William Hague is a man of enormous talent. He is
a serious brain, a magnificent speaker - possibly the best in politics
today - and he used to be an adept and compelling politician
Famously, it was once said of Winston Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill, that he ‘died by inches in public’. It was a cruel remark, but one that might equally be applied to William Hague.
Mr Hague is a man of enormous talent. He is a serious brain, a magnificent speaker – possibly the best in politics today – and he used to be an adept and compelling politician.
But for some time it has been clear that his accomplishment was all in the past, and we have witnessed a long, steady decline not so much of his powers but of his engagement with politics.
On merit, he deserved his high office, but he has never looked comfortable in it, or managed to strike the right note, or to convey the idea that he knew what he was seeking to achieve.
His Foreign Secretaryship could not have got off to a worse start. Barely four months in the post, in September 2010, it was disclosed that he had shared a hotel bedroom with a 25-year-old man, Christopher Myers, whom he subsequently put on his payroll as a special adviser.
Mr Hague – who is married – was forced to deny rumours that he was homosexual and (in his entirely understandable distress) took the ill-advised step of making a humiliating statement that he and his wife had a normal marriage, and that Mrs Hague had endured several miscarriages.
He deserved our sympathy, but it was an episode that hurt him. And Mr Hague then proceeded to operate as Foreign Secretary in a way that made him seem invisible.
He never seemed to grasp the strategic idea of a foreign policy, and how it should be deployed to establish and shore up Britain’s position of influence in the world. He wasn’t helped, of course, by the fact that the means by which a nation enforces its views – strong armed forces backing up diplomacy – were never available to him, as the Government relentlessly ran down the three services.
It meant the country got into hopeless dead-ends, such as the notion last August that with our depleted resources we should assist America in an intervention in Syria. Happily, that debacle – which would have seen us fighting on the same side as allies of Al Qaeda – was avoided, but Mr Hague was left seriously damaged.
Mr Hague took the ill-advised step of making a
humiliating statement that he and his wife had a normal marriage, and
that his wife Ffion had endured several miscarriages
His fault, in fact, was one of scrupulous loyalty to Mr Cameron, a loyalty that has not always been repaid. For it was the PM who made the running on intervention in Syria, anxious to be of service to Barack Obama, himself the architect of a disastrously unreal and ineffectual foreign policy.
However, it was Mr Hague who had to take the rap.
Mr Cameron has always given the impression of running European policy – a cause of massive controversy in the Conservative party – with very little help from his Foreign Secretary. For Mr Hague to allow himself to be marginalised on the most important aspect of foreign policy was undermining to him and, in the end, fatal.
Instead of grappling with the crucial issue of Britain’s future in Europe, concerning himself with the powder keg that is the Middle East, or challenging an aggressive Russia, Mr Hague has found other things to occupy him.
His recent photo opportunities with the actress Angelina Jolie, campaigning for an end to sexual violence in wars, were doubtless well-intentioned, but, in the grand scheme of things at the moment, utterly misguided.
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