Review in Liberator 425, September 2024
This is an excellent book of considerable interest to everyone involved in foreign affairs and in diplomacy. I need to record my two connections with the author, Cathy Ashton, otherwise the Rt Hon Baroness Ashton of Upholland, LG GCMG. During my time as a Liberal MP I happily worked with Cathy Ashton and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and she approached me to stand for election to its Council, mainly because she wanted to broaden its membership base and to diminish the hold that the “tanky” Labour members had on the Council. The election for fifteen members was on a multiple “X” basis and I explained to Cathy that I would only be able to vote for myself and not even for her as, with a multiple “first past the post” election, every other vote would count against me. She asked what was needed to avoid this problem and I explained that it needed to use the Single Transferable Vote which enabled CND members to rank candidates in order of preference. STV was adopted and I was duly elected. I hope CND thereafter retained STV for its elections. My second involvement with Cathy was completely different. She asked if my Granny Lee Jazz Band would play at her wedding to Peter Kellner at St James’s Church, Piccadilly, in 1988. I readily agreed and when we played a jazz version of the wedding march, she and Peter danced down the aisle!
When in late 2008 Catherine Ashton was proposed to be the first occupant of the post of what is, in effect, the foreign minister of the European Union (officially High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy) there were a number of negative comments about her capacity to deal with the high level diplomacy it required. From my knowledge of her I had no such doubts. Following her five years in office there was almost universal approval of her skills and performance. This book recounts the rather curious process by which she was appointed but, more importantly, it is a vindication of her ability to represent the EU in the most delicate and difficult situations. It provides detailed accounts of the EU diplomatic involvement in seven key crises: Somalia, Haiti, Egypt and the fall of Morsi, the collapse of Libya, Serbia and Kosovo, Iran nuclear negotiations and the revolution in Ukraine.
Ashton’s memoir recounts her brief time as the UK’s Commissioner for Trade and the curious process through which she was moved to foreign affairs. Despite being extremely detailed, Ashton’s accounts of the EU’s role in foreign conflicts and of her day to day negotiations with the key players are really well written and an easy and even racy read. The book is a valuable reference work for everyone interested in the EU’s overseas role and for those wanting the details of the negotiations on the seven issues dealt with. After her term of office she became the First Vice-President of the European Commission - a relative sinecure after the foreign affairs post!
And Then What? Inside Stories of 21st Century Diplomacy, by Catherine Ashton, pub. Elliott and Thompson, 2023, ISBN 978-1-78396-634-9
