As diplomacy runs out of time and the carrier battle groups sail into position, western governments are desperate to win over the Arab street. The greatest fear is that a conflict in Iraq will set the Middle East in flames. But so far western efforts at “public diplomacy” have not worked. Arabic pop radio stations and slick advertisements of happy Muslims in the US have fallen on deaf ears. More of the same public diplomacy will lead to more of the same bemused and incredulous responses. Until the west has the right diagnosis of the problem, it will be impossible to make any difference.

The starting-point for western public diplomacy has been to assume that if people in the Middle East do not like us, it is because they do not know us well enough. President George W. Bush, when asked about hostility in the Arab world, declared: “I just can’t believe it. I know how good we are and we’ve got to do a better job of making our case.” But the sentiment of people in the region is more subtle. They know America and many want to live there: the United Nations has reported that 51 per cent of young Arabs want to emigrate to the west.

In fact, there are three wellsprings of hostility that need to be dealt with together if any progress is to be achieved. First, there is western foreign policy, particularly towards Israel and Palestine. Hostility will be a constant until some progress is made on the peace process and on double standards in human rights and democracy.

The Faustian bargain of political and military support for autocratic regimes in exchange for free access to oil is no longer sustainable; what was seen as a bolster to regional stability is now clearly a source of hostility and terror.

But even if policies do change, no one will believe it unless we deal with the other two sources of hostility. Most pernicious is the pervasive sense that western policy is motivated by a hatred or fear of Muslims. In Arab eyes, the attempt to link Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden reads like a racist conspiracy theory. An opinion poll last year showed that Lebanese, Indonesians, Turks and Iranians were all more favourable about Americans than Americans were about them. An ICM survey in October 2001 found that one in four Britons saw Islam as “a threat to western values”.

Arab fear of western Islamophobia is so strong that even when western governments do positive things, they are presented as a threat. The Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram claimed that US humanitarian food aid to Afghanistan was genetically modified and had been deliberately dropped in heavily landmined areas.

The solution is to get away from talk of civilisations. When the west becomes obsessed with the question of “why do they hate us?” and tries to fight it with public diplomacy campaigns based around dialogue between civilisations, it simply adds to the sense of “us versus them”. Instead of broadcasting adverts about how nice “we” are to Muslims, we should show that those categories are meaningless.

Greater awareness of the west’s pluralism (its divisions on Iraq, for example) and of its Muslim communities would help to challenge the insidious logic of a clash between two monolithic civilisations. A BBC Arabic television service could deliver these discussions to large audiences in the region. Equally, we should tackle misperceptions of Islam in western countries. Asking Arab civil society to help western schools to combat ignorance would be a powerful symbolic response. Also, western governments should come down hard on those who misrepresent Islam – whether a television evangelist describing the prophet Mohammed as a terrorist or a journalist warning of a “fifth column” among British Muslims.

Last, public diplomacy will not get very far if it is just about firefighting. One reason hostility towards the west is so strong is that people living amid poverty, high unemployment and political repression do not have the freedom to protest about problems close to home. Discontent is deflected toward the west. This means that economic development and political reform are the only way to dispel hostility in the long term.

It has been suggested that a “new Marshall Plan” to transform the Middle East is required. In fact, what is needed is a kind of “mirror of the Marshall Plan”. The injection of US capital into postwar Europe was so successful because it catalysed the human capital that was already there. Europe had skilled workers and managers and strong educational, political and judicial institutions but it did not have the factories and infrastructure. According to the UN development programme, the required catalyst in the Middle East is not cash but the institutional and educational reform needed to build and deploy the region’s human capital.

The west should forget propaganda. It does not need to give vast sums of aid. Instead it should help civil society. Linking people and institutions with potential reformers in the region allows the Middle East to progress along its own path and is the best antidote to mistrust and hatred.

If we are to avoid the nightmare scenario, it is time to think big and involve millions of people across the region in people-to-people diplomacy rather than oiling the wheels of bilateral relations among authoritarian regimes.

The writers are authors of Public Diplomacy in the Middle East www.fpc.org.uk

In the maelstrom of transatlantic relations unleashed by the present Iraq crisis, one question goes begging: Is there a middle path between the increasingly pacifist, Kantian worldview of Europe and the increasingly belligerent Hobbesian worldview of the US, a workable compromise between Europe’s suspicion of power and faith in an international legal order, on the one hand, and America’s belief in power and suspicion of international legal order, on the other? The answer, if there is one, might be found in Britain and in the person of Tony Blair.
The Iraq crisis has cast transatlantic differences in an especially harsh light, but the gulf had been opening for some time. After the cold war, Europeans and Americans no longer share a common view of the world. On the all-important question of power – the utility of power, the morality of power – they have parted ways. Europeans believe they are moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. Europe itself has entered a post-historical paradise, the realisation of Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace. The US, meanwhile, remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international rules are unreliable and where security and the promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might.

Europe’s relatively pacific strategic culture is the product of its relative weakness in military terms, but it is also the product of its profound and admirable aspiration to escape its war-like past. Who knows the dangers of Machtpolitik better than a French or German or British citizen? The EU is a monument to Europe’s rejection of the old power politics. As the British diplomat and senior EU official Robert Cooper has noted, Europe today lives in a “postmodern system” that does not rest on a balance of power but on “the rejection of force” and on “self-enforced rules of behaviour”. Raison d’état has been “replaced by a moral consciousness”. The new Europe has succeeded not by balancing power but by transcending power. And now Europeans have become evangelists for their “postmodern” gospel of international relations. The application of the European miracle to the rest of the world has become Europe’s new mission civilisatrice. If Germany can be tamed through gentle rapprochement, why not Iraq?

This has put Europeans and Americans on a collision course. Americans have not lived the European miracle. They have no experience of promoting ideals and order successfully without power. Their memory of the past 60 years is of a world saved from Nazism chiefly by American power and of a cold war struggle that was eventually won by strength and determination, not by the spontaneous triumph of “moral consciousness”. As good children of the Enlightenment, Americans believe in human perfectibility. But Americans from Donald Rumsfeld to Colin Powell to Madeleine Albright also believe that global security and a liberal order depend on the US – that “indispensable nation” – wielding its power in the dangerous, Hobbesian world that still flourishes, at least outside Europe. Especially after September 11, most Americans remember Munich, not Maastricht.

Can the gap be bridged or at least narrowed? Tony Blair has long believed it can, and he is probably the only person on either side of the Atlantic with a strategy for bringing the one-time transatlantic partners back on to common ground.

You would never know it from listening to the pundits. The past week’s pummelling of the British prime minister suggests that Blair may be the most misunderstood leader in the world today. In Britain, across Europe, and even in the American press, he is derided as an unreasoning war-hawk, or caricatured as a man who has almost inexplicably placed his fate in the uncertain hands of George W Bush and in the unfolding of events that are entirely beyond his capacity to control. Why is he doing it, the smart editors at the Economist ask. But their answer is vague and unsatisfying – “Tony Blair prides himself on his country’s special relationship with America. He has worked hard to bond with Mr Bush” – so for pride, friendship, and perhaps a marginal increase in Britain’s global influence, Blair risks all?

This odd portrayal of Blair’s motives and strategy rests, in part, on the presumption that Blair cannot possibly share the American view of Saddam as a deadly menace. His critics assume that Blair is as sanguine about the dangers as they are, and therefore he must have other motives, like “bonding” with Bush.

The majority of Blair’s critics today judge him strictly by whether he successfully impedes Bush’s march to war. But, of course, that is not and never has been Blair’s purpose. The prime minister is one of the few leaders in Europe and the UK to comprehend fully the most dangerous phenomenon of the new era, the potential nexus between international terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

Britons and Europeans are fond of saying that they have lived with terrorism for decades. Fair enough. But the kind of terrorism they have known is not the kind that struck the US on September 11, 2001, the kind that kills thousands in a single strike. Americans today can imagine terrorism on a cataclysmic scale, and so they can imagine a man like Saddam some day slipping biological or chemical or nuclear weapons to a terrorist organisation. Many Britons and Europeans go to great lengths to avoid imagining the imaginable. Blair sees what lies ahead.

To prepare for this future, or more precisely, to prepare what used to be called “the west” to meet the new challenges, Blair has engaged in a two-fold mission. One part of his strategy, and the part that has received the most attention in Europe, has been to try to convince the wary American hyperpower to play by the rules when it turns to force, to act as much as possible within the constraints of the international legal order that Europeans value so highly. But the other, equally important part of Blair’s strategy has been to convince Europe to behave responsibly and courageously in a still dangerous world, to acquire the military capacity, and the will to use military force, as essential to the defence and promotion of that same international legal order.

The theoretical basis for Blair’s approach to Europe has been set forth most powerfully by Robert Cooper, once a top official in the Foreign Office. A year ago, Cooper wrote that although “within the postmodern world [ie, today’s Europe], there are no security threats in the traditional sense,” nevertheless, throughout the rest of the world – what Cooper calls the “modern and pre-modern zones” – threats abound.

If the postmodern world does not protect itself, it can be destroyed. But how does Europe protect itself without discarding the very ideals and principles that undergird its pacific system? “The challenge to the postmodern world,” Cooper has argued, “is to get used to the idea of double standards.” Among themselves, Europeans may “operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security.” But when dealing with the world outside Europe, “we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era – force, preemptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary”. This is Cooper’s principle for safeguarding society: “Among ourselves, we keep the law, but when operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle.”

Cooper’s notion of an international double standard for power would seem to lie at the heart of Blair’s global strategy. On the one hand, he has tried to lead Britain into the rule-based, Kantian world of the EU. And he has pursed the European interest in trying to convince the US, which stands outside that Kantian world, to respect its norms. But Blair has also tried to lead Europe back out into the Hobbesian world, where military power remains a key feature of international relations.

The irony is that Blair has largely succeeded in the first part of his mission, convincing the American hegemon to act within the international legal framework. It is ironic because that is where his critics suggest he has failed. But it was Blair, and Blair alone, who convinced President Bush last summer to go to the UN security council to seek a new resolution on Iraq. It was Blair who convinced the Bush administration – perhaps the least inclined to multilateral action of any in decades – to allow one final test for Iraq. And it is Blair who today has managed to convince an evidently impatient American president to take the risky course of seeking yet another security council resolution before acting against Iraq. This is despite the possibility of a messy political failure at the UN.

Those who simply oppose the war under any circumstances may judge Blair a failure for not stopping Bush, although the charge is a bit absurd given that Blair himself is not opposed to war. But those who claim their primary concern is the upholding of international law and the strengthening of the UN security council as the only legitimate authority for declaring war against Iraq – as so many of Blair’s Labour party critics do claim – have no business at all being critical of Blair. Rather, if they are sincere in their assertion that the issue is international order and not peace for peace’s sake, then they should be applauding and supporting Blair and turning their anger elsewhere.

For instance, across the channel. The French government today may pose as the great champion of the European vision of world order. But Europeans and Britons should ask themselves whether French policy strengthens or weakens the UN security council? France and Germany, if they hold to their present course, may succeed only in convincing a new generation of Americans that the UN security council is feckless. From a strictly European perspective, this would be a great missed opportunity. For four decades during the cold war, Americans were quite comfortable with the notion that the security council, with the Soviet Union wielding its veto, was no place to look for action or legitimacy. But during the decade after the cold war, Americans began to look again to the security council as a possible forum for the maintenance of international order and security. In the coming weeks, if France and Germany obstruct any serious efforts to implement Resolution 1441, Americans will revert to their earlier disdain for the UN. Is that how France and Germany, and Blair’s British critics propose to strengthen the international order? If the goal is to rein in the US, to convince the hyperpower that it should operate within the international legal structures Europeans value so highly, then Blair’s strategy is the best way to accomplish that goal. That is what Blair meant when he declared to the House of Commons that, “If the UN cannot be the way of resolving this issue, that is a dangerous moment for the world.”

Blair’s problem, in short, has not been his inability to influence the US. It is has been his inability to influence France and Germany. And the risk in Blair’s strategy is not that he has placed his fate in the hands of George W Bush – it is that he has also placed his fate in the hands of Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder.

In fact, it is on the European side that Blair’s grand strategy has broken down. Despite Blair’s best efforts, Europe still refuses either to fund or restructure its militaries to make them capable of taking on global or even European security responsibilities. Today, Europe is further than it was a decade ago from an effective common foreign and defence policy. Schroeder has taken his nation “the German way”, and France has led the opposition to any double standard in foreign relations, insisting as a matter of principle as well as defiance to the American hegemon that Iraq and other rogue states must be dealt with as if they were European nations.

But give Blair credit for trying. He is the only world leader today who really is trying to find the synthesis of the American and European worldviews. Were he to succeed, he might find the answer to the seemingly ineluctable transatlantic drift. More than that, he might find the formula for preserving and advancing an international liberal order in the years and decades to come.

Transcript
Global Britons Forum – London
27th of March, 2003

Chair:
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown – Senior Researcher at The Foreign Policy Centre and directs The Centre’s Global Britons Programme
Speakers:
Beverley Hughes MP – Minister of State for Citizenship, Immigration and Community Cohesion.
Philip Dodd -Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts and author of ‘The Battle over Britain’
Mike Phillips – Author of ‘London Crossings: a biography of Black Britain’ and co-author of ‘Windrush: the Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain’

Presentations:

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (chair): London is the city that most Europeans, if not the whole world, talks about as today’s most successful post-imperial, post-colonial city. That is something we should be proud of. I don’t want to oversell us as the “best of this” or “best of that” but London has got this fabled reputation now.

This is because London has developed a “glocal” identity – an identity that is at once global and local. We have noticed this in many other British cities through the research we’ve done in the last fifteen months a part of our road show over various parts of the country. What’s being said is that the most meaningful relationship that is emerging is this “glocal” relationship. Especially younger people say: “I’m a Brummie and I’m a European” or “I’m a Brummie and a World Citizen” and the in between Britishness seems to be hardly mentioned. I feel quite oppressed by the emergence of a “glocal” identification because I feel the British identity is a very important identity.

The arts, popular culture and sports are completely involved now in the remaking of this country and London. The circular export/ import of ideas of who we are is really very exciting. Let’s take The Kumars as an example – one of the most successful programmes on television. It started off as a funny programme portraying the kind of sentiments you find in every Asian family – the love of money, the spoiling of the eldest son, etc. It has is a programme that celebrates what we really want to be and has been sold to America where they are going to have an identical programme but using a Mexican family.

This is an example of the circles upon circles of trade and movement. Before for the BBC planners, The Kumars would just have been multicultural programming. It’s not like that anymore.

Islam and British identity

We talk a lot about how terrorism is exported and imported back into Europe. This is partly true. But it’s not just Islamic terrorists. There are Hindu fundamentalists, for example. I go into some Hindu temples and hear things that absolutely turn my blood cold. We need to talk about these other trades which take place in an internationalist context.

When I talk to the most extreme Muslims who claim to hate everything about this country, my question at the end is always: ‘so why don’t you go back Saudi Arabia, or Iran?’ And every one of them, including those who deeply loath the West, say ‘Oh no! I couldn’t do that! I couldn’t speak to you like this if I lived in Iran or Pakistan.’ Therefore, the trade is not just of terrorism. It seems to me – even the most detached people have absorbed certain principles, which they know they cannot live without. I think we don’t appreciate enough this asset- that amongst even the most extreme fanatics, democracy and freedom of expression of a certain sort, is part of their bloodstream.

Another interesting finding of the Global Britons program has been the staggering conservatism amongst young educated women in universities, not found 3-4 years ago. It is extraordinary how clever woman have decided to wear the hijab and to strictly abide by every single hadith, every single Sunna from the Koran. I have asked these women if they would be happy if their husband took a second wife. “Yes” they said. This change has occurred because women in Pakistan have become very powerful women in terms of ideology. They are now exporting to this country a new kind Islam, not that different from what the Taliban were doing; but it is coming from very educated women who are made to believe that unless they follow every single word of the Koran, they are lost. I am not making any judgments – I would never do that. But it is important for us to understand this trend and the difficulties these women may be confronting in the UK. We need to explore what needs to be done to make these women feel part of this country.

The implications of devolution

The Welsh and the Scots do not want to be British. The main problem of this is that I think this is terribly dangerous for quite a lot of Black and Asian British. Just when the imperial model had been renegade and we started feeling comfortable saying we are British, they pulled the carpet under our feet and made this into a four nation country. I must say that the English historically have been the most open, promiscuous group in Europe (at least when it comes with sex and food). Maybe they won’t do what the other three so-called nations have done. I recently had a debate with Tom Nair about devolution. I argued that even the language of devolution has relegated Black and Asia people to a lower rank. I find that objectionable. In the remaking of this new Britain, it is very important for people to be comfortable about their glocal identities and yet be under this British umbrella – which, I think, is the least excluding of the umbrellas we have.

Beverly Hughes MP: This morning, some of my colleagues from the Home Office’s Community Cohesion Unit and I are exploring how we can learn from the work the Foreign Policy Centre has been doing around Global Britons. We had a very interesting discussion yesterday that expanded my thinking. Following this discussion, I arrived at three questions: why?, what? and how?.

Why are we interested in exploring notions of Britishness and its related concepts? What actually is it we want to do? How do we define where we want to get to? Finally, how do we go about doing it? I think these three questions are still not formulated, but this event is part of the process of exploring them further.

In terms of why, I come into this as a Minister with responsibilities in community cohesion, citizenship, and immigration. We have a hugely diverse ethnic society in the UK and particularly in London. This has been an attribute of British society that we have been acclaimed for. When we look at changes in the global patterns of migration, we see that immigration in the UK will continue to increase. We also have to note that in some places outside of London relationships between different communities are not as strong, not as solid as they should be. Indeed, we saw very real instances of civil disorder about a couple of years ago in many of our towns and cities. To our shame, we did not really know just how segregated these communities were in terms of most aspects of every day life. The lack of knowledge that these people had of others with whom they were living side by side is profoundly disturbing.

We also have the constitutional changes around devolution which also factor themselves into this issue and change the landscape in terms of how people in Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland are beginning to define themselves in terms of those new reference points that they have on the constitutional maps. So I believe there are a number of issues, both positive issues and issues of concern of why it is a really critical that we address this topic.

Then we go on to the second question of – what are we talking about? We spent some time in the Home Office with people like Ted Cantle, who did some work after the disturbances and other people with an interest in this area, trying to find the right language to express this. In fact, there are a number of related concepts and we keep on sliding between them because it is slippery ground. For instance, are we talking about whether there is a core of shared values that people can ascribe to that helps us define and celebrate the commonality while, at the same time, leaving scope for celebrating and acknowledging real differences. If you start to think about where the boundary lies between shared values and different values tensions are created. All of this is related to the concept of citizenship. Are there a core of rights and responsibilities that as citizens of a country we should be ascribing to and how that identity fits into that? Is there a notion of modern Britishness – besides the historic notion Britishness?

I am quite a British person in terms of my ancestry, but I would not associate myself at all with many historic British traditions. So is there a notion of modern Britishness, not in terms of allegiances to institutions, but about allegiance to some principles and attributes? Is there an outward-looking internationalist Britishness that we can define for ourselves and create a degree of consensus around? Or is it the case that because of the dichotomy that Yasmin has identified between strong links with local identity and global identity somehow that sense of national identity falls through the middle? And how do we accommodate the fact that for most of us identity is not a unidimensional concept? We have identities as women, as parents, as family members, as members of our community. There are some strong regional identities in this country which can cut across the sense to which we can identify a national identity. In other words, do we know enough to start a process of discussion in which the sufficient shared understanding of that what exists to be able to move forward productively?

And then we move on to the how?

There is the question of the role of government. I feel strongly with my ministerial responsibilities that it is something I’ve got to pay great attention to. But, equally, I think the belief that government should bring solutions and answers to some of these important questions would be not only wrong, but also counterproductive. This requires a process of talking about these issues and moving forward. People engaged in this process have to own it. No one can impose an identity on him or her. You can ascribe them to something, but whether they accept it or not is up to them and whether that resonates with what they feel internally. So the role of government is a difficult one. But, I still believe we have to be an agent and try to address some of the social problems and community issues by trying to enable other people with other people to take this forward.

Dialogue is critically important. But these are extremely difficult issues. I know from the local authorities that I have been in contact with that it is quite a scary topic to start to address with community groups themselves. We heard yesterday an idea that resonated quite strongly with me. And that is the work being done with young people. These projects show how through an action (perhaps making a film) the bringing together of people through that action creating a shared objective can serve as a vehicle to some of these difficult issues to be addressed. We are here today to explore the ways in which the how can be addressed.

Philip Dodd – I have thought a lot about this notion of shared values promoted by the Community Cohesion Unit and I would like to make a few observations about that notion of shared values.

My first observation is that there is no necessary relationship between values and actions. For example, the government speaks of England being outward-looking and that is an extraordinary valuable shift. It is true that Britain is now much more like a port. If you want a metaphor for Britishness it is an import/export culture. That is good.

The real problem is that being outward-looking doesn’t seem to have any necessary consequences in policy. It may well be that we are outward looking people, but it doesn’t seem to help when we are talking about issues such as migration, or asylum policy. There seems to be a disjunction between story telling and policy. Of course, it is much easier for me to say that than if I were a Minister. But my argument is that we need to find a story that we can all buy into. It seems to me that philosophising is necessary but not sufficient precisely because it seems not to generate any particular policy. For example, we take the value of decency. Who is going to be in favour of indecency? But does decency help to explain our policy? We cannot generate any consequential policy based on this value. It is perfectly reasonable to say that it is because the British are decent that they are in Iraq, but it is equally easy to say that, because the British are decent, they should not be there. In other words, values don’t generate policy.

Another issue around shared values that I am worried about is that unless we are careful, they will become another kind of immemorial and unchanging set of issues to which we have to subscribe to. Shared values don’t seem to come out of any particular circumstance. They are transcendental. They move across history.

The family that I come from doesn’t speak in terms of shared values. My family would speak in terms of stories. Values are a very abstract term. Most individuals, families, and communities articulate notions of sharedness through stories – stories we tell to our children, and we tell each other. It is not a coincidence that the great religious texts are story-driven.

The question then is how a government body devoted to shared values can translate that issue into a language that can generate a kind of adhesion. The reason why stories are so powerful is that they are organised around people, past, present and future. Stories are compelling. There is a reason why children are told stories. It’s a way of giving them a past, present and a future. There are lots and lots of stories in Britain. For example, the community where I grew up in. Their future stories have been cancelled. It is currently in a state of suspension simply because the mining industry is in decline so the city has no future. There are other people’s stories that are discontinuous in other ways. If you see the statistics you see there is now in London, for example, a Central European population that was not here 20 years ago.

The problem with that is that as new groups come – as they should and must keep coming into Britain – those values are changed by those new groups. If they are not, then they become another kind of memorial, which we have to place allegiance to. The danger is that shared values can become ratified like some concrete monument. Because issues like migration/immigration must be resolved at the European level at the very least. This issue must be resolved at both a national and international level. We must be careful that our shared values do not construct yet another customs barrier between them and us.

Instead of referring to shared values, I would prefer to call them imagined values, because they need to be imagined. It is not something that can be drawn up together out of the present and the past. They have to be imagined collectively in our own way. They are to-be -shared values rather than already shared values. One of the things, I believe that the war on Iraq has done is to suggest how important and valuable difference have been here. If you compare how the arguments about the war have been articulated here, it is radically different from the way they have been articulated in the United States. In the UK, the differences regarding the war have been played out at every level – in the Parliament, in the media, in the streets, and in families. So one way of looking at this is that the one thing we should share is ‘sharability’ to argue over these differences. This really is at the moment as valuable as anything that we can share is.

In policy terms, we should think of generating and sustaining academic institutions, political institutions, media institutions where these differences can be staged. We will find different values played out on these stages. In some cases, there will be absolutely no compatibility. That is precisely why you need stages to discuss this. That is why culture is extremely important, because culture is about staging debates. Culture is not about providing you with answers; rather it is a way of staging a debate about what those values should be. We have to be careful about viewing shared values as something settled that we can all sign up to, because the real danger of shared values is that they will not cope with the extremely difficult moments such as the one we are now living. Shared values are easy in a good stable economy – with migration at “acceptable levels”. When the going is easy, shared values are easy. In policy terms, what we need is a plan for those moments in which the going gets tough.

I am delighted that the government is thinking through these things; but I would like to contribute to this exercise by saying that we need to find a language, an idiom that will speak to larger groups of people than the professionals. People are much happier with story-driven language that is much more compelling than value-laden vocabulary. We need a value system that will understand that it needs to be promiscuous, accommodating and open to dialogue with other value systems. It needs to be porous, profoundly and absolutely porous. It needs above all a set of political, educational, media, cultural institutions where differences are not something we are anxious about. We need a stage where children are taught history offering them a different model of world history. There is a very famous poem by Roy Stevens called ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Bird’. I have always liked that poem because we now look at the world as if there is no one way of looking at it but rather only and ever a plural way.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown –I would like to make a final comment regarding shared values. Perhaps, instead of shared values we should be talking about the principles behind this concept. These principles are the basic fundamentals of living in a free democracy. The problem today is that instead of thinking in terms of, for instance, child abuse or domestic violence, we think in cultural terms. We have become too worried about stepping on cultural autonomy that we over look the basic principle of human rights.

Group presentations:

DEMOCRACY

We arrived to the conclusion that democracy is not an absolute. Everyone on the group agreed that if you see it as an absolute – as something that is tangible rather than a process – you end up with a concept that exists on paper only with no link to reality. Democracy is a system of government – a way of dealing with differences. It embodies certain values such as freedom of expression, equality, tolerance, and a right to vote. It is a way of having a conversation about shared objectives in a particular space. It is also something, which can be either good or bad. Part of the qualities of democracies is the ability of the political systems to realize the goals of the people who live in it. So we need to think about democracies in those terms. We need to judge if the democracy is working by seeing how well it reflects the community back to itself. We need to see whether it has successfully represented all parts of the community. It also depends on how people, who live in the community understand the rules of the game, stick to them and feel a sense of ownership’s. Democracies must deal with questions of difference in a way that it is accepted to all. People must accept that they may be a minority sometimes.

We also need to think of democracy in terms of rights and responsibilities – the rights we enjoy as citizens, but also the responsibilities these entail. Equally, we need to think of the rights and responsibilities of the system itself. One of those responsibilities is to strive to improve its quality.

Our group also talked about the gulf between theory and reality of democracy. One of the most interesting sections was when we were talking about the war. We had the majority of people opposed to war and a government decision to go to war. We discussed the fluctuations in the opinion polls before the war and now during the war.

Our democracy is representative so there is a chance to remove people from power. Although some people claim that democracy seems to be working, as Tony Blair said ‘This is democracy in action’; for many people around the world – particularly for a certain generation – it doesn’t seem to be working at all. Democracy has to feel to be working for everyone, if it is to be robust. Perhaps one of the solutions is for everybody to understand the system and to have a shared sense of how it works.

ALLEGIANCE(S)

Our group decided that instead of talking about one allegiance, we should talk about multiple allegiances. We then came up with this short definition of allegiances as non-prescriptive, multiple, non-exclusive and contingent. We agreed that the national allegiance is pretty much defunct; now we have a much more global allegiance and a sense of global citizenship. And we talked about new kinds of allegiances such as sports allegiances.

One of the problems we found with the traditional notions of allegiance is the difficulty of interpreting them and filtering them through to people who do not articulate things the same way.

We then talked about symbols. We agreed that the existing symbols are not representative. New symbols that we came up with were curry and chips, a rainbow, a buttercup. In other words, something that would appeal to all people, representing the country yet not being coercive.

HISTORY

We had an active discussion of the importance of history. One element of it is the importance of focusing on what is happening now and not being blocked by history. History gives us explanations – and something to had on to. A narrative, a story, accompanies most of the facts of history. So what we are looking for today is a modern narrative that encompasses modern history. Today we don’t have a narrative that all people can buy into. We discussed the role of government in providing a narrative as an enabling and facilitating force promoting the narrative from developing. We also talked about the ignorance of history and hoped that in future generations this can change. We discussed how now there is a greater emphasis on history.

EQUALITY

We focused on the balance between individual rights and group rights. We concluded that although the legal framework should place emphasis on individual rights, it should also retain the progress made regarding community rights. In other words, an Asian, Muslim woman should have access to her rights as an Asian, a Muslim and a woman; but should also have rights as an individual. There are many cases in which a woman has been violated and she does not know if she should claim her rights as an Asian, as a Muslim or as a woman. She should claim her rights as an individual; yet also as a member of the other communities. We then discussed the South African model in which they have adopted the notion of human dignity. In any given incident, the human dignity of all parties is taken into consideration before giving a verdict.

We then discussed how very few people would take on all aspects of any identity. Not all women think the same of any given issues. The same applies for Muslims, Asians, etc. There is a risk that if you force a particular identity, then diversity will be violated. Diversity exists not only between different ethnic groups, but also between different individuals. The key is to protect the dignity of all involved.

We also discussed how a single equality body could be advantageous. This body could deal with specific issues regarding race, religion and gender but could be more effective in dealing with generic issues with multiple dimensions.

We concluded by discussing the importance of education, because equality derives not just through legislation, but rather by truly understanding each other’s values.

PERSONAL AUTONOMY

We had a lot of conflict on our group. One member thought personal autonomy should not be on the list at all. But we came to the conclusion that, if we were to conceptualize it in a slippery and organic way, then it could work for all of us. The point is that it shouldn’t be policed, or culturally determined. Rather it should be a choice or a process. Some people in the group had a problem with the fact we raised the issue of whether people should have a choice to marry whomever they wanted. They thought we were leading the debate in terms of cultural lines, which we needed to avoid.

On the other hand, we agreed that personal autonomy is a point, a progression people can reach out to, an aspiration. But people need to know that point is their focus. So they need to be taught their rights.

We then spoke about the links between underachievement and countries where personal autonomy is not a personal goal. Therefore, we thought there was a need for a differential kind of interpretation – a need for positive discrimination. We might need to address those groups that feel discriminated against. To ground it in more concrete terms, we spoke about sexual education. And we agreed that it was important that all women living in Western societies be taught sexual education, but that it was equally important to analyze how best to teach it taking into consideration the sensitivities of the parents views and rights. We then discussed the role of the government in giving directives.

Ends

The Unlikely Counter-Terrorists argues that business involvement in counter-terrorism policies and activities is vital to the success of the UK’s response. While it is now widely understood that companies are targets for terrorists, they have not yet been integrated into the UK’s fight against terrorism. Though companies cannot be expected to interdict terrorist networks on the ground, predict attacks or stop them from succeeding, the collection shows that there is much the corporate world can do to reduce the damage caused by a successful attack. But while there is much that companies can do in this regard, without a structured framework within which to operate, the effectiveness of their efforts will be limited. This is the new challenge for the UK government.
A counter-terrorism policy without business will leave the UK a soft target for terrorists. As Roger Davies argued during the event, September 11th breathed new life into Clausewitz’s concept of ‘Total War’. A total war is a war waged by those whose targets are not limited, but who seek to cause damage across the whole of society. This necessitates a total response: not just by the military, but all actors – including the government, the corporate sector, local communities and the public at large. This analysis is informative in considering the most effective ways of responding to the threat posed by Al Qaida. The network does not just aim to damage people and property, it has shown a desire to hit national and global economies, all on a scale not seen in recent memory, and like all terrorists, it uses these methods to create fear and panic across the whole of society.
Key Findings from the Launch Event
Beyond the findings of the collection, the launch event raised three key issues that require further consideration:
# The type of information and advice that it would be useful for the government to provide for the business community
# The challenge of involving small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK’s counter-terrorism policies and activities – and the opportunities for dissemination through membership organisations such as the CBI and Chambers of Commerce
# Whether or not it is possible to design terrorism out of our cities
Information and advice from government
In order for companies to play their full role in countering terrorism, it is vital that they have access to information and intelligence on which to base their decisions. The issue of public access to government information and intelligence often causes concern: it is vital that sensitivities are observed and sources are protected. While more information is usually helpful, it was agreed that the first step should be to centralise what is already publicly available. Companies can often find it difficult to track down information, need to refer to many different sources, or resort to relying on contacts as a fast-track to what they need to know. It was suggested that the government could perform a useful role as co-ordinator of these sources, and become as Dr Sally Leivesley suggests in the collection, a ‘one-stop-shop’ for business. It was also noted that, while there are sensitivities around some information sources, this is not true of all information that is restricted, and the government should perhaps re-consider its classification. It is telling, for example, that one participant working for the UK operations of his multi-national company noted that he currently relies on intelligence from the US Embassy in London, even in relation to threats in the UK. This raises the challenge for national governments of communicating with multi-national companies, and raises questions about whether some form of multi-national intelligence system between the public and private sectors might be the logical next step. If government is serious about tackling terrorism head-on, it needs to re-think the type of information it needs to hold back, what it is able to share and how it should do this.
Reaching SMEs
As the ‘total war’ analogy suggests, the impact of a successful Al Qaida attack on the UK would likely have impacts right across the country. While the ability of large corporations to survive an attack may be a higher order strategic priority for the UK, it is critical that SMEs receive the attention they deserve. Firstly, they are the most difficult companies to reach. While large multi-nationals tend to have a dedicated corporate security manager with experience and contacts to bring to the job, SMEs rarely have this expertise. They are also less well connected into the wider business and policy communities and so harder to reach and incorporate into counter-terrorism policies and activities. Secondly, SMEs tend to be the face of the country. They are the life-blood of cities and towns across the country, they employ an important proportion of the British workforce, and their presence brings reassurance of business as usual. There was discussion of the best way to reach SMEs, with private sector membership organisations, such as the CBI, or Chambers of Commerce being put forward as possible conduits for information and advice.
Can we design terrorism out of our cities?
As well as ensuring response systems and processes are able to cope in the event of an attack, it was also suggested that we might take a more fundamental look at the design and workings of our towns and cities in an attempt to make them harder targets for terrorists. It may, for example, be possible to modify designs in such a way as to reduce potential damage from attack. It might be sensible to consider re-locating some buildings, especially high-risk targets away from major population concentrations. A representative from the London Chamber of Commerce noted they were carrying out some work in this area. This is an issues that requires further consideration, both from within the architecture and town planning professions and also among the broader policy community.
Conclusion
The launch event for ‘The Unlikely Counter-Terrorists’ usefully carried forward some of the important themes raised by contributors in the collection. But importantly, it raised new issues that the policy community must grapple with in tackling the emerging threat from Al Qaida. The Risk and Security Programme will be developing further work in the area of homeland defence in 2003. If you have comments on the issues raised in this report or would like to put forward recommendations about priorities for future work your comments would be gratefully received. Please contact Rachel Briggs, Risk and Security Programme Manager at rachel@fpc.org.uk
The Unlikely Counter-Terrorists was published by The Foreign Policy Centre in November 2002. Contributors are: John Bray, Bruno Brunskill, Roger Davies, Bruce George MP, Dr Sally Leivesley, Richard Sambrook, John Smith, David Veness and Natalie Whatford.
Copies are available at £19.95. To order call Central Books on 020 8986 5488 or order online at www.centralbooks.co.uk

Employee Responsibility for Safety – Seminar Report
To What Extent and How Should Individual Employees Be Responsible For Their Own Safety When Working In Emerging Markets?
Tuesday 8th October 2002, 8.30-10.15am,
The context for the seminar:
As part of the research project, ‘Corporate Personnel Security in Emerging Markets’, seminar two focused on the role of the individual employee and what they require from their employers in order to be able to meet their own responsibilities. This followed on from the first seminar, which focused on the company’s duty of care. Jim Alvarez and Lloyd Roberts spoke to an audience of corporate security managers, specialist security consultants, HR managers and researchers specializing in the field of travel risks. This report summarises the main points that were covered during the presentations and the discussion session. The seminar was chaired by Rachel Briggs.
About the speakers:
Lloyd Roberts – Global Security Services Advisor for Shell International Limited Lloyd Roberts is part of the four-man internal consultancy that gives security advice to Shell Companies operating around the globe. Lloyd established the Security Committee of the Organisation of Petroleum Producers, a 60-member institution representing the worlds leading energy producers, and was elected as its first chairman. He is also a regular attendee of the UK’s Oil and Gas Security committee, a forum for exchanging information on security matters that affect UK based Companies. Lloyd’s military training in bomb disposal and Intelligence was followed by a Diploma in Management and an MBA. Lloyd spoke in a personal capacity.
Dr. James Alvarez – CEO of Clarity Advisors Group, a consultancy specializing in psychological training and organizational design. Dr. Alvarez specializes in advising and training a variety of clients in critical consequence management, negotiations, and debriefing. Clients include diverse public and private sector organizations, from Scotland Yard to Fortune 100 companies. He also advises the insurance industry on the impact of these issues. Dr. Alvarez is a licensed clinical Psychologist who has published numerous research articles and contributes regularly to media coverage of this topic.
The main findings of the seminar:
The seminar concluded that while it is possible for individuals to manage their exposure to risks, their ability to do so will be limited by a number of factors – some relating to the individual themselves; some to the company and its approach to risk management and staff safety; and some to third parties, such as the UK government and the legal framework.
Individual Factors
A number of psychological factors will influence the way an individual approaches business travel and responds to the risks it brings. ‘Culture shock’ describes the stress, anxiety, lack of direction produced when an individual enters a new environment. The extent to which an individual suffers ‘culture shock’ will determine their ability to effectively manage the risks they face: stress causes all non-essential functions, including memory and judgment, to shut down. This leaves an individual to rely on their instincts, which, for new risk environments, are unlikely to be developed. This will therefore impact on their ability to apply information or advice in such a way that will keep themselves safe. Culture shock is an extreme version of everyday stress. For many people, the effects of culture shock can be reduced through fairly simple training or advice ahead of their trip, which can help to develop new instinctive behaviour that overcomes these reactions. This might include advice about the risks that are present and how to recognize the warning signs.
Companies should, importantly, avoid the temptation to manage risks by cocooning employees from their local environments. It is impossible for companies to eliminate all threats by this means, and without contact with the local culture employees won’t be able to read the danger signs that enable them to predict problems arising and stay out of trouble. Researching the effects of the social and physical environment on expatriates in West Africa, Wicker and August showed that recognition of cultural differences is one of the key defences to staying safe. They call this an individual’s ‘sense-making’ cycles, “…people as they go about their daily lives are exposed to a vast array of events…the particular environmental events that they notice depend on their existing ’cause-map’, their prior understandings about the world.” This explains why even employees who live in cities with higher crime rates in the UK than their posting can fall victim to local street crimes because they are unable to read the signs as they would have done at home. Travel advice can help by providing information that allows individuals to create their new sense-making cycles: instinct is a tool to be exploited, but it needs to be pre-programmed. Companies can help by ensuring employees have sufficient time to settle in and language skills to allow them to integrate themselves.
There are also those factors that training cannot easily overcome. Those prone to stress are likely to respond less well to training than those who are not. While this is not something that companies can influence, they should think carefully about the people they send overseas, particularly to demanding countries or regions. It is also true that risk taking is a defining characteristic of many of those willing to take overseas assignments. Companies must take steps to ensure that these individuals receive clear guidance about the balance between reasonable and unreasonable risk. One recommendation from the seminar was that companies should consider widening the amount of staff screening they carry out to ensure that individuals sent to risky parts of the world are those best able to cope.
Ultimately, companies must respond to what Lloyd Roberts termed their employees’ ‘scale of needs’. Each will need different types of help and support, and some more than others. As well as those differences between individuals determined by psychological factors, an individual’s needs will also be influenced by their length of stay in a given location, for example, expat versus frequent business traveller, their experience of travel, and the nature of their work.
Company Factors
# Company Culture
A company’s culture is perhaps the most important factor influencing the extent to which its staff will be kept safe. Companies need to develop ‘pro-security’ cultures, where security is considered integral to the running of the business, rather than something that gets in the way of priorities. Those companies that adopt this culture are likely to go beyond their legal obligations in delivering security for their staff. A company’s culture will also determine the extent to which employees feel comfortable discussing their worries and fears with colleagues or managers. Individuals require a tools-set from their employer, but may avoid asking for help in a company that does not take security seriously. There is much discussion within the corporate security community about how this culture can be encouraged. One possible solution would be to have security representation at board level, or to at least ensure that the corporate security manager – if there is one – reports as directly as possible to their board. One company representative present noted that they have now included a security component on their company’s management training programme for fast-streamers. This is motivated by a desire to make security a concern across the company outside the corporate security department, thus becoming a factor in all company decision-making across the board.
# Management Structures
One of the greatest challenges for companies who develop corporate security strategies is ensuring that the policy works in practice. There is often a marked difference between what is agreed to on paper in HQ and what can be achieved on the ground. Many of those with responsibility for security have taken this on alongside another main role, which means they do not necessarily have much or any experience to bring to the position. It is important that local managers have an opportunity to feed into their company’s policies and structures to ensure they are deliverable. One company representative present suggested companies hold yearly lessons-learned exercises with major posts, or posts with significant security risks. This would give both local managers and staff a stake in the process and would help to make the policies and procedures more appropriate for each location.
# Communication
Security briefings and travel advice can equip individuals with the information they need to make everyday decisions that help them avoid danger. But the value of this information is limited if it fails to reach its intended audience, and if the individual does not then act upon it. The key here is ensuring that employees have an accurate perception of the risks they face and the fact that advice can help them to avoid these threats.
Companies must examine the methods and channels they use to communicate with staff, and the content and detail of the advice they issue. There is limited value in setting up a website if there are not, for example, regular and direct prompts for individuals to visit it or have the information delivered directly to them. Companies should also avoid information overload that can cause employees to switch off from all advice. There is also evidence to show that individuals respond much more positively to advice when they are able to see the direct relevance to themselves. In a recent study, Paul Barker surveyed BG employees in Sao Paulo and Cairo. A large proportion of respondents described the briefings they received on the ground as some of the most useful. He states, “In-country security briefing and the sharing of security information between colleagues and friends outside the company were rated high by the respondents as effective sources of information.” One company representative at the seminar commented that they had found it useful to organize briefing sessions for staff in-country where they were able to listen to those who had experienced security incidents first-hand. This is a much more credible message than dry communiqués from head office.
The company must also establish its relationship with dependents, and find ways of communicating with individuals who have only indirect contact with the company. Research from Paul Barker’s study concluded that those with dependents present tended to take a more active interest in security, but the presence of spouse and children inevitably increases the overall exposure. Anecdotal evidence from those at the seminar suggests that companies can often find it easier to tackle an individual’s security during their personal life as a family issue with spouses and children taking an active role, too. One company representative present noted the value their company had gained by holding dinners in high-risk end markets at which security issues were discussed. Spouses and children were also invited to attend and this helped to make security a family issue.
The External Framework
# The Legal Framework
The consensus at the seminar was that litigation has been a key factor influencing companies to take security more seriously. It was also noted, though, that for security policies to be credible and therefore successful, they must be motivated by a genuine sense of duty of care driven by care for employees, not a fear of the courts. This issue was discussed in more detail in the last seminar.
# Role of Government
The role of the government will be explored in more detail in future seminars. This seminar concluded, though, that it is vital for the UK government to play an active role in the area of corporate personnel security policy. The UK government has interests in this issue on a number of different levels. Firstly, it has a consular responsibility for UK citizens travelling overseas – whether they are travelling for business or pleasure. Secondly, it also has an interest in ensuring that UK companies or companies with a significant interest in the UK have as much support as possible in helping them to keep their staff safe overseas. One of the key models to assess in this regard. This will be explored during stage two of the project, which will run October 2002-March 2003.
Corporate Personnel Security in Emerging Markets is a 16-month research project being run by Rachel Briggs, Risk and Security Research Programme Manager at The Foreign Policy Centre. The project is kindly supported by Shell, HSBC, GSK, Armor Group, Control Risks Group and Group 4 Falck.
The Risk and Security Research Programme has received core funding from Prudential and the RSMF.
For more information about this project or other work being carried out as part of the programme, please contact Rachel Briggs at Rachel@fpc.org.uk or on tel: 020 7401 5356.
Relevant references:
Those wishing to follow up on any of the sources listed might find the following useful:
# Wicker and August, “Working Lives in Context: Engaging the views of participant analysts”, reproduced in Person Environment Psychology: New directions and perspectives, Walsh et al (eds.), 2000
# Travel Advice: Getting information to those who need it, Rachel Briggs, The Foreign Policy Centre, 2002
# Paul Barker, Managing Risks to Employees on Overseas Assignments, unpublished MSc dissertation for the Study of Security Management, Scarman Centre for The Study of Public Order, University of Leicester

The Chirac-Schroeder proposal for the EU Constitution seems an enticing compromise – a Council President elected by the heads of government to appease the ‘intergovernmentalist’ big states, and a Commission President elected by the European Parliament to satisfy the ‘federalist’ small states. Nevertheless, this plan is deeply flawed.

The main criticism expressed by some of the delegates in the Convention is that two chief executive of Europe will create two centres of power. Both the President of the Council and the President of the Commission will claim responsibility for running the EU. With the backing of the European Council, though, the defenders of the model argue that the Council President would be the more senior figure – rather like the French ‘dual executive’ model of government, where the French President is more senior than the French Prime Minister.

Nevertheless, the Chirac-Schroeder plan for the EU is considerably worse than the French model. First, the French constitution has instruments to deal with conflicts between the two chief executives. The French President is responsible for hiring and firing the Prime Minister and can dissolve the French parliament. In contrast, in the Chirac-Schroeder plan, the Council President would not have this power over the Commission President. Indeed, the Commission President would maintain a monopoly on the initiation of legislation and the oversight of the implementation of EU laws. The Council President would have all the prestige but no formal power, whereas the Commission President would have all the power but less prestige.

Second, because of the way the EU works, the two EU presidents would invariably be from opposing political camps. This situation, known as ‘cohabitation’ in the French system, causes serious problems for the French government. But, this is a rare situation in France, and can usually be resolved by new elections to the national assembly. But, in the EU, cohabitation would be a permanent feature: where the Council President would always be from the left and the Commission President would be from the right, for example.

We explain why this would be the case in a new piece of research with Abdul Noury from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, where we use voting data from the European Parliament to ask who would have been elected as Commission President by the European Parliament.* Our simulations reveal that in 1994 the Commission President would have been a Socialist. At that time, the European Council was more to the right, and hence chose the Conservative Jacques Santer. With a right-wing European Council, a Council President elected at that time would also have been a Conservative. Similarly, in 1999, the European Parliament would have elected a Conservative Commission President, while the Council chose the centre-left Romano Prodi. With such a large left-wing majority in the European Council, a Council President elected at that time would have been a Socialist. One could expect a similar situation in 2004, with a new left-wing majority in the European Parliament electing a Socialist Commission President, and a right-wing majority in the Council electing a Conservative Council President. In other words, there would have been cohabitation and political gridlock in the EU for the last decade.

The problem for the EU is that the majorities in the European Parliament and the Council are always on opposite sides. This is because of the way European Parliament elections work: as mid-term national elections, with a low turnout of governing party supporters and protest voters against national governments. So, political parties in national government, who sit in the Council, always do badly in these elections, while opposition parties do well. This protest vote character of European Parliament elections is likely to remain for a while. As a result, by proposing that one president be elected by the Council and the other be elected by the European Parliament, the Chirac-Schroeder plan would institutionalize cohabitation in the EU. In this situation, the centre-right across Europe would support ‘their’ European president and the centre-left would support ‘their’ president. It is not difficult to see that such a rivalry would undermine any common EU position on either internal and external policy issues.

How can this be solved? There should be one chief executive of Europe, and this should be the Commission President. No administration can replace the expertise that the European Commission has accumulated over the last few decades. Second, the Commission President should not be elected by the European Parliament. One reason for the Chirac-Schroeder compromise is that many governments are opposed to the idea of a powerful Commission President elected by the European Parliament. But, there is a better and more efficient compromise: to have the Commission President elected by national parliaments. This would involve national parliaments in EU politics and give democratic legitimacy and accountability to the European Commission, two very desirable goals for the governance of Europe. Our research shows that national parliaments would most likely elect a political moderate, who would be able to do business with the Council and European Parliament, but would be independent from both, just as the current Commission is independent from these two bodies. The Convention still has the time to propose a Constitution for the EU that is both acceptable to all European countries as well as democratic, efficient and logical.

Simon Hix is Reader in European Union Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Gérard Roland is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

* Simon Hix, Gérard Roland and Abdul Noury (2003) ‘How to Choose the European Executive: A Counterfactual Analysis, 1979-1999’, LSE/ULB/UC Berkeley.

Six years after becoming prime minister, Tony Blair still faces the most difficult and important decision of his career: whether and when Britain should join the euro. This is more significant even than the war in Iraq, involving not only vital economic issues but also the UK’s political future in Europe.

Mr Blair has often acknowledged the economic benefits of the single currency in terms of ease of transaction, of price transparency across Europe, of the promotion and expansion of trade and, perhaps most important of all, of economic and monetary stability. He is also worried about the economic costs of staying out, especially the impact on trade and inward investment. Already UK trade with the European Union, by far our biggest market, has fallen relative to gross domestic product while Britain’s share of inward investment into Europe has dropped.

The prime minister is well aware, too, of the political costs of staying out. He has always stressed the need for Britain to play a leading role in Europe – all the more important after strains imposed by the Iraq war and when the direction and nature of the EU is under such intense debate. In the medium term, it is difficult to see how the UK’s position can be sustained if this country stays outside the euro. As José Manuel Durão Barroso, Portuguese prime minister, warned the UK last December: “You cannot be in the centre if in the most important enterprise – the euro – you are not there.”

However, Mr Blair’s euro ambitions are in grave danger of being undermined by the existence of Gordon Brown’s five tests and by the latitude in their interpretation that the prime minister has given his chancellor of the exchequer. When Labour came to power in 1997, neither it nor the country was ready to join the euro in the first wave. The five tests provided a convenient way of putting off the decision. Now, it seems as if the tests are being deliberately used by the Treasury as a smokescreen for keeping Britain out indefinitely. There is substantial convergence between the UK economy and the eurozone (noted in this week’s report from the House of Commons Treasury select committee). And yet media stories based on leaks suggest that Mr Brown has decided that Britain has “failed” four of the five tests and that he wants to rule out entry at least for this parliament, as he did in the last parliament.

The Eurosceptic press would no doubt represent this as a great victory for the chancellor. Yet delivering such a negative assessment would be unlikely to enhance his reputation, any more than Mr Blair’s.

So far, Mr Brown has been able to hide his views about the euro behind the ambiguity of the five tests. He has sought to appear both as a convinced European and yet cautious about entry. But after such a pointed thumbs-down, one would be justified in concluding that he is, in reality, against the UK joining the euro in the foreseeable future. The emergence of the real Mr Brown could lead to a massive loss of confidence in the British economy by foreign investors who believe that the UK’s economic future lies with the euro. It could also seriously damage the UK’s political position in Europe. It would represent a great blow to the national interest.

The conclusion is clear. If Mr Blair is to retain his credibility as a pro- European prime minister, he cannot allow British interests in Europe to be scuppered by his chancellor. It would be a travesty of political leadership if Mr Blair agreed to a referendum on the euro being ruled out for this parliament. At the very least, he will have to keep open a realistic option of joining the euro before the next election. To secure such an option will require much more than warm words about the euro, tagged on to the end of a negative Treasury assessment of the five tests. It will need nothing less than the overdue creation of a genuine strategy for joining.

I have already argued that the prime minister should take the exclusive direction of euro policy away from the dead hand of the Treasury and set up a cabinet euro strategy group of senior ministers, which he should chair. A negative assessment makes the creation of such a group all the more necessary. For the first time, the government would be able to focus on how to join the euro rather than how to keep out. It would determine not only the terms of membership – such as a sustainable exchange rate, compliance with the Maastricht convergence criteria and reform of the European Central Bank – but also the mechanics of entry. If Mr Blair is serious about joining the euro, as he claims, he should start getting serious about providing the means to bring it about.

Lord Radice is chairman of the House of Lords sub-committee on economic and financial affairs