Back in 2017, when now-National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell was blabbering on about Brexit every ten minutes, he sat down with Civil Service World to reflect on his years as a ‘negotiator’ in the 80s and 90s. Here he is claiming China were easier to deal with than Thatcher when handing over Hong Kong…
“My mentor when I was doing the Hong Kong negotiation back in the early 1980s was Sir Percy Cradock. He said Cradock’s First Law of Diplomacy is the hardest negotiations are on your own side. When we were doing the Hong Kong negotiations his biggest challenge was negotiating with Mrs Thatcher, negotiating with ExCo, the executive council in Hong Kong. The Chinese were relatively easy by comparison.”
He goes on to cite Gerry Adams as making a similar claim, that “negotiating with your own band is always the hardest thing to do”. Percy Cradock – who served as British Ambassador to China from 1978 to 1983 – was eventually sacked by John Major in 1992 for being too conciliatory towards Beijing. His protégé Powell appears to have learned some lessons…
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