Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership and vision and global business. The dream-drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs and harness the engine of capitalism, right here, right now, at the NYSE and at ICE's 12 exchanges and six clearing houses around the world. And now welcome Inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
We're now in the middle of summer, both in the US and the UK, where we're coming to you from the London headquarters of Intercontinental Exchange, about to be in conversation with the Right Honorable the Lord Hague of Richmond and we've got a lot to discuss. On the front pages of The Telegraph and other British newspapers, our headlines and photos from protests in Hong Kong and meanwhile, in Tokyo, the G 0 leaders convened to chart the future course of the economy, the results upstaged by an impromptu meeting in the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea between President Trump and Kim Jong-un. And. In a nearby part of the world, as if tensions couldn't get any hotter, Iran has let the world know that it's exceeded a key limitation on how much nuclear fuel it can possess under the 2015 international pact curbing its nuclear program.
Josh King:
Here in London, all eyes are focused on the Conservative Party, which will elect a new leader, the next Prime Minister, by a ballot that will be announced on July 22nd. With Britain playing an outsized role in all of the global issues I mentioned, to say nothing of how their own future will depend on the outcome of Brexit, the selection of Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt to lead the Conservatives and take up residence at number 10 Downing Street has the makings of history.
Josh King:
As you're listening to this podcast, wherever summer takes you, perhaps you're at the beach with the kids, watching their creativity take the form of a sandcastle, beautiful, solid looking, but as ephemeral as the tides. After the break, we talk with Lord Hague who that the next British prime minister will head a sandcastle administration that will disintegrate as quickly as your kids' creation on the beach if the government's leader doesn't have a plan, uncorked quickly upon taking office, to exit the country's deadlock over Brexit. When you come into power, those first few days set the tone for everything that comes after. Great Britain is at a turning point and we'll dive into that and visit geopolitical flash points around the globe with Lord Hague, right after this.
Speaker 3:
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Jennifer Tejada:
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Josh King:
The Right Honorable the Lord Hague of Richmond joined the board of directors of Intercontinental Exchange in 2015 and was named the Chairman of the Board of Directors of ICE Futures Europe in January, 2016. Lord Hague's arrival to our humble firm followed a storied career in politics and government that began in 1989, when he became the then youngest ever Conservative member of parliament, the youngest leader of a major British political party in over two century and served as the secretary of state for foreign and Commonwealth affairs from 2010 until 2014.
Josh King:
He's partnered with the Envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Angelina Jolie, to launch the Preventing Sexual Violence initiative in 2012, and chairs the board of United for Wildlife, a group combating the illegal wildlife trade. Lord Hague is also a writer, having authored political biographies of William Pitt and William Wilberforce, and pens a weekly column for The Daily Telegraph, the most recent of which, urging Boris Johnson to hit the road, I've just read. So Lord Hague, normally I welcome people Inside the ICE House, but I am in your office here at Milton Gate, so you can welcome me.
Lord Hague:
Welcome to you. Welcome to London. Great to have you here.
Josh King:
So Mr. Johnson, like a Beatles rockstar, when you campaigned with him, when he was running for reelection for Mayor of London in 2012, is acting, if I may make an American comparison, like Vice President, Joe Biden, his staff telling him to keep it safe, skittish about making a mistake. Is that what you're saying?
Lord Hague:
I think that is what is happening. Yes. So he is slightly caged by his staff and campaign. And I'm pointing out in that column this week, that there is quite a lot of recent election campaigns that have gone badly. When people who like to be out there campaigning play safe because they're in the lead. In fact that happened to our own Prime Minister, Theresa May, last time. Arguably it happened to Hillary Clinton in the last US presidential election. You have to show you hungry for office, for power in the modern world. I think that may a bad thing. Maybe we should have more leaders who actually don't so much want to be in power, but we persuade them to be there, but that's not the way the 21st century works.
Josh King:
This kind of thing, it's not for you anymore. Back in 1997, you and Ken Clark hashed it out behind closed doors. How did that work?
Lord Hague:
Well in those days, the party leaders in the UK were chosen entirely by the Members of Parliament, which of course still happens in many countries like Australia, for instance. So there was no vote for the activists out in the country, we didn't have anything that looked like a primary in the United States. Well, of course that meant that proceedings were largely behind closed doors. And in fact it was me that changed the rules when I became the Conservative leader, I said it's time, in the modern age, for the party activists to have the vote. So the system now in the British Conservative party is the of parliament narrow the candidates down to just two and then the activists, the party members, 160,000 of them in this case at the moment, vote on who the winner is going to be.
Josh King:
You said that you would prefer not to be subject to that yourself based on the type of politician you are, but are the British people better off, are the members of the Conservative Party better off, with the system that we have today?
Lord Hague:
Not necessarily. I can't claim 20 years later that this has worked out as we intended. The intention was to give people a further incentive to get involved in politics. That if you give the party membership power, then more people will become party members. That has happened to a small extent and it's happened in the British Labour Party, but we have seen a tendency for party memberships to be more hard line either than the voters or the elected representatives. And by giving them power, in each case, in our main political parties, we've actually made our politics more... We've accentuated the polarization of politics. And I think you see this in the United States as well, that the people who take part in primaries might be more hard-line within their parties than the general voters.
Josh King:
Talking about accentuating the polarization, I heard you on the Extinction Rebellion podcast, mixing it up on climate change with the hosts who probably saw the world somewhat differently than you. But if the goal is to get to 80 to 90% agreement on issues and not 51%, in order to bend the curve on emissions, you've got to start some we're and engage with people.
Lord Hague:
You do. And we are losing the art of political compromise, I'm afraid. We are in a situation where the purity of the political process is mattering to people more than the outcome of the political process. It is something to do with how public discourse is changed in the two decades. It's certainly exacerbated by social media, that people are more used to sticking to their opinion and wanting a triumph for their side of the argument. I feel almost like I belong to an old school of politics here, where you say, "Well, no, we do have to find a compromise in functioning democracies where most people can accommodate themselves to a decision and feel comfortable with it." So I think people of that point of view are going to have to fight back over the coming years and decades. And certainly to accomplish objectives on climate change you need global cooperation, and that is going to mean countries compromising with each other, never mind political, partisan individual political leaders finding compromises.
Josh King:
Global cooperation, and also the engagement of business. You started, Lord Hague, at McKinsey and now you're here at ICE, among other pursuits, and out there in the business world is the company that could replace every roof in the world with solar tiles. So a commercial win-win and also a win for the environment.
Lord Hague:
Absolutely. Such breakthroughs are part of the answer. And one of the things that you will have heard me arguing about climate change is that all parts of the political spectrum have to engage with this, including Conservatives like me, including the right of politics, because it's actually market-based solutions and innovation that has, in my view, the best shot at saving the planet. If we are going to just tell people that their lives have got to be more confined, their consumption has to go down, they can't travel around the world anymore, actually the human race will go to its extinction because it will not obey those rules. But if we find that we can revolutionize the way people generate energy in their houses, that we can think of the world in a totally different way and incentivize people to do that, well then we might just manage to save ourselves
Josh King:
Because as you say, human beings have to satisfy their natural desire to be better off.
Lord Hague:
Exactly. And that's always been my starting point in politics that led me to be center right rather than center left, that you've got to work with the grain of human nature and with what works and not be overly ideological about it. And in Britain, the Conservative Party that I used to lead and is the world's oldest major political party, has done well over a couple of centuries, it's done well most of the time, by having a rather non-ideological, practical approach, but one that goes with the grain of human nature and the habits and traditions of this particular country.
Josh King:
Let's talk about your work here at Intercontinental Exchange. You've been on the board for a few years now, but when did you first become aware of what Jeff Sprecher had built at ICE, and why were you attracted to it?
Lord Hague:
Well, really just in 2015, when I stepped down from the government. I'd been immersed in politics for the previous decade. When you're in politics, you're 99% in that mind set. And I very deliberately left government in 2015. I'm one of those people who thinks that whatever you've done, however successful you are in a particular field, you then should regenerate yourself in a new field. And I was ready, after 26 years in elected politics, to go back into the private sector and to other charitable and educational work some of which you've kindly mentioned already.
Lord Hague:
And I didn't know much about Intercontinental Exchange at all, and I wasn't going to join any boards. Actually, it isn't my general habit to join boards. I do advise various companies and institutions, but I made an exception in the case of ICE once I'd met Jeff Sprecher and met some other people around ice because it's a remarkable company. It has a great energy to it, but it also has, to me, a very attractive structure where someone like me, you can be on the group board, but also chair an important subsidiary. And that means you are interacting with the business on a weekly basis. I come into the office here in London and I find out what's going on, and I'm always speaking to the executives here, so that when I go to the group board, I just haven't just read the papers, I actually am involved in one of the subsidiary businesses. And that gives you a different and more informed perspective and role on the group board. So I particularly like that structure, which is fairly unusual in the governance of major listed companies.
Josh King:
How did that arrangement begin? I mean, you started at the group board, but did Jeff come to you? Did you ask for, "Saying, I want to roll up my sleeves more?"
Lord Hague:
No, this is what Jeff Sprecher was looking for, really. There was a marvelous man here before me, Sir Bob Reed, who worked with Jeff with ICE to make the transition from the old international petroleum exchange and then life into ICE Futures Europe. A man really steeped in energy and industry, did the most wonderful job. And so ICE had already adopted with him the structure where someone who is chairing the exchange here also sits on the group board, and they needed a new person to do that. Well, that just happened to be at the time I was leaving the government and had an open book really as to what I was going to do. And I must say haven't regretted it for a moment because this remains a very exciting company. It's intellectually challenging. It's always at the forefront of what it's doing, both in technology and in products. And it looks after its people very well.
Josh King:
From your time in government, as we sit here in London, your memories have to be fresh of the global financial crisis 10 years ago. The leaders are getting ready to go to Osaka for the G20 next week, and you remember the G20 in Pittsburgh when the crisis was happening. Your thoughts, Lord Hague, a decade on about the role that futures and clearing play in maintaining a semblance of predictability in an unpredictable world.
Lord Hague:
Well, I think that it's a crucial role and it's a stronger role than it was 10 years ago. And the companies like this and financial regulators have ensured there is greater resilience in the financial system. That's why clearing houses are so concentrated and so important. And here in London, of course, there are three major clearing houses, including ICE Clear Europe, they are a major part of making sure there is liquidity and resilience in the financial system. So that, I think, is stronger than 10 years ago. When we think of the G 0 though, the capability, the capacity, of those 20 plus governments to coordinate their policy and the range of policy options they have open to them if there is a new economic crisis or recession, that is all weaker and narrower than it was 10 years ago. And so that is of great concern when we look at the next few years.
Josh King:
You just came back from Asia. I want to start on that start of the world, the trade tensions between the US and China over tariffs have been dominating the news and New York and Washington. What did you hear in your travels when you were over there?
Lord Hague:
There is a lot of anxiety, of course, across the Far East about the escalating rivalry between the United States and China. And of course there's anxiety about those disagreements about tariffs and a lot of hope for the forthcoming meeting between the Presidents of the United States and China that is meant to take place at the G20. But the greater anxiety is over the longer term trajectory. And that anxiety is justified because we are seeing an escalating clash of ideas, linked to technological developments, rival ways of thinking about how technology affects society and how it can be used. Chinese attitudes to facial recognition technology are very different from those of many people in the United States or Europe. And I certainly think the US and China are on now and inevitable course of rivalry, unless at some point in the next few years, a president of the United States and a president of China can find the vision to leapfrog over that with a new understanding between their countries. But there's no sign of that at the moment. That's a task for the next few years.
Josh King:
Xi may be there for life. President Trump may be there only until 2021. Can these two get it on or will it... Even if I think back to eight years of Obama and his meetings with Xi at Walter Annenberg's estate in California, they went for nice walks, but they didn't get much done.
Lord Hague:
No, hopefully they will make agreements that avert the worst on tariffs that will interfere with international trade and could contribute to a future recession. But my point is they need to go beyond that. This needs a real strategic vision from the leaders of the US and China to say, "Look, we can see where we're heading here. And this is going to make life very difficult for a lot of companies and countries whose prosperity will be affected. And the world is slowly heading into a new, great power, right rivalry. So seeing that coming and looking at the lessons of history, what could we agree now that will mitigate that?" And there are things that could be agreed, about the use of space, about working together on climate change, about limiting the development of new weapons systems, but those things are not yet really being discussed between the US and China.
Josh King:
Your trip to the Far East, Lord Hague, included a stop in Hong Kong where you witnessed some of the anti-extradition bill protests, masses of people, I think, that you reported back. What did you learn about the situation while you were on the ground?
Lord Hague:
It's a remarkable sight to see possibly 2 million people on the march, particularly when that is nearly a third of the entire population Of any locality, of any city. That is a remarkable site. And I watched that. I wasn't interfering with or inciting or anything as a British politician, but just watching that from my hotel. And I've seen some big crowds in my time in politics, but I haven't ever seen a bigger one than that. So when people are giving estimates of the size that range from 300,000 to 2 million, well it was near the bigger end of those estimates.
Lord Hague:
It does show, as we're seeing in many parts of the world, that people can sense when their rights and democracy, if they have a democracy are, being affected and damaged and are prepared to do something about it. And this is a little bit of hope. As we look around the world, just in this last week, we've seen 2 million people in a peaceful demonstration in Hong Kong, we've seen Istanbul, the voters of Istanbul, reject-
Josh King:
Erdogan's mayor.
Lord Hague:
-an attempt to rerun and in effect, bully them into a different outcome of the election. We've seen a couple of journalists released in Russia after intense public pressure about that. So you can see that people are going to fight back against anywhere they perceive the loss of their rights on a permanent basis. And that's encouraging about the future of the world. And particularly young people are so motivated about that.
Josh King:
Lord Hague, you were in Hong Kong for the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China to witness that ceremony. I came across a photo of you alongside Margaret Thatcher, which leads me to ask about your start in politics. You first met Lady Thatcher when you arrived on the public stage as a 16 year old, how did you find yourself addressing the 1977 Tory Party conference?
Lord Hague:
You've done a lot of research here. You're getting back a long way. 42 years ago, there I was as the infant prodigy, almost. And the remarkable thing is that-
Josh King:
Because you've written about infant prodigies now, talking about climate change, and respect what people do, even as young people.
Lord Hague:
Yes. And actually I think, the way the world is going, there is a bigger and bigger role for young people in politics. There's an active debate in this country about whether the voting age should be 18, as it is now, or 16. I'm not sure what the right answer to that is, but I can see the stronger case developing for younger and younger people to have the vote. And yes, it's quite hard for me to denigrate any 16-year-olds having political views because there was I, addressing a national conference, the equivalent of a party convention in the United States, at 16. And the remarkable thing was that it was not set up in way. People find this hard to believe.
Lord Hague:
And I say to young people now getting involved in politics, 80% of getting started is just showing up. It isn't knowing anybody. It's not networking. It's not some sort of secret influence, it's show up and get involved. And I did that as a politically-motivated teenager. And then I found myself at the conference or convention, and I just asked to speak. I just filled in a slip of paper that said, "I'm a 16-year-old, and I want to speak." I didn't know anybody at all. I handed in that and 10 minutes later, I was, somewhat to my surprise, addressing thousands of people in the hall and hundreds of thousands watching on live television and became a bit of a, for 15 minutes, a child star.
Josh King:
Well, the 15 minutes have led to many, many, many years of your political engagement.
Lord Hague:
My mother was an extremely sensible lady and said to me, when I got home, "Right, you're going back to your exams now. We've got to get back to normal." So we did go back to normal, for a few years, but I then surfaced again in politics in my 20s. But I met Margaret Thatcher for the first time then, before she became Prime Minister. This was when I was saying, as a young person, "We seemed to have lost all hope and direction in country," back in the '70s, "and we need quite a radical agenda to set us on the right path." And I was trying to encourage her to be radical. I didn't realize at the time she didn't need any encouragement. She was determined to be radical and she did turn around the performance of this country. So I was a strong adherent of her policies and supporter of her personally, through the 1980s after that.
Josh King:
On that day in 1977, the Iron Lady describes you, in front of that crowd, as possibly another William Pitt. And I wanted to know if William Pitt at age 24 goes up to the King, King George III, and shows up and gets involved just like you did. How did someone at 24 become Prime Minister?
Lord Hague:
Well, he is an extreme case, of course. And that's what I wrote about in the first biography I wrote. We've never seen before and we will never see again, our Prime Minister at 24 years of age. We partly have America to thank for this, the American-
Josh King:
Serves for 17 years after that.
Lord Hague:
He did very well, but the American Revolution, or the American War of Independence, discredited an entire generation of British politicians, and really opened the way to some new young person. Who in his case happened to be the son of an extra ordinarily successful father Prime Minister, of course, Pitt the Elder, and so arrived ready-made as a statesman in the House of Commons. I didn't do anything like that. I just came from a state school in an industrial part of the north of England and didn't know anybody. And you can't now become Prime Minister at the age of 24. But he was an outlier, really, in our history. But a remarkable thing that a young person could wield such power so successfully. Tragically, by the age of 46 he had works and worried and drunk himself to death.
Josh King:
So while Pitt went to Cambridge before becoming Prime Minister, you attended Oxford where a journalist and a classmate of yours, Damian Thompson, would later describe you as, and I'm going to quote, "A wise-cracking professional northerner who could always find room for another pint and could duck and swerve his way past cruel political jabs while landing a few blows of his own." Where do your passion acumen for political debate come from?
Lord Hague:
Well, I think it's partly in one's own nature, but it was developed in me by the school that I went to, actually. Which, as I say, it was a state school, a comprehensive school in British terminology, but one in which I was encouraged to speak in public almost every week in a debating society, in discussion groups. So by the time I arrived at Oxford aged 18, I'd already had five years of regular debating in public. Then I did that again every week or every few days in Oxford. And I ended up, by the time I was 21, I was on a tour of American universities. I was going around Harvard and Yale and Princeton debating with all the debating teams. So when I got to the House and when I became an elected member of Parliament in my late 20s, I had been debating for longer than most of the members of Parliament. And like anything else in life, you get to enjoy and develop your skills in a particular area, and debates were my particular area.
Josh King:
But given all that preparation, your first move out of university is not into politics, it's into business. You go to NCI, you work at McKinsey. Why did you feel at that point that, "For all the debating prowess that I've had, and while I feel the call of Parliament and want to run to represent Richmond, I'm going to head over to McKinsey."
Lord Hague:
Well, I think a politician needs another career. And this is something else I always say to the many young people who come to me for advice now. I say, "Yes, do go into politics to achieve public service and things that you believe in, but that is not a career. That is not a secure way to live. If you want to provide for yourself or a family in the future, you are going to need some other source of income. And you also have to be able to walk away." A politician should be able to walk out because they find they no longer agree with their party or their government. They should have the independence to be able to do that. Well, that means you have to be able to earn a living. And I've always enjoyed the business world and learned a lot from doing an MBA at a great business school. And that helps me a lot now, actually, now that I've left the world of government, having had that grounding in business and finance is an essential part of being able to come back into the private sector in a useful way.
Josh King:
Walking out into the private sector, the Conservatives lose power in 1997, which I remember because at the White House we had just helped Bill Clinton win reelection and Mr. Blair's people were calling us for advice on how to present New Labour. You're on the other side, rebuilding the party with listening to Britain, looking back Lord Hague, do you see that as the start of the strands that would coalesce into the Brexit vote beginning this period?
Lord Hague:
I think the very earliest strands, the pressures that created the Brexit vote, I think were built up in the following decade, in the 2000s. We were having our divisions over Europe, and in fact one of the things people might remember about when I was leader of the opposition then is that we had the campaign against joining the Euro. And it's strange to think now, in this country, that there were people who did want to join the Euro, that this was an active debate. Now, I always believe that it was on grounds of national sovereignty, as well as economic good sense, the UK should not join the Euro. So we were already having our splits and pressures over Europe, but we did not countenance, and certainly I didn't as the then leader, in a way of Eurosceptic opinion in the UK, certainly did not countenance leaving the EU. This pressure built up later with much higher immigration into the European Union and the failure of successive governments to hold any public consultation or referendum about where we're heading in Europe. The frustration of those two things eventually broke cover in this decade as a movement to leave the European Union.
Josh King:
After the break Lord Hague and I turn our attention to the current state of global affairs and hone in on Brexit and whether there should be a second referendum and how ICE is preparing to meet the regulatory challenges of a non-European Union great Britain. That's all right after this.
Speaker 3:
And now a word from Charles Harrington, Chairman and CEO of Parsons, NYSE ticker, PSN.
Charles Harrington:
We offer technology digitally enabled solutions to the defense intelligence and critical security markets. We see a lot of growth and opportunity in cyber intelligence and geospatial intelligence, as well as solving network problems for critical infrastructure. It feels great for Parsons to be a newly traded public company once again. When I joined a company in 1982, we were publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. And here we are, 35 years later, publicly traded once again.
Josh King:
Welcome back. Our guest today Inside the ICE House is the Right Honorable the Lord Hague of Richmond and we've been discussing the evolution of his political career from young Conservative upstart from Oxford, to the heights of party leadership.
Josh King:
Lord Hague, when power switches sides, as it did in the US in 2009, a man like Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson leaves office content in the work he'd done and resumes causes like environmental protection. You've spent your time since office, as you say, and I'm going to quote, "Getting younger as you get older", but also fighting for us is like combating the illegal wildlife trade. I heard you speak about this. What makes a man like you fight for elephants lions, tigers and rhinos?
Lord Hague:
I've always had a passion about wildlife. And I think we all have things that are from our childhood that are formative influences. I was brought up by my father to be fascinated by wild birds and animals, and to go tracking them in the snow. So I've always had a strong affinity for the natural environment. And there's no doubt now that is under threat now. And in this country, in the UK where we have a huge population relative to our size, we've seen great loss of habitat and of our natural wildlife. And then, of course, you see, particularly over the last 10 years with the rise of prosperity in Asia, we have seen the demand for products such as ivory and rhino horn that has devastated their populations in Africa. So when I was Foreign Secretary, I convened the first global inter-government meeting on this of more than 40 nations coming together to see how we could coordinate to our work on that.
Lord Hague:
And this is something, therefore, that's quite natural for me to continue out of government. Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, who was like Jeff Sprecher but in a different field, spotted that I was leaving the government very quickly and asked me to form a task force in the private sector, working with him to find ways in which we could mitigate this damage to the wildlife of the world. And we now have 120 transportation companies, 30 global banks and payment companies, working together in a network to track the flow of illegal wildlife products. And that is just beginning to yield some results in terms of the arrests of some of the trafficking networks. We have a lot more to do. This is the work that I'm engaged in. And that's why I think that everybody who can do something to save some of the nature of the world, in however small or large way, we all have to do our best to do so.
Josh King:
Speaking of the nature of the world, I've heard you speak in the past of your love of Montana. Much more room to roam there than there is in the UK. On some of your cross country ski expeditions, do you spy the elk and bison and bald eagle and wolves, and think about the way that some of the plain states are being populated by the beasts that once roamed in such great herds?
Lord Hague:
Yes. And that's very good where there is re-population. And yes, I adore Montana. I have a deep affinity for the United States and I've traveled to probably two thirds of the States of the United States, including the corners, Alaska and Hawaii and so on. But the State I've been back to a couple of dozen times or so is Montana. And there, of course, you can imagine for someone like me, who you just heard talking about how in Britain we have so many people, 65 million people in a small space, in Montana, you have 1 million people in a very large space there. There the fourth largest state of the Union, very little population. There's still a lot of room for wildlife. And when you go out into those, in my case, the Gallatin mountains in south west Montana, near Yellowstone, you can rapidly come across a lot of wonderful creatures. Well, let's hope that always continues for the future.
Josh King:
So, picking up the story of your own career where we left off, it's 2001 and you've resigned your place as head of the Conservative Party. And it is time, as we talked about earlier, to pick up the pen and write the book about William Pitt the Younger. You've always been a talker and a debater, I've heard you say that you don't really prepare to give your speeches, but what kind of a challenge was it to actually do the discipline and work of research and writing, certainly against the backdrop of 9/11 and the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Lord Hague:
Well, there was a lot going on in the world, but I was much less involved in it. I did take part in the debates about the Iraq war. I was still an active Member of the House of Commons. But at a personal level, I believe very strongly as, as I think I mentioned earlier, that we should regenerate ourselves and learn new skills. I think the idea that you have one skill in life is now very out of date. And so I said about doing everything else that I'd always wanted to do in life and that involved writing books, which is patient, solitary research but I don't mind that. I enjoy the writing. Just as I enjoy speaking, I enjoy writing as well. And I set about learning to play the piano at the same time.
Lord Hague:
And when you start new things like that, it really opens up your mind actually. And it's very good for your mind. It's really turning on new light bulbs in there that then illuminate some unexpected corners. So that was a very, to me personally, a very exciting period in life. As it happened, as you mentioned, with 9/11 and globally, it was a period where the unbridled optimism of the late 1990s started to unravel. We had not reached the end of history. We had not reached a point where just everything in the world was going to go on into a happy liberal, democratic future. And we've been dealing with the consequences of that ever since.
Josh King:
I heard your Desert Island Discs and you were talking about, I think, was it a Mozart piece or Beethoven piece was the first piece that you had learned? And that was your first selection.
Lord Hague:
Chopin. First piece, Chopin's Prelude in E Minor. And this is another for anybody wanting to regenerate a bit, to start new things, you need a teacher who understands an adult motivation. My piano teacher said to me, "We're not doing this the way children do it. We're not doing white notes and then black notes and so on. We are doing this piece." And she showed me, it looks horrendous, Chopin's Prelude in E Minor. And she said, "If you can just learn to play a few bars of that, you will then be so motivated about music and about what you can do that you within a few months you'll be playing whole pieces like that." So I later did a radio program, I think called Late Starters on BBC radio, about how you can do it. I introduced other people who'd learnt different musical instruments and got some wonderful letters over the years of people who were encouraged to take up their own... To develop new musical skills of their own.
Josh King:
Well, you have to put aside a bit of those creative instincts and extracurricular activities because in 2010, Lord Hague, David Cameron appoints you as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. And you helped broker a coalition government between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. What was it like putting that coalition together and could something like that ever happen again?
Lord Hague:
Oh, it could happen again. Although the Liberal Party for one would be more wary of entering a coalition because what tends to happen, in all European countries actually where two parties make a coalition, is that at the following election the junior party gets hammered either way. If the coalition is a success, the big party gets the credit for it. If it's a failure, they both suffer losses. So the Liberal Democrats did the right thing for this country in entering a coalition. And I always paid tribute to Nick Clegg who became the Deputy Prime Minister, but they really-
Josh King:
He now has his hands full at Facebook.
Lord Hague:
He now has an equally difficult task at Facebook. But they suffered for it domestically. It was an important moment putting together that coalition. Because in my view, the coalition government we formed and that was the government from 2010 to 2015, was one of the best modern governments in this country. We radically turned around our financial position from a huge budget deficit to a very small one, we saw a strong recovery in the British economy, and it was a government, in my view, of supremely, rational people, the likes of David Cameron, and Nick Clegg and George Osborne. And it was a pleasure to go to work in such a government, which it often isn't in politics. So that was a sweet spot in British politics. And of course it then unraveled. After I'd left the following year because of the referendum on the EU.
Josh King:
Exactly three years ago today.
Lord Hague:
Yes.
Lord Hague:
This week.
Josh King:
Three years from this week. That is where it went wrong. And that's a bit of a tragedy because this country was really set fair until that point. And we can still have a great future in the UK, but we have made it much more complicated for ourselves now.
Josh King:
Your remit back then was foreign affairs. Your tenure saw the Arab Spring begin to build in countries like Tunisia, spread in to Libya and Egypt. The movement was the first real world revolution to be spurred on by the digital revolution. For better or worse, Lord Hague, how have social networks and technology, where Nick Clegg is now, shifted the power dynamics, not just in the Middle East, but across the world.
Lord Hague:
They, they have shifted them dramatically. And we spoke a few moments ago about the 2 million people, or however many it was, on the streets of Hong Kong. Well, that had not have happened in that 2 million people could not coordinate themselves without an obvious leader, without social media. So there is a case where social media is a powerful force for standing up for democratic rights. And that was also true.... I was the first Western foreign minister to visit Tunisia after the first of those Arab revolutions, and again, met young people who had coordinated the whole thing through their social media accounts. No intelligence agency could have spotted a revolution coming because there was no group sitting in a basement with a plan. It was those young people digitally communicating with each other. So that is, in my view, a positive aspect of this information revolution.
Lord Hague:
But there is a sinister side to it as well in which it can be used as a tool of domination rather than of liberation. We are in danger, in the coming years and decades, of an algorithmic dominated society, where the state controls, in some societies those apps and algorithms by which people are increasingly living. Then we have the danger of, we think we are making decisions, but it actually it might be an illusion that we are doing so. And that's a very dangerous situation for humanity. So I think the jury is out on this. The effect of social media can go either way. Therefore people have to know they're engaging in that contest. It's not settled, whether this is a good or bad thing for the human race.
Josh King:
Just this morning, we saw the ratcheting up of tensions between the US and Iran. You worked closely with then Secretary of State John Kerry on the Iran deal and we know what President Trump has thought of that. Looking at the headlines and the bombing of the tankers, the downing of the drone last week and the almost retaliatory strike by the US, what's happening in Iran now? And what do you see as the end game?
Lord Hague:
I think both sides have to make a strong effort to avoid an accidental, or indeed deliberate, conflict here. I think both sides have made mistakes, actually. As you say, I did take part with John Kerry in negotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran and Iran has, until recently, implemented its side of that deal. So I didn't agree with the Trump Administration in then turning against that deal. Of course, I don't at all agree with Iran and some of their recent escalatory and reckless actions and what they appear to have done against oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman and in shooting down a US drone. I think there have been some very foolish steps by Iran in recent weeks. Well, this does require some dialogue between both sides. And a few years ago, when I was working on this, we did have that dialogue, through Oman actually, as is now well known, between the United States and Iran. I think the first step to this is to recover that dialogue because it's not in the interest of either side to spark a military conflict in the Gulf.
Josh King:
One of the impacts of military conflict around the world is, of course, the rise in the number of refugees. You partnered with Angelina Jolie, the Special Envoy of the United Nations High commissioner to launch the Refugees Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative. What is the scale of the problem and what solutions have been deployed through the initiative?
Lord Hague:
Well, the scale of the problem is huge. I felt that this was a taboo subject. It wasn't something I knew anything about before I became the Foreign Secretary, really. But I found when I visited camps for displaced people in Sudan, for instance, and sat down to talk with the women in those camps, that they were raped when they went out to collect firewood as a systemic act, as a deliberate military act to spread terror. And then I was studied the war in Bosnia in the 1990s. And when I visited there, I found that no justice had ever been done for rape in war on a massive scale. And so the objective of creating a campaign with Angelina Jolie, who I found had done a brilliant film about this, The Land of Blood and Honey, was to bring this to the attention of the world and galvanize action.
Lord Hague:
Now, since then we have seen some action in terms of changes in military doctrine, the training of armed forces, particularly in Africa, to avoid and prevent sexual violence in conflict. We have seen one or two prosecutions in countries which have now changed their attitude to this, but it's only the beginning of a long battle on this to change attitudes. And we have encouraged the British Government later this year, in 2019, to host another international conference or summit on this subject to assess the progress made and the actions that need to be taken. Angelina, Jolie and I are advocating that there be a permanent international investigatory body. Because at the moment there is no one in the world actually responsible for going somewhere and getting the evidence. For instance, in the recent persecution of the Rohingya people who fled from Burma or Myanmar, nobody is charged in the world with actually going to collect the evidence and launch prosecutions, cooperating with national authorities. So this would be the next step in this struggle, and that is what we're advocating
Josh King:
Over the first six months of the year those of us in New York city, Washington, DC, living the United States, were obsessively focused on what was happening to Prime Minister May, the various efforts to get Brexit through, negotiate a compromise. And then for us, 3000 miles away, it sort of fell off the radar. And it's been off our map. I landed Heathrow yesterday morning, and now I can't take my eyes off of it. I look at The Telegraph, I look at The Times, I look at all of the news sources that are coming into me just when I'm here and it is all back fresh again.
Josh King:
All the focus now on the election of the Conservative Party leader at the end of July, assuming that Boris Johnson wins, he looks almost certain to win control of the Conservative party. If he does do you think that will change anything about Brexit or push the EU to offer a new deal as we look toward the end of the year?
Lord Hague:
Well, it does change something, but not anything like as much as he or any new Prime Minister might hope because they are still dealing with the same situation, with the same House of Commons that has the same numbers in it, which are pretty much impossible numbers for agreeing any specific form of exiting the EU. And they are dealing with a fragmented political environment here in the UK. And they're dealing with the same European Union that has agreed with Theresa May a withdrawal agreement and is pretty determined not to change that agreement for a new Prime minister. So they are going to be elected, Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt, in a few weeks time and find they have absolutely inherited all of Theresa May's problems.
Lord Hague:
And that is why I argue they have to know what they're heading for here. Are they heading for an election to try to resolve this? Or another referendum? Or is there a compromise in their mind? They are going to need to know on day one, what they're going to do, because there is no transition here. There is no period to think about what you're going to do. They will have a crisis from day one beginning in the last week of July.
Josh King:
Otherwise there will be the sandcastle as you've discussed. Do you think there will be a general election in the near future?
Lord Hague:
Well, I think it's more than likely. I don't think that's a good thing, I'm not calling for or a general election, and many people in the country would be horrified to be asked to vote again. But you can see why it's quite likely. And that is because the Parliament just cannot resolve matters. In fact, if Parliament had been deliberately designed by the voters to be unable to reach a conclusion, if they'd done it as some enormous practical joke that they'd put together on social media to torment politicians, they couldn't have done a better job of it. It's so finely balanced, and it even has a hard-line Irish party holding the crucial balance on an issue where the Irish border is inevitably the most difficult issue to solve. The new Prime Minister will not have a majority for a no deal Brexit, but the previous Prime Minister has proved pretty conclusively that there isn't a majority for the Brexit deal. But there also isn't a majority for abandoning Brexit and there isn't a majority for new referendum. So that means there isn't a majority for any course of action. And in those circumstances, it will be quite hard to avoid an election to seek a new parliament.
Josh King:
On this podcast a few weeks ago, we had the American actor Kelsey Grammer, who just finished a run on the West End as Don Quixote, and I listened to his old desert island discs recording as well. And he too had an affinity for Frank Sinatra. Your selection was That's life. As you get younger, as you get older, Lord Hague, what mountains are there left for you to climb?
Lord Hague:
Well, I've not set a new mountain for myself at the moment, except that I passionate about that wildlife work that we discussed. And at my home in Wales, I am busy planting thousands of trees and creating habitat for there. And so his is my weekend obsession. And otherwise I want to write more books in the future. You very kindly discussed some of the writing I have perfromed.
Josh King:
You've got the Wilberforce book, will there be a trilogy of great British leaders?
Lord Hague:
Maybe. And if I live long enough, I would love to spend a couple of decades writing more books. So I suspect it's in the writing field that my biggest challenge is to come.
Josh King:
The passion certainly comes through every week in The Telegraph.
Lord Hague:
Thank you very much.
Josh King:
Thank you, Lord Hague, for joining us Inside the ICE House in this week, our travel week to the UK.
Lord Hague:
A pleasure. Thank you.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was the Right Honorable the Lord Hague of Richmond, former UK Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons, and currently Intercontinental Exchange director and chairman of the board of directors of ICE Futures Europe.
Josh King:
If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at icehouse @theice.com or tweet at us @icehousepodcast. Our show is produced by Rebecca Mitchell and Pete Asch with the production and editing from Ken Abel and Stephen Romanchik. I'm Josh king, your host, signing off for Milton Gate in London, the home of Intercontinental Exchange's headquarters here. Thanks for listening and talk to you next week.
Speaker 7:
Week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content here, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.
