Back in January Venetia van Kuffeler and I interviewed William Hague for DIPLOMAT magazine. Here’s the result.

DIPLOMAT’s publishing lead-times mean that it is not a ‘news’ magazine. So we aimed at more general questions exploring the Foreign Secretary’s philosophy and instincts in his job.

The interview took place when Tunisia was simmering but the Egypt/Libya crises had not yet started – a lot hasppened in a few weeks.

These observations by the Foreign Secretary caught my eye and sum up what he is trying to do:

All foreign relations are bilateral, because multilateral meetings are the playing out of bilateral alliances and friendships. And I think that has been neglected somewhat, and needs re-accentuating

Foreign policy can’t be reduced to themes and abstract concepts. It’s all about relationships between countries and between people: prime ministers, foreign ministers and so on. This is why we’re stressing the diplomatic skills necessary to conduct such relationships ... in recent years we haven’t placed enough emphasis on diplomatic skills – on knowing countries and individuals in great detail. The ethos tilted too much towards management and internal change. It needs tilting back, emphasising hard language skills and deep geographic knowledge

One thing Western nations have to tackle in foreign policy in the next 20 or 30 years is to encourage nations with new-found power in foreign affairs to use that power to help keep the peace, prevent conflict and extend human rights. That’s a new concept for them

[The US and UK have] an unbreakable alliance, indispensable to us and to them. Anybody who comes to office in Britain or America can see within 24 hours or so that you would not want to do without that relationship

… by stability I really just mean the absence of violent disorder; I don’t mean things being ossified. Would Tunisia have been in a better situation had they had better economic performance and a more open, flexible political system? Yes, they would. That lesson should not be lost on other countries

I asked him about the way that the FCO’s standards in dealing with the London Diplomatic Corps declined under Labour: "Bilateral relationships start with the embassies here in London?"

I place great emphasis on that, and on standards of speaking and writing as well as diplomacy. I hope that that is communicating itself through the entire organisation.

And this is an important passage in the UK/EU relationship:

Have we reached the high-water mark of EU institutional integration?

I very much hope so. Our EU bill before the Commons this week is a powerful aid. I explain to EU Foreign Ministers that if they want us to agree to anything that uses the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty to achieve greater integration or imposes any significant new obligation on the UK, then there has to be a referendum of the British people.

Do they believe you? Isn’t there wiggle room?

They had better do so, because it will soon be on the statute book. Of the 13 criteria set out in the bill to judge whether a referendum is required, only two have so-called ‘wiggle room’, for things so small that it would not be credible to hold a referendum without damaging the concept of having a referendum.

All the treaties of recent years – Nice, Amsterdam, Maastricht, Lisbon – would have been caught on several counts by this bill, with no discretion whatsoever as to holding a referendum. That strengthens the negotiating position of British ministers.

Read the whole thing.