The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

Does George Osborne regret leaving politics? Does he think Sunak can win the next general election? What did he admire about New Labour, Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown? Tune in to today's episode of Leading to hear Alastair and Rory's conversation with the former Chancellor of the Exchequer. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, 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. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's therestispolities.com. Welcome to another episode of The Restis Policy's leading with me, Alistair Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. And I am in a building with which I'm very, very, very, very familiar because this building, in a rather swanky part of London used to be the office of Tony Blair's. empire. But no listeners, we are not interviewing Tony Blair for the third time. We are interviewing George Osborne, former Chancellor. I don't know how many jobs you have these days. There was a time when you had about a dozen jobs on the go. Were you down to his single figures yet? Just about. I have a primary job and we're in the office of that job now. Okay. Well, it's certainly what we call pretty high-end real estate. Tony Blair would not have been anywhere else. And I guess where I'd like to start is with austerity, if I may. I'll tell you why, because I've just come from a confidence on mental health services, and it was really depressing.

And I've just walked around from the tube station, and there were quite a few people who are living on the streets. And we know what's happening in our public services. And I just wonder whether you, looking back, will at least accept that austerity and the policy you pursued in the early years of the camera government. is in part responsible for the state of the country now, which is, I think even you would agree, not in great shape. Well, I don't want to sort of start by disagreeing with you, Alistair, but I do. And I don't dismiss those issues. I think there's a lot more we need to be doing on mental health,

and we've actually worked together on that kind of thing before. I think there's a particular challenge with rough sleeping, and we've shown in the past that that can be tackled. It's not just a question of resources. But on the overall big question of austerity, there's a very simple truth, which is if you have a very large financial crash or economic crisis, the country pays the price. And that is what happened 15 years ago with the big financial crisis. And it was a lie to tell people at the time that there was never going to be a price to be paid for that. And I think the reason the Gordon Brown government was ejected was because Gordon Brown did not tell the truth to people about.

the consequences of that crash, although Alastair Darling tried, his Chancellor. And David Cameron and myself and others took a risk in that 2010 general election of saying to people, look, there are some really hard decisions that are going to flow as a result of what's happened to the British economy. And as a result, I think we commanded the confidence of the British people during that period as we made those difficult decisions, precisely because we had fronted up to them what was going to be required before an election. And that was why we were elected five years later. And I would say, you know, one of the reasons why the Labour Party has been largely irrelevant in British politics for the last 13 years is because it has not come to terms with the basic truth, which is a country has to live within its means. And it's only now relevant because you have in someone like Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, here's Stama.

People who are beginning to say, look, we agree there's not much money to go around and we're going to have to be very tough about how that money is allocated. I get what you're saying about the crash. But what you did politically very successfully was pin the crash on the Labor government. But the economic record of the Labour government over the period was, I would argue, stronger than what we've seen from the Conservatives over the last decade. Well, it's a bit like saying to Mrs. Lincoln that the play was okay, apart from the assassination of her husband. I mean, the Labor record was kind of fine until we had the biggest crash in recent British history.

I just want to say politically you successfully pinned that on the government. Well, it's the same like saying, well, first of all, course, you know, governments in charge take responsibility both for the upsides when, you know, economies generally do well and the downsides when they don't. You know, the major government was pinned for Black Wednesday, even though many other countries suffered difficult problems that day. I would make a broader point, you know, I don't know, I don't want to get back into ancient history of when I was Shadow Chancellor. You know, I think Britain was particularly exposed to that crash when it came. I don't think the banking system was as well regulated as it could have been. And we suffered more than most.

It was a bigger crash in Britain than it was in many other European countries. And I would say the economic policies we pursued after 2010 meant that we actually had the strongest growth in the G7. We had more jobs that created under the Cameron government than any other government in British history. So we avoided that mass unemployment threat that looked very real in 2010. So I think there's a lot to be proud of of what we did. But, look, you know, where I tell you we're going to agree is that then something happened in 2016, which did put the country back, set the country back, and that was the Brexit referendum and the results of that. Did you think you secured the recovery in the way that you could have done?

Yes, I think because I... Composed to some of the competitors who are now do much better than we are. Look, I think in Britain in 2016 was buzzing. It was, you know, we had near full employment. The incomes of the lowest 20% were rising rapidly because we'd introduced the national living wage. Britain was becoming a kind of the global center for business and finance. It was an exciting people looking at the UK and saying, that's the example we want to follow. And unfortunately, that is not the case today. I'm not saying it's irrecoverable.

But, you know, we have obviously suffered a great setback in not just leaving the European Union, but the way we've left the European Union and exiting Margaret Thatcher's single market and all of that. I'm not saying, again, we can't do things about it. I'm realistic. We're not going to rejoin the EU. Whatever. Well, I personally think it's highly unlikely. I think we could rejoin something that looks akin to the single market or the customs union. I think there's a great, I did an event with Ed Balls this week in the House of Lords.

And he made a really good observation, you know, and he was my great kind of political rival back in the day. He said, you know, if you do something that is not accepted by the other side that doesn't become part of the consensus, it doesn't last. And the real achievements in politics are the things that everyone accepts. eventually like Bank of England independence or the Labor's minimum wage. And I would say things we've done like the OBR. Now, I'm afraid, to my point of view, leaving the EU is now an accepted kind of consensus. I don't think the fact we left the single market in the customs union is accepted. I think the people who won a referendum 52, 48 percent went for 100 percent and as a result

have not secured their legacy. And that is open for, you know, that's open for debate. Whether it's actually called rejoining the single market or whether it's called a new trade deal with the EU, who knows. But it's clearly the big economic challenge the country faces, or one of the big economic, and the clearest kind of policy lever any incoming government, either conservative or more likely labor, can pull. George, can I try to sort of follow on from that Ed Ball's observation? One of the things that hasn't really become consensus is the policy that's associated with you, which is austerity. So in that sense, you haven't won in the way that people did with the independent central bank, the basic idea of fiscal prudence.

There is a very, very strong group of people and Alistair represents them who continue to feel that we could have borrowed more, could have spent more, and that the way out of a recession would have been to borrow and spend more. Why do you think you haven't won that argument? I would beg to differ because I think every time a political party since I was Chancellor has veered off. the fiscal prudence path, they've become essentially unelectable or been ejected from office. It's very interesting. And maybe I want to sort of bring out the difference between the fortunes of political parties and separate that off from the sort of intellectual case, because there is a very, very large number of economists still out there. You just have to open the Guardian almost every day, go on Twitter any day, who continue to argue that austerity was a big mistake

and that if we'd borrowed and spent more, we would have had more growth. We did actually have, unfortunately, for our country, a perfect experiment last autumn of what happens if you are not prudent, if you think you can go and borrow in the case of the trust government, this was to borrow to cut taxes. Anybody before trust was recommending that approach? Well, it's whether you borrow to cut taxes, which would be the sort of conservative thing to do or borrow to spend more, which might be the Labor thing to do, the trust government tried to do that. And, you know, the world said, no, we're not lending Britain any more money. And, you know, it created a financial crisis. It created a crisis in our pension funds. And it brought down the government just weeks after it had been put into office.

And I think that was a proof point for the things that myself and not just myself, but of course, our coalition partners, liberal Democrats, who got a little stick for this, also were saying at the time, which is Britain cannot just borrow endlessly. It has to live within its means. and we had a real-life example of what happens if you don't. Yeah, George, so I guess I'm going to tempt you to sort of step back for a second. I absolutely understand the arguments here, and I agree with a lot of your arguments, but I'd like you to sort of step back and look at the politics of it.

Why do you think it continues to be the case that there is such a considerable body of progressive opinion, economic opinion, that continues to see austerity as a very bad thing, notwithstanding all the arguments that you would make in favor of it? I think it's essentially lazy because it thinks that public policy problems can simply be solved by more money being thrown at them, even if that money is not available, i.e., you know, we can't borrow it and we can't raise taxes further to pay for it. Taxes already being, by the way, at a post-war high. So I'll give you an example.

When I was, you know, a young opposition MP, the most, Tony Blair was the Prime Minister, You know, the most interesting domestic policy issue was education. He made it a priority. People like David Blunkett were doing interesting things as Education Secretary. When the Cameron government came in, Cameron Clegg Coalition, you know, education and free schools and academies was a big part of our domestic agenda. Michael Gove was the Education Secretary doing a lot of interesting stuff there. I have not heard a single mainstream politician say anything interesting about education for

four or five years. I hear nothing from this government, and I hear nothing from the Labour opposition. If you ask me what Labor's education policy, and I'm someone who follows these things, I haven't got a clue. I'm not really clear, although beginning to get a sense that they want people to learn maths, what Rishi-Soonak's education policy is. In other words, domestic public service reform, not just in education, but health, welfare, law and order, these issues, which were the great animating issues when I was an opposition

MP and then became a member of the government, seems to have largely sort of disappeared from the British political landscape. And that, as a result, means, you know, failures to properly educate our young people, failures in our health service to provide a decent level of care, are blamed on levels of public expenditure, even though levels of public expenditure are historically at almost record high, rather than the failure of both the political leadership of the country and the institutions themselves and the professions involved to face up to the fact that most of these public services need far-reaching reform. Okay.

I really want to come to Brexit. It won't surprise you to know, but just to maybe finish on this, your kind of economic strategy, you would at least accept that at the start of 2010, there was growth starting to come into the economy and that the deficit had gone up largely because of global recession and we've seen a plummeting of tax receipts. And you then did make very, very big choices, which were focused on not just keeping public spending down, but actually huge cuts in some of the most important public services,

and we're still seeing the consequences of that now. Well, I just simply don't accept that. Because Britain had, for the period 2010 to 2016, the fastest recovery of all of the G7 countries. It's now a Labour ambition, on one of the pledge guards to have the fastest growth in the G7, we had it under the Cameron government. As I say, more jobs were created than under any previous government in British history or subsequently.

And there were big improvements in the outcomes of some of our public services. Things like education standards were rising, crime was falling because we were undertaking complicated reforms to those public services. And although it is true that people largely forget this now, the criticism I often got at the time, was for measures that made better off people pay for this. So when I removed child benefit from the richest 20% of the country, there was more BBC coverage of that than there was for any changes I made to tax credits for the poorest 20% of the country, not least because most of the BBC people were in that top 20%. When I increased stamp duty on the most expensive houses,

you still see endless newspaper stories about that. You know, I made a big effort to make sure that the job of filling, the hole that the financial crisis had blown enough public finances. And it wasn't a temporary hole. It was a permanent hole because, you know, permanently money coming in from financial services was going to be less. And permanently, Britain had, you know, created a structural deficit that had to be... But hold on. You persuade, you and David Cameron successfully at the political level persuaded the country that we were facing this kind of Greece-style financial crisis. But it wasn't just Greece. It was... Look, you were very successful politically. But you

made economic choices. You must accept some of the consequences of what's happening in our country now are public services. You must accept that at all. And let's go to Alistair, darling, right? Who we would both, I think, acknowledge as a decent public servant. He was going to make some spending cuts. He said before the 2010 election, you were working in Downing Street at the time, that the cuts coming would be bigger than those under Margaret Fetcher. Gordon Brown went apoplectic and told him to shut up. But he was telling the truth. Peter Mandelson, who was the Deputy of Prime Minister at the time was telling Gordon Brown, he had to tell people. There were cuts coming. They used to talk about using the C word and Gordon Brown wouldn't do it. And as a result, he was not

telling people the truth. And we told people the truth. We won the mandate for it. We got reelected. And I think, you know, there's a lesson, you know, one of the great themes of your podcast is, you know, talking the truth to the public, let's get away from this populist nonsense of pretending everyone can have everything all the time. That's what the Cameron government. government did, and we got rewarded for it at the ballot box, not because we had smart PR or not because we'd sucked up to particular newspaper groups. So you did that quite well. Well, not as effectively as you did back in the day.

But, you know, because we were telling people essentially a truth, and the public were not stupid. They knew it to be the truth. George, I want to take us off the sort of punch and duty of our different views on austerity and take the tone down a little bit back to something more personal. part of this program is about politics and what it means to be a politician. And I'd love you to reflect a little bit on what it felt like to be in opposition, what it felt like to be a shadow chancellor, what that makes you think about Rachel Reeves and the challenge that Kirstama faces.

Give us a sense of just the structure of opposition in British politics. I spoke half of my political career in opposition. It was in some ways the most sort of challenging and rewarding period. And I know that sounds kind of odd because, you know, obviously the job of being Chancellor's Exchequer is, you know, comes with enormous responsibilities, an incredibly intense job. But the job of being shadow chancellor is unbelievably difficult. You know, because when you, you know, if you're Chancellor and you decide not to get out of bed that day, the Treasury purrs on as a kind of machine and the government carries on. And it's a bit like, you know, eventually the country would notice that all the politicians were still in bed, but it'd be a bit like a kind of plane on autopilot that would eventually

kind of crash into the mountain. But in opposition, if you don't do something that day, if you don't get out of bed and say, right, what am I going to do to make an impact today so that people notice we're around, we've got something to say, then nothing happens. And I, you know, I spent many years a sort of junior shadow posts with various conservative leaders, all sort of struggling and failing to make an impact against Tony Blair. And I, you know, that period of of 2005 to 2010, when with my good friend, still my good friend, David Cameron, you know, we put together a different kind of conservative opposition,

built our case for the country, and then, you know, won the election or got ourselves in the position where we ended up in Downing Street, you know, was incredibly hard work, but so rewarding. And I have the sort of fondest memories of that period. And I think it's, you know, I kind of, I can see in the Labour opposition, I don't actually think we can come on and talk about this a bit, that they're necessarily

in quite as good position as either we were, or let alone the kind of Blair Brown opposition in the 90s. But, you know, that kind of tension and excitement and nervousness that you're going to screw it all up and, you know, the prize is there to be won if you can get your message across in a compelling way. I think is, and I, you know, look, I would say this, and it's a bit unfair on the kind of current government ministers who, you know, didn't have the opportunity to be in opposition. But I think it does make you a very, I'm not sure, a better minister, but it certainly equips you. You know, by the time I'd become a chance, I had had five years to think about what I was going to do a job. And you'd be facing a very formidable opponent.

And a very formidable opponent in Gordon Brown. You know, when I became the show, I was a bit like, I used to think it was a bit like a kind of First World War trench. I was like the next second lieutenant told to jump out of the trench to fight Gordon Brown, the kind of tank of Gordon Brown. And I was the seventh shadow Charles He'd faced. And I was only 33 years old. I was, you know, it was absolutely terrifying. But it meant, though, when I actually became Chancellor,

I had had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do with the job, which you just don't get in the nature of, you know, government's been in power for 13 years. And the Chancellor, I guess, five minutes noticed that they're about to take on the job. Can I offer this question both to you and Alistair? I mean, what was your impression of Alistair when you started in politics? what his strengths and weaknesses were,

what you thought of that part of the new Labour project. And then I'd love to hear, Alistair, what your sense is reflecting on on fighting the Tory opposition and what they did badly, what they did well. But George first on Alistair. The number of meetings I was in where people said,

we need our own Alistair Campbell. We went the whole string of communication directors until we actually landed on a very effective communication director and Andy Coulson. You know, Alice was a really formidable opponent. I was in the opposition leader's office, William Hague's office, still remains a good friend of mine and I kind of was my mentor in politics in that period, 97 to 2001. And, you know, we were a little happy band of brothers and sisters, but my God, we're we facing the standing army of Tony Blair,

Gordon Brown, Alistair, and Conball and co. And, you know, it was very effective. I think, you know, the lesson we learned from Alistair and, you know, and his colleagues was, do everything required to win. You know, they were ruthless. And I had been working as a very junior photocopy boy in John Major's Downing Street. So I'd also seen the kind of opposition coming. You know, if, you know, if you have to travel to the other side of the world to go and talk to Rupert Murdoch to try and persuade him to get his newspapers to back you, then that's what you need to do. You know, we did everything we could, and we learned, you know, David, myself, that kind of generation of, we were the sort of survivors of the new labor destruction of the Tory party.

And we kind of emerged from our, you know, from our holes to this sort of scorched earth that new labor had created for the conservative movement. And we started to rebuild. And we did. We learned a lot. You know, much as I think Tony Blair or Gordon Brown would say, they learned a huge amount from the sort of Thatcher period

and they were formed and as politicians during that period, David and I were formed during the Blair Brown Campbell period. Alistair, what's your thoughts on all this? What's your reflection on listening to all this and your memories of those periods when he's in opposition? Well, I think there was definitely a period when Tony Blair was Prime Minister where we sort of felt invincible against some of George and David Cameron's predecessors.

We just never felt that this was loosable. And that's a very dangerous thing to think. And we tried to resist that a lot. And I think that what happened when David Cameron and George Osborne came along is that we could see that there was a genuine threat. I felt a lot of the time that they learned the wrong lessons about us. I think there was too much focus on media management as opposed to bigger strategy and challenging the party. And I think you did maybe more of that in government than in that opposition period. But it definitely was the first time where we thought, I remember having

a conversation with, because as you know, Rory, I've got a bit of a thing about posh boys. and I used to say to... Did you make this point to Fettys educated Tony Blair at the time? Yeah, but Tony's the man of the people, as you know, George. I did have this sense of, God, is the public really going to elect a bunch of Etonians and private school, this club, these bullying and club people, to run the country.

And I remember Tony saying, do you know what, you look at him, they're going to think he's good enough. I remember that very, very vividly. And that was at a time when actually the Tories weren't doing that well. What did he mean when he said, I think they're going to think he's good enough? What was it that he had that his predecessors didn't seem to quite have that made Tony Blair think people would think he was good enough? I think he felt that people would look at David Cameron and think a little bit, actually,

I think he's beginning to happen with Keir Stahman now. They look at him and think, it is not absurd that that guy is the prime minister. Whereas I think with some of his predecessors, I think with Ian Duncan Smith, we used to force ourselves to imagine that Ian Duncan Smith could become prime minister because we felt we had to operate on that basis. because the minute you think, in this room at the moment, we've got some pictures of amazing sports people on the wall, Bjorn Borg and Ian Botham and Roger Bannister and all sorts of people.

And as you know, Rory, I'm obsessed with sport and what he can learn from it from politics. Darren Bent, is he on the wall? Shut up about Darren Bent. It's the one football he's ever heard of, George. But the point is that we, George is right, that we thought every day what can we do to lose, and then we tried not to do it.

And I think I regret to say, I think they did operate in that way. You would have enjoyed being in the Prime Minister's Questions prep sessions with Ian Duncan Smith because there were three young MPs who were drafted in to help it. Myself, David Cameron and Boris Johnson. Oh, my God. Every Wednesday morning we had to work out how Ian would face Tony. Actually, to be fair, there was also another Tory MP, Paul Goodman also.

It was also in that session who now runs Conservative Home. And we basically came up with a strategy. which was, we had to ask Tony Blair, it was a bit like getting your first servant to use your sporting analogy, right? Ian would have no chance if he didn't try and kind of land the first blow at primacy discussions. And so it was basically find some really obscure fact

and ask Tony Blair, like, how many people are waiting more than, you know, X weeks in hospitals in the north of England? Aha, you don't know, right? Anyway, and this worked for a while finding things that definitely Tony Blair would not know the answer to. So it's just a simple, until Ian stood up one day and a Labour MP just before he opened his mouth, because he used to have to clear his mouth with a kind of cough.

He had a sort of nervous cough. And Labor MP shouted out, how many? And that, sure enough, was his first two words. And that was the end of that stretch. That a fellow, much as I love Ian, that was a, that was a, that was a, that was a, it was not great. But Boris would always, he was editing the spectator at the time. at about nine in the morning. So he was pretending to be an objective journalist

and he's coming in to help the prime minister, the opposition leader, Charlottelton. I don't think that's the biggest crime you can lie at this door. And anyway, at about nine, we started seven in the morning. It was pretty early. What, Johnson was there at seven in the morning? Well, he was actually. And then to nine in the morning, he would need to leave,

but he wouldn't want to say, look, Ian, I've got to go. And so he would start to sort of move slowly towards the door. And then, you know, David or I would go, Boris is leaving and he would go, no, no, no, leader, I'm just going out to get a cup of coffee. You've got Tony nailed to the floor. Don't worry. You don't need me anymore. And then he would leave the scene of the crime. George, give us a sense. Am I right in saying you're somebody who actually really enjoyed politics? And if you've got a sense amongst colleagues and people you worked with, what kind of personality

takes to politics if you were giving advice to a woman or a man going into politics? and what kind of people don't really take to politics? What is the political personality? Oh, gosh, right. I think politicians come in all shapes and sizes and temperaments. I also think I was very lucky. And I don't necessarily appreciated this at the time, but I do with hindsight.

First of all, I was working with people I really like to a friend's of mine, and they're still friends of mine. And that has not been the case for many other people I know in politics, who found, for example, the recent years in the Tory party very difficult. Although, interestingly, a message I get from a lot of them right now. In fact, someone who's in the cabinet texted me yesterday saying, for the first time since 2016, I'm actually enjoying it, and I'm working with people I like.

So I was lucky to work with people I liked. And I was lucky essentially not to have to live a lie. There was never a time, particularly in government, and when I was shadowed chancellor, that I was saying things I really didn't agree with. There were some policies I didn't particularly sport. I wasn't a big fan of, for example, recognizing marriage in the tax system,

but David Cameron wanted to do it. He was the leader. That's fine. You know, he was the boss. So, individual policies, I wasn't, you know, hugely keen on. But I didn't, I fundamentally believed in him, and I believed in what we were doing. And so I didn't have that sort of awful period

of having to sort of pretend, you know, I guess with Kier-Starmor had to do with Jeremy Corbyn or some people have had to do, you know, with Brexit, which is sort of pretend this is all going really well, or this is what they want to, you know. So those two things, I think, were very lucky. I think generally also, you know, I just, I think you have to have,

you have to be able in politics to sort of step back a little and sort of observe yourself and recognize that there's an element of kind of ridiculousness to it and an element of theatre and an element of nonsense, even if the issues are dealing with are incredibly important. Isn't it a danger with that you end up with people like Boris Johnson running the show because that's all he thinks about?

Well, I think he, you know, in fact, his skill, I mean, he has many things that aren't, you know, that he's not very good at. But I think he always was quite good at noticing how people saw him. I thought he was good at sort of stepping out of himself to a degree and having a wry smile on his face when people he knew didn't like him would come up and say, Boris, I think they're the best things that's sliced bread. He would just, you know, a lot of the like a kind of king in a court. He would know he would spot the courtiers coming. Right then. We'll be back in a second.

So let's just take a quick break. It's something else here now. Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the series Stephen King calls Scarious Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules.

Don't miss what the movie was. I'll call something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From Binge All episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. Hi everybody, it's Dominic Samarach 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'll be looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and we'll be talking about one of the grimest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then-record bailout.

Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts. Just one thing you did disagree with David Cameron about, which is probably the most significant thing, was that you were always very strongly against the idea of having a referendum on Brexit in the first place. When you look back at that, do you – how do you feel about that? Because I mean, you've already said you think Brexit's been a bit of a disaster for the country

and it's probably going to get worse. Why did David Cameron feel you had to have that referendum? So I did disagree with David on that. but it was done very amicably. And his reasons, I think, were reasons that a Conservative Party leader would hold. And I was not the Conservative Party leader. And actually, unlike Gordon Brown, who I think underestimated the step up from Chancellor to Prime Minister, I never underestimated that the job of leading the party was a lot more difficult than being the Chancellor or the Shadow Chancellor.

And it was clear to David that the Conservative Party, as he had to try and resolve this issue. because everybody is itself an expression of a lot of views in the country as well, which is why it's been politically successful. But the country wasn't clamoring for a referendum. Well, the country was not clamoring for a referendum, but it is true that European issues were intruding more and more into the sort of domestic political debate. Now, I didn't think they had to be put to the kind of, we didn't have to bet the farm on an all in or out referendum.

And I never, and I always thought, you know, people blame the European Union essentially for things that we ourselves couldn't get right as a country, which has proved to be the case now years after we've left the EU. We've got more red tape than we had when we were in the EU and higher taxes and more intervention in the economy than we have when the EU. And yet the EU used to be blamed for all those things. So it became a kind of bug bear. And David would say it was a way of trying to resolve it. Obviously, he hopes to win the referendum and we all hoped to win the referendum that this was a way of bringing the issue to head resolving it and therefore cementing Britain's relationship as being in the EU but not in the Euro, you know, comfortable with

economic sovereignty being pulled, not comfortable with other aspects of political sovereignty being pulled. And, you know, he felt, and lots of other people I respect in the Conservative Party at the time, felt that it would be good to sort of essentially confront that issue with a referendum, as we had done in the Scottish independence referendum, which I think now with, again, both at the time and with hindsight, turns out to have been a really important. moment because it kind of basically called the bluff on Scottish nationalism. And ever since then, although they've endlessly talked about it, and I'm not talking just about the recent implosion of the SMP, I'm talking about the kind of golden period

of the Nicola Sturgeon leadership. You know, she was never able to get the Scottish public back into thinking that independence was a good idea. Yeah. It was a weird thing that referendum, wasn't it? Because it worked out, but it was an enormous gamble. and in some ways the Scottish independence referendum gave David Cameron the confidence to think that he could resolve other issues in the same way and use the same kinds of arguments.

Although on the timing point, it is worth noting that we had already committed to have the European referendum before the Scottish referendum had happened. The problem essentially with the Brexit referendum was what had become a kind of important issue, but only to a relatively small group of the country, although quite a large number of conservatives, which was issues around sort of theoretical issues around parliamentary sovereignty, was very successfully by the Brexit campaign connected to the question of immigration and borders. And, you know, the question that we couldn't answer, just like in the Scottish independence referendum, the SMP could not answer the question, what is the currency you're going to

use tomorrow if you're independent? We could not answer this question, which is how can you control your borders if you're in the EU? Because if you're in the EU, you have to let people in. Now, in fact, the answer is controlling your borders is a very complicated issue. And being in the EU might actually help you because you can have a good relationship with France, for example, as we've discovered with the small boats issue. But, you know, that was the kind of killer. That connection was made between immigration and the much more sort of obscure issue to my mind of parliamentary sovereignty, which I think is a nonsense anyway, because we pool sovereignty by being a member of NATO, for example. I think we all violently agree on the arguments against leaving the European Union. But I'd love a pithy attempt by you to give us your view on what the consequences have been.

How bad is it leaving the European Union for Britain? Well, I would start, let's start with the positives, which is Britain is an incredible country, one of the few really, you know, open economies with stable institutions and a decent rule of law. So, you know, Britain still has. Which has been undermined in recent years. which has elements of it have been undermined and, you know, need to be challenged. So outside the EU, Britain still can have a bright future. But I think it would have been brighter inside the EU.

I think there is little doubt now that it has knocked our economic performance permanently. It's erected trade barriers with our nearest and biggest export markets. So all this talk of free trade is a nonsense. We've undertaken the biggest act of protectionism in British history. And it has impacted Britain's standing in the world, or rather the ability of the British administration of the time to leverage membership of the EU as one way of influencing global events.

And increasingly in the world, it's going to be around who sets global standards on things like artificial intelligence that you were talking to Hillary Clinton about and who's going to do that. And it's not going to be the House of Commons. It's going to be the European Union. It's going to be the United States.

It's going to be China. And we had a big front seat role in the EU. I saw it when in the term, of regulating financial markets, you know, where a lot of the EU legislation was essentially drafted in the UK. And we don't have that anymore. So we're much more, I'm not saying we can't make our own way in the world and we can't make friends with, you know, allies like the Australians and so on. But we've lost one of our big forums where we could influence global events. That's why it worries me. Both you and Rory talk quite positively about Rishish Suna.

Rishish Suna actually believed in this and believed this was going to be good for the UK. So I'd like to get your brief take on how you see Sunnights Premiership, but also let's just, can we also return to Boris Johnson? What does it say about the Conservative Party that he became your leader? How damaging was his leadership, both of the Conservative Party and more important in my view to the country? Well, Boris had his big impact before he ever became Prime Minister, because his support for Brexit, which is a cause I don't think he actually really believed in. Which alone should disbar him from my office. But he was decisive. I think, you know, Boris Johnson's support for Brexit turned it from a kind of slightly dodgy, quite a right-wing, Nigel Farage-ish issue to, you know, mainstream,

and he was the most popular at the time, mainstream politician in Britain, Boris Johnson. So he kind of legitimised the Brexit campaign and was decisive. And so therefore, long before he arrived in Downing Street, he had already had his big impact on British politics. I think his premiership will largely be forgotten by history because he'd achieved very little in that premiership. I think, you know, the lesson, there's the extracts at the moment of the Anthony's Heldon book on... Which I read on your recommendation.

Yeah, which is, you know, it's pretty kind of shocking. Because what it shows is it's something that I was sort of, I guess, aware of when I was Chancellor, but right at the top of the British state, all power flows to the Prime Minister. You know, the Prime Minister can fire the Cabinet Secretary, the fire the head of MI6, the head of the foreign office, the prime minister. You know, there was a prime minister once who told the king they had to quit.

So, you know, there is no actual check on a prime minister who doesn't obey the rules. And there's nothing you can really do about a prime minister who doesn't read anything, doesn't do the work. All the prime ministers in my lifetime, labor and conservative, you know, have sort of worked all hours. some not really managing the workload particularly effectively, but nevertheless, sort of try. And Boris, you know, who was, you know, just sort of breezed through the job. And I couldn't help but smile when I saw that the way to get him kind of animated, his advisors would say, like, you know, come on, Boris, David Cameron and George Orson, we'll be laughing at you if you don't do this. Well, unfortunately, it wasn't a very funny period, but we're certainly laughing now. So obviously, I feel massive personal loss and bitterness about this, still trying to deal with,

why I wasn't able to beat Boris Johnson. I basically become Roy's therapist, George. We talk these issues through. And I guess the question is, why was it not possible to beat him in 2019, given that all this was patently obvious? There was enough evidence mounting over 20 years that he was an incompetent buffoon,

that he was a terrible human being, that he'd be a terrible prime minister, that he was telling lies about Brexit, that his plan didn't make sense. He didn't even understand his own Brexit deal. And yet it didn't matter how many times you tried to explain this to people, people were still going to vote for Boris. What do you do in that situation?

I always thought, you know, if it came to a leadership contest where I was contesting to be the leader of the party, I would be up against Boris Johnson and I wasn't sure I was going to beat him. And that's because there are aspects of, and I've known Boris for a long time, there are aspects of Boris that are really positive. He is very good company. His optimism is infectious. I think the sort of pre-Brexit Boris had a kind of generosity of spirit about people. You know, he's not, he's not, you know, sometimes politicians, you know,

can be quite mean-spirited. You know, Boris, there's a generosity about him, which I think people like. And then a kind of, you know, he, he sort of blows his nose at the kind of, you know, the sort of pomposity of public life that you sometimes get.

So there's lots of things, you know, and as London Mayor, I liked all that. But that was partly because he didn't have much responsibility for real things. And, you know, unfortunately, as prime minister, he demonstrated that you needed other things to be a prime minister. You need to take the job seriously. Do you think he's basically the same person as he always was, or has he changed? Well, I think it's like one of those sort of Greek tragedies that he would know more about

than me, the sort of pursuit of the prize ultimately kind of corrupted him and led him to support causes that I don't think intrinsically. I remember the, the, the, the Boris Johnson TV program where he was extolling the virtues of the European Union and saying that Turkey should be a member of it, which I happen to agree with. But why could the public not see it, George? Why could the public not see his flaws more clearly? I mean, you've described an amiable personality, but it should have been apparent to everyone that he couldn't run the country.

Well, first of all, there was a kind of collusion of all the sort of, you know, because he, remember he was quite, he was a loner, and he was quite a loner inside the Tory parliamentary party. And most MPs did not, you know, would not have wanted him as leader 10 years earlier. But by the time you get to 2019, you've had the paralysis of the Theresa May period with her unable to do anything. He offers a kind of solution to that. He's also ruthless. Remember, he fires a load of Tory MPs, including Ken Clark and Philip Hammond and, you know, Rory Stewart. Right. I mean, he's absolutely ruthless when it comes to the pursuit of the prize. And let's, you know, let's not, Alice are off the hook here, two general elections, the Labour Party offered up Jeremy Corbyn a

complete disgrace of a candidate to be the prime minister. So you'd have to be completely mad to what Jeremy Corbyn instead of Boris Johnson for all of Boris Johnson's faults. So, you know, frankly, in 2019, I think a lot of people didn't know how to vote because they, you know, if you look at my parents, I remember they're asking me, saying like, we don't like Boris Johnson, but we can't have Jeremy Corbyn. Who the hell are we going to vote for? What did they vote? I think they must have voted conservative,

and they're not actually natural conservative voters. So on a minute, your parents weren't what I would define as rank Tories. No, my parents were, they weren't particularly party political. I never met an MP when I was growing up except when they would come and speak at my school. They're back. My father's interior design, I said of his own business. And my mother worked for Amnesty International. and then she ran her own shop.

And my mother voted Labor, my father voted liberal. I think they both would have backed Tony Blair, had I not by then sort of screwed the system by becoming a working for the Tory parties that they were. So why did you become a Tory? Do you know, I always thought that the Labour Party was more tribal, that it was sort of hard. I can't imagine what gives you that impression.

I think the thing about the Tory Party is it can be anything, you know, as you've seen over the last 13 years. It's a sort of, and I'm, you know, broadly in favour of the sort of principles. And that, you know, and I think you get to, and so for me, although it's true that Rishi Sunak supported Brexit and has never really explained why he did. But, well, he's sort of, he's an arch free market. Well, I think he brought into this argument that, you know, you heard amongst certain sort of hedge fund types and whatever that, you know, is great.

The moment we're going to be like Singapore, the moment we leave, you know, the Singapore can fit inside the M25 and it would be, you know, it's a very different country. But the Rishi Sunat premiership is to me a massive breath of fresh air. We have a sensible, serious person with integrity. He runs things properly. He does the work. And he's making a series of meaningful strides forward for the government. And for the first time in years, you feel, I feel just as a British citizen, like the grown-ups are back in charge. I think that's the Tory line to take. I actually think it's only by comparison with what's gone before. And we haven't really covered list of trust. Let me mention one other

Prime Minister where I think you two will hopefully disagree agreeably, possibly even disagreeably. Because I think it's fair to say Rory rather loves Theresa May and I think your view... Well, she put him in the cabinet. Yeah, well, he's not only driven by his personal ambitions, partly possibly, but your view of Theresa May I think is fair to say is rather different. You know, I actually had a lot of respect

for Theresa May when she was Home Secretary and I was Chancellor and we work well together. You know, I thought she was unnecessarily callous, not particularly towards me, although. Or is she said, do you go away and learn about the concert? It's not the best way to fire someone. You can be nice to people or you fire them. But then she fired a whole lot of other people. I mean, it is as a bit inside baseball, as they'd say in America.

But it takes a particular kind of political genius to make Oliver Letwin your nemesis. Oliver Lettwin is one of the nicest people who wants to generally help in life. A lot of bloody Italian. He wants to help in life and was enormous help to the Cameron government and the coalition. you know, eventually to reason to reason I fires Oliver Letwin for no good reason at all other than come some kind of spite. And ultimately is the Oliver Letwin kind of amendments in Parliament that completely screw her government. And, you know, it's just, you know, how she couldn't see that her allies were people like me, who I voted for us in the leadership campaign, Oliver, that, you know,

she was the inheritor of the Cameroon legacy, if you like. That's why she became the Prime Minister, not remember, it looked like the opponents at the time would be Boris Johnson and then was Andrew Ledson. You know, and she couldn't see that the coming at her was always going to be the hard Brexiteers, that that was where the challenge was coming from. And so she basically torched her own allies. And as a result, when the Boris Johnson challenge came, she had no one there. She actually had Oliver Letwin against her rather than for her. It's interesting, but I think somewhere in her time with you guys in government, perhaps even before, she seems to have become very, very wary about the Cameron Project, not the policies. I think she broadly shared many

of your policies, but she didn't like the manner of it. I think she felt that it was too chummy, there was a lack of seriousness, it was too slick. Was good at winning, maybe, that element into it. I guess, I mean, I don't want to sort of ventriloquoise on behalf of her because we should get her on. But I think she, and this was certainly something that was very appealing on doorsteps in Cumbria. I remember people feeling a deep, deep sense of affection towards that by-election beginning of 2017, people suddenly feeling happy to campaign for Theresa May, that she spoke to people as being a dignified, serious individual. People were more comfortable doing that than I'd seen them be campaigning for David Cameron in 2010 or 2015?

Well, I don't disagree that she started with a great hand, and she just misplayed it. She lost the Cameron majority, and, you know, as I observed at the time, the moment, you know, it was clear the moment the 2017 result was that she could not survive. And yet, you know, the Tory party continued with this myth. I was criticised at the time for saying, you know, she was a dead woman walking. but that was absolutely obviously. You also talked about putting her body in a fridge. That was a bit over the time.

I actually apologized to her for that, and that was said in a, well, what I thought was a private editorial meeting at the Evening Standard, but... Life is on the record, George. Even if you're editing a newspaper, life is on the record. It is.

Much as I actually, editing the Evening Stand was one of the most enjoyable things I did. What about one other prime minister that will also be written out of history. Let's trust in a word. Well, do you know, I actually was... I quite admired Liz as a junior MP, a new MP and as junior minister. You put her in the cabinet, didn't you?

Yeah, I think she, well, David Cameron did, but I certainly supported it. And, you know, I like the fact that she, you know, was full of ideas. She didn't just got to go with the brief that was handed to her. She was, you know, that's a lot about her. And so it's not, to me, sort of surprising she ended up as prime minister. But she then makes like two basic errors. She, first of all, doesn't include any of the people she's defeated in her team, which is like Politics 101, you know.

And then second, she, you know, obviously there's that catastrophic budget where, I mean, without reopening the austerity debate, she suddenly thinks the country can borrow a load of money it doesn't have. So what I really worry about actually during that period, it was a very short period of British politics. But there was a determined attempt to undermine the independence of the Bank of England, and essentially close down the OBR, which I created. And, you know, I think one lesson from that, and indeed from the sort of Johnson period

where some of the rules at the very top of the game is these institutions need to be strengthened. And it would be a great Rishi Sunak agenda to put the ministerial code on a statutory footing. And the OBR should be made like the Bank of England. I hope the Labour opposition picked this up as an idea. You know, let's make it properly independent, give it its own independent budget. give it the power to request information from the Treasury. And then, you know, you've sort of protected the institution against someone else who wants to come along and vandalize it.

It was a very poor period of British politics that autumn of last year. I think the most depressing moment was when Boris Johnson got on the plane from the Caribbean. I thought my country really is sunk. And then amazingly, we, like throughout our history, we somehow managed to find the exit door from the mess. We may disagree about Rishi Sunaat, but, you know, I'm sure, Alice, you would agree that like Rishi Sunak or Kirstarmer, essentially at the end of the British electorate at the next general election is going to be presented with a decent choice of two decent people who can do the job.

We don't have enough time to get into this. I think the Liz Truss and her mistakes as prime minister and her particular ideological blind spots were very, very visible in her as a junior minister and as a sexual estate. And I think there's something interesting about how you made that decision, put her in there. But let me get, as we come to the end, my last question in there back. to Alistair. What does Labour need to do to win the election? Why is it that you think they're not a shoe in? And what is that they would need to do to actually have a chance of winning this? So I think they've missed a big opportunity in the last six months to seal the deal, you know, again, to use a sporting analogy to kind of be, to make it absolutely clear they're going to win the game.

Tony Blair, by this point, had done that. There was nothing the John Major government could do 18 months out. Because Tony Blair had not only defined himself against the past in the way that Kirstama has effectively done. He had not only presented himself, and to be fair, Gordon Brown had also, as people who could be prime minister and chancellor, and I think Kirstama and Rachel Reeves have done that. But, and this is the missing ingredient, they had also made an argument, a positive argument about the change they were going to bring to the country. You knew what they were going to do to education and health. And they had, they dressed it up in a theory about how Britain had become, gone from being a producer society, to consumer society, to a sort of post-stature era.

that, you know, they were going to stick with Tory economic competence, but they were going to deliver social justice. Spending limit is not competent. We didn't define this competence. Well, it was accepting, I think it was accepting the Thatcher economics. Except some of the parameters. I would say it was accepting the Thatcher economic settlement. Now, here Stama has not, to my mind, said anything really interesting about how you changed the country. And whilst you had Boris Johnson or indeed Liz Truss, you know, being the kind of grown-up who could do the job was a pretty compelling offer from KIA, but it's not enough. And I don't hear, you know, if you ask me and I, you know, you ask you to, what's Labor's Economic Policy in a

sentence? What's Labor's Health Policy? What's Labor's Health Policy? What's Labor's Education Policy? You just can't, in fact, with the exception possibly law and order where they have made some inroads under Yvette Cooper, nowhere else do I hear anything that's exciting, that ties in with the big kind of changes in our society that are happening around, you know, things like technology. it's just not creating that kind of sense of a zeitguise. And my favorite kind of quote in politics is a Jim Callahan quote, which Tony Blair would often refer to, which was in 1979 he felt that there was a sea change in ideas

and that Labor was therefore going to lose to Margaret Thatcher. And I don't feel a kind of sea change in ideas that Labor's riding the crest of a sort of intellectual wave and a new way of addressing that. The question is they've got to feel like that. They've got to fill that gap. Have they got time? Yes, they've got time, but it's rapidly running out. I mean, we're now 18 months from a general election, and this is the work you should be, you should have been doing now and over the previous year. And the last, you know, the,

the Tory party gifted labor, a period of, you know, political incompetence over the last 12 months, a window in which they could seal the deal with the electorate and they've, that window's closed, because Rishi Suneak is a competent prime minister and doing effective things. And I think, you know, the kind of, it's, look, some things are moving in Labor's favor, like the implosion of the SMP, you know, is not to be neglected as a big plus for Labor. But generally, if you said to me six months ago, can the Tories win, I'd say, I can't see a route to victory. And now I can see a route to victory for the Tories. And if they, if Rishu Suna can get to the autumn with the polls closing a bit, big if, but if he can, all hell will be unleashed for Labour. because people will say, you've not done enough, Keir Stama,

the critics in the Labour Party will start to emerge, and he'll be on a sort of downward spiral, and Rishi Sunat will be on an upward spiral, which you're already seeing, for example, the Tory body uniting behind him now, of like, hmm, this guy might actually win. And the British public, British media, love the underdog story. The guy's coming from behind, 20 points behind in the polls, written off the Sunak premiership,

Sunak pulls it off, is actually a better story than Stama gets. his coronation. Flip it around. How do you think, if you were still at the top level of the Conservative Party, how does the Conservative Party fight the next election other than as a negative campaign against Labor? Well, I think they have to move, and I think this is instinctively what they want to do towards the centre, because they've also got a threat from the Liberal Democrats. And they've got to hold on to essentially middle-class Britain.

And yes, I know there's a lot of focus on those red wall seats, which, you know, to be fair, Boris Johnson won and David Cameron didn't. But there are a lot of middle class, you know, prosperous seats in the south, city suburbs in the north that, you know, need to be held by the Tories. And they need to have a more compelling mainstream offer, which is what I think Sunak is developing. You know, things like his business event this week, you know, he's back, instead of telling businesses to F off, as his predecessor did,

he's trying to woo them, big offers on, beginning to have an offer on education. I think, you know, trying to solve. the problems in the health service. He's moving into the sort of mainstream space. Phil's very, let's try and fix the mess that we've created over the last 13 years. Yeah, but, you know, one of the, I wouldn't say over the last 13 years, I'd say over the last, not falling for that, the last six or seven years. I think these are problems that many advanced democracies face. They're not unique to Britain. But if you were, if you had to put your life on it now, who's the prime minister in two years time? Well, I think of the most

likely outcome is Kirstarmes' prime minister, but it's all to play for. One thing we haven't talked about, I do want to just maybe finally ask you whether you think you've got things right on China. I see James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary's making a speech about China today, where I think he's sort of trying to say similar to you,

we've got to call it out when they're bad, but we've got to be very, very careful because they're so powerful. Do you feel you've got too kind of China-centric? No, I mean, I think I was in the tradition of kind of Henry Kissinger and a whole series of U.S. and British administrations since then that said we've got to work with China. China's the longest extent, continuously existing civilization on Earth. It's a fifth of the world's population. It's the second largest economy on the planet. It can't be contained and

isolated in the way you could attempt to do with the Soviet Union during the Cold War or indeed Russia now. And so you have to find a way to work with it. By the way, there are issues like climate change, which are simply insoluble unless we work. with China. Now, that does not mean you have to accept that their regime is, you know, one you like, or that their, you know, suppression in Xinjiang or Hong Kong or, you know, their threats towards Taiwan are acceptable. But you have to find a means of working with them because they're a very important big player in the world and they represent a large number of people. And finding that kind of modus or brand. I actually think it's a bit unfashionable than that because everyone thinks

the kind of tensions with China arising. I actually think, tensions with China are somewhat diminishing. And the U.S. has found a way to start engaging again with China. She and Biden meet. Macron does his visit. Even things which are provocative, like the balloon that kind of, you know, the Chinese balloon over the United States did not lead to a kind of big international crisis. It was kind of handled by the big powers. And all that speaks to me that there are, they're finding a way to try and make what is the big, is geopolitical challenge of our lifetime, which is how do you manage the re-rise of China? You know, I think they are finding a route through.

Yeah. Well, it's very interesting. This is another whole podcast, and maybe we can get you back at some point. But I think the challenge to come back on that is to say that the one thing that the two parties have in common in the US is increasing conviction that they need to be more confrontation with China. I think it's very plausible that Xi Jinping will feel. that his legacy is bound up with incorporating Taiwan within China

and that he will try that before he finishes and that he may want to try it sooner or later before the US has fully disentangled itself from the Chinese economy. But I feel we may not have time for a full China. No, we should get you back and do a whole one on China. And I'd also like at some point to do a whole episode on the Bullringdon Club and what that was like for both of them.

You would have loved it, Alistair. What? You would have loved it. Really? been the drunkest person there. Would I? It would smashing up. It would have more plates than anyone else.

George, thank you for coming on. And on that unfortunate note to the Bonington Club, we'll bring it to a close. Thanks for having me on. Thank you. So, Alison, what did you think of that? Well, I enjoyed it. I know that a lot of my friends are going to say you should have given him a much harder time on austerity.

But he's so sort of set in his tram lines about how he explains that. And I actually thought it was more interesting when we got on to some of the other stuff. I was fascinated by the fact the, I've always assumed he came from a kind of rank Tory family. And he tells us his mum was labour and his dad was a libidim. What went wrong? It's interesting, isn't it? I wonder whether we shouldn't also have maybe asked him a little bit more about his childhood development. I know we tend to do it because we tend to assume that that's a more interesting question with people from more diverse backgrounds. But I do think the general question of how people become politicians, what it is that makes them politicians is interesting.

I also think that whatever you think of him, he is very, very articulate and effective. I mean, he's, and quite pugnacious. I mean, you get a sense that he's going to defend his line. Partly as well, I think, because you and I've argued about austerity so much. The book I mentioned recently by this guy, Russell Jones, it really does take the austerity thing. I'm going to send you a copy because he absolutely takes it to bits from the economic perspective. It was all about the politics. And I do think that, look, Osborne is political to his fingertips. I think way more than Cameron was. I think he was the politics in the whole thing. And also, the thing about being pugnacious, I mean, look, Gordon Brown,

is a formidable intellect political force. And I think for Osborne in his early to mid-30s to have stood there week after week up against Gordon Brown and landing a few blows from time to time. But I do think that ultimately part of the mess that we're in as a country does stem from austerity, their failure to secure the recovery, and Brexit. And to be fair on Brexit, I've always known that because I knew it at the time.

He tried very, very, very hard, I think, to persuade Cameron not to go for the referendum, and he failed. Yeah, he was very clear-sighted about that, much more so than almost anybody who was in the Conservative Party at the time, except maybe for people like Ken Clark, very clear that he thought it was the wrong thing to do in a big mistake and push very hard on that. I also think that he's a reminder of the talent that was there in that David Cameron administration. Again, many, many different views on what it all added up to. But there was some very, very bright, effective communicators in that generation that came in in 2010. And in a way, you know, particularly during the Boris Johnson period, it was easy to feel a little bit nostalgic. And he's gone on to, which is unusual again in politicians, to be quite successful in a number of different areas.

I mean, he edited newspaper. It's unusual. He's now chair of the British Museum. He's having quite a successful career, not as a banker, not as an advisor, but actually putting the deals together, which again is unusual. So he's clearly somebody with a lot of capacity. We should have pushed him more on whether he regrets leaving politics. I think he loves politics. And I think he probably all these things he's done since, although he puts a good face on them.

And I sometimes think this with David Miliband, too, that these are people who really would have really liked to stay in politics. I also think there's something interesting. and, you know, obviously I'm having all the scars of the Tony Blair, Gordon Brown relationship. And the other, the interesting thing in the Russell Jones book is the story, of course, of the Thatcher Lawson relationship and Major Lamont. These relationships between priminists and chancellors, even when they start very well, often break down, is with Cameron, seems to me, never did. That's as much about Osborne, because what that basically says is at a deeper level.

David Miliband said the thing about me that I was utterly committed, but I also knew my place, as it were. And I think with Osborne, I think there is a part of Osborne that knows that actually deep down he probably would never have been a prime minister. But he, and he was, so he was a very, very effective foil to Cameron. I think as a relationship, it seems to me that they were kind of equals in many, many ways. But he accepted and knew that Cameron just had the better kind of, I don't know what, human skills, empathetic skills, call them what you want. When did you first meet him, by the way, Roy? Well, I met him just before I came into Parliament. I was doing an event on Afghanistan debating the British ambassador at the Hay Festival 2008.

But Oswald played a very important part of my political career because I rebelled against the government against the three-line whip because David Cameron was proposing to abolish the House of Lords to please the Lib Dems in order to get a gerrymandering of the electoral boundaries to guarantee a conservative. majority in the next election. I was completely horrified because I thought these kind of constitutional changes should be done in a proper, thoughtful, serious where I couldn't believe it was being taken through in the way you'd vote on the pasty tax. And I told, I was a back mention, and I told David Cameron in advance and told the chief whip and I was discreet about it. I didn't go to newspapers, but I wasn't going to vote for this thing. Anyway, 10 minutes before the vote was due to happen, George Osborne comes up to me outside the voting lobby. And he says, I am going to promote you to be a minister. in 11 days time. And if you walk through that door, I'm not going to promote you for the rest of the parliament.

And I had to look at this guy who I liked in many ways, and I admired in many ways, and deal with the question of whether I was going to walk through that door or whether I was going to be bullied into staying in order to be a minister. Let's guess what you did. No, I walked through the door because I didn't have much choice. And I think actually it was a misjudgment on his part. I think almost anybody who you try to bully in that way, 10 minutes before a vote, is going to walk through the door. But he was true to his word. He would then remind me about it through my first five years that he left me as a backbencher. He kept saying, remember Rory, you could have been a minister, you could have been a minister, I warned you.

And Boris Johnson used to enjoy this. I remember when I was staying with George Osborne and Cheveninging, it's his sort of country house that he got his chancellor, Boris saying to George Wilson, why did you not make Rory a minister? And George smirked and went, Rory knows exactly why I didn't make him a minister. So it was amazing. I kind of wasted five years of my life and someone at the heart of it as George Osborne. I thought the story about Ian Duncan Smith preparing for PMQs with Tony Blair being briefed by Cameron Osborne Johnson and Paul Goodman and Johnson trying to sort of sneak away the whole time. I mean, what a line up that is. Oh, my God. I mean, I suspect at least three of those four were sitting there thinking,

I think I could do better job than you here. But I think good also that for balance that we have done someone from the right. I know many of our listeners tend to be more on the centre left, but I think it's good to get a variety of voices, even if it's challenging for listeners. Can you kind of get King Charles? I mean, for heaven's sake, Roy, you know, I put in all my mates. George Oswald is obviously a closer mate of mine than he is of yours. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. George Oswald at one point in his life was utterly obsessed with me.

As indeed he said. But no, I think if I can pull in the lights of Hillary Clinton and Tony Blair and Bernie Sanders and all these other people, surely for heaven's sake you can get the king. It's a good challenge, isn't it? It's a good challenge. Good challenge. We'll beat it. All right. So long. Bye-bye. See you soon. Bye. Hi, it's Dominic here from The Rest is History and here is that clip that I mentioned earlier. The other thing is something else she gets from Grantham and that's the Methodism. And actually this to me, I think this is one of the absolute defining things of Thatcherism. It's the tone, the moralistic, evangelical tone.

Yeah, and the low church tone rather than the high church tone. Completely. Margaret, as a girl, had to say grace before every meal. She had to go to chapel three or four times on Sundays. Her father, as a lay preacher, went on and on and on about hard work, individualism, thrift, clean living, all of this. And this is what I think makes her politics different. There is a moralism to it, a low church moralism that is totally unlike anything that any other Tory leader says before. So in 1984, an interview with the Times, I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end, good will triumph.

I mean, Ted Heath could have lived to the age of 10,000, and he would never have said anything like that. It's unthinkable. Also, I mean, what's interesting is that it's giving to the left what the left often give to the right. It's casting the left as evil and the right as virtuous. And usually it's the other way round. Completely it is. I mean, you see this reflected in her archives, which are online at the Thatcher Foundation website, which is brilliant, by the way, this amazing digital archive. you can see all the notes that she would handwrite for her conference speeches.

And they'd be full of all the stuff about the evils of socialism, good versus evil, what the great religions of the past teach us, what life is struggle. Her speechwriters would cut all this. They'd say, God, this is bonkers. But it would find its way in one way or another. And I think you're absolutely right. She thinks socialism is not just wrong.

she thinks it's morally it's evil, it's corrupting. And people in 70s Britain, you know, they're used to thinking, socialists are well-meaning and idealistic, maybe they're a bit deluded, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, she doesn't think that. She doesn't think they are well-meaning idealistic. She thinks that they're doing the devil's work. Yeah. And that's what makes, for her admirers, it's so invigorating and for her critics.

I mean, if you're on the left, right, and you're used to thinking yourself of yourself as the goodies. To be told, actually, you're not, you're the bad people. It's insulting. And it's why, I think, one reason why people take it so personally when she sort of wades into battle. If you want to hear more, search for the rest is history wherever you get your podcasts.