The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2)

Episode Date: October 13, 2024

How does militant socialism compare to Corbynism? How did Labour’s ‘remain’ campaign go so wrong? And what should Labour be doing about immigration?  On today’s episode of Leading, Rory and Alastair are joined by long-serving Labour minister, Alan Johnson, to discuss all this and more Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] Assistant Producer: India Dunkley Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producer: Nicole Maslen and Fiona Douglas Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport 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 the rest is politics.com. To the Restis Politics leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. And we're now here with Alan Johnson for part two. So Alan has introduced himself, his childhood, his fascination with Harold Wilson. He's just written a great book on, talked about his time in the trade union movement a bit.

and ending up as running the Tradeoam Movement, and then a moment at which Tony Blair rings you up and suggests you become a member of Parliament. So tell us a little bit about, firstly, that transition. You very kind of read my book. I found entering the House of Commons very weird. What was your first experience? Do you remember entering the House of Commons?

I remember it very well. Those days you could drive in through the gate, yeah? There was a couple of coppers there. Nobody even searched the car, I think. I drove there from where we lived in Crystal Palace. So it wasn't very long, sort of 20-minute drive. I went down to that underground garage. And next to the space I parked in, next to it,

was an open top, two-seated sports car. And out of it, unfolded Alan Clark. I mean, he's unfolded this Alistair's great friend. Don't get him going, Alan. Don't get him going, Alan. There's all of his 11 cars. I said he tried to give him a Bentley, has he told you the story? No, no, really?

We had pals with her. I was quite pals with Alan Clark, yeah. I never met him, but I followed him into the comments. And he, as I say, leapt out of that car, had nothing. He'd come back into Parliament in the 97 election. Remember he'd lost his seat. 92 came back to the men for Kensington and Chelsea. Kensington and Chelsea, where I was born.

It could have been my MP. And he put his hands in his pockets, nonchantly ran his hands through his head. I had briefcases, documents, boxing, you know, the kind of, I didn't know where I was going. This was a completely new world for me. I'd been to the Commons, yeah, but not through that member's entrance and the little cloak room with a bit of ribbon to hangy sword and all that. And I thought, I don't know where I'm going. I recognize Alan Clark.

I'll just follow him. And I followed him up the escalator. And he's almost whistling. It wasn't quite, but almost whistling. I don't long to try and keep up with him with all this stuff. And eventually you got, because it was such a huge, a majority, rather like now, I guess. You had all these people wandering around, didn't know where to go or what to do.

And you had little lockers to put your stuff. And then it took you a while before you got some staff. It was very traumatic, I think, is the main thing. But, you know, we were on the government benches. That always attracted me. That's why in the end, Tony, I think, persuaded me, not just because I was absolutely behind him. I'd stood up, the only trade union leader to support changing clause four of the constitution.

So you would have been seen as more on the right wing of the trade union movement in those days. Yeah, I suppose that's true. Although in Labour terms, talking about being on the right, We're all on the left. The people on the far left are just, you know, away with the birds on a different planet. But all of us are on the left. We are democratic socialists or social democrats, whatever you want to call us. And so I quickly settled in, mainly because, and this is where I'm absolutely with you, Rory,

because I read your fabulous book. I reviewed it as well and said it was fabulous at a time. So I'm not just saying it here. I loved my constituency. You know, my constituency didn't choose me. I was imposed. when I took the parachute off and looked around in Hull, West and Hesel, I found a wonderful place, not just because I've always been interested in poetry

where here's the place where Andrew Marvel was the MP. Forget Larkin. Andrew Stevie Smith, not waving but drowning, born in West Hull. Forget Larkin. I don't think you'd have said that during the campaign, would you? I wouldn't have said any of that, no. And when I got there, Larkin wasn't a great hero, by the way. There wasn't even a statue of him.

But it was the biggest fishing pool, distant water fishing pool. in the world, it had been. And that had all disappeared overnight. You could walk across St Andrew's key from one trawler to the others. There were 250 of them, and now there was just one. Did you get any...

And through that slump, by the way, the trawlemen were promised all kinds of things. Promised retraining, promised money, promised redeployment. They got nothing. They were classified as casual workers. Did you get any resistance

to, you use the word parachute? So Stuart Randall was the MP, wasn't he? and he stood down and miraculously ended up in the House of Lords and you came in. Thank you, sir. Did you get any resistance because of that? You're not a northerner. You're from London. Watford, he thought was the north.

Yeah, I did have an auntie. My mother's sister. Which you made a great deal of, I'm sure. She featured all publications. Who married a soldier, a whole soldier, who was actually my mum's boyfriend. My auntie'd nicked him off of her. They went to a whole lad, nine kids. So I figured I had a built-in majority, but they didn't all live in my constituency.

No, I'd been there once. Not really, mainly because Stuart had an awful lot of problems, through the age of militant and all that. He kind of was a bit of a matinee idol, pretending he was militant and then wasn't. I might be being unfair to him, but, you know, he promised he'd moved to the constituency and never did. He, there was a vote and no confidence in him. He only won it by one vote. So in a sense, I came in, and he had a,

different headquarters. There were two headquarters in here. I came in halfway through the general election. And there were two headquarters and one Stuart had the key to and the other one he didn't. This is too traumatic for any of you to be funny and concise about it. But can you just tell us very briefly what was militant for our younger listeners? If you think of momentum more recently around Corbyn. Yeah. Militant was in a way much more pernicious. Oh yeah. Much more pernicious and much nastier. And really, it was one of the things that have happened ever since the Labour Party was created in 1900. These kind of off to the, on a different planet, far left groups decide the only way they can manage to get any power is to wear Labor's clothes to get

elected. Couldn't get elected on their own platform. So entryism was a big thing. It's always been a big thing. And they had very radical left-wing piece. Very radical. I mean, Timer Wilson was crypto communists they used to call them and they were all over the place. But this was very, this was Trotskyists, basically. I mean, you know, they had no time for Stalin. What did Trotskyists believe in? I mean, they come to Trotskis, I don't understand. What were they, what were they thinking about? They believed Stalin was a sellout, basically. They believed that any attempt to, well, get a Trotskyist and I'll explain it to you, but basically, they felt that the revolution was betrayed. The revolution was betrayed. Because

internationalism and, you know, ensuring that there was a proletariat, dictatedst a proletariat right across the world. That was the job. And you don't compromise on that. And so I suppose that actually Tony Blair's rise to power and the move Neil Kinnock and John Smith and Tony Blair was painful. I mean, more painful than conservative politics. Because presumably the people on the left felt very morally superior. They felt right was on their side. They were on the side of radical equality, revolutionary change, and you lot were a bunch of sellouts. So it must have been a very, much more painful than conservative politics, these fights. Conservative politics might go that way. I doubt it will ever be as bad as in the early 80s.

It's brutal. Yeah, things can only get better, the great book by John O'Farrell. John O'Farrell. He explains in that, and this is very much my experience of this, as I was in Slough at a time, Slough Labor Party. He describes a constituency meeting. They only had a bit of money, one leaflet to a big council estate. Should we make it about the cuts to local council and, you know, bin collectors not coming around? Or should we make it about Nicaragua? Militant were in the majority and they had to walk around this council estate delivering leaflets on Nicaragua. That's a great example of what things were like. So that's why when Jeremy Corbyn came in, some people on the right Labour Party would slightly tease him about talking about Venezuela and Palestine because

they had sort of memories of a day when it felt as though people weren't talking about things were relevant to voters. Absolutely. And, you know, we'd seen it. Jeremy had been there for a long time, you know, what he's doing now, which is not a Labour MP. The difference was he was sitting on Labour's benches.

He's never, he's never, brought into our constitution, particularly the new one. A bit, yeah. Tony sort of chased you down, a bit like it chased me down a few years ago, sort of didn't give up. Just talking through how he kind of wore you down

to become candidate. You were sort of, I can't remember how your name first came up, but he was sort of on this list of people that we thought were good MPs. You were a big deal, right? I mean, you were running a big union. I know about a big deal. It was a big union, and we'd had a big victory.

We stopped, Heseltine and major privatised in the post office. Everyone had lost those disputes, you know, whether it was rail, whether it was steel. How did you win? Tell us a bit about the tactics. There was a great documentary about it. Michael Cockrell documentary about it. We employed the Tories PR agents, and we got behind Tory lines. And we got the Tories really, really rabid about.

the effect of this, your local post office will close, you'll get the end your Saturday delivery and all of that, forget two deliveries a day. All the things that have happened, post-privatisation, by the way. But this was the early 90s. And because we won it, it was seen as a big thing. Tony was very pleased. And this documentary by Michael Cockrell

that Tony might well have watched. I doubt it both. It was a word in the right ear. It was about lobbying. And he made our campaign, the centrepiece of a one-hour program. It was at least 25 minutes. No, but also you were quite high-profile.

just around the place and across the media and you were very, very, you were clearly of our politics and you're also clearly a very good communicator. Because of that, really, I had a profile, only because of that. But no, I'm driving up Gypsy Hill. This thing that's like a brick next to me, which is apparently called a mobile phone, goes. I did pull over because I was late for my mother-in-law's birthday party,

picked it up. I'd had a thing with Tony about a candidate election in Newport. Remember when Alan Haworth crossed the floor. and I wanted to talk to him because we had a good guy, Reg Kelly, who was in Newport, and we wanted to be assured that it was going to be a vote of the members. Angie comes online, Angie puts me through it, Tony. Tony says, yes, yes, no question of it. It's going to be an open ballot.

You will win it. But he said, but Alan, just as I'm trying to get away because I've got my mother-in-law, I hear you want to be an MP. I said, I don't know how I've told you that. Tony, I've got the slightest wish to be an MP. And I didn't have the slightest wish to be an MP. I mean, why would I want to go to the bank benches? Anyway, he said, well, I'd quite like you to be an MP.

I'd quite like you to be an MP. I thought, bloody hell, you know. Come and talk to me, he said, I was on the Eni-Cid of Labor Party. So I went and spoke to him. I said, well, where would the seat be? He said, well, where do you want it to be? Because what we know now is all those MPs who are going to step down. We're going to spend on the House of Lords.

To spend more time with the peerages. He knew That that was coming up But I mean This is where I feel guilty Because I mean You did it through a very unique route Through the kind of Cameron's flirtation

With primaries I see so many of my colleagues Who slogged away for years Moved the family to places Where they thought the MP Was gonna breathe their last And here was I Being asked by the leader of the party

Did you think that there was a chance That you might become a minister I mean when you were thinking Am I going to really give up A job I really care about to be a backbench MP for the rest of my life? I wanted to be a minister. I didn't want to be. But it looked pretty certain. This is February

1997. And the leader of the Labour Party's made it clear that he wants you. So if you are reasonably competent. He never made any. There was no deal. He never said, oh, you're about it. You have to, you know, you've got to make sure you. Tell you never made deals. No. As we know. Is that right?

Well, he didn't make money. We got a smirk from him. We don't know what that smirk made. I didn't even try to argue that I want to be a minister. But, you know, I thought, am I going to get to six and look back and think, I missed that opportunity. Here's the leader asking me. And so I haven't thought it over, I didn't care where it was.

And can I bring you in us? To what extent were you involved in this sort of thing, deciding someone like that should be an MP, deciding that someone might become a minister? I mean, tell us a little bit about you. Would you have chats with Tony Blair about this stuff? I can remember talking about the sorts of people that would be good. Tony definitely wanted some good new people coming at the end.

He actually asked me at one point to get a seat. Do you wish you had? No, but... Yes, he does. He really wishes. Do you? Yeah, you wish you'd be an MP. Anyway, I said,

you want me to be an MP or do you want me to run the campaign. Oh, yeah, he said, you better do the campaign. But no, Alan was definitely one of the, I'd say, in the top few that Tony was quite keen on. So, yeah, probably. And were you involved in him becoming a minister? I don't know. There'd be discussions.

I've got this suspicion that you were behind. I'm not becoming a minister. I was a minister. I was a PPS the same year I got elected to a wonderful woman called Dawn, Dawn Promerola, as Paymaster General. Then in 1999, Junior Minister DTI Puss, then Minister of State. Then I get a phone call after the 2001 election, and I'm going over the Humber Bridge in the back of a government jag because I've done something at Bishop Burton College, my role as DTI a minister.

And the phone rings, there's a reshuffle going on. And Tony said, Alan, I'd like you to go to education. I'd like you to be the Minister for Higher Education. is absolutely no word of a lie. I said, Tony, Minister for High Education, you realize I left school at 15, I never went to university. He said, precisely, precisely. The reason I thought your hand might be in this is because we'd unveiled the need for tuition fees at the back of the Deering Commission on higher education, Deering from Hull,

my old mate from the post office as well. And he had said, look, you know, those who benefit from higher education, should make a contribution. And that included, not students, graduates. Once they've graduated, once they're earning blah, blah, blah, perfect formula. I supported it instinctively. It was very controversial.

The minister at the time was under the accusation that came to all of them. You're pulling up the ladder after you. You got a free university education with generous grants. Tony had clocked, and this is where I saw the hand of Alistair Campbell, that actually if you put someone in there that didn't go to university, you're going to stand a final chance. I'm not really touched that you assume that if something clever and smart

Wilsonian has happened that you should be down to me. I'm happy to take credit. I'm happy to take credit. Moving on, you went on from that to be the Secretary of State for Health, which is, as famously people say, kind of the biggest train set in government.

This enormous over 100 billion pound machine, million employees, etc. I mean, that must have been an incredible responsibility, and it must have been completely overwhelming to try to get your head around something so big, so complicated, you know, hundreds of millions of GP appointments a year. I mean, how do you get your head around something like that? Well, this is now Gordon Brown. Yeah. So, Alice has departed to scene. Tony's departed to scene. On the day he went, on the evening he went, Gordon said, well, you can start education if you want. But incidentally, I'm going to make it this schools and families thing. And I'm going to take higher education and further education, put it in another department. But you can do that if you want. My priority is health.

And I'd quite like you to go to health. Well, you know, of course, you go to health. I was really fortunate because the heavy lifting, we're now talking about 2007, the 10-year plan, and we're living this life again now, including Arodasi, mentioned him in a second. Ten-year plan was well underway. We'd been recruiting nurses and doctors. The famous announcement Tony made on the Sunday TV.

that is going to increase the budget of the health. We were now going towards 110 billion. It's 160 now, but we're going towards 110 billion, which was incredible. Investment per head of population. So Patricia Hewitt, my predecessor, had been through hell. You might remember nurses screaming and shouting at her at conferences. That's because she was sorting out the budgets of the local primary care groups.

And Alan Milburn had done these big reports. Alan Milburn had done his beer. Everyone had done their bit. As you've warned you, Alan, that Alan Middleburn is Rory's hero. Yeah, yeah. Well, he's a hero of mine as well. He's a good friend. And he's back doing the same thing again, I see yours.

It's certainly in the picture. Gordon knew what he wanted to do on health. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, one of which was to say, look, there's this guy, Arodarsie, who's a surgeon. And Gordon had been to a presentation, Ara made about a number of visits

people have to make the bus journeys to here to there, to there, to shifting healthcare to the community. all of that. He said, I'd like to bring Aarazi in. Remember, they were called Goats, government of all the talent. That's right. Yeah. I'd like to bring ARA in as a minister and be him to work with you as a minister of state. Now, the first thing that springs to mind when you think of a major leading surgeon isn't humility, is it? I mean, let's face it. No. Would this guy be satisfied to be a minister of state? Because it was Aara, who is a wonderful person, by the way. I mean, you wouldn't know.

He used to, you know, at St Mary's where he's a surgeon, used to go in sometimes dressed as a porter. Because when he stepped in the lift as a surgeon, everyone drew back and bowed to him and paid homage. He went as a porter to see what the kind of reaction was to him as a boulder. I mean, he's that kind of guy. There's no ears and grace about horror. And we forged a very good relationship.

And that was Gordon's idea. I had two great years. First of all, because it was two years. and I was usually moved on, you know, after a year. But it was two... Utility player. Yeah. It was two years. We dealt with some really big issues. I loved everything about it.

The NHS used to withdraw treatment from someone who couldn't get a drug. Nice, which was probably Alan Milburn's greatest contribution, by the way. Nice. Hadn't approved the drug. Just to explain to this. There's nice... And they decide whether or not to get it. Yeah.

And now all over the world, people follow the nice judgments. Anyway, if someone who was terminally ill paid for that drug, if they could for whatever reason, all NHS treatment was withdrawn from them. And it was barbaric. And everyone told me, including Andrew Leslie, was my opposite number, by the way. He wasn't pressing for this. People told me, if you remove that, the whole of the NHS will collapse. And I got a very good surgeon called Mike Richards.

We used to have some really good people around, not just our, you know, surgeons, health professionals. I said, Mike, have a look at this, because this seems to me to be absolutely awful. If we change this rule that's been there since 1947, would it mean, you know, the sky all falling? And he came back and said, just do it. Just do it. So we just did it. And it's never been mentioned since. It's fine.

Not many people can do that. Yeah. But imagine saying, well, you know, you might have sold you. It might be a modest income and you've sold your house for this. Well, we're not going to treat you anymore. Go somewhere else. You mentioned that we've sort of back here again. So we talked about Aradarzi's report on the podcast recently, and I pointed out that he wrote a very similar report in 2008.

It feels like things are worse than they were. It feels like the economic situation is worse than it was. How can the government turn this around? On health. Well, let me just tell you a little anecdote. Ara's first report came out and said GP surgeries ought to be open in the evening when people are free to go there. They go, why are they closed on Saturday mornings? Big BMA campaign against it.

Who joined them? The Conservative Party. Andrew Lansley joined the BMA in saying no to extended opening hours. Seems incredible, doesn't it? But that's what happened. How are they going to turn it around now? Well, I think to a certain extent, this is history repeating itself because the waiting times are now back.

I'm not sure they're as bad. When we came in in 97, people waited years for a simple cataract operation. They waited, you know, at least 18 months. In fact, John Major had said under the Citizens Charter, no one will wait more than 18 months, months. We were reducing it down eventually to an average of nine weeks, maximum of 18 weeks. Can you do that again? Yes, but you need help.

And you have to bring in, you know, all hands on to the bump. Do you? You do, yeah. Well, you see that the way we did it and the beauty of it was a single tariff. you didn't pay extra because you were used in the private sector. You didn't pay extra because it was one tariff. And that tariff applied for a hip operation, whether it's in the private sector or the public sector.

But it will. So that's not unwilling to. The budget was 160 billion. But I guess what we're honest is getting to and certainly where I'm going to is that one of the things that helped you along with the reforms is Gordon Brown very significantly and Tony Blair significantly increased expenditure. And health inflation has been much bigger than government spending for the last.

14 years. So Aradarzi's report has just said that the government needs to put in tens of billions. It's 37 billion just on capital spending. Just on capital. So I guess, I don't want to put you on the spot too much or put you into kind of tribal complication here, but surely one of the issues is that it's going to be quite difficult sort out without quite a lot of cash. And the question is where the hell is that money coming from. It's going to be difficult. But that's capital. It's not revenue. So Ara's making the point on that. that that backlog will just get worse if it's not sorted out. Others have said that. So leave aside the revenue issue. How can you raise money there? Well, we know the private sector have been sitting

on wads of cash. We know there's been no public-private partnership since Hammond stood up in Parliament in 2018. You were there, Rory, and said not just that PFI is going to go. I mentioned PFI in a second, but no form of public-private partnership. There's forms of public-private partnership out there, like the Lyft model that built the health centers all around the country, that are not PFIs. They're not 90%, 10%, i.e. 90 private sector, 10%. They're 6040. The developer actually is in charge of it, not the contractor.

There are forms of public-private partnership that companies are willing to get involved in if we come up with the right model. There's not been any kind of model for nine years. That has to be one solution on capital. while you wait for the revenue situation maybe, although there is a hundred, you know, 160 billion pound going into the NHS now. So you need that reform before any more money comes in. But you can tackle what is really the arrows pointed it out as the priority now.

Because why is productivity bad? Because they don't have good equipment. Okay, quick break and we'll be back in a minute. Hi, everybody. It's Dominic Samark here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show. The rest is politics when Raw. he was away and I was filling in and enjoying Alistair 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 It's 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. So you did trade, you did pensions, work in pensions, you did education, you did health, and you're also Home Secretary. I always thought you were in favour of identity cards. I was, of course. I introduced them. Right, but...

Still got mine if you want to see it. But where are you now on the sort of the politics of immigration? Did we handle it well? Did we underestimate the impact? What should a new Labour government now be doing to tackle immigration as a political issue? Well, we didn't handle it in the way we're accused of handling it. an open door. That all comes from 2004 when the Eastern Bloc came in

and we said, us, Sweden and Ireland, who were the three most successful economies in Europe, we had 600,000 vacancies. I was at work and pensions at the time. We need, you know, there's no qualifying period when people can come here straight away. And then you add the Polish plumber and all of that. And probably in hindsight, that was a mistake only because of the optics of it. I mean, you know, as well as I know, people say Tony wasn't concerned, you know, open door immigrant. God, he was fanatical about ensuring that we had.

That's why David Blunkett went and did that deal in France. With Sarcozy, yeah. With Sarcozy. So what happened, my view on this is that we, in the end, when that referendum came, the majority of British people, I think, if you say to them, immigration has been good for this country, they will agree, but it needs to be controlled, they will agree. In the end, when it came to the referendum in 2016, Farage and others were able to say, with some justification, but it's not controlled from 26 countries in Europe.

It's not controlled. Not just that. They were meant to tell us, we were never part of Schengen. We were meant to know if serious criminals were trying to come into this country from countries in the European Union. We never got the information. So we didn't know. And all of that, it's happening in Germany now, you know,

they're kind of looking to go back on Schengen. Well, if they'd been in that ballgame in 2015, 2016, a European Union, because people want in this country, and I think in most other countries, they want immigrants to feel safe here. They are liberal about immigration as long as it's controlled. And when it looks like it's not controlled, you're going to get people saying, well, close the border. very strongly involved in was the Remain campaign.

What lessons have you drawn from that? What went wrong there? What could have gone better? Well, my job was get a Labour vote out. And I suppose, you know, I would say this, wouldn't I? The statistics show that we, 67% of Labour support is voted to remain, right? So in that sense, it's job done. I'm convinced it would have been 75% if we had a different leader.

I mean, Jeremy was... Corbyn was not leaning into it. Corbyn was for leave. Yeah. And not for Remain. And also that... Cameron and Osborne, both thought, if only we'd get Jeremy Corbyn out more, somehow it was going to shift the vote. When actually, every time he went out, I think he pushed it backwards.

It's bad, yeah, absolutely. What was that line for you working in that environment? It was okay, because I was on the Labour side, and the Labour side had people like Blunkett coming to talk, and we had Tony, you know, and in a sense we were amongst friends. It was the big campaign that was taxpayer-funded that should have been making the argument to the general public. Not ours. We were making the argument to Labour supporters. If we could have got more Labour supporters out, I think we might well have tipped the balance

because it was so close. I knew. I told Kevin McGuire, famous Daily Mirror, journalist the night before, I think it's going to be a lead vote. I felt it. In fact, in the end, I thought 52-48 was closer than I thought it was going to be. Because they had everything in their favour, you go on the doorstep in whole Western Hesel, wherever you were and try and explain this great idea of Monet and Schumann about bringing countries together after the war

or you go on the doorstep and you say take back control who's going to win that it's quite obvious we're coming sort of towards the end and I think almost for my last question can you reflect a little bit on what you learned

about what makes a good politician and what makes a bad politician and I'd love to see a couple of things one of them your strength and weaknesses of politician and then maybe what you've seen in other people and strength and weaknesses as politicians it's like being on the psychiatrist's couch in with you two

I think decisiveness is crucial. Decisiveness is crucial. I like to think I was decisive. I know of junior ministers and even ministers whose problem was that they couldn't make a decision. They waited ages and ages and age before they make a decision. Now, I know sometimes that can be the wrong decision, but what the civil service want, you know this,

is a decisive minister, and they'll put all the arguments, but once you're in a car, It's dual control. You've got a civil service next to you. If you're not going to put the car in gear and drive it away, they will. I think that's crucial. I think, you know, special advisors is a crucial issue here.

I had brilliant special advisors. They came with me to every department. And they didn't have any expertise, obviously. They didn't need expertise in that department. They had expertise at work and pensions when I originally recruited them. But they were good at linking the civil service with the ministerial team. You know, you hear so many stories about special advisers who kind of walk around as jack the lads because they've got the minister's ear and treat civil servants with disdain. Mine never did do that, which I think was part of our success.

Any success, you know, in a sense of staying and not getting sacked. And your weaknesses, Minister, what do you think looking about you were less good at in the game? Or as a politician, what were you less good at in the game? I should have been more. tuned in to politics as a whole. It was always to me. It was fun. I was enjoying it.

But I was also enjoying reading books. I was enjoying listening to music. I think really it's so all-consuming that the times when I thought when that's gone wrong was because I didn't pay enough attention to it. And I should have been all over it. And I admire the ministers who really are thinking about it day and night. But I'm afraid that's just not there. That's what I said right at the start.

I think that's what stopped you maybe thinking that you could have been. Oh, I couldn't have been. Top-drawn material. I couldn't have been. I'm not top-drawn material. And that's the simple fact of that, is, you know, unless you think your top-drawn material, you're not top-drawn material. But, you know, I think both Royal and I would agree that you are more prime ministerial material than Liss Truss or Boris Johnson.

Probably. Yeah, that's not a very high bar. No, it's a very low bar. But, look, you were, you know, including from me, you were put under all sorts of pressures at various points. You said, look, throw you out in the ring. Because number one, they thought I should stab Gordon in the back in the midst of the... No, no, not you? Oh, there were people coming to me.

You know, the PLP, they're going to put this letter in, Alan. This is Gordon in the middle of dealing with the financial services crash, which he did very well, by the way. That's when the middle of... James Ponell and people were standing up and go, whatever, whoever. I don't like to name friends, but, you know, there were plenty of people looking and saying to me, well, someone's got to step in there. and, you know, it should be, there's nowhere I was going to have anything to do with that.

But. No way. And the same happened with Ed Miliband, by the way. For sure. But then when Gordon stood down, you didn't even think about standing. I nominated David Miliband. I thought,

I went on the Today program specifically to say, look, I'm not standing, but here's this guy. But there was never a part of you that thought maybe you could and should. Only when it looked like we might go into coalition with the Lib Dems, you know, there was that weekend.

You know, you were in 10 Downing Street. at a time. And it looked like Lib Dems came to talk to us. I've always been a supporter of proportional representation. I was dealing with Chris Hoon and all. And I thought

the cabinet was thinking, well, we'll have to appoint someone if this works. And I, it was going to be for three years. Gordon knew he had to go. Yeah.

It would be for three years. And I would have put my hat in a ring. So on Sunday night, I was thinking, yeah, okay, you know, maybe. Deliction of duty if you don't really do that.

By Monday. Of course, the coalition had formed very sensibly. But I think we could have just about put a numbers together. Good. Well, lovely to talk to you, Alan. Good luck with the book. Thank you very much. And the other thing about you, I don't know about you, Rory.

We all get invited to a lot of book festivals because we write lots of books. You love book festivals, don't you? I only write books to go to book festivals. I mean, what is it about book festivals that you love? I love them. Oh, God. Well, there's a little bit of the musician bit in me, you know, that you're on the stage. there's a little bit of the politician that you get very interesting questions from very nice people

who are not out to slit your throat as they sometimes were at political meetings. And, you know, people who like books. I've been steeped in books since I was a kid and meeting other people who like books. What's not to like? They're wonderful. Good, okay. If only you were less cynical, Alistair, and more appreciative of your own literary skills. Without talking up the three of us, which is the temptation and the answers question.

books by politicians that you've admired. Are there good politician writers that you've liked over time? You mean I can't talk about you too? Not novels. I mean, I did read 75 Virgins, whatever it was, which was Boris Johnson. I made it through the first six pages. Only because I was so fascinated to know whether someone who can write string a sentence together, let's face it, he can, could adapt to fiction and he can't.

So I'm not read Dijraelis. Disraelis are probably the only ones that I probably would like. So on fiction, no. On nonfiction, I think I'm sitting in front of my, at least my one favorite writer. You can come into it with the diaries, but politics on the edge is a masterclass. Thank you. Alan, very much. Well, Dundra.

You set himself up for a quote, a quote for the paperback. He's already got one. Very good. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much. So, Rory, Alan Johnson, what a fabulous man. Really, really amazing. I also think he's a reminder of how completely fundamentally the world changed somewhere

between around his birth in 1970. And, you know, he's not actually that old, but he's a glimpse into a universe that has completely vanished. When we're talking about politics today and what people are looking for from governments, yes, they're looking for their lives getting better, but nothing. like the scale of transformation that we're talking about Donald Johnson. We're not talking about what the Labor governments and the conservative governments were delivering after the Second World War, which in the case of Allen's family would have been the first indoor toilet, water supplies,

electricity, the first access to an automobile, to a car, all the stuff which basically meant that the world changed more after the Second World War, particularly for people on low incomes than I think at any time in human history. And in a sense, he's living that out. But he's also a great writer. That's one of the other reasons I really admire him. Yeah, he is a great writer. And what I really always loved about Alan is, he really is a team player. And even now, with all the kind of benefit of hindsight, he still sort of sees himself as being part of a team and still has to defend the team. And I like that. And the thing about his writing is this latest book is really interesting, the one about Wilson. Wilson's a fascinating character. But I think it's a good

idea of a published to say lots and lots of people won't read. 800-page big biographies of big political leaders. So actually, particularly, I think, for a younger generation, maybe these 30,000 word profiles of our best-known Prime Minister is a good idea, so I wish him all the best with it. And Wilson also, I think, really interesting when we talk about political leaders, because there's the positive spin which Alan puts on it, the cleverest man of his generation,

incredible social mobility story, white heat of technology, kicking out the old Etonian tofts, bringing labour into power, a kind of master of politics. But on the other hand, we tend to think actually about Britain in the 70s is a pretty kind of depressing place. And we're not quite sure whether to kind of celebrate that whole era that went from McMillan, Wilson, Heath, Callahan as a great moment or something that actually where Britain kind of slightly lost its way.

Yeah, I guess also that period, and it's interesting, Alan's books about his life, have all got a Beatles song as their title. I guess in 100, 200 years, I wonder if actually the most remembered part of that period out of the United Kingdom will be the Beatles. And it's definitely true, isn't it? I mean, if you think about Mozart, we don't actually remember exactly who the Austro-Hungarian emperor was at the time or who was running Salzburg. Also, the very hopeful element of that is the fact that Machiavelli is the most remembered person from his period of history. So hope for us yet. Hope for us yet.

Good, good, good, I'm glad. I'm glad you're going Machiavelli as your model. Just finally, seriously, on Alan, I think he, charming, thoughtful, highly intelligent, so much that I would have loved to dig into and understanding how the post office workers union worked. You know, I was having lunch with someone yesterday who said, oh, they were very, very left wing. But actually, he seems to be saying that he sort of made them less on the left. The reason why I think Tony Blair was so drawn to Alan Johnson, his politics were, although it was a left-wing union, his politics were always pretty clear. And he kind of, I think, got the trade, not just his own union, but was an important part of getting the trade union movement as a whole into a better place when it came to Labour being in government. Serious guy, very serious guy. Serious guy, serious writer, serious politician, and quite a sort of legendary story. I think, you know, that's my kind of impression of a contemporary statesman, Alan Johnson. Very good. See you soon.