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  • [MUSIC]

  • So Lord Patton, welcome to Stanford.

  • And. >> Thanks very much.

  • I've been here before.

  • I've lectured a couple of times at the Hoover Institute,

  • where I think they were slightly nervous about my own brand of conservatism.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> But I survived in one piece, survived

  • long enough to go and do one of, do two of the lakeside talks, so it's Bohemia Grove.

  • So I've been through every sort of anthropological

  • excitement imaginable in North California.

  • >> Well, we appreciate you hopping across the pond to join us again today,

  • and whilst we're spoiled with many a guest throughout the year.

  • Few have been involved in so many historical moments as your good self nor

  • worked with so many leaders, ranging from through to the pope.

  • So we've got quite a lot to cover but I'll try to take a whistle soar through it all.

  • And perhaps given that the audience is Stanford students we

  • can start with your role as the chancellor of Oxford, and

  • given that it's such a historical old educational institute.

  • How are you ensuring to keep it relevant and

  • that it continues to attract top global talent?

  • >> First of all, a word about the role.

  • Oxford is the oldest university in Britain.

  • They're not the oldest in Europe or indeed in Europe and Africa.

  • It's Europe or Africa is and the oldest in Europe probably Paris.

  • But we're pretty getting on for 900 years.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> And we have a college which

  • the professor was called new college, and

  • it's called New College because it was founded in the 15th century.

  • 13th century. [LAUGH] So it's very, very new.

  • My old college was founded in the 12th century, and

  • it celebrates it's 800 or 850th anniversary about every two years.

  • It's a way of making money.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH]

  • There've been a lot of chancellors over the years.

  • I do point out that at Cambridge,

  • three of their chancellors have been executed and one has been canonized.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> Whereas at Oxford,

  • three have been canonized and only one's been executed.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> So we've done rather better.

  • These days, The chancellor is elected by all graduates

  • and I'm only the fourth since 1935,

  • Lord Halifax who as ambassador in the States and foreign secretary.

  • Harold McMillan who was Prime Minister in 1960, Roy Jenkins who

  • was president of the European commission and probably the greatest reforming

  • interior home secretary in our politics since the war in 1983.

  • And I was elected in 2003.

  • The job is elected for life and

  • I used to say like the Pope, but I can't say that anymore, so like the Dalai Lama.

  • I probably can't say that if there are any Chinese representatives present.

  • And the job is one surrounded by mystery.

  • Roy Jenkins, my predecessor, used to say it was one in which

  • Impotence was assuaged by magnificence.

  • It's been assessed Harold McMillan who was a sort of Edwardian intellectual

  • used to offer a more metaphysical explanation.

  • He used to say well as you know, the vice chancellor actually runs the university.

  • But if you didn't have a Chancellor you couldn't have a Vice Chancellor.

  • So I'm like a sort of ceremonial monarch.

  • I'm a constitutional monarch, lot's of ceremonial stuff, lots of fundraising.

  • I chair selections of new Vice Chancellors.

  • And generally, try to make a paint of myself with governance of they're not

  • supportive enough of the University.

  • The most important thing for us to do at Oxford

  • is to ensure that we remain a terrific teaching institution.

  • George Cannon Who I think is one of the great prince's of the American republic.

  • George Kennan said that teaching at Oxford he thought was incomparable.

  • And even though it's expensive,

  • we have to try to keep it that with our tutorial system.

  • And we have to make sure that we are still

  • Pushing the boundaries of knowledge as far forward as possible.

  • Our medical sciences division, there I say this in Stanford,

  • has come top of the global lead tables for five years running now.

  • And our math and engineering have got better and better.

  • One of our senior mathematicians won the Abel Prize this year And

  • humanities at Oxford are terrific.

  • I would like for them to be better.

  • And I'm particularly concerned at the moment that while we can still rise quite

  • easily with a bit of effort funding for.

  • Scholarships for graduate studies in sciences and medicine.

  • It's much more difficult to do so in the humanities.

  • And that is partly because of the disgraceful way in which

  • universities tend to be judged in almost an utilitarian fashion these days,

  • rather than for more general considerations.

  • To find myself as chancellor occasionally having to make speeches

  • justifying teaching the humanities is a bit annoying.

  • But as I always, we teach the humanities because we're humans.

  • So, my job is to try to ensure that and people continue to

  • deliver the quality of teaching we require, and the quality of research.

  • We've just appointed a new vice chancellor

  • who is Irish American, College Dublin, UCLA, no one is perfect.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> Harvard.

  • She was one of Drew Fousts' proteges and when she was the executive dean of

  • the Advanced Studies there, then ran St.

  • Andrews in the UK where she among other things had to take on the Royal Golf Club.

  • And what I will not say because I think it's highly offensive so I want to

  • make the point that she's the first woman who's ever been Vice-Chancellor of Oxford.

  • But she is and

  • she is absolutely terrific, a great expert on international security and

  • has written, I've spent quite a lot of my life in politics dealing with terrorism.

  • But I think she's written the best academic studies

  • of how to deal with terrorism than I've read by anyone.

  • >> So, on the topic of progressing ideas, and

  • as we move to what many are calling the new innovation economy and

  • knowledge based economy, >> Silicon Valley is especially

  • well placed to do so, but I don't think London's too far behind considering we've

  • now got our own little bubble of San Francisco.

  • It's essentially Silicon Valley, New York, and Washington in one.

  • But as we strive to adopt new technology and innovation.

  • What hurdles do you think remain for London and the UK to progress and

  • become a little bit more like Silicon Valley?

  • >> Well, I think there are two basic ones.

  • First of all If British politicians aren't worried about

  • the standard of math in our secondary schools, they should be.

  • Secondly, I think that we don't have

  • as natural an innovative culture as exists in the United States.

  • I was interested yesterday.

  • One of the young undergraduate who helped to organize my campaign for

  • governor of, it wasn't even that, the of the university.

  • It was at the reception we had last night in I said what are you doing here and

  • he said I'm now the economic.

  • I'm now the head the economics department at Google.

  • And, I, [LAUGH] terrific that he's here, but,

  • I wish that he was, doing something, to promote,

  • innovative culture in the, in the UK.

  • So, I think we lack the same innovative culture and we haven't made some of

  • the investments which would have helped to make us even more competitive.

  • For example, there is an obvious requirement for

  • a technology and transport corridor between Oxford and Cambridge,

  • which together are formidable with a growing and successful

  • record of spinoff, with a lot of shared Interests.

  • And I think that governments in the United Kingdom have been

  • pathetic over the years in investment.

  • I don't think infrastructure investment has been a great

  • story in the United States since probably President Eisenhower but

  • that's perhaps another matter.

  • But I think infrastructure investment

  • Improving the level of basic math in schools.

  • And trying to do more to promote innovation.

  • I don't think, myself, that that has as much

  • to do with the tax system as some right wing politicians think.

  • But there are other things you can do to promote To promote that culture I suspect.

  • >> I'll skip over the topic of taxes, and it's

  • interesting around how this innovation has been progressive in many ways.

  • And yet, the gap between the rich and the poor seem to be increasing over time.

  • How do you think we can reconcile this progression in a more sustainable manner,

  • and bring everyone else along?

  • >> I think that's very interesting, and I guess profoundly

  • relevant to what's happening in your own >> Domestic politics on

  • which I'll be blessedly almost silent.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> But also, on ours as well.

  • [COUGH] There's a very good book which I read recently.

  • I think it's called Concrete Economics or Concrete Reality.

  • Which makes the point that it's a complete fiction that wealth and

  • prosperity have always been created in the United States by the private sector,

  • that the government has always been a drag.

  • Not true.

  • You start with Alexander Hamilton, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR.

  • You even look at the period of the long Ike boom and

  • see a combination of public investment and private endeavor.

  • So the city on a hill was built by government,

  • as well as by the private sector.

  • And >> The boom

  • which probably lasted into the 60s

  • saw the genie coefficient, and

  • you all know what that is, falling to the lowest level in American economic history.

  • So from 1940, I think about 1946, 47 the Gini

  • coefficient was moving in the right direction.

  • And since 1968, it's been going in the other direction.

  • And I sometimes wonder How American politicians get away with the fact

  • that there is such an astonishing multiple of CEOs pay to mean or average earnings.

  • There is I think a lot of evidence that this is because people don't actually know

  • or the figures are, they can't believe the figures if they're told.

  • When asked, they think there's a multiple of 30.

  • They don't the multiple ten times or more that ten times that size.

  • So I think the levels of social inequity in the United States.

  • And we've been moving in that direction in the United Kingdom,

  • are becoming politically hazardous.

  • And if I had to try to explain one of the reason why for

  • the rage which helps to sustain, Mr.

  • Trump's ambitions, I would guess that social equity is a very big reason.

  • I also think that

  • there is a relationship between social equity and

  • the sense people have that globalization is wrecking

  • their prospects and delivering prosperity everywhere else except America.

  • It's not, of course, true.

  • But never the less there is that perception.

  • And we have that in the United Kingdom as well.

  • The sense people have that they want to get the world in, or stop the world and

  • get off.

  • That they want control over their own lives

  • in a mythical way, which has never really existed.

  • And certainly hasn't existed during

  • first periods of globalization in the 19th century or in the last few years.

  • In the United Kingdom in the last few weeks we've

  • seen the near demise of our steel industry, why?

  • First of all because of the dumping of cheap steel by China,

  • which is producing about half the total amount of student in the world,

  • and which saw an increase in steel production of 300% between 2008 and

  • last year.

  • The British steel industry, in terms of its competitiveness,

  • has been Has been completely screwed because of that.

  • So, who's suffering?

  • Not just the workers, but

  • an Indian company which owns the British steel industry.

  • So, when people talk about controlling their lives, so

  • they can protect their jobs and family's living standards.

  • That's not the world we live in anymore even if it has been for the last

  • few years, and I would wish people were making the case for free trade.

  • Fair trade, but free trade were making the positive case for

  • globalization more effectively and more Toughly then they are.

  • It seems to me that the real One of the most important things,

  • really the most important thing we should be doing in response to

  • the competitiveness of globalization, is investing more in our public education and

  • in the improvement of our public education system.

  • In my own country in particular, investing in further education,

  • we've always been really bad at any vocational education,

  • particularly in comparison with Germany.

  • So, I think social equity is an important part of this but

  • only part of a broader nexus of issues,

  • which touched globalization as well.

  • >> It's- >> Good old Eisenhower.

  • >> Well, it's interesting in Europe they often refer to nowadays

  • is the younger curse around politicians know what to do,

  • they just don't know how to do it and get reelected.

  • So now that you're a cross venture and I believe you've referred to yourself as

  • a liberal internationalist these days as opposed to just a conservative NP,

  • how do you think about commentary that politics is increasingly orchestrated,

  • politicians are caught up in opinion polls and

  • going to focus groups to guide them as to what to do next and

  • balancing the need to be responsive to the electorate but not just reactionary and

  • be able to deliver a manifesto to address some of the issues that you just raised?

  • >> I don't see any point in going into politics

  • unless you've got strong views about things.

  • And one of the things I find infinitely depressing is

  • politicians who have to ask a focus group what they should be concerned about and

  • then ask another focus group how they should explain their concerns about

  • whatever the first focus group has told them should be bothering them.

  • And one of the reasons why I found, I'm not making a political pitch,

  • I suppose I am really, one of the reasons why I found President Obama

  • such an attractive human being is he does seem to me when he's talking about

  • events which really mattered to him like his own identity, and the relationship

  • between his identity and the political culture in which he has to operate, you

  • get the sense that this is not something he's had to ask somebody how to express.

  • I mean I thought the two speeches he gave, the one speech he gave in his pastor's

  • church before the 2008 election about race in politics,

  • and the speech he gave a few months ago after the slaughter of

  • some African American worshipers in a church in the south.

  • Those speeches were astonishingly powerful because that was him,

  • because that wasn't some other guy with the yellow legal pad,

  • and writing the words down, it was authentically him.

  • So, if you don't have strong views about what society should be like, I mean,

  • become a chartered accountant and make some money.

  • >> [LAUGH] Or a venture capitalist.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> Readjust your views-

  • >> You can still have very strong views,

  • but I don't see the point in

  • going into politics unless you really feel passionately about one or two issues.

  • What most worries me, well what would most worry me if I was an American citizen

  • I think, is the extraordinary power of big money in politics.

  • I mean, I shouldn't mention names, but you know the sort of people I'm talking about.

  • >> [LAUGH].

  • >> And quite how the Supreme Court can define

  • spending huge amounts of untaxed loot on supporting

  • partisan opinions partly because they suit your own business interests.

  • How they can define that as covered by

  • the freedom of speech amendment I simply don't comprehend.

  • I was very impressed by Justice Scalia's intellect but that seems to me,

  • to use one of his phrases, what he would have called pure applesauce.

  • And the sooner there is a Supreme Court which reverses that decision,

  • I think the better for American democracy.

  • Those of you who are historians of America, which I'm not,

  • may regard what I'm about to say as too simplistic but it always seemed to me that

  • the majesty of the American political system was balancing

  • a Constitution which established a republic not necessarily a democracy,

  • with a political system which is democratic.

  • And in order to balance the two, in order to make the checks and

  • balances of the first something other than vetoes on action, you do need to have

  • the ability to compromise, to make consensuses and

  • so on, which seems to me to be something with a Smithsonian these days.

  • When I first got involved in politics, it was in an Merrill campaign in New York

  • in the 1960's, when the Republican party in New York was led by Senator Javits,

  • Senator Keating, Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsey.

  • Can you imagine what the Tea Party would make of that these days?

  • >> [LAUGH] >> So if we think about

  • the political actions which you're best known for it's the last colonial Governor

  • closing the final chapter on the good 'ol British empire,

  • so, [LAUGH] so when we look back

  • in terms of the silo British joint declaration it seems though you had

  • remarkable clarity as to how you'd make progress towards a '97 deadline.

  • And you stuck with it and

  • had courage of your convictions despite great outrage from Beijing at the time.

  • I think they cursed you to 1000 years of hardship.

  • >> The sentence was remitted subsequently.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> But it's been reinstated given what

  • I've been saying about students in Hong Kong but that's another matter.

  • >> And even some of the former Brits who are out there weren't supportive,

  • and then the stock exchange collapsed.

  • What gave you that courage to go on despite the naysayers and

  • the follow through on the actions?

  • >> I've always felt most comfortable in politics when,

  • and forgive this, maybe, if this sounds a bit sanctimonious,

  • when I've thought that what I was doing was not only the right thing to do but

  • the right, and it seemed to me that we had made promises

  • to people in Hong Kong which we were creeping away from.

  • About a month or six weeks before I left Hong Kong,

  • I was visiting as Governor, a hospital for

  • the mentally ill, and it was in a series of low bungalows,

  • each of them fenced in with a sauntiere,

  • with a passage through the middle, and I'm walking along and

  • a very, very well dressed Chinese chap in a three piece suit,

  • gray suit, and wearing I think I remember a Homburg,

  • Governor Patten, Governor Patten, he says, and

  • to the horror of my staff I walked across and talked to him.

  • And he was incredibly polite, it's always lethal when people are polite.

  • And he said Governor Patten, can you explain this to me,

  • you very often [INAUDIBLE] British colleagues

  • about Britain being the oldest democracy in the world.

  • I nervously agreed.

  • So he said, can you explain this to me?

  • Why is it that you're handing over the last British colony

  • to the last great communist tyranny in the world?

  • Without ever consulting the people about it.

  • So, here was the sanest man in Hong Kong.

  • Who was in the hospital for the mentally ill.

  • [LAUGH] There was actually

  • no alternative but the transfer of sovereignty in Hong Kong.

  • And Hong Kong, or most of Hong Kong Had been only taken on a lease.

  • And the terms in which both the lease had been negotiated and

  • the grant of the rest of the home call had been made

  • were clearly matters of 19th century history,

  • which nobody would seek to justify in the 20th or 21st century.

  • There's a period when

  • Weston powers not least the United Kingdom were trying to globalize

  • China and buy opening into the opium trade.

  • I mean this is not something And

  • even Queen Victoria found particularly attractive.

  • And so we have now alternative but

  • to hand Hong Kong back to China

  • but we'd undertaken will the chinese agreement

  • that Hong Kong would be guaranteed that it's way of life,

  • due process, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, rule of.

  • And so on would carry on for 50 years after 1997.

  • And to be kind to China it may be that they

  • were conceptual difficulties.

  • Let me give you an example.

  • I got excessively praised for rather limited things I did

  • on democracy because I was operating within Very strict,

  • agreed guidelines.

  • But I was trying to ensure that elections were at least free and fair.

  • And one of my critics, who is a spokesman for For Beijing.

  • Perfectly nice chap said to me you don't seem to understand our position.

  • We're not at all against free and fair elections.

  • We just want to know the result in advance.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] And

  • I realized at that point that we were not going to have an easy way of

  • connecting, of reaching agreement.

  • And I sometimes actually think that it's that it is quite difficult for

  • people with my sort of background small pluralist and so on,

  • to really understand that Chinese communist mindset.

  • I don't necessarily say Chinese mindset because you can think of lots of Chinese

  • communities which are profoundly The liberal imperialist.

  • What's only been worry about what's happened subsequently, is that

  • those in Hong Kong who feel primarily Chinese.

  • Also want Beijing to understand that

  • they feel that they're Hong Kong Chinese, that they have

  • a sense of citizenship which may not be as powerful as their sense of Chineseness,

  • but in terms of the complexity of their identity It's really important.

  • And to some extent, trampling that

  • under foot is the crudest Beijing has done, recently.

  • I think presents President Xi's arrival.

  • I think that's been really counterproductive.

  • I went with my wife to an Oxford alumni gathering in

  • Hong Kong this time last year, no this time two years ago.

  • And I was coming out of receptions and meetings and there would be 100 or

  • 200 students, a lot of them who had hardly been born

  • when I left Hong Kong Singing Rule Britannia and God Save the Queen.

  • And I mean it was terrific for my reputation in Oxford I can tell you.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> But

  • you could understand how provocative it would have been

  • to the governing authorities in China.

  • And that's their fault, it's really unnecessary and

  • silly that they provoke that sort of We have some.

  • But I have huge respect for

  • the students who were demonstrating 18 months ago for democracy.

  • With the most extraordinary politeness and good manners imaginable.

  • It's something that you've been involved in conflict resolution across conflicts,

  • also in the bulkins as well as northern Ireland and

  • as developing officer with the Ethiopian sedan.

  • It seems that you're very good at bringing all parties to the table, and

  • giving incentive.

  • Most notably with the book,a dn

  • encouraging raising change by suggesting membership of the EU.

  • How do you think through this kind of carotene stick approach to resolution,

  • and are there any common take away you'd share with us as to

  • progressing discussions in the heat of the moment.

  • And moving things forward.

  • >> I've become obsessed, over the years, with identity politics.

  • And how lethal identity politics can be.

  • I've worked in Northern Ireland.

  • I've worked in the Balkans.

  • I've worked in the Middle East.

  • I've worked in Asia.

  • And the extent to which

  • when people identify themselves with a very simple pure blooded set of loyalties.

  • When that turns into a facility to imagine

  • that they're being victimized when the rather crude and

  • simple sentiments of whip top by Demi Gods, it nearly always leads to disaster.

  • The most difficult job I did was actually after the Good Friday agreement, which to

  • Tony Blast's credits and my [INAUDIBLE] credit, they manage to negotiate.

  • The one thing that nobody could agree about was policing.

  • The police force in Northern Ireland at the time,

  • was regarded as an arm of a Protestant state.

  • Northern Ireland was probably 53%,

  • 52%, Protestant, and 47, 48% Catholics.

  • The police force, was 93% Protestant, and 7% Catholic.

  • And that was plainly, not something that

  • could survive in a new Northern Ireland.

  • Resolving that issue involved a lot of things

  • that were politically very difficult, but

  • it seemed to me that these were corners you couldn't cut.

  • You actually have to, you actually had to,

  • face up to the, difficulties of changing names, of changing symbols.

  • And, we did that.

  • And at the time, there were roars of, disapproval from the units, but

  • it's lasted.

  • And one result, is that today, the police service in Northern Ireland is pretty well

  • 30-35% Catholic and the rest Protestant.

  • I mean, it's been a real transformation and providing.

  • So first of all,

  • I think you have to stand up to the rougher side of identity politics.

  • Secondly, you have to provide a political context in which people can

  • extract themselves from the corners of rooms they've painted themselves into, or

  • get off hooks.

  • Something I used to get annoyed about when negotiating with Chinese interlocutors.

  • They were always saying to me, but you've got to understand we've got face.

  • You got to learn to save, where we need to have our safe face.

  • I used to say to them I've got bloody face too.

  • [LAUGH] You've got to understand other people have

  • face which needs to be taken account of when I was European Commissioner.

  • Mr. Aznar, the then Prime Minister of

  • Spain, a pretty tough fellow,

  • asked to see me because he'd heard that I had worked in Northern Island.

  • And he was reading across to the situation into the bass country.

  • And the terrorism of Etta and

  • he wanted to know what I thought should be done about policing in Spain in order to

  • help undermine Etta.

  • And I started.

  • I went into my spill about the political background in northern Ireland and

  • what we've done on issues like housing and local government and job creation.

  • I could see him glazing over, because I didn't have a simple, hard,

  • sock it to him Response.

  • So there's always a context between what you try to create but

  • ultimately you actually have to stand up to the worst sort of identity politics.

  • There's a fantastic book, it was a regular book on identity politics by Matthew San.

  • There's another very good one by a French novelist called Amin Maalouf,

  • who has won the Goncourt and several other prizes.

  • I think his main novel was called, The Rock of Tanios.

  • And was actually born in Lebanon,

  • Arab Christian, writes in French, now lives in France.

  • And he's written a brilliant book about the complexities of identity.

  • You think about your identities, I've thought about mine, Irish,

  • lower to middle class, Catholic, Tory,

  • what my Irish forebears would have thought about me being a colonial governor.

  • [LAUGH] But

  • my great grandfather was born in Ireland in 1829, left Ireland during the famine.

  • So we all have these complicated identities ourselves.

  • And Maloof says at the end of his extraordinarily tough

  • on tackling identity politics says that normally when you're a writer.

  • You hope that in the future, your grandsons,

  • granddaughters will take books off the shelf and think this is a wonderful book.

  • Gosh, did our grandfather really write this?

  • He said his hope was that when his grandson took, I think it's called

  • the Pursuit of Identity or the Question of Identity and takes it off the shelf.

  • He'll look at it and

  • think, my goodness did people have to write books about this in those days.

  • So, it's a tall order but

  • I hope that identity politics is something that we can start to.

  • Illuminate even while comprehending the complexities

  • of other people's identity and the importance to other people should

  • have an identity which is respected and is given the dignity it deserves.

  • >> So on the topic of shaping identity,

  • you later went on to be the chairman of a media review for the Pope.

  • Now considering that they announce their election results through smoke signals.

  • I'm not quite so sure how one goes about reviewing the digital media policy and

  • coming up with Twitter and so forth.

  • But can you talk a little bit about How that came about and

  • the effect you think its had, and the drive and reaches achieved.

  • >> Well the message, the invitation was of course brought by Dove.

  • [LAUGH] Carry on Dove, yes.

  • I was quite surprised to be asked to do it but jumped at it.

  • I'm a cradle Catholic, and I'm a huge admirer of this pope.

  • And I'm what would be regarded as a fairly liberal character.

  • I didn't think the Arch Bishop of San Francisco would have

  • much truck with some of my opinions.

  • So a great admirer thought that it

  • was a pity that a man who was probably the best communicator

  • in the world had a pretty, to put it mildly,

  • archaic way of Communicating.

  • I mean the budgets in the Vatican when we started work was pretty well,

  • 92% spent on a newspaper, the Observatory Romano.

  • And on radio and we all know

  • that most people getting their information on television and social media.

  • So actually even from that sort of fundamental point of view there

  • was a lot to be done.

  • I had a very good team including a brilliant

  • social media expert who just happens to be An ex-banker, but

  • now a member of the Dominicans.

  • A great French priest, called Eric Celobere, and a very,

  • very good group of others from outside.

  • Two excellent women, a German and

  • a Spanish, and we've put together a series of proposals,

  • which the Pope, which His Holiness, accepted.

  • And established a team of Italians to implement.

  • So, I hope it's.

  • [LAUGH].

  • There was no footnote to that observation,

  • but I hope it goes well.

  • It's very important that it should,

  • to be fair to the person who's leading this team.

  • He's been head of Vatican television for a long time, and

  • the technical competence of Vatican television is extraordinarily high.

  • But it does matter, it particularly matters that

  • people are getting the sort of social media messages which they require.

  • When I want to know what the time of Mass,

  • or I look it up as I would look up Trailer for films.

  • And I think most people are like that and

  • they're slightly surprised when they can't get the information that they want.

  • He is a remarkable man and

  • we must all hope he survives.

  • I used to have my meetings in the Santa Marcia which is the.

  • Hostel that he lives in.

  • And one day we'd had a meeting and we were having lunch and

  • it was his birthday, so it would have been December 2014, I suppose.

  • And he's sitting with cleaning ladies and the lavatory attendants and

  • the cooks having his birthday lunch.

  • And I said to the very nice Irish priest who was looking after me,

  • that it was a terrific, terrific size.

  • And he said, yes, you haven't heard the best of it though.

  • He said as his popemobile was crossing St.

  • Peter's Square, he was stopped by a group of

  • Argentinean pilgrims with a bowl of that herbal drink Mate.

  • Which some of you may love, I might say I prefer a dry martini, anyway.

  • [LAUGH].

  • He's handed the Mate and takes a great swig out of it and

  • his detectives, his bodyguard says,

  • heavenly father, you must never do that.

  • You never take a drink from people in the streets, it could be poison.

  • So the Pope had replied apparently, what's the matter he said,

  • they were pilgrims, not Cardinals.

  • [LAUGH].

  • So, we must hope he survives.

  • So, I think with that I'll turn to the audience for questions.

  • And I believe we have a couple of microphones roaming around.

  • Selena, don't know if you have a question from Twitter to start?

  • Let's start with a question from Twitter.

  • So a lot of us have worked with very different managers,

  • but what was it like working with the Pope and the queen?

  • [COUGH] Different sexes.

  • >> [LAUGH] >> I must say,

  • just one point on that which is not irrelevant.

  • When I first went to one of the Pope's private Masses,

  • I said to my secretary, I'm a priest, how does this differ

  • from what it would have been like under previous popes?

  • And he said, easy, he said, there are women on the altar.

  • The Pope.

  • I'll tell you one similarity.

  • And I don't want to be accused of leze-majeste,

  • either in its ecclesiastical form or its less spiritual form.

  • They're best, quite simple and straightforward,

  • neither of them remotely grand.

  • When I had conversations with Pope Francis and

  • when it was business it would be a one-on-one.

  • Or one with an interpreter because my Italian isn't as good as it should be.

  • No other people around in a simple,

  • rather a dreary, little waiting room in the Santa Marta.

  • Not sort of lots of purple and scarlet and

  • sashes and berettas and so on.

  • Similarly, when you see the queen,

  • she's perfectly normal and straightforward.

  • She starts the day, as most of us do in Britain,

  • listening to the BBC radio [LAUGH] Today program.

  • And she is what you would have expected

  • of somebody born in the 1930s,

  • yeah, just, or 20s, English,

  • well British, upper class.

  • She starts with those opinions, which have been modified over

  • the years by the number of Prime Ministers she had seen come and

  • go, and the number of members of the public she's met.

  • The extraordinary thing is that for somebody of her age, and

  • how enthusiastically she cares about her public duties.

  • Having had to do a bit of that as a colonial governor, it can be pretty boring

  • and she never gives that impression that also.

  • What they both exemplify is a very old fashioned virtue

  • which I hope exists, I mean I've done some jumps in business.

  • But I hope exists in business, or should exist in everybody's life and

  • makes things easier, they both have a sense of duty and obligation.

  • And maybe if only as citizens that's something which we should feel.

  • So they're perfectly normal to deal with.

  • And quite funny.

  • That's great.

  • The queen has a very good sense of humor.

  • So your next question.

  • Hi, Lord Patten, thank you so much for your speech today,

  • my name is I'm a second year MBA student.

  • I have a question regarding, since you're Tory,

  • I was wondering if you comment a little bit about how the recent release of

  • the Panama Papers would have on the Cameron government.

  • And also, given that you spoke very eloquently about social inequity,

  • looking back at the previous few governments.

  • The Prime Ministers, the Deputy Prime Ministers, Nick Clegg,

  • David Cameron, Tony Blair, they all belong to the Oxbridge elite.

  • And do you think that kind of social stratification

  • is going to continue going forward?

  • Second question is, if you were able to talk to the presidency right now.

  • I think we will start with those, that was all ready two just there.

  • So if we start with those two pretty meaty questions.

  • Let me deal with the second one first.

  • It's true that there are a huge number of British Prime Ministers and

  • Ministers, and Members of Parliament And

  • judges, and senior executives, and

  • editors of newspapers of left, right, and center.

  • Huge number of people who

  • run things in United Kingdom who went to Oxford and Cambridge.

  • And why is that?

  • The reason is that Oxford and Cambridge along with

  • Imperial and UCL and Kings College London

  • are the best universities and the toughest ones to get into.

  • It shouldn't be a surprise that the people who go look

  • it's too very large in the United States.

  • It shouldn't be a surprise that the people who are smart enough to go to the toughest

  • universities go on to get to the top end of their careers.

  • I think we have an establishment, which is overwhelmingly meritocratic.

  • It's overwhelmingly based on competence rather

  • than connections they're connections can come into it.

  • But I'm nowadays described by the, by the popular press as a Tory Grandee.

  • My mother who was not unknown to be a bit of a It's unfair to say social climate,

  • but you like to think that she was cut off the slightly classier block.

  • My mother would have been delighted to hear me called Tory grandee.

  • Here I am, my dad was a professional drummer in a jazz band.

  • We lived in a semi detached house in

  • a part of London suburbs which was on the margins between lower and middle class.

  • And, I went on the scholarship to secondary schools,

  • I went on the scholarship when I was 16 from my secondary school to Oxford.

  • I'm a scholarship boy and I found myself

  • in my life doing jobs surrounded by the scholarship boys.

  • That is true, that's David Cameron is an old attorney on

  • But his predecessor was a Scottish grammar school boy.

  • His predecessor was at a rather grim school in Scotland.

  • His predecessor John Major left school at 16.

  • And his father sold garden gnomes.

  • His first job interview was to become a bus conductor and he was turned down.

  • He predecessor was Margaret Thatcher,

  • whose father ran a grocery, and was a scholarship girl.

  • Her predecessor I could go on, as of the conservative party but

  • as the son of a small building merchant.

  • My wife used to stay with some friends in the town where we worked

  • and whenever the lavatories were blocked they'd send for Ted Heath's father.

  • So, I think we're a much more socially mobile

  • society and it's not surprising that people from one of the most

  • difficult universities to get into finish up doing some of the toughest jobs.

  • But, what is incredibly important for

  • any meritocracy is to ensure that it recognizes

  • that there are even broader ladders behind it in order to let people climb up them.

  • What's incredibly important for people like me.

  • And others is to recognize the role of the state in helping us up the ladders.

  • And to recognize that the state is still required to help people from poorer and

  • more disadvantaged backgrounds and to get onto the matter.

  • And to rise up it.

  • So, I think meritocracies have to be benign and sensitive to the interests

  • of those who are coming after them if they're going to justify themselves.

  • On the Panama Papers, the Prime Minister I mean,

  • this has all happened since I've been away, but as I understand it.

  • His father had established a trust from which

  • his family benefited

  • when he died, as well as benefited.

  • I don't think anybody has suggested it was a way of evading tax.

  • Or covering up the billions that you'd earned as was the case with Mr Putin

  • for example.

  • And I think I'm right in saying it's the sort of trust,

  • which if you're an American citizen, you don't have to go to Panama to set

  • up because there are at least two American states where you can do it anyway.

  • I read Fareed Zakaria this week on why there were no American

  • names in the Panama Papers, and his argument was, well,

  • you don't have to do that if you're an American.

  • I think undoubtedly Cameron will suffer from a bit for

  • people being reminded that he was a rich toff.

  • And I'm not quite sure how long that lasts, and I regard

  • wealth envy as one of the less pleasant aspects of living in a democracy.

  • >> [INAUDIBLE] I have the privilege of asking the last question.

  • And you wrote a book, What Next for the 21st Century?

  • And then that's kind of a question that many of us,

  • especially second year student here, asking ourselves.

  • So what are the big problems that you see that some of us should put our minds to,

  • to start solving for or

  • what pearls of wisdom would you like to share with us to close?

  • >> I sent a copy of my book,

  • What Next, to the then chancellor of Cambridge University, who was

  • the Duke of Edinburgh the Queen's husband >> And

  • he was well into his 80s now well into the 90s and he sent me back

  • a handwritten reply saying what next question mark.

  • When you my age is there ever one answer.

  • [LAUGH] [LAUGH]

  • >> It's probably.

  • >> What next I tell you what I find surprising and

  • I think it's going to be the sort key, the sort of nodal issue in the next few years.

  • Most of us understand.

  • Most of us recognize intellectually that very

  • few of the problems that weigh on our society,

  • very few of the problems that confront our societies

  • could be dealt with by individual countries.

  • And yet at the same time, the enthusiasm for

  • international corporations to tackle those

  • problems has waned significantly.

  • So whether you're talking about epidemic disease or

  • international economic issues, trade or environmental issues,

  • or trafficking human beings, or trafficking guns.

  • None of those issues can be tackled unless there is cooperation and

  • while that is true, the support for

  • shared sovereignty, for shared policy making has declined significantly.

  • I think it's a real problem.

  • I think here in the United States, you have

  • a difficulty that the republicans believe in free trade, but

  • not in the institutions which are necessary in order to sustain it.

  • And the democrats believe in the institutions but not in the free trade

  • I think there are similar problems in other countries.

  • So I think reigniting a belief in

  • international cooperation, in international institutions,

  • to give credibility and legitimacy to that cooperation.

  • I think that is hugely important and

  • should be invested with a degree of hope,

  • which doesn't exist.

  • I think one of the things great universities like this one should do,

  • exist to do is to provide hope.

  • At the end of one of the most remarkable books

  • about international relations I've read,

  • Henry Kissinger's book on diplomacy which was written in the 1990s,

  • whenever people think about Henry Kissinger's record in government he's

  • an extraordinary fine historian.

  • And he's written, Diplomacy is a book about

  • the post-war settlement, the great contribution of

  • United States to the world after 1945, with some help from Europe.

  • The way that had brought peace, certainly in Europe, for

  • a longer period then anything since the congress of Vienna.

  • And he writes at the end about how that's shaking to pieces,

  • the point I've just made and he quotes

  • an old Spanish proverb, traveler where is the road,

  • don't ask where the road is, roads are made by walking.

  • And I think it's the role of universities to do some of the walking and

  • to show us where the roads are.

  • And I can think of know better or more important a task for

  • universities or for university teachers or for university students.

  • The last thing you should do it at a university is,

  • I think that it's somewhere where you can go to be safe or protected from the world.

  • And I can make one last controversial point.

  • I think it's an oxymoron

  • to talk about universities and safes basis in the same breath.

  • And I think universities are all about challenge and finding those roads,

  • and which will get us from one predicament to another,

  • because that's what being alive's all about.

  • >> That a delightful note in which to end, we'll all get out and walk and

  • chatter and path.

  • So please join me in welcoming, thanking.

  • >> [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC]

[MUSIC]

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