The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

Why do some soldiers make bad politicians? What's the West doing wrong in terms of its policy towards the Ukraine War? How can Keir Starmer turn around the public perception of his Labour government? On today's episode of Leading Rory and Alastair are joined by Ben Wallace, Secretary of State for Defence from 2019 to 2023. Tune in to hear the former Tory minister answers all these questions and more. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] Video Editor: Kieron Leslie Assistant Producer: India Dunkley + Alice Horrell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producer: Nicole Maslen 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 therestispolitics.com. That's the restispolitics.com. Welcome to the Restis's leading with me, Anastair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. And today we have with us Ben Wallace, who was a conservative defense secretary, very, very central to Britain's response. to the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a strong favorite to be leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister, chose not to go ahead with that. Before that was security minister, which he can tell us a little bit about that job, and was also a member of the Scottish Parliament, and before that was in the Scots Guards. He was a professional soldier for seven years. He's somebody I've known for many years, because he was one of my native. in Scotland and he was a member of Scottish Parliament and I'm very happy to have him or we are very happy to have him with us today thank you for coming on I think you invite me right so are we

three Scots with English accents that'd be right Surrey Islanders used to call me tell us about tell us a little bit about your family Scotland the Scots guards and that well my parents are both Scottish my father grew up in Fife he was pretty orphaned at 15 Dean. His father was from Levin and Cochoddy. So my father used to joke about Gordon Brown that in places like Levin and Cochordy, you either wanted to marry the GP's daughter or the son of the manse. And Gordon Brown were definitely part of that. Where my father came from, that was the upper echelon. And my mother came from Perth and was a teacher, a secondary school teacher most of life. They actually met in London. But they went back to Scotland.

after working in the Somerset in the West Country and then the United States for 10 years and then they came back. So you spent most of your childhood in England? I spent most of my childhood in England until about, I don't know, about 18 really. It came back and I met Rory roughly about 18 then. But you always felt Scottish.

Yeah, I'm cheering on Scotland, whether it's at Twickenham or Murrayfield and in the rugby. When you were in the Scottish Parliament, did you feel that you were fully accepted? Did you feel you were treated any differently because actually you don't sound quotes like a Scott? No, I think you always got a few lines, but fundamentally with a name, my first name is Robert, Robert Wallace. It's quite hard not to. And indeed, having been in the art.

I could have called you William, couldn't they? They could have done. Being in there, you know, and now I think Scotland actually does have a place for all sorts of people. You know, is that phrase we're all Johnstom's band, you know. lots of Scots did go away and came back, and that's part of our history. And there were, there were some wise people in Scottish politics. I mean, Donald Juer was a great, wise politician, and he was interested in every facet of Scotland. You know, he was happy, you know, Donald Jue was comfortable at a big house of the, a laird as he was, you know, in a tenement

block in Glasgow. You know, I mean, I think quality Scottish leaders and politicians understand that we are a very diverse, country full of class and everything else, whether we like that or not. And those type of people are like that. But I'm afraid there's always a bit of a chippy wing, which we've all come across. But, you know, ultimately, yeah.

And I also found great kindness in Scottish Parliament. I've said it before. When I arrived, you know, I was completely naive. You know, I mean, I'd be serving in the army. My last base was in well into barracks. and, you know, it was like slightly going behind enemy lines as the Tory in 1998. I mean, you know, we'd been wiped out. There wasn't a single media outlet that particularly was even sympathetic to us.

And, you know, people like Dennis Canavan, who you'll remember from your day, Alistair, was removed from the list by Tony Blair because he was viewed as two left wing, Tony Canavan and John McCallion, if you remember in Dundee. And Dennis was just the kindest man and always supportive and always helpful. and we used to have some very funny, I remember I was on the European Committee in the Scottish Parliament and it was chaired by a man called Hugh Henry

who had been leader of Scottish militant and Dennis Calvin just piled in and you say, we're not with your militant friends now. So they're sort of good gang. So Ben, I remember when you were just beginning to think about going into Scottish politics sitting down at dinner with you with a neighbour

and the neighbour saying, what on earth are you doing, getting involved in politics. And you said, as I guess every aspiring politician should. You know, I was inspired by a teacher in school to be committed to politics, and I've always wanted to do politics. But presumably, now that you're no longer a serving politician, you look back on your young self, your person in your early 20s, you can look at it in a more ironic way, because there's something interesting, isn't that? I mean, you left school dating, didn't go to university, joined the army,

were a professional soldier, and then at some point suddenly decided to do this very strange thing, which was going to elect to politics. And you must have changed a bit between 18 and 25 along that journey. What was that journey?

What was happening? Well, politics is always in you. And I think one thing I learned in the army is I saw it first hand on Northern Ireland. I hate nationalism. I hate the division that it brings. I hate the... And, you know, people forget,

when the new Labour government had the referendum on Scotland and then the Scottish Parliament elections were happening, I felt passionately that I didn't want the union to break up. And, you know, there was a stage when the SNP in the first parliament build up to the Parliament elections were polling at 41%. And I passionately felt that, you know, if this is, if they carried that momentum into the first government of the Scottish Parliament, then it would be a, you know, that momentum would be hard to stop. and I felt it was important to, you know, stand up for what I believed in. I didn't think I'd be elected. I mean, to be absolutely brutally honest, I was serving here in the London. I thought I had no political hinterland. I hadn't been a member of the party.

I thought I'd get some no hope seat and, you know, at least led my trade. And I think probably because I was the only one under 75 or something, people couldn't understand why anybody would want to be a Tory. I got picked by West Aberdeenshire. And then I got elected on the list into the Scottish Parliament. And I remember, Ben, you very kindly invited. me to dinner when you were still on the Scots. So I remember you asked a captioned Scott Scards. What was your sense, the Army? Would you have stayed? Would you have liked to stay for another 20 years?

No, I was never a high flyer in the army. I had a great time. I loved at the time with the Scots and the Scots Guards and all. And I had some great, I did two operational tools, which I enjoyed. But I wasn't a high flyer. I wasn't in the right place at the right time. And I probably didn't warrant a higher promotion. So I thought, you know, I'd done, I joined it.

I'd actually at Sanders, I think at 19 when I first went there. And I was 28 when I left and I'd had a good, good stint. But time for me to do something else. But I was, you know, when I decided I wouldn't run for leadership, the Tory party and all of that, I went back to Donside, up in Aberdeenshire, where I used to live, right up on the northeast where the areas I used to represent. And I just went on my own to just go and sort of ask myself, you know, where it all began and stay with the lovely family who looked after me. And, you know, I realized that there was a large part of naivity. I mean, I literally had no idea what I was putting myself into when I went into Scotland, Scottish politics, which is. is a great learning for anyone. I mean, if you want to learn how to fight, how to make your case, how to be heard as a minority, how to understand the Labour movement,

which is really important. If you want to be in my view, you want to be in politics, you need to understand the Labour movement. Then, yeah, but my God, literally, I remember, I left the army in London. I think I was poured onto a train.

I'd had such a boozy lunch with my friend saying goodbye. And I got out at Glen Eagle Station from the sleeper. And I'd bought a dog on the train, which I couldn't quite remember, but I bought a lovely dog called Sally, a black lab from a keeper. And then literally got back on the train

and went up to Aberdeenshire. And that was really, that was it. Do you think soldiers make good politicians? I think junior soldiers do. I think if you are institutionalised, I think what people don't always realize is that the armed forces are an institution. And the first 20 years can go,

quickly in anything you do in life. And what I noticed in Parliament is those politicians that came in as captains or major, like James Heapy, he was the Ministry of Armed Forces, who's an outstanding colleague and very good minister, and actually was the most experience of all our colleagues on operations. You know, I think he'd done two Afghan tours, one of which was horrendous, with lots of, you know, people losing their lives. I think he'd done Iraq and he'd done Northern Ireland, right? You wouldn't know it because he wasn't shouting it from the rooftops. But if you start going higher up, these guys have been in 20, 30 years. And that's just quite a hard transition.

One of the things that sometimes makes me anxious in American politics as well as British politics is people overly trading on being a veteran. You get a sense that there's a certain kind of politics. You particularly see it in the US, but there are glimpses of it in the UK, where people are really trying to force their military record down people's throats as part of their bit. What's your reflection on that? I think what people are striving to tell the public in a whole range of other areas, including defences, I had a life before politics.

One of the mistakes, I believe, in governing this country is both the media and political parties value the high flyer. And everyone loves a story. And I noticed, you know, Louise Hayes resigning. and large parts of the script are she was a high flyer, she was the youngest member of this and the youngest member of that. But politics is about governing. You need to learn how to govern. And I think what people are trying to say to the public is I had a life.

I didn't, I wasn't a PPE, Oxford, Oxford graduate straight into being a special advisor, straight being into a politician. I dealt with real life. And I think the veteran bit is part of that. But she pointed out that, People like James Heepian, in fact, you are relatively modest. You don't spend your entire time talking about your military record publicly. I mean, is there a sort of, there's a choice, isn't there, that people who've been in the Army make how much they talk about.

I mean, even Bob Stewart, who'd been a full colonel, didn't spend a great deal of time talking about his military record. I think that's who he had in mind earlier. No, no, it might be one. No, I think it's who I had invited. I think it depends why you go into politics. Right. I mean, you know, Johnny Massa, my colleague, wanted to go into politics. and his main drive was improving veterans and putting veterans on the map.

So inevitably, he is going to talk about veterans. That's what he wants to be. And I totally admire him for that. And he did put it on the map. And through thick or thin, he got a post in the cabinet as in a veterans minister in the cabinet, the veteran office cabinet affairs. And I think if you go into politics for a campaigning issue, whether it's nursing or NHS, you're going to talk about it all the time because you have to have credibility.

And especially if you are not a. senior cabinet minister where your credibility has to come from your experience or in opposition where you have to have credit. I mean, I remember saying to one of my colleagues who was quite disappointed, he wasn't getting promoted and he'd been a soldier. And I said, wait to where in opposition, they will be desperate to have a real genuine soldier on the front bench. Desperate. But as you get to the end of a long period in government, what my experience was, the special advisor class take over. They come in, you know, everyone else has left, gone to do something else.

And so the special advisor class become the cabinet. They become the politicians. And what gives way to that are people with experience and who are not perfectly polished as a politician. And that's when the public get more frustrated, actually. Do you not think also with, and as you know, my brother was also in the Scotscars,

do you know, and I find with him, and he had a very different exit because he, you know, he was invalided out, but, or medical grounds, But do you not, I always found with him he never quite escaped in his own mind the fact of having been in the military. And I find with a lot of military people, it utterly defines their life. So that's why I don't, I sometimes, I disagree with the way. I think sometimes I'm surprised how little military MPs talk about their military service. I think, I suppose it's where you go to see it.

I mean, you know, if you spend a lot of time mixing with the military. military types, they will talk about the MPs who are talking about the politics. I think, I mean, your brother, and for your listeners, was the most wonderful Piper. And, you know, I served with him and he was, he was fantastic. And I would see him at association sometimes as well. Yeah, for a lot of people in the military, it's their whole life. They've joined at 16, certainly in Scottish regiments. You used to be able to join in your 16th year. So you could be 15. you were a junior leader. And for many, it took them away from very dysfunctional and difficult upbringings.

It gave them in their mind everything. So, of course, it's going to be part of their life. I think as I get older, I suddenly realize that you do all 22 years as a soldier. You're finished at 41. I mean, you're out. Suddenly, you've got to find. And I think that's their part of why a lot of people find it hard to leave the broader family is, you know, a regiment, for example, is everything. It's everyone knows where they stand, it's tradition, it's history, you're something in it, no matter what you are, whether you're the storming or whether you are the regimental sergeant major, you are something, you have a status.

And then it comes tumbling down really quite quickly. And you go into real world where less people have ever been in the military. And it's like a sort of, no one cares you, a sergeant or a young officer or a colonel. And that's quite hard for some people. So fast forward, you then come into Parliament in 2005 with this quite unusual experience, military, and having been a member of the Scottish Parliament. And it's then a very, very long time before you're promoted, which is Theresa May making you a security minister when you get your first proper ministerial job.

We're now in a world where people like Rishi Sunak, Kirstama, many, many people are, well, in fact, in the current Parliament, there are MPs who've come straight in. to Parliament and become ministers immediately. I mean, the Middle East Asian minister, for example, as a Middle East minister, literally elects it. And the day after they're elected is a foreign office minister. Firstly, what did that feel like? Well, the times when it was pretty frustrating, being stuck on the backbench, his feeling I came in to do something, I'd be a pretty good security minister. I'd be a pretty good defence secretary. And I'm stuck watching everybody else doing this. And secondly, what is this phenomenon about? So I came in, I was made

Shadow Deputy Scotland to David Mandel, as we were the two Scots who were devolution. It was that sort of remember we didn't. David Medell was basically the only Scottish Tory MP, right? A bit like, you know, Labour went through with a lovely guy Murray. I mean, he was it for a bit. I did start that in shadow. Then we had the election and we had the coalition. And it's a very good example of how poor man management is in, or HR is in modern politics. I mean, so I remember the, you know, there was the government and we sort of roughly went along with the idea of the coalition. Coalition appears, and they start announcing the jobs. And then somebody's announced in my job. And then no one actually rings to say, sorry, Ben, there's in any room. And I remember it was my 40th birthday, I think.

I was sitting in a rain-swept car park in Anglesea where eventually a few days later, the chief wits rings up and goes, well, sorry, I haven't got any space. But would you like to be Ken Clark's PPS? And actually, that was the best I did. And I, and I, and I, and I, and I, Then David Cameron asked me to be a whip, and I said no the first time. Andrew Mitchell was asking me, so it wasn't the greatest recruitment video. And I said, no, thank you. I want to stay with Ken, which, so then I got told, that'll be the end of your career. You never turned down a whip, but I stayed with Ken Clark.

And I learned from him. And, you know, my two friends in politics would be Ken Clark and Jack Straw, right? I mean, they were both mentors and advisors and good people. And so I did PPS for that. And then eventually I did say yes to being with David Cameron the second time round. So I was appointed as what they kept telling me was a minister from there. And then when I actually did stand down, I was the last one left who'd been never had been out. I'd survived, I think it was 19 reshuffles.

Was the Jack Straw thing because of Blackburn Preston? I think we were Lancashire. Yeah, we got some. We did Iran together. Right. You could do a whole different podcast on me, Jack Straw and Jeremy Corbyn going to Iran for a week, which we did. And Norman LeMont. We all went to Iran.

Oh, God. And I was the only pro-European on the whole trip. I mean, I was quite staggered how both neither Jack nor Jeremy who had any real excitement or like of the EU. And I was like, well, I know. And we went on this trip, the four of us to Iran. But I always, and we had a common interest in the Middle East and Iran. And then there was the Lancashire link. And the Lancashire Labor are just lovely people.

I got on very well with most of the Labour Party in Lancashire. Lindsay Hoyle was a good friend of mine. And you'll know, Alistair, from that part of the world, that what Jeremy Corbyn completely got wrong about the stewardship of the Labour Party is the Labour voters in our part of the world are deeply patriotic, at some level, you know, conserved with the small sea, hardworking, they feel completely removed from the sort of, I'm going to say it, the North London bubble of Jeremy Corby. And they're just all around, you know, of course we have disagreements, but they're not chippy. They don't, most of them don't take it to heart. They don't agree with you and you don't agree with them.

And it's why I've remained there and I will remain there to the end. I think. Let us ask one more about Ken Clark. What, what, we, would you define your politics as being closer to Ken Clark than to Boris Johnson? I think economically, I mean, the problem a Tory party has had for the last 20 years is we defined ourselves left or right by Europe, right? But if you actually look pre pre that, we were always defined by economics, right?

So Ken Clark is a Thatcherite economist. He's a deficit hawk. He privatized. He modernized the NHS after the Griffiths report. As a chancellor, he would have always been in favor of trying to lower the tax burden. He was definitely not tax and spender. But because he was pro-Europe, he was viewed as being left-wing. Boris Johnson is viewed as being right-wing because he was Brexiteer.

But if you actually look at his policies, it was quite a lot of tax and spend, quite a lot of big state intervention. you know, and, you know, all of that, the Tory party now that Brexit happened, the toy party has to work out its centre of gravity again without having to evoke Europe is defining you as left or right. I was very moved by watching you as Ken Clark's PPS because most people made nothing of those jobs and you had a real affection from him. As you said, you made a friendship, you were learning from him, you spent an enormous amount of time with him.

But he also made something of that job in a way that many other cabinet ministers didn't make much to have PPSs. What did you pick, what did you learn about politics from him? First of all, he let me be part of his job, right? And what people don't understand about Secretary of State is the private office can sort of put his arm around you. Your diary isn't, no one gets to see your diary. And your poor old PPS is sort of loitering around Parliament. and waiting for you to appear, not a beer. And that was definitely harder.

Just to explain to listen. Sorry, parliamentary private secretaries are unpaid and often in the modern world, they're not chosen by the sexual state. It's the first step on the rung, often given by the whips, often for high flyers. And in the case of my PPS, he often didn't even turn up to weekly meetings. I had to keep ringing him and saying, where are you? why are you not at the weekly meeting? Who is your PPS?

Bim Aflami. Four times he missed weekly meetings. And I of course had this model in my head of you and Kent Clark and I thought he and I were going to be like Batman and Robin. I would attend meetings with officials. He would let me... And actually, I do remember proposing in the Boris Johnson government that what we should do is we should formally make the PPS part of a government,

albeit unpaid, so that the civil service can't shut them out. And it becomes the apprenticeship. I mean, you know, Tony Blair made an amazing, you know, quite right. His point was the day I left was when I knew how to govern. And, you know, when I arrived, they didn't really know what was going on in the same way. And, you know, if we could formalize PPSs into the government structure and that they are allowed access to the meetings, I mean, okay, they can't do things like NSC and secret stuff, but fundamentally they're part of that.

That's the best training ground. And if you want to become a minister, everyone needs to be a PPS. for a year, and then we'll understand how it works. I mean, you remember this. When you arrive in government as a minister, someone will say, oh, you've got to go to the PBL. You go, what's the PBL? And it's the public bills liaison committee,

which is where you are supposed to take whatever piece of legislation you want in front of effectively a star chamber off the chief whip, the leader of the house, who will then test you on the bill. The lawyers will be there saying, is it compliant? What's your handling plan? the leader of the lords, I'll be there. No one tells you. I mean, no one tells you that. And, you know, you don't even know how to read a proper ministerial submission. There's no training. And so I think, I think that is, that's why I was eternally grateful and Ken

brought me with them. And he also didn't use his mobile phone very much. So I was his number 10. For a long time, he didn't have one. He never switched it on. He didn't have But he also loved debate. He didn't have a go at someone on the right or someone on the left. You know, you'd find him going out to a jazz club with some of our colleagues from... John Prescott. He used to go. But also the righter wing of my party, you know, because he liked people. And I think the thread of politics to me has to be, you need to be interested in people.

And if you're not, you shouldn't be a leader. and you know, you shouldn't really be in politics. And that's what the army teaches you, is that you lead not by saying, I've got rank. Because in the Scotscars, if you did that, you'd get duffed up in the middle of the night. Give us a sense, looking back in time, how you think about the people that were dominating when you came in.

So David Cameron, George Osborne, Michael Gove, what was that whole culture? What was that period in the conservative? I see George Osborne's £10 million richer today. Very good. Is that how much I even paid for this? No, you're actually doing this for love. I think you better walk out.

Well, they were the spads, right? They'd inherited the earth. The end of, you know, John Major's government came. They'd all been special advisors. So at one level, they had the advantage of the new how Whitehall worked. But they, you know, apart from Michael Gove, these guys inherited the earth. And, you know, they brought quite a few other people with them.

You know, Ed Vasey had been a special advisor. and ultimately Matt Hancock comes in. Yeah, they all come in. And I think that is, I mean, you definitely felt there was an inner circle and there was an outer circle. And what was their view of the world? How would you, you know, you watched them very carefully for, I suppose, a decade. What was their worldview? How did they think Britain, what did they think about foreign affairs?

I'm not sure any of them really had any foreign affairs interest. And in defense, you know, some of them. them don't. Some of them are just pure economists, you know, and, you know, I think you and I know very well, Rory, that there are people who like foreign affairs, but, you know, if someone wants to ask me about the bond market, strongly, it's not my thing, right? I mean, it's so I think they were determined to win power, they wanted power. They knew, I think they were alert enough to know that we had to really change. And, you know, I remember the sort of lobby against David Davis in the leadership election then was, you know, we cannot have one more heave. We have to actually

change. And your listeners will have a view of how deep they really changed or not. Was it superficial or not? But ultimately, the green agenda, some of the more social liberal agendas, was absolutely about saying, look, we have to appeal to the Lib Dem voters. We have to talk about certain subjects that Tories might have been previously not. And if that necessarily means a falling out on certain subjects, then we will do.

And look, I will always benchmark the big change with Tony Blair because I believe that the Labour movement realized it had to really change and it chose a man that embodied that change. I grew up with lots of people who became part of the new Labor movement. My father had been in advertising in the 60s and early 70s and even beyond that. And I met a lot of them.

My sister shared an office with Peter Mandelson in the late 80s, literally in the room of this size. So Tony Blair embodied changed. He wasn't the key architect of the chain, but he was part of that chain. And my worry about the Kirstama government would be, in my view, I think it's a one more heave government. I don't think they really changed. They did a bit of changing, but deep down, I think some of the decisions, Keir's government has already taken, I don't think Tony Blair would have ever made that decision.

What sort of decisions you talk about? Well, I think the pay deals without productivity link, you know, that would have been very much part of New Labor. I mean, New Labor, you know, Alan Milburn and those lot, they understood that you had to make money go further and you had to reform public services. It was often one of the main mantras. of Tony Blair. And I don't think, I don't hear reform attached to the Kirstama government. I hear,

oh my God, look what we've discovered coming into this department and we've got all this money. We just better take some more money. And I don't think he would have made any of those business decisions in the same way. I think those have been negative. Is it partly a comms problem? Because I guess if you were to put them on, they'd say West Streeting is proposing to reform, we are going to do some reforms, we've got planning reforms in mind. Is it partly they're just not talking about it enough? No, I think when I say one more, it was a one more heave election as well. You know, every time Rachel Reeve said, we're going to pay for this through growth, I didn't really hear many media outlets saying, how?

How are you going to get growth? I don't think she was tested. Now, I think she would have been four years before or whatever, and I think Labor in 97 had to prove the how, because that was their challenge. And have you really changed? How are you going to talk about that? But that was partly because the then conservative government, although on its last legs wasn't nearly as bad as the government was just gone.

So I think that was the reason maybe Labor didn't get tested so much was because there was just a sense this government has got to go. And that leads to one more heave, right? And but also opposition is healthy for any party. You know, opposition allows you to regenerate, re-center, you know, find your common endeavor, build a team. And there's something amazing when you are in opposition and you think you're about to win power, which is suddenly all your differences internally disappear because you coalesce around a common endeavor. You become a team and genuinely you become a team. And then literally the day you win power, it just starts to peel away because of the nature of it. When I was preparing for this, I read a few things about you,

and one of them, I'd forgotten the extent to which you were a sort of very, very early mover in the Boris Johnson should be leader of the Conservative Party, sort of third, sort of thinking. Now, I don't know if you ever listen to our podcast, you may know that... Not the Boris Johnson fan club. No, it's not. It really isn't. So do you still think that he was the right person to lead the Tory party and to lead the country? Or do you think like we do, that he was a complete disaster for our country and our politics? I still think he was, and I'll tell you why. And there is a line across here to Ken Clark is, you know, if you live in our part of the world, you know, I was a remuner, right? I couldn't actually understand how, you

in my part of the world where we make the Eurofighter and the typhoon, we're big exporters, and we still have cotton mills doing top-end fashion and stuff like that that still needs export markets. I presumed that my constituents and all the others were devoted to remain. What became apparent, actually, is a large part of their Brexit vote was actually about London. It was about the metropolitan bubble as they saw it. That's different from urban, by the way, and I often think, I often think some of my party got completely confused, different in urban and metropolitan, which is not the same thing, is people felt estranged from both the political process here,

your own book. It talks about that sort of feeling. And we needed a leader who actually was waltz and all interested in people. And I remember taking Boris to see a submarine launch with the Australians in Barrow in the August as he was going to stand down and he was already going to... And they all came out to see him. Now, I guarantee they wouldn't come out to see Keir, probably wouldn't come out to see Rishi.

But they all came out to see Boris. And that's not about he was providing a con to them. There was a sense of he's our guy, right? You have been giving us your guy for the last 20 years. You know, he's quotes, our guy who used one of the most consequential issues

in our politics. to advance his own career, to become leader, then to become prime minister, without, to my mind, any real sense of what he wanted to do for the country. And I think we're seeing that now that he's out. He's just like, he's basically in 900-word newspaper columnist who became prime minister. Just because it's the same as Trump. Just because Trump has a certain appeal to a certain demographic, doesn't mean that they're the right people to take the country. So Boris did believe in leveling up, right?

I mean, you didn't do it. Well, he spent a lot of money doing it, and you might say it wasn't successful in some areas, but also, and this goes back to the point about governance, right, which is when you realize, you all arrive in opposition, and I've already looked at some of lavers of promises, and I go, that won't be there in four years, not because they're being dishonest, but whether we like it or not, delivering capital projects, it's hard and takes a long time, because people have rights, people don't like you building railways over their land, people have, You know, the Parliament is not straightforward. The Treasury hates anything that's longer than a year. I mean, just cannot stand. I think the, I remember, the Treasury even resisted, I think, Gordon Brown's efforts to go to three-year spending reviews. Because when you're in a one-year review, all the powers of the Treasury. And so some of the, like the 40 hospitals, for example, you know, that will take 15 years to deliver, right?

That's how it is, right? And HS2, all these things are very difficult. But he genuinely, you know, I remember he came back from Govern and he said, I met these people, the apprenticeships working on the yards. He says, I want you to be the shipbuilding as though, because I want them to have a proper future. I want British shipbuilding to be turned around. And, you know, he never stood in the way of what I wanted to do. The Treasury stood in the way of every single thing, every single thing. This was something that troubled me when I – so I was a minister in the foreign office when he was foreign secretary.

and he would say to me things like Rory Libya. You know, Libya is a bite-sized British problem. I want you to sort out Libya. And I'd go away and I'd bring together a plan. But what he would never do is take the time to master the detail and make the case to the treasury with me. Or with the Africa strategy. I'd write an Africa strategy. And I'd think, okay, I'm going to present it to him.

I'd walk him through it. He'd say, you know, 100%, you're my plenet, 100%, you're my plenetetetetetetetetary in Africa. get on with it, right? And I would say, are you absolutely sure of foreign secretary? It's this many more embassies. It's this many more staff. It's this absolutely, right? He then leaves the room. I turned to the permanent secretary and say, okay, we've got the green light. Let's go. And the permanent secretary would say, well, I don't know, because, you know, I could probably go in to see the foreign secretary tomorrow and convince him to do the opposite, right? But is that Boris's fault, right?

Or is that the rearguard action of the system? But deep state. I've been a member of the deep state for many years. Because all the prime ministers, and I served all five, right? I think that must be a record. We don't have ever had so many prime ministers in one gig anyhow. But nevertheless, you know, some are detailed people. Rishi and Gordon Brown were technocrats.

I mean, they absolutely couldn't move without another paper being commissioned. and the, you know, Gordon Brown and co used to think if they stay out the problem long enough, suddenly a miraculous solution would appear. Then we have people that lead from the belly, you know, like instinct. That's what I want to do. You sort out Africa. But then don't do the detail by sitting down and saying to the foreign secretary, do as you're bloody told, and to the permaccent saying, do as you're told, I've rubber stuff.

I spent my life with rearguard actions to things that Boris had agreed to. But I really realised this, because I then went on to the Minister of Justice, where I had David Gorkas of boss. And the difference there is he was. would give me, really get behind me on prisons, but then every week he'd call the civil service in and said, are you doing what Rory asked you to do? Yeah, I did that in defence. And I learned I had one boss who hardly even spoke to me and didn't even ask if I've been on holiday or what did I do for the summer. And the civil service love that because when they don't

have a connection between the minister and the sector of state, they can get in between, as you know. And the foreign office is incredibly hierarchical. I mean, it's the foreign sector. or no one. And junior ministers are told, oh, you can't go to this country yet, because the foreign secretary hasn't been. And you go, but he's never going, you know. And it's, the foreign office is hierarchical. The treasury is belligerent. And, you know,

a real, a successful prime minister will master the treasury and has to be a master of the treasury. And, you know, I wrote a column in the telegraph about, about a year ago, or whatever was, saying that I believe Rachel Reeves will be the Achilles heel of the Labour government. because I don't believe she's going to master the treasury. Whereas, you know, and I don't think Keir's the type who's going to sit down and sort of knock heads together and say, well, I'm running the treasury if you're not.

Whereas, you know, there was always that help. Just on that, why did you say that? What was your thinking? Because whatever we think of Gordon Brown, when he became the chancellor at first, it was his treasury. 100%. And he was running it, right? And you have to be the boss of the treasury.

Otherwise, the Treasury will lose you in process deliberately. They will appeal to your risk aversion of, let's just one year, Secretary of State, trial chancellor. They will divide and rule all the different ministers. I mean, the number of Treasury ministers, you and I would meet had no power at all. I mean, just going around the houses. And you have to be the master of it.

And, you know, Gordon came with power, of Labour, as in he was in his mind the Labour Party. I speak for the Labour Party. Not that chap in number 10. I am the pedigree. And he mastered the Treasury at first. I can disagree with lots of things he did. And you have to also be innovative.

So, you know, the Bank of England, you know, I don't agree with it, but the growth of the PFI structures to get round his own rules, all of those sort of things. He was innovating. I don't believe H. Reef was remotely innovative. I think it should just be a passenger.

And I think Rory and I saw this. There are two types of ministers in government, or three. One is the passenger, which is I have no respect for at all. And what they do, they get their submission. They just tick the box and they just carry it on. And they're not trying to shape anything or change anything. They're just trying to be a passenger in the hope that they get promoted for not causing any waves. Then you get the greasy poll people who they'll just do exactly as they're told by number 10

and not really care about the subject they're looking at because they want to be the next. X and the next Y. And then I think you get people who I think, you know, Rory, you were one of these people, is you're bloody lucky to have power. And it might last a year and it might last 10 years. So while you have it, make a change, if that's what you want to do, and fight. And you do have to fight. I mean, one of the reasons I thought, I don't want to be prime minister is there's only

so much fight you can have in you. I mean, it is a daily, daily fight. Fight to be heard by your boss. fight to over all the very civil servants just been told by the Prime Minister, we want this for the Africa strategy, fight to make sure you triangulate to get the Treasury in the room.

Here's a really good example that's frustrating to ministers of treasury tactics. They don't turn up to meetings. Well, they send an official, not a minister, because if they send an official, they cannot be bound

by collective ministerial making. So time and time again, but that's down to the minister. I always think that it's down to the minister. Yeah. Ministers has to know who's going to meetings. Minister has to know the significance of meetings. Yeah, yeah, no, but I don't control the Treasury, right?

And it's a very easy thing for the Minister to say, oh, right, you know. Because what the Treasury likes to do is push everything to one big grand bilateral between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. And you would have seen that in your own downings. So every small thing, like, well, the Treasury won't let me have 50 million to do an Africa strategy. The Prime Minister isn't going to call in, of any colour. the Prime Minister is not going to call in the chance to say give or he's sure of 50 million. And the Treasury loves to wait till it's a big, well, Sir Prime Minister, this is the envelope you've set.

And, you know, that's it. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Gollhangers. The Rest is Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. We often think of beating cancer as treatment, but imagine stopping it before it begins. After years of work, Cancer Research UK scientists are launching a clinical trial of lung vacs, the first vaccine designed to prevent lung cancer. It builds on Tracer X, the world's largest cancer evolution study, which tracked lung cancer cells over many years to uncover the disease's earliest warning signs.

Lung Vax is designed to train the immune system to spot these signs early on, destroying faulty cells before cancer develops. So it's not treatment, but preventative, with the potential to stop lung cancer before it starts. The first stage of the trial starts this year, focusing on people at higher risk. It shows what long-term research makes possible. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchukuk.org forward slash the rest is science. 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 Rory 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 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 con. 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 grimmest 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. I'd love to bring you into foreign policy and defence. So talk us through Ukraine. That was an extraordinary, unique moment. You were the Defence Secretary. talk us through your evolution, talk us through what worked, talk us through what's gone wrong, and give us a sense of that whole moment and your role in that. Well, it actually started beforehand.

I'd been to Ukraine as security minister. I'd been the security minister in some pretty horrendous times, the terrible 2017 terrorist attacks, Manchester, Westminster, all of those attacks, London Bridge. But I'd also been the minister when the scruple poisoning happened. And it became abundantly clear that, you know, to use the GRU on our streets to deploy nerve agent. And again, for the list, the GIU is the military intelligence, the Russian state. Who are mainly currently the in vogue intelligence service that have been assassinating people around Europe or trying to. And in fact, only in May this year, they were part of a plot to burn down a warehouse in London.

So to deploy nerve agent on our streets to kill what they viewed was a traitor and then tragically took the life of dawnsurgia is not something any government takes lightly and is not something that would have been decided by a junior rank of the GRU. It would have come absolutely from the Kremlin and from Putin himself. And I realized that this was a very, very different Putin and Russia from the man who started the journey. under Yeltsin. And he didn't seem to care the risks he was putting people in. The Novichot bottle that was full of almost pure Novichok, it was thrown away and put under a bush, well, I think in a small park where a poor old,

we think, Dawn Sergis's boyfriend had found it. If that had been delivered in aerosol, it would kill 10,000 people. I mean, this was not a sort of joke. And, you know, I knew then that we were in a very more, dangerous place. And totalitarian states or messian leaders, wherever they are, you need to read them. You need to read who they are and what they are and what they're thinking. So I went out to Ukraine where we'd had a frozen line since 2014. And people forget, even before the invasion, Ukraine had lost 18,000 people. People were being killed every week on that line. So I went over

there to understand the wider network of how Russia was functioning. And so the time we fast forwarded to the Ukraine invasion, and as you know, in foreign policy, Roy, you have to also read human. You have to read the people. I mean, going back to why you should be in politics. Politicians can't read the room. It shouldn't be politics. I mean, it's staggering how many very bright people can't read the room and make judgments.

You saw Shogu, the defense minister, not long before the invasion. What were you reading then? Well, I wanted to go. Because they were sort of saying this isn't going to happen. Why do you keep complaining? I mean, so it was pretty obvious from the April before. So Putin wrote an article, which he wrote most of it, the year before, called the sort of historical links between Ukraine and Russia,

which was read like a mine-camp novel. It evoked ethnic nationalism. NATO was only mentioned in one paragraph in 19 pages. So let's, you know, the talking points from the sort of MAGA crowd in the United States are all Kremlin talking points. It wasn't mentioned. It was all about his view of destiny and Premier and all that. And that was him, right?

So that's not a spin doctor writing. That was him. So you, you realize that. And then they had this big exercise the April before. They left all their armoured vehicles, you know, surprisingly nearby. And we did, you know,

we could see signs that this was not just a normal exercise. And you add that to the rhetoric. And my judgment was he's going to do it. And, you know, I can't talk about intelligence, etc. but there were people within the establishment who didn't believe it. I remember a few weeks before, you know, very senior US and UK intelligence people saying he's not going to invade.

Yeah, and I think one of the fallings out of the post-Iraq war was in order to protect politicians using too much intelligence or being too reliable on a single report, which is one of the things that came out of Chilcote, is SIS and others were too reliable on one report. we quite rightly do a proper assessment through the joint intelligence assessment and it's all sort of matrixed and washed

and very, very logical. That's brilliant. But it is only, in my view, advice. And people are not always rational. I mean, I'm having a big row of somebody who said, oh, no, well, Putin's terribly rational. He's not going to do it. Oh, really? Really?

I mean, you know, is it rational to use nerve agent in Britain? I mean, when did that become a rational response? Well, I tell what I think was rational about that, is that after it happened, and as you say, a British citizen rather than the Russian quotes, traitor close quotes, was killed, I think he sort of thought, I've got away with that. So the rational in him said, I can get away with a lot more. Yeah, and he'd murdered someone in Berlin, an attempt to murder in Austria. And the other thing I'd seen as security minister is that daily Russia was attacking us in

cyber, daily. And what was interesting is across Europe, different countries would deal with it differently. I won't say, but there was one major power in Europe who just didn't want anyone to know they were being constantly cyber attack. We're not going to talk about that, as if it was some national embarrassment, you know. So I went to. But just like that, could we have done more after the Scribble attack? I think we could have done more in 2014. I think when he invaded Ukraine.

So first of all, after the Scribble, that was the foreign officer at its best, when they pulled together. and we got 153 Russian spies from around the world expelled. And that was definitely the foreign office at its best, doing a really good job in our Italian service and everything else in getting that done. I think we could have all done more then. We could have realized enough's enough, put in financial sanctions much earlier, got rid of all these oligarchs in London who, you know, I mean, I was also, I mean, the security job was as fascinating as a defence job

because I was economic crime minister as well, organised crime. So I could see the dirty money flow. And, you know, every time. Why didn't we do more about that? Treasury. Treasury blocked every effort I ever did to try and make it. I remember discovering that you could register on company's house, a company, without even an identity check or a Google check, to find out your sanction.

And, of course, the owner of the regulators of these bodies are either the Treasury or the bays, but the Treasury wins. Every time, I remember finding that almost no estate agents had ever reported under a suspicious activity report. or bags of cash or dodgy purchases of of, of houses. And I'd say, we've got to really clamp down on these things. And I spoke to Ken Clark about it. He said, oh, it was always the same when I was Chancellor.

They never wanted to do anything to Treasury did that. So I sound a bit like angry Treasury person. Just because the money's, they want the money flowing in. They're just, they're not wealthy people. Yeah, they're terrified. It sends the wrong message. We're not open for business. I'm glad to say a lot of these things have now changed.

You cannot just open a business on company's eyes. But there's still an awful lot of dirty money in London. There's dirty money all over the world. But we are kind of up there. No, we've done quite a lot now. Have we? I brought in the first criminal finance act with the unexplained wealth orders. Again, you know, people who didn't like it, where people like the Treasury, they wouldn't

give us liability coverage. So if the NCA put an unexplained wealth order on someone and that person sued for reputation, you should be able to cap that. So they got quite frightened that someone. Molligart would annihilate them with a law case. So, yeah, and you could then see the tentacles of Russia all over the corrupting methods of corrupting us both financially, politically. You know, I remember the Russians, during the Black Lives Matter riots in America and when

it got really bad, we discovered that the Russians were magnifying both extremes of the debate, both the sort of KKK and the hard militant Black Lives matter, deliberately to harvest division. And I think we can see a little bit of this in a sense that they're ramping up pro-Israeli and anti-Israeli sentiment. I mean, they're really enjoying that sense. I mean, I think it's a mindset, and it's very different from Chinese mindset, which is I think Russia thinks, well, if I can make my rivals weaker, then by default, I become stronger. I mean, never mind actually looking after your own population and giving them heating and indoor toilets and making sure that they have a better standard. That doesn't really matter by the looks of things, you know, all broadband or whatever. As long as my enemy is weakened, I become stronger.

Well, their whole media landscape is about, they don't talk about Russia. It's basically Europe's terrible, Middle East is terrible. It's terrible. Yeah. You know. But what about what they did on Brexit, for example? As you say, you were a big Remainer. Well, so I did read a lot of those reports were not true in the media about, you know.

No, but you can't deny that the Russians sought to influence. They would have liked, well, they sought to influence Scottish independence. I mean, they would have liked division. There's no logic to it. They did try. It was pathetic, actually. In the Brexit debate at one stage, I remember there was some troll factory in St. Petersburg.

And the problem was they couldn't quite get British humour right. You know how, you know, because for these memes to take off, you do need to get the humour in the right place for someone to think. And it never quite worked. It never took off. It's like, no, that's not funny. So you have to, but I genuinely, and I, like, say this as a Remainer, their efforts did not have an effect.

And we're not slightly picking and choosing on that, though? No, I saw a lot. I mean, I would know whether they were any good at it. I mean, you know, I think we have a lot more to answer for our Remain campaign and how we dealt with it. I mean, the Remain campaign was, you know. Pathetic. It was. Okay. So back to Ukraine. So we're now in the few weeks leading up to the Putin suddenly in February, 2021, 2021, it's 2022, deciding to advance towards Kiev.

Tell us about those last few weeks. Okay, so going back to all this thing, I had come to the conclusion in the summer before that they're going to do this and we needed to put some weapons into Ukraine to allow the Ukrainians to defend themselves. And we're talking about those short-range anti-tank missiles. 300 meters, right? They're not going to hit Moscow or anyone else. The institutions didn't want to do it.

Senior members of these times, well, that's escalatory. I remember I was asked to go to the celebration of Ukraine independence on its 20-year-old, 30-year point. So which institutions are you talking about? Foreign Office said it would be escalatory to me to attend the celebration of Ukrainian independence. Spooks? Some of the spooks, some of the national security institution. And to be fair, this is where Boris was very good. I wrote to Boris and I said, look, Boris, we need to get some of this stuff in here.

We're not talking about the high levels. We need to give them hope and deterrence. And he said, go to America, see if the Americans are okay, went to the Americans, they were fine, came back in September, and it got passed by the relevant national security committees, and then nothing happened. And it kept getting put back on the agenda by the system.

So the weapons were not deployed? Not until January or December, I think December or January. And that, it should have been, it could have been three months earlier. So we got the bin in January. and then, you know, the drumbeats of war. And there were still people. I mean, I remember going to Germany, and I took with me pictures of the mobile crematoriums

the Russians deploy. I mean, you can imagine what that is like. I mean, that's the type of attitude they have to their own forces. Because we know in 2014, they hid all the deaths. They covered them up, cremated them and buried them in fields and things. So I said, look, they are going to do it. And the Germans were like, it's not logical. why would they do it? And it isn't logical. I mean, who would sacrifice nearly 700,000 of your

troops and most of your army? But the people were not convinced. I went to Moscow. To be fair, the Scandinavians were convinced, you know, and I used to use Sweden and Finland as a proper market to the EU. I used to say to the rest of Europe, France and Germany especially, look, if Sweden is worried, you should listen. This is a historical neutral country. It knows its neighbor. It's a mainstream EU country. It's not a sort of traditional Eastern European type. I said, you should listen. And they really got it. The Scandinavians all understood there was a problem and it was going to happen, something was going to happen or was going to happen. So I went to Moscow the week before, or 10 days before, I think. It was all a bit, if you remember,

Liz Truss had then gone. I'd originally invited Shueger to come. And so remarkably, I then got invited. So I went. I took my chief defense staff and a team. And it was, you know, quite respectful. We laid a wreath at the Kremlin for the unknown soldier. We had a parade there. And then we went and, you know, it was a classic type of conference room in the ministry. And there was Shoyugu, Garasimov, who was the, you know, undisputed at that stage leader of the Russian military. Obviously, some of the GRU people and another general. And I brought my chief defense and my commander field army, which is an unusual post to bring, but I brought him because he's the guy who would have to deal with any.

It was like saying, we're not, we have our own capabilities here. And we had a meeting and it was actually, I mean, there was a plus and a minus the meeting. The plus was I realized then that their planning assumptions were entirely wrong. You know, Shoygu said to me, well, my mother's Ukrainian. They're going to welcome us. I thought you haven't been to Ukraine recently. I have, you know. And they're going to, they're not going to fight.

And Shogu gave away, he said as I was leaving that basically his army was invincible. I mean, he said, you know, we used to be much further down the pecking order. Now we're like in the top. So there was hubris misjumption. And those assumptions are what lead to failures and military plans. Because if you make your plan, as we saw around, well, they're all welcome you in Kiev and all the girls will want to marry you and everything else, which is what they all thought, the conscripts, basically.

But also Putin's just been told he wants to hear the whole time. Yeah, yeah. And then they just lied to me. No, we're not going to do it. And I thought his lie was so straight. And there is a thing called Vranu in Russian, which is it's like an abuse,

which is, you know I'm lying. I know you know I'm lying. I'm still going to lie to you because I'm powerful. I mean, it's a bullying tactic. And, you know, I knew that somewhere else in that building was a room. clearly making the plans for what was going to happen a few days later. And you could tell.

Where do you think it goes now? How does this thing end? Well, the prescription of what we could do is all there. It's been laid out for two years. You know, Europe needs to stand up. It needs to put its money where its mouth is. You know, the one thing Obama and Trump has agreed on since 2014, I think it was, is 2%. So it's bizarre, but it is the one thing I think they actually agree on.

and Europe has talked round around and circles about it. Sorry, interrupting it. That's that other NATO countries should spend 2% of their GDP on defence. Yeah, that's it. The American complaint that Europeans are not spent on their own. Which is probably low. It is low. And it is lower and it's low now.

Because of what's happening around the world. But it's, so the prescription is, you know, we've had two years, right? So we could have been ramping up our production, sending more equipment to Ukraine, There are issues in Ukraine. I've written before that one question I've always had for Zelensky is why didn't you mobilize your people? In 1939, we mobilized men and in 1941, the Women at War Act, we mobilise women. And if you are against an enemy that wants to annihilate you, as Adolf Hitler did,

then why haven't we mobilized? And I think in the war, we spent something like 56, 60% of GDP on our defense. I mean, we didn't think, oh, yeah, but what's going to happen after it? We just had to survive. And I think there are some questions around. Explain that again, Felicity. So it's not actually recruced as many young men as people. Well, when we had the call up, everyone was called up.

We all were trained. And then we, you know, people, we had, we had conscription in the Second World War. They don't quite have conscription. And Zelensky took a view that he was wanting to preserve the sort of 18 to 28-year-olds were younger. And it's not a mass conscription. Now, you know, I would have said, and I've written it, what I think they should have done is mobilized, asked Europe to train them, right? Because that's not a hard ask. If you ask them to train people, that's not difficult. And then they go back to their houses. They put their helmets under the

bed. They put their uniforms in the cupboard. They go back to work. And you can then call them up. And that hasn't happened. Okay. Let's get into this then. So, 2022, remarkable, Putin does make it through to Kiev. Beginning of 2020, people are really beginning to think about a counter-offensive, this very complicated idea that Ukraine is going to push Russia back. What goes wrong there? Why didn't that work? I think two things.

First of all, we probably were all trying to impose how we do things on them. And Soviet armies didn't quite have the same type of combat engineer. So we always have in our system, combat engineers are the men and women that clear minefields and breach obstacles. And the Russians had been building this obstacle, massive sort of, like an obstacle, sort of motorway, really, through the territory they already held. And, you know, to puncture through that landmines, drones, everything else is a very big call and very hard. And I don't think Ukraine actually had that capability at the right moment.

And also we'd all underestimated the use of Russian landmines. I mean, the Russians have millions of these things. And they were just throwing them out the back of their carts. You know, literally. So the minefields were deep. They weren't just shallow. You know, they were putting mines on top of mine. So you clear the first mine and the second one goes off.

And at the same time, cheap drones, which is the real new phenomena of this battlefield is you can be found anywhere. I mean, these cheap drones flying everywhere, whether they're dropping anything or just watching. So in armoured warfare, you have to assemble. You have to concentrate your force to then punch through the barrier. And the problem is, if you're in your assembly points, and somebody with a 200-pound drone has spotted you, suddenly the artillery comes in and you don't get to congregate or muster in the way you're supposed to. So if you can't concentrate your forces to punch through, it becomes harder. And then you get stuck in a minefield, and then the Russian artillery is vast.

So it was a very difficult time. There were some successes, Hearshan, if you remember, we got to the north side of the straits looking opposite into Crimea, and indeed since then people have crossed over. There were some successes, but obviously Russia managed to repel. that. But the other thing is, at great cost, I mean, no other, maybe apart from President Xi, no other nation would survive losing 700,000 of its own citizens, dead or injured. How many do you reckon are dead? How many Russians do you think of dying? The figure we talk about is dead injured or deserted.

Right. But how many do you written are dead? A quarter of a million? I'd say quarter of a million plus. I'd say, I mean, they were, losing $1,500 a day recently, a day fighting over an empty shell of a village. He doesn't care, right? I mean, there's a reason he's had to now rely on North Koreans. I mean, he doesn't care. And this is the big test for the West, is just as we see in the Middle East, it's about resolve. And now, the problem is, what are we going to do in a world where the dictators have no regard for their own population at all? And they believe that's the. way you win, you know, because...

Well, he's sort of being proved right. Well, that's what we've got to be very careful about. We've got to be very strong on our resolve. But is there not an argument that we have been rhetorically saying to Ukraine, we will back you as long as it takes, come what may. But I know you made the comment about, you know, sometimes they treat us like a kind of Amazon store. Well, no, that was a misquote.

I'd said, we're not Amazon, we're a partnership. Okay. Because I had offered training in Britain. and I need people to train and if you don't give us people to train you can keep buying all the stuff you'll like but when people will lose their lives but there's been a sort of pattern

where Ukraine kind of says what it wants from the military Abazard and then there's all the politics takes over here in America and Europe and then we don't give them what they want when they're asking for it and then eventually we do but meanwhile Putin's moved on to something else Yeah, no, I found that terribly frustrating.

And, you know, he's a bully. I mean, that's how I view it, right? And for a bully to be successful, all he has to do is intimidate and people to fear him. And Putin is a bully, and he needs to be stood up to. But what does standing up to him mean? Well, first of all, you don't have these ridiculous debates about Stormshadow, not Stormshadow. I mean, let's not forget, over these last nearly three years, over these last years, we had rouse about anti-aircraft missiles,

we had rise about tanks, we had rouse about not even storm shadows, planes, you know, every single time you go around and circle. But is that because we're democracies and he's a dictatorship? No, it's because I think... Or is because we're just not delivering on the words that we're promising. Because there are parts of our systems, as in in our government,

who believe that escalation, you know, who believe his rhetoric on escalation and are... So they are intimidated by the current... They are intimidated. Absolutely. Well, all threats. No, I mean, originally...

But every time there's something... Every time that we are deemed to be escalating, they sort of put out, don't forget the news. I mean, they've got that drunk media of lurking around the game show hosts, you know, I mean, Putin knows that, like for like, NATO versus...

A unified NATO versus Russia in convention. method is done. Russia loses in conventional. And in fact, is definitely going to lose now because he has got no army left, really. So he is a vote.

Definitely going to lose. On a conventional battle, Russia would lose. Against the unified nation. Against the unified nation. With the United States. Yeah. With the United States involved.

It's part of the key. But absolutely. Remember how much he has lost in his modern arsenal. I mean, you know, when you're resorting to firing Iranian drones and sort of ballistic missiles and human wave attacks. That is not, that's not the battle they were configured for. But yeah, he evokes nuclear. He's done it 30, 40 times.

He evokes it. And so what about Trump? How do we feel about NATO, Trump, future thereof? Well, on one level, Trump has a legitimate cry to say, you've been warned since 2014 by Obama as well, that you need to pick up the pace. You know, people forget the Americans are on the hook for 300,000 plus personnel to come to our aid. If I was a Secretary of State carrying that liability, I'd be a little bit, you know, thank you very much. And we have been, and, you know,

go back to really 1991 onwards, we have been corporate raiding the defence budget to pay for our other, I wouldn't call them luxuries, but to pay for our social policies. And maybe that's a decision that people, all the governments, Both Labour and Conservatives of government. And I get misquoted constantly by John Healy.

You have a lot of respect for my successor, or one of my successes. But both Labour and Conservatives in their time have reached for the defence budget when it suited them. And that's, you know, I've been in a hollow armed forces under both Labour and Conservative. I've been in those hollowed forces. So I think Trump is probably, I suspect, going to require more of a subscription to be a member of NATO. And what that is, 2.5 or 3%, I don't know, and what time he'll put on it. When it comes to Ukraine, it's quite interesting. I've been reading some of the comments by his picks, first draft picks,

you know, his picks for government. Some of them are quite contradictory. You know, I think it's a national security adviser who said Putin views a ceasefire as an opportunity to reload, right? And some of them have been quite harsh on Putin. Blom said he's a murderous thug and he doesn't know what's going to hit him. So, so, but then others obviously like the Hawaiian, whatever, she's lady is the Tulsi.

Yeah. And the basic, the basic trend, though, with most of them is to say China is the priority, Russia's a distraction, all these supplies. And even Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor who you're quoting, has said he's very reluctant to provide more patriot missiles because it involves stripping the they could use against China. Everyone is worried about our own stocks. I mean, you know, we've spent stock or gifted stocks to Ukraine.

Everyone has, and that inevitably comes from your own stocks. So we don't quite know what Trump will do because reading his mind is quite difficult. But let's imagine the worst case scenario where he really feels that he's said America does not want to spend another $50 billion next year helping Ukraine against Russia. And that he's sort of hinted to his voter base that he's not about to spend a huge amount of money helping Ukraine next year. Would Europe be able to step up without that $50 billion to America? And what would be involved? What would be the challenges? Let's have to cut something else.

I mean, my whole... Do we have to mobilize? Our whole effort, my whole effort was to change the culture of where defense sat in the public sector choice of spending. Ultimately, we can argue about 2.5, 3% or whatever. But ultimately, both governments had got out of the habit of talking about defence's court. It'd been a stick-on discretionary spend. The Treasury would dollop some underspend from another department into you. But no one was really prepared to say, look, we're going to cut, we're going to spend less on roads this year because we're going to spend more on transport.

We're going to spend less on the NHS, whatever you want to choose from the – that was never going to happen. And even when I felt very pleased that I got Rishi over the line and put a date on 2.5, that was going to be funded out of cutting civil servants. If we really want to be honest about defence spending and how much heavy lifting we're going to have to do, someone's going to have to be brave, whether it's Kirstama or Kemi Badnor, and stand up and say,

you know what, next year, we're spending less on the roads budget or whatever budget you want to choose. And until that happens, the public don't buy the smoke and mirrors of, you know, we're going to cut bureaucracy, magic. And it's, so that's the UK. How about the rest of Europe? Can you see them really stepping up if the US cut 50 billion?

I mean, is it likely? I mean, I agree. I think some will. Unfortunately, the smaller powers will. Poland. Poland is definitely. I mean, Poland is going to be, Poland is going to replace Britain within the EU as its role it plays, if you want.

I think it's the fifth biggest economy already. It's highly productive economy. It's spending, I think, towards 4% of GDP. It's going to become Europe's security voice. European Union security, it's not the continent of Europe and one of its big power bases and it's going to be very interesting

to see how France and Germany accept that. So they will. The Scandinavians are already in a better position. Their forces are better being ready. They're not massive, but they're good at it. I think the question will be, would France and Germany? That's going to be a big question.

Would Italy and would Spain? And if you really want to get going, remember, I think it's shocking. I think 78% or maybe 82, somewhere around that of all of NATO spending is by countries outside the EU. Right. So, so what, you know, I understand Macron's call for an EU army and all these. I don't agree with it. But it's all pie in the sky if your security is paid for by Canada, America, Britain and Turkey. I mean, it's it's pie in the sky and Putin knows it. On being out of the EU, sorry to sort of return to the obsession. I'm going to put you a little,

little theory. So you were in the frame to be NATO General Secretary. You were ish, right, but, and George Robertson, who had been one of your predecessors when we were in power, became General Secretary of NATO. I think Brexit did for you. Discuss. It's possible, possible. I mean, just on the second genus, I can tell you that the background of this was Mark Rutter was what everyone had thought and we were all happy with. The Dutch Prime Minister. The Dutch Prime Minister.

Biden personally asked him at least twice and he said no. So when he said no, we saw a vacancy and we thought, yes, we'll put me in. I hadn't gone into defence to be the Secretary of General of NATO. And yeah, definitely elements of the French and German

establishment did not want me to be the Secretary of NATO and they wanted an EU person, I think. Within those systems, though, it was quite interesting. So within the French system, I had supporters, right? Because I'm not, you know, I'm quite happy to stand up to the United States. And I have done in my own time. And I fundamentally believe that we cannot just go spend our life buying completely American equipment.

We need to invest in our own, I would say that coming from Lancashire. We need to invest in our own defense capabilities and things. And if we're entirely dependent on the United States for our defense, There'll be no industry. Thousands of people will not have their job and we'll get what we're given. And by the way, that does mean back of the queue when it comes to defence. You have to wait until they built their ships. So I think there were some, yes.

And I think Biden was always iconic. He didn't want to upset the French and Germans. That was a long-running theme in them. Look, to be fair, Olaf Schultz and I do not get on. I've been very publicly critical off of them, not when I was serving, I have since. But during my tenure, you know, he blamed me for the tanks. You know, I embarrassed him because I put Challenger tanks into Ukraine.

And it made him have to do that in the end. So it didn't always get on with the SPD German defense team. Well, the much-vaunted Pistorius that people keep saying. He's good. No, he's okay. He's okay. But I had the previous one, Christian LeBrett, before that. But also, it was Olaf Schultz.

It wasn't, to be fair to Boris. I mean, Boris is perfectly good, Pistorius. I mean, he could be in the running to be. he might remain defense secretary in a grand coalition of the Germans. But ultimately, I used to feel that Germany, you know, were holding back, we're trying to play a game that was too clever by half on Putin. Israel, Palestine, other big conflict going on at a moment. Now that you're free of politics, what would you say about what Israel's been doing in Gaza

and what it's been doing in southern Lebanon? Well, I think, you know, everything we have, we have to be guided by international law. And you have a right to self-defense, but that self-defense has to be proportional. And I can see Netiyahu's point of view, which is, you know, I'm going to finish this. Well, I was looking at some quotes from the Israeli Prime Minister in 2001 when I think it was Islamic Jihad kicked off. And he said, we're going to annihilate them. Well, no one ever did. I mean, it's very hard to annihilate a terrorist belief.

You can damage the military, and Hamas had been very badly damaged. But I think what worries me about the Israeli guards, I think, is where's the political solution? I don't hear any political solution. And you're only going to bring stability in the long term through a political solution. Now, I actually took the view you shouldn't have a ceasefire with Hamas, but what you should do is recognize Israel holds all the cards. controls the airsy and land. It's got time on its size. It could have taken out the initial people who prosecuted that. It could have done it over 10 years or one year. It didn't have to do this bulldozing of so much of that small strip of land. And in doing so, I think, lost the moral

high ground. And in doing so, we will see, because I had done this as a security minister, the radicalisation of young men across the globe. So, look, they are right to defend themselves. But I want to see a political solution alongside it. You know, I think if you ever want an advert for why you should never have proportional representation, it's a Knesset, right? Which has always produced almost a governance of Israel that is very, very hard to make any progress on politics, political solution. So we are now held to ransom by tiny little parties in Knesset who don't want a two-state solution in any way at all. and I don't see them producing any solution. I had a friend who sat down with Netanyahu very recently.

And Netanyahu was basically on monologue form and saying, we're dealing with an octopus and we're cutting off their legs one by one. But the head of the octopus is Iran. And all I need is give me the weapons and we're going after Iran. What's your view on this as a strategy? Well, you can slightly put it another way that if you were Iran right now, your proxies have been smacked all over the place. You know that your own military is a bit of a joke insofar as it isn't.

You've talked to yourself for years about how good it is, but it isn't really very good. And you fear that Israel's coming for you, one way or the other, whether that's true or not is separate. I think you'll see an acceleration of the nuclear program in Iran, which they've had on and off. I think that's the truth of their program. It's been on and off. It's been on. It's been off. It's been on.

So I think you're going to have definitely the direction of a nuclear-armed Iran, whether it's this year, next year or the next three years, which Israel has always said is unacceptable, as have the other neighbors. I mean, you know, many Gulf Arab states do not want a nuclear-armed Iran because Iran will do what Russia does and start having spheres, influences under its umbrella. But is it possible, right? I mean, Iran, it doesn't matter what solution is going to happen in the Middle East between Israel. I don't think Iran is going to stop with its ambitions now.

But the challenge for anybody is if you think the solution is to use military force to stop its nuclear program, you have to be 120% sure you can. I mean, if you do it and it doesn't work, what do you do then? And it's going to be really interesting in Trump, because, in his mantra is no boots on the ground, but, you know, if Iran was what they wanted to do, that would not, you couldn't, Israel can't do it on his own.

Now, listen, my final question, Ben, to bring us back to the UK, is the state of your party today? Is Kemi Badock going to be a leader at the next election? And is she ever going to be prime minister? Kemi I worked with and I think

I think you know this better than most is that in the when you're in the political bubble the swirl of rumours and they go round around and circles my experience of working Kemi is she was instinctively strong on her economics she was direct

and you know was a competent Secretary of State a good Secretary of State. That was my experience of her. She's done the right things at first. She hasn't jumped in with a policy a day. Some of the other candidates were like announcing a policy a day.

And she knows that it's a four-year cycle, five-year fight. She's already played the Kier should resign card. Alistair, I'm not going to take that from the Labour parties. But I mean, I was watching Louise Hayes' vizios of everyone should resign for wrongdoing. Well, we'd have a day she resigned. We'd ever do it. I think everyone, I mean, usually the Lib Dems are the first out of the trap for a resign. That's true.

I don't think we ever call for Major to resign or should we did. But I think, I think, look, I think she will get there, actually. What, to number 10? I think, well, which is a long time in politics, right? I mean, I don't, you know, look. What are you hearing here, Rory? I'm not hearing of bringing endorsement. Well, no, no, look, I know it's a four-year journey, right?

So it is all to play for. I think she could do it. I think she has the qualities to do it. She's the qualities to be the prime minister. But I also know I've been in opposition. I remember being a Liz Truss's cabinet. It's the only member he'd been in opposition. It is a hard slog opposition.

And also a week as a long time in policy. If there was an election tomorrow morning, I think she'd have a good chance, right? Because Kirst Arma and his team are very unpopular. Right. And people are worried. But I'm also not naive enough to think that what happened. this week is going to be solidified into people. I remember here's a lesson from Ken Clark. When we went very early on in the Cameron administration, we had this privatized the forests

debates, right, which was where I can't remember what the policy was. It was so sort of, it was pretty minor, which was going to be something like the National Forestry, whatever they call it, the Forestry Commission. We were going to sell off some of the public forest estate. We're going to sell off some of the public forest estate, but we were going to guarantee all the rights away and people would still be able to it. And there was this big thing, and David Cameron did a U-turn, and it was the first experience of new MPs getting letters and, you know, campaigns against it. And Ken went, this is just such rubbish. He said to me, if in four years time, you've got to do your Ken. If in four years' time, Mr. Jones is still walking through here.

That forest with his dog, he won't give a toss about that debate four years earlier. And you have to put things in perspective in politics, and you have to think, visualize through the next four years. So, so Kemi's challenge is, can she visualize the four years? Kier Starmes' challenge is to think about what's actually going to do in year three and four. Never one was it doing now. And Rachel Reeves' challenges, if you don't grow the economy in year or three or four, or, you know, if the tax income is low and you have lost growth, you'll done, right? That would be my view.

And Kier should think about moving her in year three to bring someone in. because I think that is ultimately what we'll do for them and do for us. Final one for me. Lessons and leadership. David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris, Liz Truss, Rishi Suno. Or the one you admire the most, Tony Blair. Imagine I commissioned you to write a book on lessons and leadership. What are the doves and don'ts being a British primacy you've picked up?

So the do's and don't are, first of all, it's an old army question, in which the test of leadership is, be very clear in what your mission is and what everybody's role is in it. And there's an old test in the army, which is when you turn up and you go to the trenches and you said to the young guardsmen,

what is your higher commander's plan and your role in it? If you can't answer it, the leaders failed, right? No one's asking the guy in the trench to storm the bastille, but you're asking them, you know, what's the boss's idea?

Because then they can all contribute. And if you can't answer that, and too many leaders in politics don't communicate that. either to their own troops or to the country. My plan is this, and your plan in it, your role in it, is that. I think that's the most important thing for any leader, and it's also a very good test to find out.

People have no idea what it is to be conservative or to be part of the new Labour movement. What's the point? I mean, they'll all just flake away. So that I think is the most important. The other one is that experience matters. It really matters. Don't fall in love with the media narrative.

Oh, a high fly, aren't they brilliant? No, no. I'm afraid sometimes the unglamorous, hardworking, the ministers of state carry governments. They are the hard workers. I mean, there are really, they know how to govern, they attend those boring committees, they attend, they try and triangulate and get their way. So learn how to govern and if not train people how to govern.

There's nothing wrong with people learning their trade, right? And I think those are, governance is a skill. And the way you govern in politics is people, process and policy. And if you can't get that triangulation right, then you ultimately won't deliver. So Liz Trace could stand up and make a policy, but she didn't really think about the people, like in the OBR and all those things,

and you didn't think about the process. And, you know, I will take it back to the new Labour sort of trilateral power of, you know, the man sitting opposite me, Alistair Campbell did comms, Peter Mandelson put the fix in, John Prescott knocked heads together of ministers. Those, that three

helped drive New York. Labor deliver because, you know, ministers, you know, cabinet committees, you know, prime ministers don't really like attending them most of the time, but you need someone who says, I don't really give a toss about transport, but I'm telling you, you come up to a decision. And John Prescott was good at that, right? And, you know, I think you've got to have those three stools of governance. And if you don't, you just fall off the cliff. And, you know, I think those are the three lessons. So we'd agree that Tony Blair was probably the best prime minister of your political life. After Margaret Thatcher. Of your political lifetime.

Of your time in politics. I'm not that young. I think there were some great leaders in our time. And, you know, I think, I'm afraid to say the jury is out on both Keir. We'll see what Kemi delivers. And I think let's just go back to being, valuing experience in life, whether you're an experienced broadcaster or an experienced, you know, we're too busy to throw people away and focus on the glamour. So the bald, overweight man sitting here on the program.

But I do think that's true. Well, thank you very, very much for your time. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. Right, Ben Wallace. Well, he was more interesting than I thought he was going to be. Oh, thank you. No, no. I mean, look, he's a proper person. I knew him before he became politician, knew him when he was still in the army, even before he's in Scottish Parliament, because he's my neighbour in Scotland. But one of the things I really appreciated about him is that instead of becoming massively bitter, and he had every reason to be bitter,

he was stuck on the backbenchers for basically 10 years because Cameron, didn't raise him. And actually, Ben was developing through all that time. Real expertise on Iran, very confident on defense, and turned out to be a brilliant defense secretary and somehow Cameron couldn't see it. But he didn't become bitter. He remained incredibly funny. He clearly, you know, was not a fan of Cameron's and was pretty cheeky about him in the barbden. The second thing is that he became really weirdly, despite being a Remainer, became Boris Johnson's wit for his leadership run. But he called me and he said, Rory, you know, I'm ringing to tell you that you need a vote for Boris Johnson. But to be honest, you can completely ignore what I'm saying. Because actually,

it's not going to make much difference to your career, who you come out for. If I view, I'd just keep your powder dry and not endorse any of these duggers. So he was, what was he doing there? Was he confident he'd got the vows anyway, looking after you? I think he's confident that he got the vows. Or making you feel, oh, maybe these guys aren't Confidently got the votes being pretty straight as a friend. And I was really appreciated it because actually, even Theresa May, who I really liked, her whips were cranking up the pressure and being like, as a friend, I would seriously advise you to vote for Theresa May.

I'm afraid nobody who doesn't vote for his ever going to get a position. And he was just like, I forget it, do what you think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, he's pleased by the eyes about that. I thought it's really interesting on Ukraine. I thought I had a really kind of good sense of sense of why it's got to where it's got to now do you think he was as optimistic as he seemed?

No, I don't think he is as optimistic. I think it was a help when he was Defence Secretary, though, that he actually knows quite a lot of stuff about armaments and can talk with relative confidence. I mean, those years in the Army at least gave him some background. Yeah, yeah. I also like his cross-party nature. He obviously admires John Healy.

likes Jack Straw a great deal. He was reminding me before we recorded. He said, do you remember a conversation we had on the day that your old boss stepped down? And I said, oh, no, I don't. He said, well, I was standing next to you. And I said, I don't know why you, what I've done this, because you've just got rid of your best ever prime minister. Yeah. The final thing I think is actually quite moving about him was this relationship with Ken Clark, which was completely true.

nobody I ever knew made anything of this job of being a PPS which is like an unpaid part-time parliamentary back carrier where often you barely see your minister at all he had lunch with him almost every day went out to Ronnie Scots with him and literally like learnt like an apprentice for the month ago. But that says to me that underlines to me that Ken Clark was a very clever politician because one thing you should be doing if you've got anybody that you can be developing you should be doing that. But secondly, if you're a minister and you've got all the different sort of forces and pressures going on with the department, use your allies. Yeah, but those are prime minister or

PPSs. I think what was, and they were important even in our government. You know, David Cameron or Theresa May's PPS is important. You know, Gavin Williams and famously made his career as a prime minister's PPS. But it was unusual for a secretary of state. And Ken, you know, it's absolutely wonderful, but he was getting older, he was relatively slow. I really, I like that part of Ben's character that he could really spend the time. And he also recognised that my brother was almost as good a piper as I am. Much better, much, much better, Alastair. And on that, we will conclude.

Good. See you soon.