The last time I had lunch with BP’s long-serving chairman Peter Sutherland, in October, we were at his office at Goldman Sachs International, of which he is also chairman, and the share price of Royal Bank of Scotland (he is on the board) was in freefall.

Banking systems all over the western world were close to collapse that day and Sutherland, 62, was visibly shaken. The geniality that I’d noted at our first meeting in the summer (at the Salzburg Trilogue, a conference where we’d talked about the English Hispanist Gerald Brenan) was undiminished, but now Sutherland was understandably preoccupied. As we spoke over sandwiches about Spain (Sutherland’s wife is Spanish), he did not touch the food.

Two months later, the turbulence is a fact of life, and the former Irish European Union commissioner and director-general of the World Trade Organisation has chosen to lunch at Wiltons in Jermyn Street. There’s an overwhelmingly male, club-like atmosphere. I can see why Sutherland likes it here – he is at the centre of the establishment in all its forms: in addition to his business interests he is chairman of the London School of Economics. And, a staunch Catholic, he is financial adviser to the Holy See.

He arrives in a navy blue suit, striped shirt and closely patterned tie, not entirely camouflaging the physique of a former University College Dublin and Lansdowne Rugby Union Club front-row forward. The maître d’ and waiters greet him as a familiar, and he returns the compliment, speaking solicitously to a waiter who has a stiff neck.

On his mind today is not the credit crunch, although we will return to this later, but Europe. It is the guiding thread of our conversation, and soon after our lunch news will break that Ireland is to hold a second referendum on the Lisbon treaty – designed to reform the workings of the EU, and which Irish voters rejected first time round in June last year.

Life story:

The passions of Peter Sutherland

1946: Born in Dublin on April 25. The son of an insurance broker, Sutherland was educated at Gonzaga College, Ireland’s top Jesuit day school, and then read law at University College Dublin. He graduated in civil law, and was admitted to the Bar in Ireland, England and New York, as well as being licensed to practise at the US Supreme Court, writes Olivia Keetch.

1969: Began practising as a barrister in Dublin.

1971: Married María del Pilar Cabria Valcarcel – they have two sons and a daughter, and divide their time between London, Ireland and Spain.

1981: Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald made Sutherland, then 35, Ireland’s youngest ever attorney-general.

1984: Nominated by the Irish government as its European commissioner, and spent four years in Brussels (1985-1989).

1989: Turned to business, becoming chairman of Allied Irish Bank and, in 1990, joining the board of BP. But Sutherland gave up both these roles when he became director-general of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt) in July 1993. When the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was set up in 1995 he served as its first director-general.

1995: Left the WTO and returned to business as non-executive chairman of Goldman Sachs International and non-executive director and deputy chairman of BP. Appointed BP chairman in May 1997.

2004: Awarded the honorary title of Knight Commander, in the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, in recognition of his services to British trade and international business.

2006: Then secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, appointed him UN special representative for migration. In 2006 Sutherland became a financial adviser to the Vatican, in a role with the suitably exalted job title of “Consultor of the Extraordinary Section of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See”.

2008: Became chairman of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His other academic posts have included visiting professor at University College, Dublin, and distinguished visiting fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels.

We just have time to order starters – lobster bisque Newburg for me, wild Scottish smoked salmon for him, and a glass of Chablis each (he says no at first but is easily persuaded) – before Sutherland launches into a defence of the philosophical underpinnings of the EU.

“The founding fathers of the EU were explicitly philosophical in their approach. The philosopher who influenced the EU’s chief architect Robert Schuman in particular was Jacques Maritain, with his concept of forgiveness, and his idea of personalism, of the dignity of man not being linked to race. Forgiveness – after the bloodiest war in history – was the key to it, the essence of the argument. And it proceeded as an attack on nationalism, which had led to the wars, on national sovereignty, through a pincer movement of creating the supra-national entity above and the 1931 doctrine of subsidiarity below.”

As I sip my wine (it is an excellent steely-dry 2006 from Jean Durup) I find it something of a shock to hear a prominent business leader speaking in such Europhile and integrationist, not to mention philosophical, terms. I remark that most current European leaders seem to take an entirely pragmatic and non-philosophical approach to the EU, in public at least. And in Britain, where philosophy has never been popular, a Eurosceptic press makes it practically impossible for a politician to say anything positive about Europe.

Mention of the Eurosceptic – and especially the Murdoch – press brings something close to a scowl to Sutherland’s normally cheerful face. “I read an exposé in Ireland claiming that leader writers on the Irish edition of The Sunday Times were instructed to write against the referendum. And that’s not to mention the tabloids. I feel personally wounded in relation to the Irish rejection of the Lisbon treaty; I gave up a week to campaign and argue for it, on television and so on. I still don’t entirely understand it. After all there’s no deep current of Euroscepticism in Ireland; over 80 per cent of the Irish think the EU’s a good thing.”

There’s no doubt about his passion for the subject. He has said that the job he really wanted was president of the Commission; he was favoured by Jacques Delors and the British government and, but for a change of government in Ireland, he might have been Delors’ successor. “I do absolutely believe in the European project. I think it’s the most noble political ideal in European history in a thousand years. Thank goodness the Spanish have embraced it.”

Such sentiments must rarely be voiced in Wiltons. Visible from our comfortable alcove table is Sir John Major, the former British prime minister whose ultimately unsuccessful attempt to hold together a Conservative party divided on Europe ushered in the reign of New Labour.

Sutherland may lament the excessive pragmatism of the English and prime ministers such as Margaret Thatcher but he has a generally positive view of Britain. “For me Britain is the most tolerant and moderate of places, with the greatest respect for human rights and, of course, the long history of democracy. But at the same time, it is the greatest perpetrator of negative stereotypes of other people – you see it all the time in the tabloids. And stereotypes are indicative of an attack on the kind of principle we were talking about earlier of the dignity and equality of human beings irrespective of race, gender, creed.”

The main courses arrive. Wiltons is famed for fish, and Sutherland has opted for seared scallops with a portion of spinach and – a particular favourite of this ardent European, it seems – Brussels sprouts. I have gone for grilled halibut with spinach. A second glass of Chablis is in order. Once again, Sutherland takes little persuading. “This is a deliberate attempt to undermine my defences!”

We move on to the business of BP. Sutherland is disarmingly offhand about his long association with the company. “I’m not really a businessman at all. I’m a jobbing barrister by trade.” (He was Ireland’s youngest ever attorney-general.) “I first came across BP when I fined it, as EU competition commissioner. And then there was a European link. Some Europhiles, including David Simon who became chief executive and then chairman, persuaded me to join the board. I became deputy chairman and then when Tony Blair was elected, out of the blue David Simon was ennobled and joined the government – this was 1997 – and I became temporary chairman, and the temporary chairman has become the longest-serving chairman in BP’s history.”

Something must keep him there. “Oh yes, I love it. I’ve loved it. BP is a global company. I have been involved in the EU and later in the WTO, as director, in the integration of countries through economic means, which goes back to the whole issue of nationalism and how to handle it. And BP is a practising element of the globalising process, which is what this is all about.”

Not everyone loves multinationals, especially big energy companies. “Of course there are people who would attack multinationals. And there are good multinationals and bad ones. But overall I’ve never come across in my experience at BP what I would consider to be anything other than a totally moral approach to decision-making.”

These are fighting words. Sutherland is prepared to back them up. “We were among the first to recognise publicly the challenge of climate change. We were the first to make a very strong position on bribery and corruption. We wouldn’t allow it, and we created a main board committee covering ethics.”

No wonder Sutherland is fighting BP’s corner. The company has had some high-profile problems in recent years, most notably the fatal explosion at its Texas City refinery in 2005. In recent months there has been a business dispute at its Russian joint venture, TNK-BP. As we meet, this problem is in the process of being resolved but it has focused world attention on the difficulty facing foreign investors in Russia.

And, although he is charming to me, there is another side to him – he has a tough reputation as a business fixer and enforcer. In 2006 he had a public battle with BP’s former chief executive, Lord Browne.

As 2009 will be his last as chairman, I wonder whether he has plans to replace his BP hat with another one. “No, I am not going to substitute the BP chairmanship with anything similar. There are a lot of things I want to do with my life now . I’m hugely enjoying being chairman of the LSE [he took this on a year ago] – it’s such an intellectually stimulating place.

“The other day I invited the great historian of Spain, Paul Preston, who’s a professor there, to lunch at the Garrick, which I belong to. I’d just been reading Preston’s latest book about the Spanish civil war. And Preston said, ‘What’s this all in aid of? The chairman rings me up and asks me to lunch, what’s up?’, and I replied, ‘Absolutely nothing, I just wanted to meet Paul Preston.’”

A waiter brings the dessert menu. Will Sutherland be tempted? “Absolutely not. Oh, I might take the fresh raspberries. But no cream.” “Some ice cream, sir?” asks the waiter. “No. Where are you from?” “From Poland.” “Good – excellent. Lovely country.” You can see the waiter being charmed, as countless adversaries, interlocutors and colleagues have also been over the years.

There is one subject we have not mentioned, and I know I must bring it up. As chairman of Goldman Sachs International, Sutherland has worked for a bank that has weathered recent months far better than many of its competitors (although it has been forced to convert itself into a conventional deposit-taking institution in order to cope better with the recession).

As we start a new year, I want to know where Sutherland thinks we have got to on the rocky road of the financial crisis. “I think we’re a long way from seeing the end of it. I won’t say it is inexplicable, but certainly it wasn’t predicted. It is very, very dangerous. For a long time people were in denial about the linkage between financial markets and real markets.

“Two weeks ago I was in Istanbul – I’m vice-chairman of the European Round Table of Industrialists, the gathering of chairmen and CEOs of the 47 top companies in Europe – and I’ve never heard such a uniformly negative view of the future.”

As the raspberries and crème brûlée arrive we have hit a sombre note. “It’s deeply worrying if it affects places like China – which it has, with the World Bank predicting growth down to 7 per cent. You already have a lot of people being laid off, and there are very serious potential social consequences. Including social consequences in Europe and the US.”

Over coffee I ask whether lessons can be learned from recent events.

“Yes, there are questions we should be asking ourselves, especially in the Anglo-Saxon economies. If you look at Denmark as an economy, you have higher marginal rates of tax, lower unemployment, a very high safety net support, and GDP per capita significantly higher than this country’s. This is the social model everyone was moaning about. But maybe it works rather well. What you also have, agreed with the unions, is a flexible labour market. Labour market flexibility is to my mind very, very important – far more important than the ability to earn very large sums of money.”

Just as I am formulating a response to this, Sutherland takes the words out of my mouth. “I feel somewhat hypocritical because I’ve been a beneficiary of this” – and judging by the well-cut suits around us he is not the only one – “but I don’t think that has interfered with my thinking processes. I do think we need to reflect on a certain culture of excess.”

Harry Eyres’ ‘The Slow Lane’

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Wiltons
Jermyn Street, London SW1

1 x wild Scottish smoked salmon £28.00
1 x Lobster bisque Newburg £13.00
1 x seared scallops £28.00
1 x grilled halibut £26.00
2 x spinach £10.00
1 x brussels sprouts £5.00
1 x fresh raspberries £12.00
1 x crème brûlée £10.00
4 x glass Chablis £32.00
2 x double espresso £ 10.00
2 x espresso £9.00
1 x mineral water £5.00

Total (inc. service) £211.50