The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

In the first ever episode of ‘Leading’, Alastair and Rory are joined by former Deputy Prime Minister, Michael Heseltine. One of the biggest names in the last half-century of British politics, Lord Heseltine discusses everything from his crucial role in the rise and fall of Margaret Thatcher to his current position in the House of Lords.  Tune in to hear Michael talk about how politics has changed, why he lost the Conservative whip, Europe, Brexit, and the Miners’ Strike. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening, join the TRIP Plus Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's therestispoletics.com. Hello and welcome to the Restis Politics leading with me, Anastis-Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. So, Alisa, concept with the Restis Politics leading is it's going to be our new podcast with interviews on it. And what guests are we going to get on this show? We have lined up a whole variety of people. I'm in politics. I'm not in politics.

Marina Litvinenko, who I did a while back. Arsendvenger has agreed to do it. Oh, very good. I've got to be there for that. I'm a real fan of his, actually, despite my... You know nothing about football? I know nothing about football. I do. I do. I do worship Arsengen. You do worship? Yeah, I really admire Arsnevonnevarez. No, worship, really worship is

what you do to God. Okay. Well, you do. I don't, you do. Fiona Hill. Great. Foreign policy lady. Expert on Russia. Michael Johnson. Do you know who Michael Johnson is? The basketball player. That's Michael Jordan. runner. Yes.

The runner. How do you know him? God, get around. I get around. I get around. So anyway, it's going to be new podcast feed. Not going on the rest is politics

because, as people have already heard, they're not all going to be politicians. The Archbishop, by the way, has said he'll do it. Archbishop Canterbury. As has the other old Etonian, the headmaster of Eden, that you keep pushing off into the near distance,

the far distance. So people just got to subscribe wherever you get your podcast. It's going to be released weekly on Mondays until we run out of people to interview, but I guess we never will. Very good. Well, looking forward to it very much. So our first ever guest on the rest of his politics leading is...

Is none other than former Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine? You know, Michael, I don't really believe in the honour system, and I want to get rid of the House of Lords. So I find it very difficult to say, my Lord. So are we OK with Michael? If you push me. Good. I'm pushing you. So, Michael.

Now, you were born on March the 21st, 1933. what other extraordinarily significant historical event took place on that day? Well, it's not one I'm proud to recall, but it is a matter of historic fact. It was the day that Hitler took power in Nazi Germany. Do you think that to some extent, because it gives us a sense of how far you go back, but does it also explain why through your life, and I've known you for a very long time, you've had this near obsession, I think it's fair to call it, with, Britain's place in Europe. And I just wonder if we could kick off by if you gave us, you know,

fairly briefly that sense of the historical context of your life and the ups and downs of our relations with Europe and how we've ended up where we are now. I don't think the two events are in any way linked because I don't think I knew the Hitler analogy until much later. But of course, why I do remember a European experience is because I lived through the Second World War. I actually remember standing in the garden of our home in Swansea with my grandfather, watching the searchlights, searching for the German bombers. We had a little dog, and he knew every night the bombers would come, and he'd be sitting at the top of the stairs waiting to go to the cellars.

We weren't there the whole of the war because we followed my father, but we were there enough of it to know of. the experience. And my first very clear memories are broadly associated with the feeling in Europe, it must never happen again. People talk about Europe as a sort of economic phenomenon, not an economic phenomenon. If you look at a thousand years of our history, what were we doing there, battling with virtually every European nation, battling across the world. For the people of my generation, they remember three wars in three quarters of a century, Franco-Prussian War, First World War, Second World War. And the absolute obsessional conviction, it must never happen again.

It didn't start with economics, started with a Schumann plan, which was basically to try and get a grip on the war-making industries, coal, iron, and steel. Then with the leadership of Monet, it became a wider platform and it presented for this country a very understandable and traumatic choice because however you want to think about it, we did play the most incredible role from 1939 to 1940. We were alone and we really were. We should also say, of course, with the backing, the incredible backing of the Commonwealth and Empire countries. But, In the immediate context of our homeland, we were alone and threatened, threatened by the submarines, U-boats in the Atlantic.

And, of course, then came the remarkable speech, the Churchillian speech, we must create a kind of United States of Europe. And that was the background to my early political experiences. Now, it's been questioned. What did he mean? Some say he didn't mean us, but he didn't say they should create. He said we must create. Michael, you remember being pro-European from your mid-teens and onwards. When you were originally involved in university politics and your late teens as an undergraduate at Oxford, were you

already consciously keen for Britain to join the European community? I was part of a movement within the University Conservative Association to get a more democratic franchise for the election of officers. And we started a breakaway organization called the Blue Ribbon Club. And the Blue Ribbon Club, not surprisingly had a blue cover for its membership, but it had three interwoven circles on the cover. And they were, of course, the Commonwealth, the United States and Europe interwoven. And I was 18, 19 at that time. So just on the historical perspective, what has happened that took us to a situation where in 2016, the UK left the European Union, any attempt to have a serious debate about the consequences appears to be null and void,

virtually impossible at the moment with our politics, and the historical perspective has vanished from the debate. You might try to put it in there, we might try to put it in there a little bit, but in terms of a genuine debate about Britain's place in Europe, it appears to have gone. Yes, I think that is true. And I think, of course, well, We've given an awful lot of thought to this issue. In a curious way, I don't think the referendum was about Europe. Of course, it technically was. But what were people really voting about?

And I think if you ask that question, they were voting for change. And if you're going to argue for change, the important thing is to dangle in front of people something that they can identify that they want to change. Well, the first thing you've always got to do, and this is true of all general elections, is prosperity. You've got to show them hope that things can get economically better for them. Now you're going to have some people to blame. And who are you going to blame? Well, it's quite important politically not to blame people who might vote for you.

So the important thing is to have foreigners, them, somebody else. And if you can throw in a few foreigners with red tape, tying us and shackling, us, how much more coherent is that to people feeling that their living standards are not rising as they had hoped. Their aspirations are not being met. So I think that's why the Brexit campaign took off. It was because the underlying circumstances of frustration created a void. Right, but they're not better off. And a lot of people who voted for it would now accept that they're not better off and that they were lied to. And yet, it is still very, very, very difficult to generate a sensible, mature, reasonable debate about Britain's future in Europe.

Now, you're 89, as we said, and you are one of the few people who keep saying it can be reversed and eventually it will be reversed, and I hope you're right, but what is the route? And do you think it can be done in your lifetime? Well, when you're facing your 90th birthday, questions about your longevity have a certain sensitivity, if I may, put it to you, frankly. So I'm not going to get carried. It's not a secret. I'm not going to get carried away and say we're going to be having a new referendum tomorrow.

But do I think that we'll change? Yes, I do. And what's the route? The younger generation. Because to me, the most appalling thing of Brexit is what it's done to the younger generation. Because it has really said to them, look, you may all feel that we're in the same continent and there are all these environmental issues that are going to affect us

and all sorts of other big international things. But you're not going to be at the table where these things are discussed. Sorry about that because we know best. We're independent. We're free. We're going to be a new imperial power or whatever rubbish you want to put.

And they can see that there are the European colleagues altogether taking decisions in which they have no part. But they're not taking to the streets. There doesn't seem to be the kind of anger that we saw when we were doing the people's vote campaign. That appears to have evaporated. I think that's perfectly fair.

But my guess is that as the failure to deliver Brexit, because it never could be delivered, but as it becomes more clear, and as the frustrations grow, and as the younger generation become a much larger part of the electorate, it may not create anger. But it might create an intellectual understanding. Michael, obviously we're very sympathetic to your views on this.

But one of the interesting questions is why were you not able to win this debate within the Conservative Party and become leader? Why was Ken Clark not able to win this debate within the Conservative Party and become leader? And in a much smaller way, when I was trying to run on these issues and the Conservative Party to become leader, again, I found it impossible to really win through, impossible to get sufficient. momentum from MPs and members to make these kinds of arguments? Yes. Well, I did a bit of research on this. And curiously enough, about a month ago, I got a letter from a former Tory MP who told me that David Cameron had told him that he couldn't use him in the referendum campaign because he was too pro-European. And that struck

a chord with me. Because just about the time before the referendum campaign, I was invited to go to an evening occasion, which had politicians of serious stature from all parties, and I was asked to make my European view clear, and I made the speech. And forgive me for saying so, but unanimously people came up, and we've never heard that said before. We've never understood the basis upon which all this happened, and you must be part of the process. And to my pleasure, I thought, well, that's good news. But I never heard another word. And it was later, after the referendum, I talked to a senior guy in number 10.

I said, why did you never use me? And they said, because you were perceived to be too European, that you might have said you liked the idea of the euro, and we dare to have that. I think what David Cameron did was to look at the public opinion polls, which showed that a lot of the European issue, resentments, all about economics. So David focused his defense of the European venture on economic grounds. Actually, there's no emotion in economics. The real issue for Europe, a thousand years of warfare.

Sort of trying to get to the bottom of this question of how the Conservative Party responded to you, you were almost prime minister, you almost became leader, but it didn't work. Is there something structural about the Conservative Party, its members of Parliament, its ideology, which makes it difficult for somebody like you or later Ken Clark to become leader? No, I don't think so. Ted Heath did it? Ted Heath did it, yes. But I think the answer is much simpler that he who wields a knife never wears the crown. And Margaret had a great following in the party, and I was perceived to be the person who had brought her down.

And, of course, I did play a part in it. I also think I'd help save the party because I got rid of the poll tax as part of the process. We'd have got decimated if we'd fought with the poll tax in place. But that did cause a great division, and I was the cause, or seen to be the cause. But do you think your more European, more wet fees were not part of the problem? He'd rebel at the wet. Yeah, yes, yes, yes. He's a hard-edged, right-wing, economic Tory.

You think of a Tory minister who's privatised more of public sector activities than me. And he's still proud of it. And I'm still proud of it. And I would do it again. Yes, absolutely. So putting the thing in context, who did Margaret put into the front line on the two great battles that she fought? On sale of council houses and on the defeat of CND, me. And our relationship with Margaret as a colleague was a very good one.

She thought, she told the chief whip, Michael Joplin, that she said, thought I was her natural successor. It was until the European issue became the focal point of her concern that I felt the time had come to go. When Margaret Thatcher died, how did you feel? What was your assessment of her life and legacy and her role in your life? Well, in part, I've just described we had as colleagues a very good relationship. I mean, that doesn't mean to say we liked each other or were friends. That's ridiculous. That's not. the nature of the relationships of people in business or universities or hospitals or politics, but you work alongside someone with someone and sometimes you work for somebody. And in my experience

with Margaret, she knew what I believed and it often coincided with what she believed. Indeed, in some curious ways, she tried to use me to change the process of government. There was a disastrous evening, because if you look at the number of ministers who actually ran their departments and ran them the way Margaret wanted, I come out top of the queue. I mean, I closed down more quangos, even than Keith Joseph. I beat him by one. I ran down my department by 3% per annum, which was way ahead of whatever else was doing. And Margaret looked at the techniques I was using and thought they were so impressive that she invited me to give a,

what frankly was a tutorial to the cabinet. It was a disaster. You can imagine, because it meant really detailed draft and exploration of things like organograms and spreadsheets and, you know, and you can imagine Quentin Halesham and Willie Whitelaw sitting there being told

by this extraordinary phenomenon from the Welsh valleys, well not the valleys, but from Swansea, and there was a small businessman and all this telling us, you know, the great figures of historic. What would Willie White Law have been like as Prime Minister? People thought that he had a good chance against Mr. Stach. I supported him against Margaret. What would he have been like as the Prime Minister?

Well, look, you will never know, because what you can never know is what people will be like under pressure. But I think he'd have been a good prime minister. On the descending issue of the trade union power, which was actually where 1979 pushed us, there was complete unity in the cabinet. Indeed, the extraordinary thing about Margaret's cabinet is it was Ted's cabinet given a second chance. And that was invaluable because we were battle-hardened and experienced and we knew what we're going to do. there was no dissent, and Willie would have done it in the same way that we all did it.

And again, quite in my view, perfectly understandably, we didn't win the first confrontation with the minors. We had to compromise, but that merely hardened the view. We can't let them get away with this. And it was a brilliant exercise, Peter Walker, Nigel Lawson, who just piled up the the coal at pits and the bar stations. Can I come into ask Alice on this? So presumably your political memory, if this is very,

very different from Michael's, when you hear about the miracle of how brilliant they were and taking on the miners and how extraordinary Peter Walker and Nigel Lawson were in stockpiling and his memory of the early 80s, yours is very different, right?

Well, no, I think, no, it's not different. And I think that's where it ended. But along the way, there was an awful lot of really different stuff going on politically, which became the kind of fire of politics at that time. And can I invite you to sort of speak more from the labour point of view through the early 80s and how you would have responded listening to this speech from 1980 to 1986.

Which one? Well, the way Michael's talking about taking on the unions and the strikes and the early ages. There's no doubt that's what they were doing. And I think that part of what... But emotionally, how do you feel? How did you feel at the time? How I felt, well, I was at that time on the daily mirror. very occasionally in the back of Michael's car as he drove around the country

stirring up his own positive profile. Can I put it like that? Staring up a slightly different agenda to the one being taken forward by his wonderful leader. And I also remember the labour – there was a much clearer divide, I think, between the parties at that time and a lot of these big economic and social issues than maybe during the time when I was then on the other side of the particular fence with Tony Blair. But listen, Margaret Thatcher, your question about Willie Whitelaw, I think if Willie Whitelaw would become Prime Minister, as Michael says, we'll never know. I don't think we'd still be talking about him in the way that we still talk about Margaret Thatcher as a figure of radical change. I think Willie would have been a trying quieten the horses and keep things on a nice, steady track. Well, I think you are right that Margaret wasn't particularly reactive personality. I've always said about Margaret.

There were two Margaret's. One here, the gut, one here. This was very high quality. Which was more powerful, the brain or the gut? The brain in the end. And there were so many examples of that. But just going back to your question to Alistair, which let me help him, the real confrontation was 1968, Barbara Castle and Harold Wilson,

White Paper in place of strife. And so the Labour government. I was 11. Well, you see, I was much rather older. You were in the House of Commons. Yes, I was in the House of Commons, yes. So I was in my 30s. The Labour government knew that the Union power had to be confronted.

Okay, they didn't do it, and there's plenty of reasons why I think Jim Callahan wasn't keen on doing what Harold Wilson wanted to do. But in the end, he played the price because the winter of discontent of 1978 was perhaps one of the most. one of the most acute social tensions of our modern time. And that was under a Labour government. And that was a year before we came to £79. So although you could argue with those Tory or Labour who did it, the fact is that all governments knew this issue had to be confronted. Okay, hold that thought.

We're going to take a very short break. Back in a moment. Hi, everybody. It's Dominic Samaruk here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show. the rest is politics when Rory was away and I was filling in and enjoying Alastair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Restis History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own.

So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise. people are arguing about Europe, the government has got a few issues with the trade unions, and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues, and people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we're looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking

about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and we'll be talking about one of the grimest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more,

just search for The Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the Restis Politics Leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alastikamol. We're facing strikes at the moment. train strikes, NHS strikes, potentially teacher strikes. Do you think that Rishi Sunek and the Conservative government is doing the right thing and trying to hold the line against the unions and not increase wages? Or would you be making more concessions?

No, I think that Rishi has brought sanity back to British politics. It's a very interesting contrast. I think I understand what he's doing and I respect it. We've had a roller coaster and used quite. grammatic language, if you like, about recent prime ministers. But what I think Rishi has said is, look, we've really got to do some hard grind on these big issues. And that means sitting in number 10 with people who understand and working out the details

and bringing back the changes that are needed. And that's all rather boring, because what people want is someone flying all over the place and waving a flag or jumping in and out of a tank. It doesn't seem to be doing that, though. He doesn't seem to me to have a plan either. Ah, well, this is where we will see because he's got five plans. And in his interview with Laura Kuhnsberg, I think he repeated them at least six times. I think he thought he was doing a clip when he was actually meant to be doing a half-hour interview.

But you, you was a genius of the PR political world would have said to him, be you've got five points, keep repeating them. No, I wouldn't. No, I wouldn't. Okay. There's a definition between repeating yourself and saying this, making the same point. But I don't think a plan for the country came over in that interview or in his speech. Well, it did come over in the sense that he had thought about the issues. He had thought

about what people were concerned about. And he was trying to identify with people's concerns, which I suspect he did, that people heard all these points. And so right, he knows what he's doing. Now, what I would expect to see him do is to start trying to say, month by month, these are the ways in which the things I promised you are happening. We haven't yet seen, and maybe that's because he's not that sort of person. Where's the vision? Where's the language? Where's the rhetoric? Where's the high ground? And he's helped, of course, because his opponent hasn't much skill in that direction either. What would your advice be to him dealing with RMT and train strikes that meant, or indeed NHS strikes, nurses.

Well, I think that, in a sense, it's what he's saying. And I would, if I was advising him, I would say, look, let's be up front. You're talking about honesty in politics. Now, let's be honest. Here is a guy who spent extraordinary sums of money, of taxpayers' money, borrowed money, in order to combat the most horrendous threat, which COVID was. Now it looks less of a threat. but at the time, completely unpredictable and with the most awful consequences.

And Rishi, first of all, provided the cash to deal with COVID, but produced enormous sums of money to subsidise the people's jobs. And he should be upfront about that. This is what I spent. Of course, it's part of our problem today. And there's a price to pay, and all of us are going to pay it. And I wish it was otherwise, but I would not have changed anything I did. to produce the circumstances we've got.

We've now got inflation. And of course, I can say what people are saying, give a bit more, give a bit less. But this is never one-off. Every time you give something to someone, someone else says, they got it, I want it. And so the inflationary pressures build on themselves. And the only alternative is an element of sacrifice.

But then it's about who makes the sacrifice. About who makes yes. Yeah. And that, I think, is where, at least when you were doing what you were doing and you were, for example, doing the stuff that you were doing

in regeneration in Liverpool and you could go up there as a bit of a Tory Toff and people would like you and you'd give them the freedom of the city and all that stuff and you did deliver something

for those people. I don't see in Rishi Sunak somebody who has a sense of who those people are, the lives that they lead and the challenges that they face. That's what came through to me from that interview

was a guy who doesn't understand people's lives. You see, this is the advantage of hindsight when I did the things I did starting in London, not Liverpool, no one believed that I knew what I was doing. Well, I can tell you, when I was in Liverpool,

I'll never forget someone on the streets shouting, give us jobs, not trees, because I'd given them a garden festival. And so the only benefit I've had, and I'm very proud of it, is years later. And this is, I mean, we haven't talked about regeneration. but there is no short-term fix for regeneration. It's a long-term grind with certain very clear objectives.

And so Rishi can take comfort from the thought that he's begun to articulate what he wants to try and achieve. If it works, then he'll get the credit. And he's short of time, let's be frank, the general election, not very far away. You voted Lib Dem in the European elections, as did I. you lost the whip, I got kicked out of the party. You can't vote in the general election because you remember the House of Lords, but I'm assuming you're now back in the fold,

and with Johnson gone and trust gone, you would vote Tory. No, no, I lost the whip because I voted for Parliament to be given the last say on Brexit. And three weeks after I lost the whip, the government decided that was what they were going to do. It was the policy anyway. The policy anyway. And curious enough, my first revolt on the Conservative Party, which was in the 60s,

was over the race relations legislation, Wilson, I think, Wilson legislation. You're saying. And my party, three weeks later, came round to what I'd done. Obviously, the time when you were losing the whip was also the time when Boris Johnson effectively threw out of Parliament, Ken Clark, Nicholas Soames, Philip Hammond, and all these people. Do you think that was a change in British politics? Can you imagine a previous Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Jim Callaghan, throwing out such senior figures from the party for voting against them?

Well, I haven't done an search to find out what penalties Margaret applied in given the circumstances. Well, he not only took the whiffway, he took the whiffway immediately before a general election, so they were unable to... She also liked having arguments. Margaret? Yeah. She loved having arguments, whereas I don't think Johnson does. But curious enough,

Margaret, that was one of her, she started here, you know, foreigners, we don't like foreigners, Europe, we don't like all that. For those who are, for our listeners, Mr. Heseltine was Lord Heseltine, Michael was punching his gut there. She started in the gut. Yes, yes, that's quite right. But when you talk to Margaret and you argued with her, you could persuade her. And that, of course, one of Margaret's greatest achievements, for any shadow of doubt is the single European market, the market. and people are the ignorance in this country as to what goes on in Europe British civil servants queue up to fly to Brussels to be part of the machine

and Margaret was not prepared quite rightly to let the French and Germans fix the single market like they fixed the common agricultural policy when we kept away so she sent Arthur Cofield there to fix it for Britain quite rightly and brilliantly did he achieve it so the idea that there are all these nameless foreign out there. They're all Brits or French or Germans or whatever it may be. No, Rory, by taking us down the path you took us there, you allowed Michael to avoid my question about whether he would vote conservative at the next election if he had a vote? Well, I don't have a vote. I know you don't have a vote. That's why I said, if you had a vote, would you vote conservative? Would you

urge people to vote conservative at the next election, given what's happened in the last decade? It would be difficult for me. I'm a member of the party. It was a very important point since they took the whip away, but they don't mind taking my money. And so, so, so, I deliberately give money to the Scots Conservatives because they're actually pro-European. And so my conscience is absolutely clear. But the real question for me is do you leave the party and leave the field or do you stay and fight? And my position is clear. I am a conservative.

You cannot be more conservative in record or conviction in a lifetime than me. and so I'm not prepared to be silenced within the party. If the party wants to move its policies, that's up to it. But they're not going to make me change my fundamental ways. Well, where does that leave you in terms of, if somebody comes to you and says, I'm really struggling with what to do with my vote in the next election, I respect you as a human being and as a political figure, my politics are very similar to you.

Who do you think I should vote for? What do you say to them? Well, I get this so often every day. Exactly. That's my problem. So what do you say? I mean, I'm not going to, but I could name your great swath of my friends, even my family, who are saying just that to me. What do you say to them?

I think probably, I don't know what I'm going to say to them because I don't really know what the conservative platform is going to be. But equally, it's very difficult to see how I could vote for somebody else. Michael, can you explain why you're a conservative if you had to articulate what it means to be a conservative, why you didn't become a Labour MP, why you became a Conservative MP, it means to be a conservative. Julian Critchley always described you as a liberal. He thought you were a liberal. Oh, well, when I fought in Gower and in Coventry. And he used to heckle Nye Bevin.

Well, that's another story, but that's a very funny story. But the issue of fighting liberals, I used to fight. And in Tavistock when I was elected, there were two liberals in this constituency, but I'm going to win. And I did win. Why are you a conservative? What does it mean to be a conservative? Well, it's about a veneration of tradition. It's about a conviction of the role of the individual. It's about the liberty and the tolerance and the culture of individualism and freedom. It's about respect for energy and initiative.

It's about believing that there is within each of us a degree of talent and a degree of ability. And you should create the circumstances in which each individual can pursue that to the greatest of their ability and to the better common accord. And you should therefore hesitate before you constrain that enormous talent that people have. So, but of course, my colleague on my left, Alistair, would immediately say, but, you know, Labor's all about a quality of opportunity and he would sound very similar to you. What do you think the real dividing line here is? Well, I think the real dividing line tends to be ownership and taxation about creating the conditions of individualism. And the Labour Party, I don't think, are good at that.

I mean, they are the party of the great machine, the great union power. The more extreme, they move to the socialist, communist model, which is a statist. We know best. We tell you what you do. Michael. I said at its extreme. Oh, at its extreme.

Okay. And I thought you were straying into caricature territory. No, no, no. No, look, because I want to come back to an important point. On the big issues where I have perhaps had some real experience, which is urban regeneration, I have worked with labor leaders and councillors. And there's never been a debate at all about the, the politics of the decisions.

It's all been about how do we solve these practical issues of the fact that there's derelict land or that there's not enough opportunity or whatever it may be. And I would, well, I mean, what can I say to Labor control Liverpool who gave me the freedom of the city?

I mean, how... Does that allow you to drive cattle through the streets without being arrested and things like that? What benefits do you get from that? You get free bed and bread. The huge benefit of believing that you did something rather special. Good. And I have to tell you, there were tears in my eyes when Joe Anderson, the Labour mayor of Liverpool,

who was quite short, stood alongside them. He doesn't have your flowing locks either. Well, we had to, I remember saying to him at the time, we were in power with the Lib Dems, and I sat with Joe in the council chamber, chamber in Liverpool, and I said, this is carrying coalitionitis too far. What did it feel like in 66? How different was politics, Parliament, the Conservative Party in 66, compared to today? Oh, a very interesting difference.

When I first got into the Parliament in 1966, the orphan of the storm, there were 11 of us, new members of Parliament on the Conservative benches. And it was commonplace to listen to members rise in their place to talk about my honorable and gallant friend. This was the aftermath of the war that the gallant applied to people who had held a field rank in the military. I think that was a formative part of post-war politics

that although parodying the situation to an extent, the non-commissioned officers came out and became the trade union leaders, the officers came out and became the Tory candidates. But in the end, they'd fought together. And you can't escape. I mean, Willie Whitelaw and Peter Carrington, Brigade of Guards officers at some of the toughest battles. And they couldn't bring themselves to talk about sort of workers of shirkers and all that terrible sort of jargon.

They were the people they'd fought alongside. Peter Carrington's tank was hit. There were sort of other guys in that tank with him, you know? I think the other big change you would have to recognize is that the sort of standards that you were held have, to a large extent, gone. And I wonder how you think that has happened and whether we can get it back. Well, I think there have been some very serious allegations of that sort. And I think that it could be got back, but it requires political leadership.

And that can only come from the leader of the party, the prime minister in power. Michael, you had a reputation as a politician for being a great orator. Was that something that came naturally to you? Is that something as a teenager you were a great public speaker? Is it something you had to work on? I think that it was probably there. I don't think you can train people to make the sort of speeches. Looking back at those speeches, you communicate intellectually with an audience,

but you have to communicate as well emotionally. And you felt it happen. It was extraordinary. And no one told me you got it. It just came. But, of course, once you knew you had it, then you realized you had to keep using it because those speeches, which some people think were quite good,

some people think were absolutely appalling, they saved me, actually. They saved me because Margaret wanted to sack three people, Peter Walker, Paul Channon, myself, and it was in The Economist, these three are going. And I was saved because on the day of the execution, I was speaking from the Tory front bench and in company with Margaret to a meeting of small businessmen.

So they couldn't sack me then. And then I made one of those speeches and I became unsackable. So they saved me. Who were the other great orators of that period, do you think? Oh, Ian McLeod. And I suppose you could say, in a sense, Enoch Powell? What about the Labour side? Oh, Nibben.

But you know, can I tell you my story of Niveben? Well, I know you heckled him. Oh, well, this was, I was fighting Gara and, of course, a huge Labour majority. So I had no very few helpers and no audience and nothing. So there was this advertisement in the South Wales even. Post, the Labour Party of South Wales will gather in the Elysium cinema on a Sunday evening at 8 o'clock and the right honourable now in Bevan will dress. And they all came and in the dark and thousands of us and there was I at the third balcony. And they all came and I Bevan got up

and said, first of all, I want to introduce Percy Morris, Swansea West, Dymour, Swansea East. And then I for Davis, a new candidate for Gar. You have both the candidates for Gar here tonight. Ah, said Nibben, I hear the voice of an Englishman. And you couldn't rebut, or did you rebut? Did you try to rebut? The Labour majority is soared. No, actually, I think you'll find you had a slight swing in your favour.

Well, I know. but I can't resist to joke because the joke is one of my post-dinner party best jokes to say that I got slaughtered. Actually, it's not true. I did have a swing for the Conservatives. Well, what about today? Roy and I've talked a lot about the fact that you very rarely hear speeches in politics today that you can say that was a great speech. Why has political oratory gone the way it's gone? I'd have to have notice of that question, whether I can think of people.

There's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't have. of great speeches. Indeed, they will. I mean, human history is about great speeches, and there will come a time. And indeed, if there wasn't a need today, it is for someone who can take the traumatic position this country faces and analyze it and vision in its place. Just as my last question for me as we come to the end, what would be your advice to someone going into politics today? What do you think the key thing that you try to get over to an ambitious just 20-year-old. My mother remembers seeing you in the Oxford Union. It's sort of your flowing, blonde locks sitting in your throne and looking up at this figure

when I suppose you were in your early 20s and thinking, goodness, this kind of godlike figure is going to end up as our prime minister. What would be your advice to the sort of 21-year-old equivalent to Michael Heseltine today who wants to go into politics? Well, if you're thinking about it, don't do it because it's a grinding, grueling profession with some upsides, but a lot of downsides. So you have to have the will and the energy and the commitment and the vision to really want to do it. But if you have that, it is the center of the stage. In the end, it's where you can make a difference. And what difference you can make must be up to you, because it's your view is and not mine that you're going

to drive you on. But it is the most exhilaration. satisfying, bewildering commitment you can make. If you said to me, it's another version of the same question. If you were 21, would you make the same decisions? Absolutely. And if I have one great resentment today, is I haven't got any time. You had a heart attack when you were 60.

So you've had 30 years since then, and you're still going? Are you going to keep going until you drop? That's twice I've imagined your death now, Michael. Don't take it personally. Many people who longed to see this circumstance. But I'm not one of them. Nor I. And I know you, because you like making fun of me.

And if I weren't there, I'd be a void in your life. But the idea of retirement has never occurred to me. And I am extraordinarily lucky. First, I have a wonderful family. Secondly, I am still involved in the company I created. Thirdly, I'm a gardener. And I have the ultimate privilege. are being invited to podcasts of this sort.

Well, my final question, Michael, is actually to take a little bit of a bone, pick a little bit of a bone with you, because you do have a fabulous garden, and I share your obsession with trees, and you once showed me around your wonderful garden, and you had lots of your posth Tory friends there at the same time. And as the event broke up,

I noticed them queuing to sign the visitors' book, and Fiona nudged me and said, don't you think you better sign the visitor's book as well? and I followed, I think, behind Richard Ryder and John Gummer and one or two other Tory grandees. And then you came and grabbed my elbow and took the pen from me and said, I don't think my friends need to know that you were here. I don't believe that. I will deliver the visitor's book for your signature.

Would you? Yes, I certainly will. I'll even go further. I will apologize for this at the CUNA in my. behaviour. Well, I can guarantee you it's true. I think it was a joke, but Fiona has died out on the story often.

Well, that's your privilege, and I'm glad to contribute it to the richness of your life. Thank you. And to the life of others. Well, thank you for being our first guest on the rest of his politics leading. I hope it wasn't too painful. Thank you very much.

Non-committal. Thank you. And have a wonderful effort. If you have suffered under Jeremy Paxman and John Humphreys and all the others. Exactly. We're pussycats. Well, thank you for coming.

That was very interesting. So what our listeners won't have picked up is he turned up looking very, very smart in a pinstripe suit, a little red pinstripe suit with his tie on, flowing white hair. Sorry, a red pinstripe suit? Yeah, well, the pinstripe was red.

Oh, you mean the striped was red? Is that how you described posh suits? Well, I thought it was a very unusual suit, actually, to be honest, I never seen something. I mean... I remember him once telling me how much his suits cost, and it was kind of what I paid for a car. Phenomenal.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, pretty phenomenal. So I thought one of the things that was striking in that is he kept talking about how good his relationship was Mrs Thatcher. Was that your memory as a journalist? No, not at all. Not at all. The big driving narrative of that time was the Thatcher government, obviously.

And one of the big stories all the time was Michael Will He Wonti. I think she did have an almost admiration for him. But Willie Wainty, Willie Wainty turn against her. Yeah, and will he go? will he eventually sort of storm out, as indeed he did, and will he challenge? And there was a chap called Sir Anthony Mayer who kept being put forward as a stalking horse. And that was all about sort of testing the water to see how much opposition there was. And, you know, Michael had a lot of kind of pretty powerful, significant people in the parliamentary party. You know, they were basically

his people. He didn't have that many in government, but he had quite a lot on the backbenchers or in junior ministerial places. He was an assiduous quarter of the, you know, the media. In fact, I was just in advance of this, I was kind of doing a bit of research. And I looked on Wikipedia. I've actually labed at his entry as a journalist. Tony Bevin's, who was before your time, Tony Bevin was a brilliant journalist from The Independent, who sadly died very young. But Tony and I were absolutely the leaders of the pack against Thatcher in terms of the media. I think we shared an absolute, you know, desperation to get rid of her. And how could I put it? Michael was quite close to me in Toley. So, you know, and I did, I used to spend quite, he had a really nice, he had a

chap called Andy, he was his driver. And Michael used to get really bad car sickness on long journeys, and he did a lot of long journeys as he went on the kind of around all the local Tory parties night after night after night. And he was doing that, of course, because in order to run to be leader, he needed to win over all those local associations. Yeah. So he never, he never stopped campaigning. And what he was brilliant at was even if I would turn up at some of these Tory party dinners, and he would say, oh, there's retrograde from the mirror. He's always following me around, and he's writing yet another piece about how I'm trying to, you know, wield the knife and all this other rubbish that these people run. And then he'd sort of get back in the car and we'd have a little chat about what his next move might be.

Amazing. One of the things that's interesting, so he's almost 90. I find it very interesting how things get blurred. that often, and maybe it's just me getting older, but in the memory of people as they get older, because the Parliament that he entered in 1966 wasn't just different because it had a few men who'd fought in the war. It was different in every single way. I mean, it was only just over 20 years since MPs had been paid for the first time.

So many of those MPs will have entered 20s and 30s as men with enormous private incomes coming in to do this as a hobby, very, very, very male, obviously, very, very much more upper-class. very, very white. Totally white. Totally white.

And it's interesting. And of course, we can feel just what a change it is, as you say, from the moment he was born, which was Hitler taking power to where we are today. I mean, Hitler feels very, very distant. And yet within his memory, the 60s seem as though it's just a sort of continuation of the world today. Whereas my guess is if I walked into that parliament, I'd be complete astonished. Totally.

And if you look at, there wasn't film of those parliaments because, you know, that's the other big changes. It wasn't on television. It wasn't televised. to have radio out of Parliament. But I think the other thing, and I'm with you about the way that memory, that's why I didn't,

I was struggling a bit with that answer about what it felt like, because your memory does play tricks with you. And I was actually trying to remember some of those moments when Michael was talking about some of his speeches. I was trying to remember which of them when he was in government,

when he was out of government. And he's, because he's been around for so long. And we didn't really cover the period with John Major, because that was another very important part. of his career, where he, having wielded the knife, he didn't get the crown, John Major did get the crown, and Michael became Deputy Prime Minister, First Secretary of State, whatever it was called,

and became a very, very powerful figure within that government as well. There's also an amazing, you can see the kind of smoothness and the kind of twinkle, the way that he avoids the question, the sort of way that he ends, the little cheeky jokes. I mean, he's a very, very polished politician. You can get a sense of sort of 50 years of practice. Absolutely. The other thing we didn't really get into is he had quite a reputation of being pretty brutal with his civil servants. He really did shake them up. And I think the ones that were really good didn't mind it, but I think a lot of people found him quite difficult to work with. He was also often accused of slightly vanity, wasn't there? I remember a permanent secretary who'd been a young civil servant working in his department. This may be unfair, claiming that when Michael turned up, first day, he'd said that the office they'd offered a secretary of state was too small. And they had to find the biggest conference meeting. room in the whole place and redecorated it as a ministerial office to accommodate it. Yeah, but he, and when he was at the Department of Trade, it was, you know, has that strange

title, the president of the board of trade. So he preferred to be called president rather than the secretary of state. Yeah, I think that's all fine, though. I mean, I think he's a big beast. He's definitely a big beast and has long been a big beast and we like big beast, Rory. Very good. Well, thanks for listening to the first, the rest is politics leading that interview with Michael Haslton. We're back next week with. Marina Litvinenko. Thank you very much.