events are very rarely what they seem. The Hague crisis is not about the man’s competence: it is about a battle for power.
Quite a few ambitious politicians are now eyeing up Hague’s job. This especially applies to Andrew Mitchell, the unctuously loyal International Development Secretary. Malcolm Rifkind, foreign secretary in the dying years of the Major government, retains ambition. So does the Lib Dem elder statesman and foreign affairs “expert” Menzies Campbell, who stuck the knife in on Newsnight by claiming Hague was no longer interested in his job. Others, such as Dr Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary (who seems to have embarked on an ill-judged war of words with US defence secretary Robert Gates), and Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, are also sniffing around.

But the urgent battle is ideological. David Cameron’s Government is split in two on foreign affairs. The most powerful faction are the resurgent neo-conservatives: Fox, Gove and Chancellor George Osborne. They have never accepted that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, and retain the strongest links to the US Republicans. These neocons believe that they have captured David Cameron, and that Hague is the remaining obstacle to a return to the interventionist foreign policy of the Blair years. They have influential allies in the press, many of whom have been responsible for the most unfair attacks on the Foreign Secretary.

The immediate battle concerns plans for a no-fly zone over Libya, where Hague has been more cautious and less excitable than his gung-ho Cabinet colleagues. But other battles lie ahead. David Cameron has yet to show any serious grasp of foreign affairs. But the Prime Minister must at some stage define his administration by choosing between the Tory realism of William Hague and the neo-Conservatism of the Foreign Secretary’s powerful and ambitious Cabinet critics.