Markus Leitner was appointed Swiss ambassador to the United Kingdom in August 2021. He has worked in South Africa and Chile and is a former ambassador to Iran and Egypt. Interview by Lucy Kenningham. Can you pinpoint a highlight of your career so far? I’ve been lucky in the timings of my placements. I was in South Africa during Thabo Mbeki’s presidency. It was an optimistic period:  Nelson Mandela was still alive, prices for resource exports were high. It was the same in Chile – the copper price was high and the country was thriving.  Egypt, though, was a different story. I handed my letter of credentials to President Morsi who was in prison two weeks later. It was a dramatic and drastic start, and a very uncertain time.  I started in Iran at the same time as the new American president (Trump) took the US out of the nuclear agreement, changing things dramatically. It was an extremely challenging yet interesting few years.  Perhaps the real highlight is still to come? I’ve already had one in London. When you present your letters of credence to the Queen, you are taken in a coach to Buckingham Palace. Every head of mission has a 15-minutes exchange with the Queen. When you reflect that she has received 16 of my predecessors in her 74 years as monarch, you get a feeling of the historic dimensions. You initially worked in banking (perhaps explaining your reference to commodity prices). Does this give you a particular insight as an ambassador? I do think it was a factor for my appointment to this job. Switzerland is the fourth largest investor in the UK and a major trading partner. Now that the UK has left the EU, it’s natural that we work together on financial services, for example. We are two huge hubs for finance and innovation. How much interaction do you have with our Parliament? I recently had a dinner in parliament with our British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce. There’s also a highly active APPG for Switzerland. We also have something very special: the parliamentary ski trip. As ambassador I will take part too, though not in the downhill race!  I recently went to Parliament with our Foreign Policy Committee, and accompanied them to Edinburgh and Belfast. With the UK being outside the EU, it’s in our mutual interest to compare notes on ideas and strategies.  Switzerland has a unique relationship with the EU. Are there lessons here for the UK? Switzerland has never been a member, but we have over 100 agreements with the EU. Our starting point thus differs to the UK’s, but we face similar issues, such as our access to the Horizon Europe research programme. It’s not about Switzerland “teaching” the UK. Switzerland is not in the EU, but it is in Schengen. Has Brexit affected Switzerland or UK-Swiss relations? Brexit has had an impact on our negotiations with the EU Commission, which has to find a way to deal with third countries that are not en route to becoming members. They look at the UK and Switzerland and probably don’t want to give one advantage over the other – although as I’ve said, we’ve come from very different places. Can you give us a flavour of the Swiss reaction to Brexit? The Swiss have followed Brexit with a lot of interest. It’s based on a referendum – and we know a lot about those in Switzerland! At the same time, the Swiss will not comment on another country’s referendum decisions. We don’t like this either when it happens to us! How often do the Swiss hold referenda? There’s a national referendum every three months and it’s just a normal feature of life. In fact they’re held more often even than that. There are referenda on the federal (national) level, the canton (county) level, and the communal level. What are the implications for Parliament? You always need a solid majority if you want to bring through a law. Parliamentarians need to find broad consensus on legislation because otherwise your opponents can collect signatures and force through a referendum. That might limit the Parliament’s importance in terms of decision-making compared to the UK. But it is key in terms of shaping the debate and finding compromise for new legislation.  Is the participation rate very high? At the last referendum, it was 66 per cent. Everyone is registered automatically which means that 66 per cent of the entire adult population really is a considerable turnout. Not every referendum has such a high participation rate, but we try to make it easy for the population to participate in democratic processes. Is this a uniquely Swiss way of running things? There are other countries with elements of direct democracy, but ours is very specific. Referenda and popular initiatives were not set out in our Constitution back in 1848, but have evolved over time, making our political system unique.  What I think is interesting is that our referenda are always binding. You see referenda in many different countries but often they are a consultation. In Switzerland people know that their vote counts, their vote decides, and they d...