Elder statesmen Biden & Charles 'are going to be hanging around a bit longer than you guys realise'
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00:00 Well, for more analysis on this, on both Joe Biden's meeting with Rishi Sunak and a look
00:05 ahead at that NATO summit, we're going to cross now to Denis McShane, the former British
00:10 Minister of European Affairs.
00:12 Hello, sir.
00:13 Thank you very much for joining us here on France 24 today.
00:16 Great pleasure.
00:17 I'm speaking to you from Athens, where I should think our Greek friends might have a line
00:22 or two on Mr Erdogan joining the European Union, but that's probably not going to be
00:28 raised at the building.
00:29 It's a very interesting development.
00:30 I think Mr Erdogan is spelling the fact that President Putin is not looking good.
00:37 And as your commentator said, Erdogan is a shrewd politician and he's going to stop backing
00:44 a loser.
00:45 And that's, I think, some of the smoke signals we're seeing today.
00:49 Very glad to have your take on that, sir, because I was going to ask you about it.
00:52 Well, maybe if we have time, turn back to it later.
00:55 But I do want to start with the meeting between Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden.
00:58 It almost felt like a formality.
01:00 It only it didn't last very long.
01:01 Joe Biden is, of course, already heading to meet with the king.
01:06 What does that suggest about the state of their relationship, if anything?
01:09 There's not much of a relationship.
01:12 I mean, Rishi Sunak is one of the most polite people on God's Earth.
01:17 So he's not going to he's not pompous and stupid like Boris Johnson was.
01:21 He's not a serial liar like Boris Johnson.
01:24 So he'll get on fine.
01:25 He's a Silicon Valley billionaire, Goldman Sachs banker.
01:29 He understands America.
01:31 But I think what is interesting is the importance that Mr. Biden is making.
01:36 It's good to see the king.
01:39 You're going to see two heads of state, both say they're not young men, no longer in the
01:46 first flush of use in the late 70s, 70s to 80.
01:51 And the press in England, the right wing press, the European press, the Tory press, keep denouncing
01:59 President Biden as Cedar, always falling over.
02:01 You should be in an old person's home.
02:04 And here he is saying, hey, you said the same stuff about Ronald Reagan.
02:09 I'm meeting your king, who is a young man.
02:11 He's about my age.
02:13 We two head to state, you know, something we're going to be hanging around for a bit
02:17 longer than you guys realize.
02:19 Well, Joe, you did say that Rishi Sunak is a polite prime minister compared to Boris
02:27 Johnson.
02:28 But there are some major disagreements between his government and Joe Biden, notably on those
02:34 cluster munitions and on Ukraine's possible path to NATO membership.
02:37 How important do you think these disagreements are?
02:43 I would ratify it.
02:44 The subject of the long negotiations.
02:46 I also was responsible as Britain's Europe minister for starting the talks or getting
02:51 Britain to support starting the talks with President Erdogan at the time.
02:56 I could tell you lots of anecdotes about that.
02:58 But OK, leave that for later.
03:00 Right now, yes, Britain does not support the use of cluster weapons.
03:05 It signed an international treaty against them with 120 other countries.
03:10 The United States never signed that treaty.
03:13 So technically it is legally in the clear.
03:16 And the real problem is that the Ukrainians are asking for these weapons.
03:21 The Russians have been using the nonstops.
03:23 It's almost day one of Putin's invasion of Europe, of Ukraine.
03:28 And the Europeans and the United States have not provided sufficient arms, as to say, shells,
03:35 bullets, missiles, bombs, all the stuff you use in warfare.
03:40 You think by now, 18 months into the war, we could have got a few more factories going.
03:44 They're very profitable.
03:45 The companies have made lots of money.
03:48 But we've just been so poorly led across the field, in my view, in providing Ukraine with
03:56 giving Ukraine what it takes.
03:58 As Churchill said to Roosevelt, give us the tools and we will do the job.
04:04 We'll finish the job.
04:05 And as Zelensky's saying to Biden, and Zudak, and Macron, and Shultz, give me the tools
04:10 and believe me, my boys can see this through.
04:14 And unfortunately we haven't.
04:16 And so now in desperation, Biden is sending the cluster bombs.
04:21 Sir, I do kind of want to follow.
04:23 This is unfortunately the last question we'll be able to get through together.
04:26 But I do want to follow up on a little bit of what you said there.
04:29 You said that these are the kind of things that we need in war, that the West has been
04:32 kind of slow to give Ukraine all of what it needs.
04:37 But does the fact that 120 nations have banned them, does that not matter?
04:42 Does it not take away a little bit from the West's credibility when it comes to human
04:46 rights and kind of just warfare?
04:50 Let me say something very unpleasant.
04:53 When you engage the kind of all-out war, killing children, killing innocent people, killing
04:57 novelists, that Putin has started, then some of the finer niceties of human rights aren't
05:05 obeyed.
05:06 Yes, of course, it would be better if cluster bombs were not used, but they were used by
05:13 Putin to kill innocent Ukrainians.
05:16 And we have not provided sufficient weapons.
05:20 So people don't understand, I think, at times just how god-awful war is.
05:25 It's not a set of newspaper articles.
05:28 These are men and women shedding their blood to defend Europe's freedom.
05:33 We in my view should be sending them far more of a necessary wherewithal to achieve that
05:39 aim, and say quietly to Mr. Putin, hey, forget about Biden and King Charles.
05:45 Maybe you should think about retirement, old boy.
05:48 Tennis McShane, I'm sure there's going to be a lot of disagreements about that precisely
05:53 at this NATO summit on Tuesday.
05:54 France 24, of course, will be keeping an eye on that.
05:57 In the meantime, thank you very much, Dennis McShane, the former British minister of European
06:01 affairs, for joining us today.