10 minute read
The Interview
Tom Tugendhat
(1986-91)
Advertisement
Mark Lobel (1992-97), BBC World News Reporter and Presenter and former BBC Political Correspondent interviews the MP and Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
It was Tom Tugendhat’s first engagement with Pauline life for almost thirty years. “What on earth are you doing this for?” the military man barked at me in his parliamentary office. Wrong-footed: “Um, I thought it would be interesting to meet you,” was my somewhat meek reply, before I then recognised this shot across the bows as a pre-interview power game. I had seen senior politicians try a variant of it in the past, claiming not to know what they were going to be interviewed about. “Oh. I’m here for my looks,” was Tom’s riposte, smiling slightly.
It was an odd beginning. It also piqued my curiosity. I was due to explore his role as a budding statesman, with incisive knowledge of world affairs, as the influential Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. I was also interested in his bold Prime Ministerial ambitions.
Now, though, I was more interested in his school days. Did he actually dislike the school? Was he put off by the current political winds from associating with it? If so, what on earth was he doing agreeing to be interviewed by me? It is for the St Paul’s alumni magazine after all.
It turns out he did appreciate the school’s “fantastic education”. He has high praise for school chaplains Stephen Young (Philosophy Department 19882002) and Hugh Mead (History Department 1966-97) who taught him while he was there and for the Christian Union. His first move after Barnes is testament to that: studying Theology at Bristol. Then came an Islamic Studies Masters at Cambridge. This took him to Yemen where he learnt Arabic. He used that Arabic and his French as a journalist in Lebanon. After that he worked in PR; as a management consultant; and an energy analyst, none of which he enjoyed nearly as much as his time as a reserve officer in the Territorial Army. His standing there soon shot up. He joined just before September 11th happened, which thrust him into war zones. In Iraq he says he was, at times, terrified working on operations. His greatest adventure was in Afghanistan where he helped set up the National Security Council and the government in Helmand Province before being involved in military operations from 2007 to 2009.
His fond recollection of his time in the Army is notable compared to his more ambivalent feelings about his schooldays. I dug deeper into why he turns up to regimental reunions and not school ones. It appears his old school somehow represents injustices he is now trying to address. He explains: “Much of your life is spent in very small bubbles. St Paul’s is a tiny bubble of a particular rarefied section of the community with a certain wealth distribution, geographic distribution, economic… The wonderful thing about the Armed Forces is it’s not. It’s everybody. One person I worked with, his grandmother did quite well, and she ended up as Queen. And somebody else I worked with his grandfather didn’t do so well. He went to prison for trying to sell him as a four-year-old. That’s quite a range of people. One of them ended up as RSM (Regimental Sergeant Major). The other one has some job doing podcasts in California. I’m not quite sure how successful that is?”
To be fair, Tugendhat concedes he is part of The Establishment, “but I seem to be in rebellion most of the time,” he adds. He is careful not to blame anyone in any particular bubble, but his mission is clear – he wants to challenge the divisions in society and see the different worlds integrate with one another. He fears a “rarefied education” may not help that cause. He implies that the Army just about saved him by opening his eyes to the world, but he fears for the school’s future now with an increasingly split society. The other problem with St Paul’s, he says, is the cost. “Inflation in fees has outstripped wage inflation to an extraordinary degree.”
Once we do get onto world affairs, it is difficult to listen to such an articulate, well-informed, educated individual and not think that his schooling played a crucial part. But I will leave you to decide what is going on there. Let us turn to another of his bugbears: China.
Just before we met, the West Kent-based MP was taking the Chinese to task in the Commons for their human rights record. He was urging the British government to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2024. He leads fellow Conservative MPs in the China Research Group calling for sanctions against China over the alleged mass rounding up of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. They have already influenced government policy and he has been blacklisted by Beijing which he says has had no effect on him at all.
The Spectator recently argued that ‘China bought Cambridge’ because of Chinese funding for a new Institute for Sustainability Leadership based in Cambridge. In addition, it said the University received millions of pounds from the Chinese government to set-up »
a research centre based in Nanjing. Tugendhat has a warning for institutions like St Paul’s not to follow Cambridge University’s example and accept the Chinese yuan. “It would be unwise because it is very hard to explain to somebody that you are guaranteeing the academic freedoms that Ofsted requires you to guarantee and that your charter left by John Colet instructs you to keep.” His fear is “enabling students to be taught under a dictatorial system that refuses the civil liberties that are fundamental to education” and of getting into a financial relationship with China that, through satellite schools there, “starts to affect schools at home … causing a growing silence” on the issues of free speech, human rights or calling out the Chinese for stealing technology or intellectual property.
Perhaps Tugendhat’s greatest legacy so far by pushing an anti-Beijing message (alongside, whisper it, Donald Trump) has been to encourage the British cabinet to take a more hawkish position over its economic dealings with China.
But, it seems, our statesman’s influence only goes so far. His warnings not to cut Britain’s annual foreign aid budget by around four billion pounds a year went unheeded by his party. He thinks it will be a long and costly mistake: “You’ll see Brits winning fewer positions at UN bodies. You’ll see our voice not being heard so much in the African Union or being not as well received in the Commonwealth. You’ll see others filling that place.”
He says a simple lesson in diplomacy has been ignored. “If you think things are going badly with you at the table, trust me, walk away and they will get worse.”
That is also an apt description of what has happened in Afghanistan. The UK has withdrawn from a costly twenty-year war there. The 48-year old congratulates British troops for preventing another terrorist threat similar to 9/11 from taking place in the West during its operations there. But he bitterly regrets our exit. He compares it to the years following the end of the Second World War: “The fighting stopped in 1945 but the victory didn’t come until 1991. Because we built up the civil institutions, the economic partnerships, all the infrastructures of a prosperous and successful Western Europe that gently exerted increasing pressure on The Wall until one day it collapsed. That was a phenomenal success. What we’ve just done in Afghanistan is pull out in 1955.”
He worked closely with many Afghans in Kabul and Helmand but “wouldn’t be surprised if many didn’t survive until Christmas.”
Our interview was hurriedly brought forward at the last minute to make way for an unannounced visit to London from a very senior member of the Indian Army. It is testament to the rebel backbencher’s diplomatic skills that he was the one to explain to our key ally, in the kindest possible terms, why we have abruptly abandoned ship in Afghanistan by leaving so quickly despite Afghan forces being so unprepared, especially in the skies. That has arguably left a clear run for India’s arch enemies, namely China and Pakistan, to increase their foothold in the war-torn country, through a Taliban Trojan Horse.
But some in the party want to see far more of him than just his diplomatic skills. He ranked highest outside the Cabinet in a recent Conservative Home grassroots poll for Next Conservative Leader. The bookies have him second in line outside the Cabinet, his current odds the same as the Home Secretary and not far behind the Health Secretary.
He is in the highly intellectual wing of the party, once backing Michael Gove for leader and is great mates with the likes of former Conservative MP, Rory Stewart and many of the next generation Tories. He is an unabashed centrist, compromising, anti-populist. He is very refreshingly not a career politician. The son of a high court judge and husband of a judge on France’s Supreme Court has even got pleasant things to say about Keir Starmer, describing him as “a very decent guy,” other than being “too lawyerly”. He currently has a higher media profile than the leader of the opposition from what I can see, from comment pieces in the Daily Mail to appearances on Talk Radio and everything in between. Which goes
Tom during his military career
some way to answering my original question, namely why he is talking to me. His star is clearly rising. He is wearing it all well. He is intent on boosting his profile at any opportunity. He thinks he could be Conservative leader one day. “You don’t say when the moment comes that you don’t want to do it,” he tells me.
But he says his party is not heading in the direction he would choose. It is no secret that he does not approve of the current leader. So, I ask, chasing a cheap headline, how he would sum up Boris Johnson’s leadership using a military phrase.
“There’s no way I’m giving it to you,” he laughs. So instead he describes what leadership should be. “Accountability, authority and responsibility.” We are chatting days after an opposition MP is thrown out of the House for repeatedly calling the PM a liar. So, I ask, how important is truthfulness these days? He begins with, “I think integrity matters and I think truthfulness matters in how we deal with each other.” He adds, “The ultimate protection in a democracy is not the law or judges or police. The ultimate protection is shame.”
Tom Tugendhat does not try to be someone he is not. He once told a podcast he does not have a favourite band and he is relaxed enough to say he does not really follow sport. The only cagey answer I elicited from the practising Roman Catholic was about religion. I asked him about a cross that is pinned to his noticeboard. He tried to bat it away, telling me affirmatively, “I’m not elected to represent the bishops.”
He says his best friend in politics is his wife. They have two children. He famously changed a nappy silently enough not to disturb his interview on the Today Programme with John Humphries. Though LBC’s Nick Ferrari did call a halt to their interview the following year when the breakfast presenter heard a baby cry in the background. Then there was a TV interview last year from his home during which his kids badgered him live on air to join them in some face painting before repeatedly jumping on the bed.
“Very kindly after that interview a number of people sent me a series of how to guides. So now I’ve got a ten-page booklet on how to paint a tiger and how to do a butterfly. You know, white first, then a bit of sparkles, then some blue. I’m very good at face painting now. I’ll do you in a minute,” he says, laughing, before rushing off to try and save face with that Indian General.
