Ask him whether he thinks that The X Factor was rigged against the Welsh singer Lucie Jones, a colleague suggests before our interview with Peter Hain. But the Welsh Secretary looks blank when we do. He doesn’t do frivolous or populist, he’s a serious politician. The former anti-apartheid campaigner has become the left-wing conscience of the Cabinet. He is not ashamed to advocate higher taxes on the rich, he wants a wholly elected House of Lords and is a strong supporter of the trade unions.
What concerns him most at the moment, though, is foreign policy, particularly the war in Afghanistan. The discredited election there has raised questions about whether Britain should be involved at all. “You need a legitimate system of government. We don’t have that at the moment and it has to be sorted,” he says. “The whole credibility of our attempt to create a democratic system of politics is under threat if there isn’t a principle of good government embedded.”
He is not alone. Karl Eikenberry, the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, has warned the White House against a troop surge and criticised President Karzai.
Mr Hain, who was the Foreign Office minister responsible for Afghanistan between 1999 and 2001, says that the Afghan President has to clean up his act. “I don’t think you can crudely trade off 100 more troops for sorting out this nook or cranny of government. But we have to be very clear that we are in there to create a better situation and a system of governance that has respect from its citizens.
“It is hard to see how the Afghans can respect a government after an election in which a third of the ballot papers were forged. The whole election completely discredited the structure of government. Our troops aren’t fighting to protect a corrupt leader, they are fighting to defeat al-Qaeda. Our mission will not succeed unless good governance marches hand in hand with good security.”
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The aim, in his view, must be to build up local leaders so that Mr Karzai no longer dominates from the centre. “It’s not just about corruption and rigging the election, we need to do things in a different way. We need to encourage bottom-up growth of provincial, regional and local political development. What you can’t have is a model in which the Kabul Government establishes outposts in Helmand and elsewhere and expects local people to buy into that. You have to negotiate with local forces.”
Does that include the Taleban? “Yes, you have to have discussions with the Taleban — a large section is not wedded to al-Qaeda. In Northern Ireland at one point we thought the war could be won. We couldn’t win without a political solution but equally we had to make it clear to the IRA that they couldn’t win militarily. We have to make the Taleban understand they can’t drive the international coalition out.”
For too long Afghanistan was misunderstood by the West, he says. “Mistakes were made in the past. In Iraq they had a state run by an evil dictator but Afghanistan has always been feudal. They don’t have a state, they have never had a state. We have to build a system of government that is more organic. We can’t just have a besieged government in Kabul — not just in terms of terrorist and security threats, but contempt from the people.”
He believes that the Afghan people are on the same side as the West. “They certainly don’t want Osama bin Laden coming back riding triumphant on a horse into Kabul. We are not trying to create a British or American colony. That would be wrong and completely, catastrophically counter-productive. This is a partnership which will either work or fail. It is under strain; I don’t think it is yet failing.”
Last week the former Foreign Office minister Kim Howells said that the Government should set a timetable for withdrawal. Mr Hain disagrees but he does think that voters have to believe that the end is in sight. “My timetable is this: we can’t be there for ever and we can’t leave now. When people start putting 20 years on it, that is unacceptable. I’m not going to give a limit but we don’t want a long time frame.”
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He would be open to the Commons being given a chance to vote on Afghanistan if a “sensible” question can be drawn up. “I’m in favour of government being accountable to Parliament whether that’s on matters of war or matters of peace,” he says.
Public opinion is overwhelmingly against the military campaign. “There’s a lot of uneasiness about what we’re doing. The public is horrified by the mounting death toll and worried about how long the war will last. I don’t think they think we should pull out but they do want a much clearer forward strategy that is capable of being successful.”
Does he think people have died because of equipment shortages? “I can’t imagine there’s ever been a war that Britain’s fought where equipment issues haven’t featured in casualties. We are getting more helicopters into theatre all the time.”
Although he sympathises with Jacqui Janes over the loss of her son, Jamie, he thinks that Mr Brown should not be blamed for his poor handwriting. “There’s been a backlash against The Sun’s treatment of Gordon on this issue. As somebody who has suffered deep personal loss himself, he understands better than most of us what it is to lose a child.”
The Prime Minister, he points out, has never played for sympathy over his poor eyesight. “He is a very proud man. He has a disability that he has never hidden. It doesn’t affect his capacity to do his job but if he didn’t spot whether one particular word was clear in a letter I think most people would forgive him for that.”
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He believes that the voters will warm to Mr Brown between now and the general election. “His strengths are the ones people will come to see as the ones we need at the moment and they’ll forgive him for the fact he’s not a showman and can be a bit awkward if they know he’s on their side.”
In his view the general election could be more like the one in 1992, which the governing party won, than 1997, which brought an opposition landslide. “We’re going into the election as the underdogs but it’s not just going to be about fed-upness with Labour after 13 years in power, it’s also going to be about fear of the Tories.”
Labour does have to change, though. “There’s been a torrent of new ideas and documents in the last year. What there hasn’t been is a strong political message. Ministers should be campaigning rather than being preoccupied with red boxes and sitting in Cabinet committees.”
The BNP, he warns, is sucking up the support of the white working class who feel abandoned by Labour. “We mustn’t turn our back on our traditional working-class vote . . . We need to work a lot harder on reassuring people that the BNP offers them no answer to their concerns over affordable housing and job security.”
Immigration is a big concern. “We have been tough in what we’ve done — maybe later than we should have been — but we haven’t been open enough about the issue,” says Mr Hain, who made his name fighting racism. “We are a very congested island and the thought of rushing up to 70 million is really problematic for me.”