The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right?

Episode Date: June 14, 2026

What does James Cleverly think of Nigel Farage and Reform? How does Cleverly explain his unexpected exit from the Tory leadership race? What could the future of AI in Great Britain look like under different leadership? Sir James Cleverly joins Rory and Alastair to answer all these questions and more. __________ Search IG.com to find out more and/or Look for IG in your app store. __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [e-mail] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Josh Smith Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Senior Producer: Nicole Maslen General Manager: Tom Whiter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's the restispoletics.com. Stama does not understand how diplomacy works. He gives things away in the hope that he's buying good work.

It doesn't work like that. It's a negotiation. He's awful on the international stage. He's useless. Nigel Farage, I think, his big motivation is to be able to say to people, you wrote me off and you were wrong. That's all he wants. If he ever walked through the door of number 10,

he would regard the job done as he crossed the threshold rather than saying this is the start of the job. And I think that would be catastrophic. One of the things that's unanchored both of the main parties is the failure to admit to the consequences of Brexit. I knew you were going to go there. I don't want to make this all about Brexit. Well, I know.

That's part of the problem. No, no. We're not going to agree. The statistics, you can roll your eyes and sigh all you like. We're seeing a similar polarisation of politics in countries that did not do a Brexit. Partly because the mainstream parties have made the same mistake that don't fight these guys harder.

But that's not a Brexit thing. They play their game. No, you're proving my point. This episode is presented by IG. So whether it's the vetting of senior political appointments or its costly policy U-turns, the last few months of UK politics have been a masterclass in what happens when you don't do your homework. And the consequences, as we've seen,

can ripple out far beyond the initial decision. And the same rules supply when choosing your investment platform because picking the wrong one can hit you directly and in a very measurable way. Some investment platforms charge hundreds of pounds more a year than others, losing you money that never got the chance to grow. With IG, there are no annual fees, meaning more of your money stays invested from day one. And on top of that, you pay zero commission on stocks, shares and ETFs, so there are no hidden charges quietly eating into your returns. And even better, IG has been trusted by British investors for over 50 years. So you know,

you're in good hands. Search IG.com to find out more. IG, trade, invest, progress. Your capital is at risk and other fees may apply. Welcome to the rest of this politics leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alice Campbell. And we're very lucky to have with us, Sir James Cleverley, who we've actually been trying to get for some time.

I was what's having him frantically when he was foreign sexual or home secretary, but clearly now he believes that we're worth engaging with. James was a friend of mine in Parliament. He became an MP in 2015, before that was a long-time member of the London Assembly. He was also a territorial army officer for a long time, and is a colonel in the military. He comes from a very interesting background, which we can talk about a little bit at the beginning. There are persistent rumours that he might be our future Mayor of London. And he was also, for our listeners, our most favourite potential Tory leadership candidate.

Every time, literally, when we went round, it's true, is no. It's a kiss of death. I know. We went around doing these live tours, literally four, five thousand people, including the O2, which is only 12,000 people. And we'd ask them who they wanted to be the Tory leadership candidate, Generic, Baderick or you. And you would win like 90% of the time. Thereby showing, possibly, that our listeners are more informed and more intelligent of the Conservative Party membership. What do you think? Well, I never got to the membership. I never got to the membership. I would have won. I think the fact that I'd been party chairman, that I'd been in the party. a long time. I'd spend a lot of time helping other conservatives get elected at local government level and mayoral level

and things like that. I think if I'd got to the membership, I think I would have won. And what happened? Because you were at one point, you led in the first round, didn't you? No, I was, so I think what happened is that I started late. So a number of the other people, this is not a criticism, it's just an observation. A number of other people

that were running could see the right on the wall. They could see we weren't going to win the election and they could see that there was going to be a leadership campaign. I was home secretary and we had the illegal immigration staff. We were trying to get the Rwandah scheme through the House and operationalised. We were trying to get visa changes. So I was absolutely immersed in the day job. So I didn't start any kind of preparatory work for the leadership thing, which meant I started late. And I think a lot of people, A lot of MPs assumed that I was in it to get a good job in the Shadow Cabinet rather than to win. So I don't think I got the kind of early momentum.

So initially it looked as if I couldn't win. Then we got to party conference, which is always my plan, because I knew that I would outperform everyone else at party conference. And that's how it played out. And I think I went from all the MPs thinking I couldn't possibly win to a load of them thinking I couldn't possibly lose. And I lost track of the number of conversations where people were saying, MPs were saying, who do you want to be up against in the final? Who do you think, who are you in the best place to beat? And I thought, oh, we're going to do it, aren't we?

We're going to do something which should be a simple process, vote for the person you want to win. Because we're conservative MPs and because this was our habit at the time, we decided to make it overly complicated. They voted, as it were, to try and give me an easy ride. To give you an easy ride to the final, yeah.

And in doing so, it gave me the easiest ride. To defeat. You went through almost exactly. what I went through in the 2019 leadership, which is that your votes suddenly dropped, having been in the lead, going into the next round. And I think we lost the same number of votes. They flipped over to the other side.

It's a very weird feeling. And I think there was, maybe we'll discuss this in other ways that this phenomenon manifested itself, is we'd forgotten how many MPs we had, or how few MPs we had. And I was trying to make the point. A couple of people trying to help me out by lending someone their vote, is enough to upset the apococ.

Because we just haven't got that many votes to play with. So a couple of votes changing from one column to another. But, you know what? I don't regret for myself. I mean, I concluded when the same thing happened to me that potentially Michael Gove and Grant Shaps were up to dirty tricks. You did not conclude that Robert Jenrick was playing clever games with you. No, because he's very principled, non-opportunist sort of volunteer.

So again, I think that's a fundamental risk reading because he was scrabbling to get through to the final. I mean, the idea that he was so confident of his numbers that he could start lending, borrowing, that is a caricature of the system which people keep applying to it. There were very few votes up for grabs. By the time you locked in your core team and the people that you, you know, pretty much 90, and as we know, it's never 100%. But in your whipping list, those kind of people are like solid, solid, solid. By the time you did that for each of the three camps, it's probably only about 20, 25 people that are in play. And none of us, none of us had the luxury of saying, you vote for them, then come back to me. You just didn't play out like that. Everyone was scrambling for votes.

Everyone's trying to use every bit of leverage. Everyone's trying to guilt trip, everyone they'd ever campaigned with or done a favor for or bought a drink at some point in their political past to try and get over the line. In the end, it didn't work for me. But I don't regret it. I don't regret going for it. I don't regret the things that I said during the campaign. I went in with my head held high.

I came out with my head held high. And I think some of the markers that I laid down during the leadership thing are being picked up now by chemi. And she's taken a different direction to the one that I advocated for. But I think the last couple of weeks have shown that she has really, really grown into the job.

And she is setting a much more thoughtful, proper conservative, right-wing, but thoughtful, balanced tone, whilst everyone else in the political landscape is scrabbling around because if you don't really instinctively know who you are, you get blown off course by everything and that's happening all over the place. Well, listen, we'll come back to the past and the future of the Conservative Party, but let's wind right back to the start of your life.

Tell us just a little bit about your mum and your dad. And I guess from my perspective, Rory hates it or I'll ask this question, but what made you a Tory? So I came from a mixed heritage family. The joke that I used at my party conference interview, which is still one I really like. So I'm immigrant stock on both sides of my family. Mum came to the UK from Sierra Leone and West Africa in 1966. My dad's family came from Northern France in 1066.

So it's still a good gag. Yeah, it's good. It's still a good. So Anglo-African, born and brought up in southeast London. Dad was a surveyor by profession, a surveyor, stroke estate agent in terms of how he earned his living. Mum was a midwife in the NHS and had been like through her whole adult life, came over here as a young woman to study and stayed. And my grandfather, my dad's father, staunch socialist, originally from Wiltshire and then moved to Southeast London after the war. So I suppose dad from a traditionally left-wing family,

mum's family in West Africa, very, very high status, absolute social elite, senior civil service, senior military. So very much what would have been thought of as the Tories, obviously it doesn't map exactly like, but my West African family were my establishment family, my English family were my left-wing family. But dad was a small businessman. And born in South East London, 1969,

How we meant to imagine, is this is pretty amazing, right? This is your dad is meeting, marrying your mum in, I suppose, 1967, 68, right? So this is... Actually, the meeting and me came well before the marriage, but that's another... But anyway, let's say 6768. And this feels quite kind of summer of love, hippie, liberal, young white guy gets together with a young black woman in London, and would have been incredibly progressive. I mean, presumably there would have been family members who were...

pretty troubled, no? Not that I'm aware of. And so... That must have been a very progressive climate then because certainly reading any book or seeing any film from the late 60s, early 70s, you would have had a lot of disapproving aunts. So the funny thing was,

I mean, twofold one, my English family, so my dad's brothers, two brothers, his older brother married a German woman. Remember, this is only a couple, a decade in a bit after the end of the Second World War. That was the thing. my dad's younger brother met and married

and had a family with my mum's best friend from Sierra Leone and my dad met my mum through his brother and his then girlfriend. So of my grandfather's three sons one married a German girl

just after the war and two married black girls from West Africa. So for me, growing up, that kind of ethnic mix, racial mix,

that was just family. That was what my perception of family was. What was the sense around you of, you would have been a pretty rare sight, I'd have thought, where you were growing up? I mean, once I stepped out of my family, but of course you only know what you know. And so growing up, I had white cousins, I had black cousins, and I had light brown cousins, same color as me. And so for me, that was just what family looked like.

How regularly would you and your cousins have, you and your non-white cousins have encountered what today would define as racism? Oh, I mean, well, what we nowadays define as racism wouldn't have been defined as racism back when I was growing up. Which is a good thing? Yeah, well, I think, I mean, we maybe come on to that in terms of whether we become overly sensitive to some things and whether we've, whether we take a pragmatic look at history. But the point is, of course, there was racism. And there were good-natured, jokey names. that I heard about me when I was at school from people that I would regard as friends. And they weren't being nasty, which today would cause outrage.

Yeah. Absolute outrage. In terms of proper nasty racism, and look, I was in Lewisham. I grew up in Lewisham in southeast London. I lived on a street which was at the end of the marching route for the National Front in the 1970s. The National Front, marched. I mean, it's a long road. I'm not going to pretend I was looking out the window watching it happen, but they marched through New Crossdown into Lursham, down towards Lerisham, whilst I was a kid. So that was the backdrop of what's going on. But as I say, there, you know, there was language that was used on the TV. I horrify my kids. I know, not Afghanistan. I horrify my kids when I show them, when I show them on my phone footage of the black and white minstrel

show. I'd say, like, this is mainstream TV. Comedy programs, like Mind your Language. You remember that? Set in an ESOL school, which was basically every single racial stereotype gag from everyone around the world, and it was mainstream TV, and this was, this was

normal, this was the backdrop of my growing up, but that said, did I feel particularly oppressed? No, and look, I had a loving family. I had a very, very stable childhood. I went to a good school, and I had lots of good and close friends, so I didn't feel particularly victimized. I didn't feel particularly held back. I applied to join the British

Army back when you just did not see black faces in the British Army because I came from military family. All my African family were military. My aunt was a full colonel in the Sierra Leone Army Medical Corps. She just didn't occur to me that that shouldn't be a career choice. And because my family were all officers, my African family rule officers, then that's what I would do. And the way racism in the military? Probably. Try being ginger in the military. Try having big in the military. Try having a big nose in the military. Everybody has the piss taken out of them for their physical attributes. But I was actually one of the things that did strike me, not racism, but well, you can judge what it was. So one of my colour sergeants at Santa,

Coloss Sergeant Thomas from the King's Regiment, which was the old regiment that was around Manchester. So not the, not Cheshire Countryside, that was the Cheshire Regiment, Manchester. And at one point, I can't remember. I actually remember him. You know, we were at Sandus at almost exactly the same time. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. Do you remember the Colossan McEwen? Yeah, Black Quartz? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do. He was my Colossarton. There's a picture of him on my wall. Well, it's a picture of me on my wall

with him in the picture. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Colossan Thomas, at one point, and we were sat under San Basha in the rain on the training area somewhere, cold and wet and tired. And I went,

I was going through one of those periods you go through at Sandhurst where it was just like, I'm not sure I can do this, I'm tired, screw this, I don't even know why I signed up for this. And it's part of the process and he sat me down. And he said, I don't normally do this, but you're doing very, very well. And it didn't feel like at the time. He said, you're doing very, very well. You've got a decent chance of getting, you know, sort of honour to just, you know, get a grip. And I was like, okay.

And he said, and also, you're the only black. guy on the intake. So everybody's watching. It's not just about you. Because all the black soldiers that come after you will be judged by your performance by all the people on this course. And I'm like, oh, cheers a lot. Enough pressure as it is.

And he's basically saying, you're also carrying the weight of others. And I had never, I had never thought like that before. And it was one of these things. And for him, I suppose it was a bit of a high risk. Because I could have just crumbled under the pressure as it was. I like to describe, I finished in the top three, which as Rory will know means third. Because if you finish first, you get a sword,

and I didn't get a sword. And if I'd finish second, I would have said I finished. I finished in the top three of my intake at Sandus. But it's interesting, because you could read, I can hear, when you said that, I could imagine some people saying, well, that's the guy kind of pretty racist tendencies. On the other hand, it could be somebody who's seeing you in a leadership role.

No, Colise Sergeant Thomas was black. So I forgot that. Colour Sergeant Thomas was six and a half. Halffoot, West Indian heritage, hard as nails. Okay, well, I think that's proper motivation seeing you as a leader and telling you to think about that. Oh, but here, right, here's the thing, Alistair, here's the thing. When you thought he was white, your implication was that it came. Well, I immediately thought he was Welsh and Ginger because you just mentioned that.

So here's the thing. And this is the point. So here's the point, exactly the same words and exactly the same circumstance. When your mental image of him was of a traditional white British colour sergeant, there was maybe the sniff was this a bit of racism, whatever. As soon as you found out who was black, it was like, oh, this is inspirational, motivational. I think this is where we are, problematic. I think one of the big problems at the moment is, and I don't want to go studs up on you,

because we all do this, and I think it's been amplified recently, we project a lot of assumptions onto. words and actions. And I think we seek, and I'm not saying you did this just now, but I think collectively we seek to condemn more quickly than we seek to understand. And I think that's taking us in a really, really, really difficult and fundamentally dangerous place. I can't remember a point in time when we've had, I think, a more divided society and more divisive politics. And as I grew up with the National Front marching down past the end of my street. I'm talking about seeking to condemn rather than understand.

So you've got to pull me up for hypocrisy. No, no, no, no, I'm pulling up a member of another country who's just said, Henry Nowak died the same way as civilization dies. He should still be alive today and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it. I mean, I don't know, I don't know, this, J.D. Vance. I don't really know what to make

of when someone in another country, right? I mean, you're not doing that presumably when something happens in America, right? You're not sending out a tweet saying every time Trump does something wrong, you're issuing a condemnatory tweet

saying, this guy dies in the way a civilization dies. Yeah, I'm not, but lots of other people in British politics, particularly on the left, lots of people in the Labour Party have. I mean, lots of people in the Labour Party, you look at what, you know,

the mayor of London says about Donald Trump. You look at what David Lammy said about Donald Trump during his first term. You look at, so lots of Brits, particularly on the left, have done that in very, so in uncritically positive ways

when Obama was president and relentlessly negative ways under Trump. And then we're getting some of it back and it's not nice. Now, I don't agree with the vice president's comments. I didn't agree with his comments about British contribution to the Second World War. There are lots of things he says

I fundamentally disagree. But what I don't do is, and I'm pretty sure, but, you know, I've not done an audit of myself, but I'm pretty sure that there is no or not much of me going studs up on other countries' administrations other than the time of when it was my job to do so. So when I was a foreign minister, a big part of the job is laying down the UK position on the conduct of other countries, both domestically and internationally, it's part of the job. But, you know, slating individuals of other. countries and very much personalising it.

The Trump administration have got a lot of this, and they're doing it back to us, and we don't like it. No, but James, let me just, I think that's really rewriting history. Sadiq Khan, I think, is incredibly calm and well-tempered, given that the President of the United States

attacks him, lambast him virtually every time he comes here. Yeah. And not because of what Sidit Khan does or says, but because of absolute lies that the Maga crowd tell about London. And I think it's racist. I do think it's racism.

And I think what you see in the way that Hexoth talks about, you know, erasing people like Colin Powell from the library and the archives of the Pentagon. It's racism. It's one of the supremacy. I'm not defending. I'm not defending the positions they've taken. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not cheerleading for the Trump White House or his administration.

What I'm saying is that if we're saying that it's, it's wrong when that administration criticizes us. And I think that was kind of the implication of the question. Then we got to ask ourselves, have we been doing it? And we have. Lots of us have. Now, you can argue that, oh, well, when we do it, it's completely legit. And when they do it is illegit.

And that may be true, but it just makes it a harder argument to make. So either we agree that in the contemporary political, geopolitical, diplomatic world, we dish out criticism like that online and in speeches or we agree we don't and if we agree that we do if that's part of how the modern world of diplomacy works

then we should expect to get some incoming. You can't push but not expect pushback and I'm not saying it's legit I'm not saying I agree with it but I'm saying it's the nation does anyone serving in the Labour cabinet do that like the prime minister

the deputy price this guy's this is not a lot of backbenchers it's like the vice president it's the state department official account has come out saying, there's literally the official account on State Department, ideological conditioning and two-tiered policing and glaring symptoms of civilizational decline. They must be rejected across the West Side. If the metric is, does the Trump White House do things fundamentally different to other? It has a great impact.

Not different. America always has a great impact. The reason I'm punching this a little bit is one of the things that troubles me about the direction, the conservative party. is gone is how reluctant people are to call this out. Oh, that's nonsense. I was about to use a different word. I've criticized. Well, at the moment, you're very much on the one hand, on the other.

What about this? What about the other? No, no, I, I... I mean, you're not saying that's outrageous, right? When I read you these things, what you're saying is. I disagree with that. I disagree with that. And it's not that the Labour front bench is doing this against the Americans, right?

This is not what our foreign secretary, our foreign office, our deputy prime minister is doing. right? It may be backcountry's doing. No, not just about that. We have had. When serving in office. So now, David Lammy tried to play this with regard to the Labor opposition to Black Lives Matter. He basically said, oh, when you're in opposition, you're allowed to do these kind of things. We're much more tolerant of US senators, congressman, stuff that Vance said before he was elected. It's when you've got the weight of office with you and you start doing this. And I just start setting up. And I disagree with it. And I disagree with it. I don't think it is. is I don't think it is accurate. I also don't think it is useful. I disagree with it fundamentally.

But the point I'm saying is for us to turn around, oh, this is, this is outrageous and they shouldn't do it. It's like we've, we, you point a finger at someone, you've got three fingers pointing back at yourself. And if we become uncritical or if we don't analyze ourselves and understand what's happening and why, I think we'll keep getting off. What's the rule of fact and truth in this? So when Donald Trump and the Maga... I'm not here to defend the Trump White House. Let me just push this a bit further, though, because I think this is really important for maybe one of the reasons why people aren't listening to the Conservatives in the way that maybe they should be, as they're the, you know, the official opposition. When Trump, for example,

condemns London, as he does all the time, you might be mayor of London, as Brory said earlier. He certainly might be the candidate. And when he says that we have Sharia law, when he says that he's got this horrible human being in charge of London, a Muslim. I actually think that Sadiq's amazingly restrained, and I wish our front bench, the Labour front bench, would push back harder at this stuff, because I think it's poisoning our politics. Elon Musk, another one, every day. We threw to, stop two American YouTubers coming in last week for being not conducive to the national good. Elon Musk is not conducive to the national good. Nobody ever calls it out. So I think this is... So firstly, lots of people

call it out, so I disagree. But also the point... Have you called that out? The point... Lying? The lies that they tell? So I, if I were to spend my entire time correcting things I disagree with online, I would get no work to work. Correct. But it is important. And when it was my job, when it was my job,

I did highlight misinformation, disinformation, factual errors. But the point, the point I'm making is that the way this White House conducts itself is unprecedented. It is unprecedented. And it's wrong and it's corrupt and it's and it's a danger to democracies around the world. But also it's the White House that is currently running America and that is

our, that is one of, if not the most important bilateral relationships the UK has and we have got to make it work. And you and this is one of these things with diplomacy and foreign affair. I don't like the word diplomacy because it kind of implies you're being terribly diplomatic. You're not, you know, international relations, foreign relations. Foreign relations. Foreign relations. you've got to make the relationships work that need to work. And that sometimes means you have to pull your punches or bite your lip. But ultimately, for example, the White House position towards supporting Ukraine in their defense against Russia's brutal, full-scale invasion is more important than our diplomatic. And we're not calling that out.

They're letting Ukraine down. What are you trying to – so the question is that what are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to feel good or are you trying to get stuff done? Because rowing with the White House, either being embarrassing the White House, would be deeply counterproductive. Because we know what the president is like. We need to bring him to where we think the US should be rather than stand on the touchlines and shout.

And that's difficult. I agree. It's difficult. But with Ukraine, Ukraine's a very good example to me. Ukraine is surviving against Russia, despite the United States, which I think Rory and I both feel now is on Putin's side. And the thing about calling it out, I suspect that Trump right now gives more respect to Mark Carney

than most of the other leaders in the world because Mark Carney has called it out and he called out in Davos and Trump didn't like it. Is it changing the US position? It may or it may not, but the point is changing the Canadian position. Is it changing the US position, yes or no? Well, if it isn't, then what's the point?

The point is to change. The point. So, Alist, when I was foreign sector A, there are a couple of things I really, really pushed hard on. One thing I absolutely hated was the habitual use of the phrase deeply concerned, because it relegates us to observe a status, which is passing comment on world affairs. And I said, we are not in the commentary box. We are on the pitch. We don't tell the world what we feel. We tell the world's what we are doing.

Now, you talk about, we should call it out. We should call it out. Lovely. But the point I'm asking is, what is the best way of changing the US president's position in terms of support to Ukraine? That should be the starting point. There should be the first question ahead of every action. If it doesn't help us get the US administration into the place that we think is the right place, then we should probably not be doing that. Even if it's a little bit uncomfortable. Where I completely agree with you, you have to try to do your best to make the relationship. relationship work at every level. And I think Kirstearner has tried really hard to do that, the King's visit and all that stuff. But the minute he didn't jump when Trump said Iran,

then we start to pay a price. But let me just finish. Let me just finish. Starma does not understand how diplomacy works. Stama thinks if you give stuff away and he's done it with Chinese with regard to the Chinese embassy, he's done it to the EU with regards to Erasmus, he's done it with the US with regard to the state visits. He gives things away in the hope that he's buying good. It doesn't work like that. It's a negotiation. He's awful on the international stage.

He's useless. And the US, so, and the fact, the fact that he didn't have any bargaining chips with the US because he gave them all the way up front is the reason why we weren't as influential with regard to Iran. Ditto with the EU. Let me just, let me, let me, let me, man to the, we're actually, I was getting to point about Mark Carney. I think Mark Carney, well, I know, Donald Trump has phoned Mark Carney, more than Mark

Mark Carney has phoned Donald Trump since Davos last year. I think that last night, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, meeting just after Zelensky came to London. Last night he met Kyr, he was Starmre, he met Mertz, he met Macron. I think that is leaders doing what you're suggesting. Don't just whack the other side, do something different, show that Europe can matter. My point, though, you're in opposition now. My point is that values really, really matter. And unless people like you are prepared to say that what they're doing is more than unprecedented, to any British person, I think what they're doing is unacceptable on so many levels. And I think you will actually

find you get more respect both here and there if you're prepared to call it and more. Well, I've, I have always been clear out my values. I think Kemi's setting out the values of the Conservative Party. And we are defining our values through what we do and what we say, rather than defining our values in opposition to something else. And that's, and I think, And the reason I make that distinction is because I do, I do think there is a real danger that you can be led around by the nose, like a show bull in an agricultural show, by circumstances beyond your control. And you're just constantly responding to other people's positions on stuff. And you're not ever really defining yourself. And I think there's a danger to that.

And I think this is one of the things that we see now with the Labour Party in government. The Labour Party, in the lead-up to last general election, defined itself exclusively as not being the Conservatives. And that's fine until they became the government. They had no anchor. They've been blown around all over the place. So that's why you have the perverse circumstance of Labour backbenchers having the whip withdrawn for voting to increase. increase benefits. And fast forward 12 months, and the prime minister and the chancellor,

lauding the fact they've increased the benefits bill, which they removed the whip from Labour MPs. So they complete U-turn. A point I made at the time. Absolutely, but the point is. Because I can call them all out. Because the question I asked myself was, how does nonsense like that happen?

And it happens because the Labour Party, at the moment, is completely unlawful. unanchored because it defined itself as being not the Tories rather than being the Labor Party. And I think it's a massive error to repeat that mistake. And that's why I think it's so important that we as a party, the Conservative Party, and Kemi personally as a leader, create a self-definition anchored in our values, not just as a response to someone else. Okay. So, I mean, James, we're talking at a time when, however you spin it, labor and Tories are in a catastrophic situation historically. There's literally not been a time in the last 200 years where the two major parties have been so low on the polls. I was talking to an MP from East Sussex who pointed out that they'd gone from, I think, 23 councillors on the Tory councillors to zero. That Hastings, which used to be, you know, when Amber Rudd was then, was a Tory labour marginalist, now a reform. green marginal. I mean, it's this unbelievable. It's completely unbelievable. So I guess the question

is, if you sort of step back from your role, which is maybe unfair, you're on the front bench, right? You're trying to boost your team. But I guess if you stood back and look at this, you're like, whoa, this is a big problem. I mean, you can stick to your values. You can talk about these things. But for whatever reason, I don't know, is it Boris Johnson? Is it this trust? Is it that the Tories run for 13 years? Or is it the tone that people are taking? taking the polling is not that impressive. There's a huge gamble going on that if you just stick to your guns and remain anchored, somehow this is all going to turn around by the election. What's going on? I mean, what, what happened to Sussex? Why have we ended up in a situation?

We've got zero councillors and we're not in play for what used to be Tory labour marginal. For two passionate pro-Europeans, I worry about how little we look at European politics. because we have now, we are now experiencing a phenomenon which we've seen in continental European politics over the last decade, it's been building over the last decade, which is this real bifurcation of politics. You look at the last German elections and because Delinca and AFD kind of counterbalanced each other, you end up with a sensible centrist, you know, centrist dad kind of coalition. But the vote split, the vote split very hard to the hard left and to the hard right. And that's being replicated across Europe. You see the French presidential elections. The last set and the set that are coming up, same phenomenon.

So it's not unique to British politics. So saying, oh, was it Liz? Was it Boris? Well, that wouldn't explain why it's happening in other European countries. And again, you see this in the States. Now, because of the way their party branding works, rather than their party system, you know, people think of, or you know, people describe President Trump as, you know,

a Republican president, but he's from out with the tradition of the U.S. Republican Party. So we're seeing this across mature democracies. So I don't think it's uniquely about us. That doesn't mean to say we can go, oh, it's not our fault, we could just move on. We do need to do something about this. But the opportunity, and how does, can I just sort of, I mean, the analysis is very interesting,

but how does it feel if you're like a councillor and Sussex, who's been used to running the council for decades and suddenly you have zero seats. I mean, what are your activists say? What are the council say? It's very brutal. Well, it's happened to us in Essex. Essex County Council, which was a conservative run for decades, we've complete lost control. It's a reform run council. And for a lot of people, a lot of activists, a lot of counselors, it is a complete shock. It's an unprecedented shock. It's like nothing they've experienced. And again, to explain to listeners, because not everyone's in the thing. These are often the people who you rely on to leaflet.

These are the main activists. These are the people that run the party machines. So when they get unhappy, that's to be true for labour as well. Yeah, absolutely. This is, so it's something new. So the question is how you respond to that. It's interesting, again, in your question, for me, the fundamental question is, is, do you get elected to be elected, or do you get elected? or do you get elected to do things that you believe in?

There is a real temptation to just try and be where the electorate seems to be in the moment. So you get chasing after the votes. And perhaps, I'm not saying this inevitable, but perhaps in order to do that, you need to say and potentially do things that you don't believe in, that you're uncomfortable with. They're probably spotters.

Well, I think the public do spot it, if you're not being honest with yourselves. But even if they don't, even if you con them for a little bit, and you then get elected on what is a false prospectus, and you kind of go, well, I've got myself elected, thumbs up, job done. That's where things fall over. And we're seeing this now with reform, where they have taken control of councils. It's been an absolute car crash. Because Nigel Farage, I think, his big motivation is to be able to say to people, people, you wrote me off and you were wrong. That's all he wants. And I have no doubt that if, and I don't think it's going to happen, but if he ever walked through the door of number 10,

he would regard the job has, as job done as he crossed the threshold, rather than saying, this is the start of the job. And I think that'll be catastrophic. This episode is brought to you by Vauxhall. Electric cars have become part of life on the road, and Vauxhall is supporting the UK's transition to electrification. Well, how are they doing that? Well, to start. their Electric Streets of Britain initiative aims to support local authorities in accelerating the UK's on-street charging infrastructure. And it's exactly what you want to see from Vauxhall, which is of course a British brand, a proud partner of Team G.B. Vauxhall's also supporting the next generation of athletes on their journey to the 2028 Olympics. And there's more.

Their new Vauxhall Grandland Griffin, a large family SUV, features a premium specification at an affordable price. whether you choose an electric or mild hybrid version. Even better, going electric can get you an additional £1,500 discount thanks to the electric car grant. Any questions you have about electric cars are probably answered by the Vauxhall Grandland. Search Vauxhall Groundland or visit your local Vauxhall retailer today. Electric grant teas and sees apply. Visit voxor.com.uk for more info. Hi, it's Rory here.

To celebrate the release of my book, Middelland and Paperback, I'm doing two live shows on stage in London in September. And I'd love you to join me for the conversation. Middelland is my portrait of rural Britain and politics. It draws on a decade of living in Cumbria, being the member of Parliament, writing about its resilience, its beauty, and what this corner of England can teach us about community, purpose. And if you'll allow me to sound a bit grand, democratic renewal. Every ticket to the show includes a copy of the book, and it should be a great opportunity. I'll be in discussion with people. We'll have questions. I'm happy to engage with almost anything. We can talk about global politics as well. I'm playing the Dominion Theatre in London's

West End on Sunday the 13th of September and the Richmond Theatre in Richmond on Tuesday the 15th of September. If you'd like to buy tickets, you can head to feign.com.com.com.uk forward slash Rory-dash Stuart. That's fain.combe.com.com.org slash Rory dash Stuart. This may be getting into internal Tory psychology. I was very fond of you, and you will remember I tried to persuade you to run with me in 2019. I read about that in your book. Absolutely. I think we could have gone into more detail.

I think I could have had more pages. You could have more pages. Wait, if you joined me, we would have been Prime Minister together. We would have been taking them from Liz Truss and Boris Johnson. But at the same time, the characters around that I remember were people like Robert General. and Danny Kruger, giving me great lessons about loyalty. You know, Danny Kruger actually basically got me fired from the Tory party, giving me a lecture on how I mustn't in any way vote against the Tory party,

challenge it, that he was Tory through and through. Generic sending me a little WhatsApp saying I'd gone to soft left and centrist dad, and he was going to be a Tory regardless. Now, what is happening? How can I reconcile on my brain? people like Danny Kruger and Robert Jenrick giving me quite a moralistic Christian ideological messages about how they're totally loyal Tory through and so now there was reform what's going on so I was thinking about this actually and Danny you mentioned Danny

Krueger Danny wrote something I can't remember exactly where it was and he wrote something which I thought was a throwaway line for a little bit of rhetorical flourish which was about conservatives that done things wrong when they're in government can get absolution from Nigel Fragge as long as they were willing to basically, you know, prostrate themselves. And I thought it was a funny line. And Danny can be, he can be very good with words. And I thought it's a bit of a funny line. I now watch Nadim Sahawi lie knowingly on television. I watch Robert Jenrick lie on television. I watch people that I liked and respected just mutate live on air in order to try and win the approval. And I realize it's penance. I think it's a combination

of burning bridges, consciously burning, or burning boats, better metaphor, burning boats. Like, you can never go back. You need to denounce your former party and your former colleagues. So this is a one-way valve. I think part of it's that. But the other part of it is ritual humiliation as some kind of purity test. Of themselves. Of themselves. And it's famous in every gangster movie, isn't it? You have to that sheet to really show your loyalty. Like go shoot your old boss? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

And this is what they're doing. And everyone can see that's what they're doing. And ultimately, and I don't know when, I mean, you ask, you know, the question that was meant to answer and I kind of slightly avoided it. How do we deal with this? Don't do what you believe to be wrong. Starting point for a good life. Don't do something you fundamentally believe to be wrong, even if that thing is

superficially popular, because people do see through it. And if ultimately, even if they don't, even if ultimately, and was it, all political careers end in failure, at some point in the future, when I get rid of this beard, I'm going to have to look at myself in the shaving mirror and ask, did I fundamentally do what I believed in or did I just do what I needed to do to get me elected? And if you can't say I did what I believe to be right, then frankly, what is the point? What's the point in getting involved in politics? The money ain't that great. You get slagged off on social media. you know, if you're really, really lucky, you get some very lucrative book deals like you and your Bet Noir, Boris Johnson, but most of us don't. So you've got to do what you believe to be right. And I don't believe Nadim believes what he says about Kemi. This is Kemi. If you've got to pick a conservative... What are the lies that you object to? Oh, him claiming that she was all pro BLM back in the day and she's contorted her position. I mean, like, talk about pick the wrong target. Chemie has been relentless in her opposition to identity politics about this division staff,

about critical race theory, about Black Lives Matter as a political movement, and to try and suggest that she was playing footsie with Black Lives Matter five, six years ago when it was flavour of the day, when they were, you know, Nadine Zaharwe, he was at a BLM conference. And he was talking about diversity quotas and this kind of stuff. But how do they make the because, because just just finished on Robert General? Right. So when I first met him, he was this sort of rather sort of, seemed to be kind of nice, young. Cameroon? Yeah, innocent Cameroon, kind of left winger. Ken Clark, pro-EU. Because he voted, so he voted for. He was pretty much left of me, right? He was more liberal than me, right?

And now the Ken Clark's table. So he was from that traditional. I mean, and there's a long-standing tradition. Now he's moved well right in me. What's happened? Need to ask him. But, I mean, for me, I think, I think there's a lot of frustration there. I think he's been a good boy for his political career. He's not being in very long, says he is a chippy person he came in in 2010. But look, if you think from his point of view, he grew up in the Ken Clark stable, and there's a long, I love Ken Clark. Lots of things I disagree with him about, but a titan of British politics.

So he kind of grew up in there, very much in line with the David Cameron Modernization Project, very much in the slipstream of that agenda. Did it get him top-tier status? No, it didn't. It got me as high as it ought to have got him. Well, hang on. Well, I'm not sure he would agree with. I'm sure he wouldn't, but he did.

And then very much, then very much, yeah, very much in the Theresa May stable, and then very much in the Boris stable. Then he wrote that joint letter with Oliver Dowden and Rishi Sunak saying Boris is the future. And so he's been the good soldier to every general place ahead of him. And he just hasn't got where he thought he wanted to be. he saw Rishi becoming prime minister, olive becoming

deputy prime minister, and him was like number two at the home office. And that's the way he kind of peaked. And I think he's very angry that he has done what he believes

as being kind of a good and loyal member of parliament. Is that the way to interpret going? I don't know. I don't know. You have to ask it. You have to reliving your psychological pain, Laurie.

But so one of the point, but no, but one of the points is, one of the points is, I, I refuse to believe, I'm sorry, I refuse to believe that anyone honestly can go on that much of a political journey. From right over there to right over there. Well, you can if you believe nothing.

Well, you might think that I couldn't possibly. I mean, I was speaking at a book festival in Redford in the Midlands, which is next to his constituency. Quite close, yeah. So a lot of his constituents were there and somebody said to me, what did I make of Robert Jenner? journey and I said, well, I think it's fairly obvious. He's an opportunistic slug. And the guy said you're being deeply unfair to slugs. But, you know, let me just take a more significant one than that, though, because you're saying that the Conservative Party has to be anchored, Labour Party's not anchored, et cetera. I think one of the things that's unanchored, both of the main parties,

is the failure to admit to the consequences of Brexit. Oh, I knew you were going to go there. Well, I've got to go there. I'll tell you why. So how does that explain all the Europeans? No, we'll come on to that. Similar things. But, no, but my point is, three people, essentially, the history books will put three people down as the big drivers, the big creators of Brexit. Cameron for doing the referendum, Johnson led the campaign, and Farage.

And you could maybe add our press as well for 20 years of Euro-scepticism. Two of them have been prime minister. Most people in the country now would say that Brexit is not worked out as they planned, including people who voted for it. And yet, it is not impossible that we put the third of those into office, into Downey Street. I agree with you. Probably won't happen, but he is leading the polls and it might happen. And that says to me that neither of the main parties have wanted to confront the reality of the consequences of Brexit. Would you not buy some of that, at least? Because? So by your own, by your own, to buy polling numbers, the third of that

Troika, it was not a Troika, because they weren't working together, but the third of those names is currently leading the polls and doing well in the election. And your hypothesis is if we passionately denounced the delivery of a democratic mandate hard enough, then somehow Nigel Farage would do less well. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. So I'm not genuinely not sure what you are saying. What I'm saying is that anything else that happened in our politics that did so much damage to our economy and our standing in the world, the author of us it would pay a big price. Cameron paid a price, Johnson paid a price for other things. The fact that Farage never gets challenged on his role

means he's just being able to move away because you guys and Labor vacated the field. I don't want to make this all about Brexit. Well, I know that's part of the problem. No, no. But I just lay these down and we're not going to agree. So we can dance around this May poll over and over again, but we're not going to agree.

But if your hypothesis was right, how do we explain the fact that this bifurcation of politics, this polarisation of politics is happening across mature democracies, including down in Australia and European countries. How do you factor or how do you explain

the fact that our economic performance has largely tracked identically to the other major European economies? Took a big dip during COVID and a slow recovery out of COVID.

We're definitely only going to move the facts on that. Well, no. Well, hang on. Because it's not true. Our economy is performing far worse because of Brexit. You're saying that as a statement, but the fact of figures, even the figures track. Look at the GDP graphs of the UK or France, of Germany, the big three European economy.

None of them are doing well. None of them are doing well, but they all follow the same trajectory. And so if it was the, if it was all about Brexit, and you're saying... It's not all about Brexit. Or majority, or mainly about Brexit. No, I'm making a different point. I'm saying that the guy who was a big author of Brexit

has paid no political price because you and Labour have made a judgment not to make him do so. And it's not about relitigation of this. That's exactly what it's about. It's not. It's about character. It really is.

And this goes back to the point about Trump. If you allow right-wing populist leaders who lie a lot, who change their story, Left wing lies are okay, but right. No, because I don't think we do. I don't think you do. No, give me a lie. I tell you, mate, I don't know how long we've got before we have to pull stumps.

We're here until you admit I'm right. That's the rule of the podcast. Because I've got to vote, I'm going to vote at 10 o'clock, so I'm not sure you've got enough time to agree on this. Do you not accept even partly that for 90-froarch? The joke for the listeners is that it's about 11 o'clock in the morning. He's talking about 10 o'clock at night. Anyway, we're not going to agree on Brexit. I'm not going to a realistic gay break it.

I'm simply, I'm not. I'm making a bigger, what I think is a bigger point that relates to this. If you have a populist polarising post-truth politician like Farage, unless that is called out all the time by the people trying to stop him, you were playing his game. Because that works so well for you guys previously, didn't it? I mean, that really worked during the... We didn't do it.

It really worked during the, it really worked during the referendum campaign. We didn't do it. Look, I'm going to disagree. I'm going to disagree with you on the strategic, on the strategic intent there. because I don't, I just don't, I don't, you are relitigating it. You are, you are, you are, pointing out of being a disaster. Yeah, but the, the, the statistics, this,

you can roll your eyes and sigh all you like. But as I say, we're seeing a similar polarization of politics in countries that did not do a Brexit. Partly because the mainstream parties have made the same mistake. We are. We are. We are. We are. But that's not a Brexit thing.

No, you're proving my point. Anyway. Can I come to the back to you as far. Foreign Secretary, right, which was an amazing, amazing role and one that I think you enjoyed, right? I did. I thought I was good at it, and I enjoyed it, and I was heartbroken when I got moved. When he got moved. David Cameron, big-footed you. No, why did you get moved out of Foreign Secretary?

That was weird, wasn't it? It was Rishi C.Nat wanted to bring in David Cameron, yeah. There was a bit of that, but also I think Rishi needed to move Suella, and he needed someone that he felt could hit the ground running. And sorry, this is a sort of tiny thing, but I, I, I don't know. It's also a bit kind of confused by David Lammy, suddenly been replaced by Yvette Cooper when he seemed to develop a good relationship with J.D. Vance. He's not the prime minister. He didn't do the reshuffle, Rory. I didn't do the reshuffle, but I don't think David was doing good job as foreign secretary.

I think he was over-indexing for the US. I think he was overplaying his relationship with Vance, which turned out not to be that useful. They had a relationship, but he's not really exercised much diplomatic leverage from that. And I also have on pretty good authority because you never really. really, you never really step out of foreign affairs, that he wasn't, he wasn't spreading the love widely enough. So let me sort of develop. Imagine you're still foreign secretary.

Oh, lovely. Those bodyguards. As we enter particularly a world of AI, we become very, very conscious on the fact that we have critical dependencies on China, but we also have extraordinary critical dependencies on the US, cloud computing, AI, defence equipment. the dollar global payment systems. How would a country like Britain over 10 or 15 years think about, not achieving total sovereignty, you can ever achieve that,

but a little bit more choice, a little bit more hedging, a little more independent, so we're not in the position we felt we were in with Greenland, which is we are completely over a barrel. So this all goes back to the fundamental, it's the economy stupid. Everything is dependent on a foundation stone of a healthy and vibrant economy.

And our economy has grown too slowly. We are not the only ones, but our economy has grown too slowly. That has meant that there's less money to go around than some governments would like. And I think we have not applied the money we have had to the right priorities. I think our industrial base,

not you just mean heavy industry, but a lot of businesses, everything from the point, pottery to data centers requires a large amount of cheap and reliable energy. And we've drifted away from understanding that. And that's put us in a difficult place. We became reliant back from the EU accession countries back when Tony Blair was Prime Minister.

We became overly reliant on relatively high-skilled but relatively low-paid labour. so we didn't invest enough in the kind of technologies that would increase productivity. And we over-relied on the post-Cold War peace dividend. And so there are lots of things there that we need to do to re-establish ourselves as a top-tier player. I think it can be done, but it's going to take some fundamental resets in things like our tax and regulatory system. We tax and regulate our businesses to such an extent. They can't grow. We punish growth when it happens.

We're not investing in the right kind of defense. We're not taking a lot of things as seriously as we should. And I think these are recoverable because we're still with the right time zone. We've got a fantastic education system. We've got some very, very good technologists. London is the world's third largest AI center. But we are going to have to do some big things differently if we are going to maintain that power. And really easy to talk about soft power.

People think diplomacy is soft power. It's not. It's hard power. It's hard power with a smiley face and velvet gloves, but it is predicated on your ability to do difficult and tough stuff if need to be. And if we are not willing or able to do that, then we are not going to be able to have any kind of sovereignty. But it really comes down to strong economic decisions,

cheaper energy because that fuels everything. We became wealthy and powerful and influential in the age of steam because we had first move of advantage on an energy source. And if we want to stay top table, we've got to understand, particularly in the modern day and age, all comes down to energy policy. We're labour in completely the wrong place. Johnson trusts Sunak in a word.

One word for each. or have the phrase or just give us a sense of your assessment of those three that you served under. So Rish, I think, could have been a great prime minister if the circumstances were different when he stepped in. I think we'd lost that. We'd lost the 24 election. I think a lot of people around him got very, very panicky. We made bad decisions through the campaign, lead up to the campaign, which really, really didn't help. I think Liz became so driven by wanting to prove a point that she lost track of some of the fundamentals of, politics. And what was the point? Well, the point she wanted to make is you've laughed at me my whole career, but look at now, I'm prime minister now, and I'm going to do the things

that you told me were impossible. And she set about, and the thing with her, she did two things simultaneously, which were contradictory. One, she advocated a big reduction of taxation in order to get the economy rolling, and then at the same time, a massive, incredibly expensive fiscal support package. And you can't do both. You can either, you can either tax. You can either tax less and spend less or tax more and spend more. What you can't do is tax less and spend more. And just before we get into Johnson, it's really interesting what you say, though, because part of my job in Downing Strip was to try and keep ministers quotes on message. So you were saying there, what I imagined at the time was probably what you thought. How hard is it when you were like one of the key communicators and you were actually having to go out and say, this is all fine and she's got the plot and it's all making sense?

So the big advantage I had was it all moved so quickly. I was never really asked to do that. So day three in my job as foreign secretary, Her late Majesty the Queen died, and we went straight into Operation London Bridge. We went straight from Operation London Bridge into the UN General Assembly. Went straight from the UN General Assembly to Arbei Shenzhou's funeral. And I was flying back from the far east as the wheels were falling off the British economy.

So literally I was like, wow. So how did it feel? It felt. I mean, I was stepping into one of the biggest jobs in British politics, and it was like, it was like nothing I'd ever experienced for. All the certainties, all the handrails, all the foundation stones that I thought were solid were wobbling. And it became, it became clear. By the time I got back, and for the first time, just going into party conference,

It was really the first time I caught my breath. So that beginning part of October going to Conservative Party Conference, been Foreign Secretary for a month. That whole month had just been turbulence. Total, absolute head-spinning turbulence. And then we're at party conference. And luckily, I was able to stand up

and just give a speech on foreign affairs because I was Foreign Secretary. Like, shit. Keep my head blow the parapet on that. But it was impossible to understand what was going on. And Johnson? So Boris could have been. Again, you're not going to agree with this.

Boris could have been an amazing Prime Minister. Two things let him down. I think you had people around him who did not have his best interests at heart and thought they could use him as an avatar for their ambitions. People have been doing, Cummings and others, but mainly Cummings. People have been doing this throughout Boris's career.

He got hit with the challenge of COVID, which was exactly the wrong kind of emergency for Boris. in the way that Ukraine was exactly the right kind of thing. COVID was exactly the wrong kind of thing. There were no inherently right answers. It was all very difficult. It was very technical. It required him to do things which he instinctively didn't want to do. Like all the lockdowns, really, really unlibertarian. He was quite a libertarian type person. All these things were odds with his belief. And it just smashed him about and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, he's always had a degree. can discuss how much of a degree.

The degree of personal ill discipline. We knew that when we as a party chose to make him prime minister in many ways, that was personal rather than professional, but those things blurred and the wheels came. All of which you can read in my wife's book that she's writing about her. So Susie's, and the reason I'm reliving this, so it's because Susie's writing a book at the about her time being treated for and recovering from cancer. And it basically starts 2022. So it goes from 2022 to the end of 2025.

And so we're reliving this. And she's writing about what she was going through. She was saying, what were you doing at the time? I'm flicking back through my diary going, oh, my God, I was doing this. And oh, my God, I was doing that. So it's all painfully familiar. Well, I'm so sorry to hear about your wife.

No, she's in a good place now. She's in a good place now. And we look forward to the book. Final one from me, AI. I mean, given that I think we both agree that this could probably transform everything very, very quickly, our economy's public services, defense, maybe three, five years, the world will be almost unrecognizable. Why are so few politicians campaigning on this issue and making it central? I mean, if I'm right that in five years time, the whole world is going to look completely different, we're going to look back at these political debates. I'm going to go, what the hell were they talking about?

they're still stuck in the 1980s? Yeah, I think it's because it is, it's hard to understand. It's easy to understand a very, very, very superficial level. And if you want to just echo the same talking points as absolutely everybody else, then you can probably get away with it. You probably get away with it. But because it is so transformational and it is moving so very, very quickly, it would be very, very easy to start putting policies in place,

which are obsolete long before they ever. get through the parliamentary, the parliamentary system. I did, when I was foreign secretary, I, I, I chaired the first UN Security Council debate on, on the safety of AI from a geopolitical, kind of, you know, weapons management, financial sector management. And we, we had an expert, a British expert and a Chinese expert, and they were absolutely fascinating. And the stuff they were saying at the time, I was like, right, scribbling this down. I thought, I'm going to I'm going to become our in-house expert on AI. And then something happened.

I can't remember what happened. You know, some conflicts. And I looked away and spent some months thinking about something else. And by the time I look back, I was completely gone. And everything that I thought I knew and thought I understood had largely become, become obsolete. And I think that's one of the challenges. I think that politics, global politics, is particularly ill-prepared to deal with both the opportunities. and threats because the advocates of AI, I think, have probably got a bit of a blind spot to

some of the risks, and the people who are fearful of AI have got a blind spot to the opportunities. And like everything boring, the truth will sit somewhere between the two. So you look at science fiction, you look at science fiction from the time we grew up, and we're about the same kind of vintage. You look at science fiction from the time when we grew up, and it was like household robots and flying cars and that case. No one had thought of the mobile phone and no one had thought that every single person in a, you know, developed country could have on-demand access to the entirety of human knowledge, but mainly spends time looking at cat videos and pornography. You know, and we'll have the same, we'll have the same with AI. I think in some areas it will be much, much more transformational than we can get our heads around.

and in other ways you look at if we look back or if we had a time machine and travel for 10 years there will be lots of things which are very very very familiar

that we thought would be transformed and trying to guess which one it's going to be is kind of almost impossible there are some things that we know we need to be very

very careful of AI hallucination is a massive problem AI's ability to do the brute force force attacks on digital security systems, or right viruses, right penetration code is really, really worrying.

AI's inability to recognize its own errors and to lie. I mean, AI lie. There was something where some people were testing, I can't remember which one it was, but they were testing it. And not only did it lie, or not only did it hallucinate, when it got pulled up on it, it lied about it and I got pulled up on that, it lied again. And the thing is, of course, AI is trying to replicate humans, because we've told it to replicate humans. And what it's doing is it's replicating our faults and frailties and amplifying them.

So we need to, you know, just like a very, very high speed vehicle. There is a steering wheel, but you get it wrong. You know, you're driving at five miles an hour and you take a wrong turn, you bump into a tree. Like, it's not nice, but it's not fatal. If you're in a Formula One car, fundamentally the same technology with just so much more power, it's a massive problem. This is what AI does. All the things that we do well,

it could do very, very well and very, very quickly, but we've got to find a way of how do we harvest the positives and mitigate the negatives. Because what we're not going to do is we're not going to turn it off. That's not a credible option.

We didn't really get to the bottom of the very first thing I asked you, which is why you're a Tory. Because I'm not daft. Okay, okay. That's making a lot of assumptions in there. No, look, as I say... Let me give you three

and then you can wrap them all in one. Why you're Tory, would you like to be mayor of London and would you ever serve in a conservative party that did an electoral or coalition deal with Nigel Farage? So why I'm a conservative, I'm a pragmatist, as I say, I have family backgrounds in both public service and in commerce and I think I understand, and I'm not unique about this, I understand the interrelationship between the two. I don't put one on a pedestal above the other. public service, whether it in the health service or the military, is not some higher calling to the people that wake up early, risk their own capital, invest their own time, work hard in order to turn a profit and employ people. One's not better than the other. Very new labour. It's a very... Well, you did your best when you copied us.

So the bottom line is, the bottom line is that interrelationship. That interrelationship is really, really key. I think the Conservatives understand that more than other political parties. Point one. Point two. Do I want to be Mayor of London? It's a fascinating job. Obviously, I work with Boris for eight years whilst he was Mayor of London. You can get stuff done. I'm a you know, I was born and brought up in London.

My constituency is less is an hour's commute from Liverpool Street Station. When London does well, the country does well, and we can feel it in Braintree. And when London does badly, we can feel it in Braintree. And London is underperforming. And I know there's lots of misinformation and disinformation, but that is something that needs to be addressed.

We are losing talent. We are losing overseas investment. Our reputation on the world stage is not as strong as it should be. And you can be as frustrated by this as you like. And I saw this as Foreign Secretary. The words UK, England and London are often used as interchangeable terms on the world stage. So if we want the UK as a nation to be on fire in a positive way I mean like firing on all cylinders London needs to work and ain't working. So you're running okay. No it's not no look and I do this I do the terribly unfashionable thing as a politician which is say that of course I'm of course I have thought about it and of course I am thinking about it but I have not decided one way or the other because it's a it's a big step

I love being the MP for Braintree and and I'll be loath to step away from that and then the final point of Farage. I cannot see that circumstance coming to pass because he has made it absolutely clear he wants to destroy the Conservative Party and I said I was speaking up in Stockton and Pontes on Friday night, Saturday night and I made the point that if there was a dating app

if there was a political equivalent of a dating app and the profile said, I want to destroy you, I'm not sure that I would want to match up on that particular dating app. And he keeps saying over and over again, He hates us. He wants to destroy us. He's got this real vendetta because he thinks the Conservative Party undervalued him and then mocked him and etc. So some of which may be true. So I don't think that's, I don't think that's credible. But the direct answer is no, I wouldn't because either he would be the senior partner in a coalition and would be taking the country in a disastrous direction or he would be the junior partner in a coalition. And I just don't think. think he would accept that. His ego wouldn't let him. And if he was the senior partner in the

coalition, I think he would do the country at enormous amount of damage, because that's what we're seeing happen at local government level, because it's all performative, it's all feels. It goes to that point I'm saying earlier about, you know, deeply concerned and why I hate it so viscerally as a phrase, because it's all about the vibe. It's all about the feels. It's all about, are you angry about something? I'm angry about something. Let's be angry together. Sort it out. Not interested in that, mate. I just want to stir the pot and show. things up. That is not what public service is about. That's not what

politics is about. You go to a doctor because you want to be made better. You don't go to a doctor so the doctor can just empathize with your particular pain. And the same is true of politics. Empathy is really important. It's one of the preconditions for successful elections. But if that's all you got,

if that's all you got, if all you are is an echo chamber of the angst of your nation, then you are not the your big part a big part a nation not maybe not maybe not the majority but a big part part and listening to minority voices is really important particularly minority voices you disagree with and i do think again i think that's an error that has been made by a number of political parties i would say this one i think labor worst offenders listening to minority voices that they agree with but not minority voices they disagree with um so we have to understand why a lot of

of people feel really, really uncomfortable. But if all you do is echo that discomfort, you're not serving the country. And as I say, those first go into politics. We don't do it for the kudos. We don't do it for the money. We do it because we want to make the country a better play. Give me your direct reaction to how he handled, how Farage handled the Henry Novak. Very, very, very badly. Very, very, very badly. The problem we now have got is there are some things that he was talking about which are important to discuss. Are public servants too scared of being accused of racism to do the right thing in some of those difficult judgment-called situations?

And I think there have been too many examples of where people, whether it's from the Manchester Arena bombings, whether it's from the... Victoria, Climbier. Sorry? Victoria Climbier. Victoria Climbier. There have been too many where people, People have been scared off doing the right thing because they're worried about accusations of racism for us to just ignore that.

But the tone he's taken has made it harder to have those conversations because a lot of people who value are actually pretty good track record of race relations and integration. They have been dissuaded from entering into that conversation because he has amplified the polarisation of the debate. and to add anger into the mix, we started off talking about our time in the military. And, yeah, there are, you know, people who have been to far more dangerous places than I have whilst being in uniform or whatever. But you're always taught to think calmly as an officer. And that's not to be unemotional, but it's about not letting your emotions get the better of you. And for someone, a serious, someone in a serious position, a senior political figure to say the appropriate response is rage, I don't think adds value. And I know that people will say, well, Vance said that as well.

Lammy said that in the past. And I'm critical of everyone who says in a difficult situation, the best thing you can do is to be emotional rather than thoughtful. it's always, always, always, always the wrong response. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much, James. So, Rory, James Cleverley, did you have a vote in that leadership election when Bade Not Win? Or were you out of the party by then? I was out by then.

But as you know, my cunning plan when I was running for leadership was I thought me and Cleverly together might have had a chance of beating Boris. It didn't work out. Listen, what did you make of Cleverley? I enjoyed the conversation. I'm glad he didn't seem to remember that I once said he's the most misnamed politicians since Andrew Adonis, which was one of my cruelest jives against Mr Cleverley. But I thought he was thoughtful.

I sensed a little bit of tension within him. I think he still wants the Conservative Party to go in the direction that he set out when he was running for the leadership, which I guess is what I would define as maybe more on the centre than the centre right, and certainly not down the kind of radical populist right. I like the fact that, you know, he had a good go at you. When you were talking about Jenric, he had a good go at me over Brexit. He sort of fights his corner. I thought he was refreshingly frank and honest about some of his colleagues.

And I know I accept why you can't be when you were sort of bound by collective responsibility on the front bench. But I thought his assessments of his colleagues was pretty good. Yeah, so I hope our listeners, because, you know, we should explain to our listeners. We're always trying to get these politicians more on the right. but they seem either terrified or, I don't know what it is, reform of thinking of just taking the decision, they're not going to entertainers at all. Kemi Baderlock who said you'll come on, which is good.

But yeah, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the conversation. So he is, I mean, as you probably, I'm sure, you know, was a Brexit voting guy. Yeah. And he was a, had been one of Boris Johnson's staff. So from my point of view, he was always well to my right. Yeah.

But I think if you're going to have a version of the Conservative Party that is more right way, I'd much rather it was that because he finds a way to do it. And I felt that was true when he was discussing the Henry Novak tragedy and discussing Trump. He's found a way to do it that is he's not stirring things up. He's not kind of trying to outrage. He's a voice which is quite strong. I mean, as you say, he pushes back.

It's quite confident about what he believes. You wouldn't agree with everything. But I don't think he's like a post-truth polarizing guy. He's a reassuring conservative voice, and we could do with many more of those. I also think he's actually an unusually good communicator. I mean, you know, it's invidious for me to say, but I'm afraid many of the Labour front bench are not as easy communicating as he is. Yeah.

I'd forgotten, you reminded me that when we were doing our tour, it was around the time the Troy Leadership Collection was going on. And I think you're right. Every single audience we did, we asked the audience, if you were choosing between Genrick, Bade Knock, cleverly and whoever else was in the frame. I think it was those three by the time we're doing it. And he was kind of landslide every time, wasn't he? Which was interesting.

Absolutely. Okay, well, there we are. Don't let anybody ever say we don't interview Tories on this podcast, Roy, that's why I said. See you soon. All right. See you, seen as stuff. Bye-bye. Hey, y'all's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder, what if?

Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what-if. how you love and quality you can trust. Visit wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home.