The dangers of 2024 and how to manage them - with Britain’s oldest foreign secretary
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 19 January 2024
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
2024 is still young but from Gaza to Ukraine to Pakistan, somewhere new is seemingly pulled into the mire of geopolitical clashes what seems like every day.
In an extended interview, Lewis asks Lord David Owen - Britain's oldest foreign secretary - about the state of the world and where we fit in.
And, ahead of an election that could see Labour and Lib Dems play a prominent role in the balance of Westminster power, we ask the man who left the Labour Party to found the SDP party - the precursor to the Liberal Democrats what he makes of the parties, and of Westminster today.
Editor: Tom Hughes
Senior Producer: Gabriel Radus
Producer: Laura FitzPatrick
Planning Producer: Alex Barnett
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Video Production: Shane Fennelly & Arvind Badewal
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.2 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:13.0 | It will have to be a fight of passion and of conviction. |
| 0:18.2 | And to anyone else who aspires to lead the parliamentary Labour Party and this |
| 0:22.3 | Labour Party, it will have to be a fight of passion and conviction. We're fed up with the fudging |
| 0:28.9 | and the mudging. We're fed up with slush and mush. We want courage, fight, conviction and hard work. |
| 0:37.2 | Older listeners will probably recognise those unmistakably bellicose and forthright tones straight away. |
| 0:44.0 | It was, of course, the voice of David Owen. |
| 0:47.0 | Them fighting and fighting his cause has been a theme of his political life for the soul of the Labour Party. |
| 0:53.4 | His political career was a remarkable one, |
| 0:55.9 | a country doctor who became a Labour MP, |
| 0:58.3 | cabinet minister, who left Labour for being too extreme, |
| 1:01.4 | and in 1977, foreign secretary at the age of only 38. |
| 1:07.2 | He was then our youngest foreign secretary since Anthony Eden in 1935. He's now our oldest |
| 1:14.6 | living foreign secretary and he has seen it all. He's known them all. When he came to office |
| 1:20.8 | appointed by Jim Callahan, consider that the Vietnam War had just ended. Carter was in the |
| 1:26.4 | White House. Brezhnev was in the Kremlin. |
| 1:29.1 | The Cold War still raging. The Shah of Iran still on his throne. He is known many of the |
| 1:36.0 | 20th century's key players, and there is no one with a keener eye on world affairs, or many with a |
| 1:42.2 | much longer pedigree within them. |
| 1:50.2 | 2024 is still young, and yet each week, each day which has gone by, has seemed to bring new jeopardy, a new hotspot being pulled into the mire of geopolitical clashes. |
| 1:56.2 | So he thought there could be no one better to ask about the state of the world, where |
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