The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 64. Caroline Lucas: Leading the Green Party, leaving politics, and the importance of protest

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

How hard is it to be a one person party in parliament? What can the left learn from the populist right? Could electoral reform actually help Keir Starmer? On today's episode of Leading, Rory and Alastair are joined by the Green Party's Caroline Lucas to answer all these questions and more. Pre order Caroline's book, Another England, here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/another-england/caroline-lucas/2928377252441 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/leadingvpn It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ TRIP ELECTION TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Election Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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the 10thmé. Visit Ancstu.ca for the details, the conditions apply. Rory Stewart. And me, Anastair Campbell.

And we're with Caroline Lucas. And we get a lot of listeners suggesting interviewinges for leading Caroline, and I have to say there have been quite a few suggesting we get you. Well, that's very lovely. So there you are.

And I think it is fair to say you are a leader, twice leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. You are also literally unique, the only member of Parliament representing that party in Parliament, a Parliament which you are soon to be leaving, much to the chagrant of many, I suspect, and we'll maybe get into why. But I suspect you won't be disappearing from public life. You've just published a book, which I stayed up very late last night to read, called Another England, and we'll definitely talk about some of the themes of that.

But we do, we like to get a sense of our guests' backgrounds and childhoods. And I was genuinely shocked to discover that your parents were both daily mail reading Tory voters. So was I. Till when? Till when? Till ever, all their lives. I never managed to persuade them otherwise. They were reading the Daily Mail up until the end.

And you? And I kept trying to leave coppers of the guardian around, but just somehow they never got picked up. So what was your childhood? It was just very normal, I suppose, in the sense that my dad was the executive of a small business, a heating company, in fact. He had some of the first sale of panels which we had stuck on our house, which I hated because they made such a noise in those days. There was this motor on the side of the wall just where I slept. And so it used to wake me up at six o'clock every morning. Is that because they were into the whole Save the Planet thing?

I think, no, it wasn't. It was more that it was an economic opportunity when new things were happening and my dad was quite into new things. So there he was having this heating company and my mum stayed at home and looked after the kids and kept the house nice. And it was a very resolutely unpolitical household. Politics was never discussed, ever. Even with the day the mail sitting there spewing out his propaganda at you?

Yeah, I mean, I brought it up once I had understood that there were. alternatives to the Daily Mail that were available. But for most of my younger childhood, it was just there. And Carolyn, it often sounds slightly when you talk about it as though it's a sort of Harry Potter lifestyle where your father is kind of cast as Mr. Dursley. There was a privet hedge, I have to admit. Privet hedge, exactly. But tell us how many brothers and sisters, you became relatively, I guess, would you have been seen by your parents as a kind of radical, rebellious teenager going on kind of CND demonstrations and breaking with them and coming back with lots of books.

I mean, what is that whole story? No, well, that's pretty much it. I have a sister and I have a brother, but they're both quite a bit older than me. So my sister's nine years old and my brother seven years older. So when I was actually kind of growing up, if you like, most of the time they were away already at university or at secondary school or whatever. So in that respect, it felt in some ways a little bit like being an only child rather than being one of three.

And they're very lovely, but we are very different. And yes, I was definitely the one that was always getting into trouble, that's for sure. Did you sense yourself being political quite young? Actually, no, I was rebellious quite young and didn't like rules very much. But I think in a way I was sort of quite late to things like CND. And that was when I was at university that I really got involved with that and was on the buses going up to Greenham Common at some godly hours in the morning to take part in those demonstrations and so forth.

So it was something that I came to later. But I think what really changed things for me was friendships that I had at school. And there was one particular friend, Rachel, who changed my life, frankly. I mean, her family was as different from mine as it would be possible to be. I mean, their house was a total tip. Books everywhere. Her mum, I remember, even when she was cooking as tea, would have Jane Austen or something propped up on one of those book props, you know, that you have in the kitchen,

usually for a recipe book, but she had Jane Austen there. And she took us on an amazing trip to Paris, which I shall never forget when it was about 15, and just that sense of your eyes opening where you've got this amazing mother of a friend who is taking you to the Rodin Museum, who is introducing to the poetry of Jacques Prevare, who is demonstrating where it was on the bridge that Alan Fortnier fell in love with the woman who then became the muse in some of his later works. I mean, it was just a door being smashed open in a whole new world being introduced. it was wonderful. Carolyn, again, for listeners of different generations, give us a sense of what Greenham-Carman and CND was all about, particularly for international listeners who don't necessarily know what

those things are, and give us a sense of the flavour of it and the colour of it and what mid-1980s Britain was like and who were going with you on these buses and what you were trying to do and achieve. So CND, the campaign for nuclear disarmament, had a real kind of burst of life in the mid-80s because we were protesting against the sighting of US nuclear missiles on UK soil. And Greenham Common was the preeminent place where those nuclear weapons were being held. And so there were regular demonstrations there, but more to the point, there was also a permanent women's peace camp there.

And so in many ways, I think a lot of the demonstrations that have happened since then on many other issues kind of take some of their inspiration from the kinds of attitudes and approaches is that the women took at Greenham. And one of the things in terms of, it was interesting, you should say, tell me about the colour of it, because that's what I remember. In fact, what I remember is the terrible wire and the razor wire and all of the greyness of the places where the missiles were kept and the fences that were keeping you out. And then this, this what felt like, this extraordinary surge for life where people were

tying colourful ribbons on those wire fences when they were. singing when they were just really embodying a different set of values around love for want of a better word and the contrast between the death on the inside of those fences and the love and solidarity on the outside. And Karen, were the divisions within the movement, were you conscious that there were sort of, you know, greens alongside Trotskyites, alongside Stalinists, alongside different types of leftist movement? And was there a sense that it was a kind of complicated progressive coalition where you were conscious of different ideologies? To be honest at the time, it genuinely didn't seem like that. I can certainly accept that if one were to look back and understand some of the tensions that were there. And there were certainly tensions about the extent to which it should be women only and who could stay at the different gates because there were lots of different gates with different names and they each had their own politics around them.

But actually getting on that bus, I was at university in Exeter. So getting on that bus at 5 o'clock in the morning from Exeter to go up to that demonstration, that sense of division certainly wasn't there. To the contrary, there was just this marvellous sense of actually getting on the bus and not knowing a single soul. And by the time you got to Green, you were all best friends and would do anything for each other because you've had that sense of having a shared objective. You had a sense of a shared sort of mission. And that was something really precious, actually.

And it's something that I think I probably quite enjoy in other demonstrations and in other kinds of solidarity movements since then. Do you worry, I mean, I know you were very vehemently opposed to the recent legislation on essentially curbing trying to limit protests, but do you worry actually that we're not maybe as much of a protest nation as we used to be? I think we're all a bit apathetic about some of these things now. Do you think that, can you imagine students today getting on a bus and going and sort of camping in a place like that? I'm trying to think of the causes that motivate people now. I don't know that I agree with that analysis in a sense.

I mean, I think extinction rebellion brought millions of people onto the streets and from all age groups and all backgrounds and people who had never been on a street before as well as young people and so on. So I think the climate crisis has the potential to reignite that kind of solidarity and that kind of peaceful protest. What I do really worry about is the way in which the government is clamping down on that. And if anything, perhaps that demonstrates that they are worried that some of this stuff could actually get more powerful and could be successful. You and I work together on the people's vote campaign. Another good example, huh? It is a good example, but then I sort of think, well, that was, you know, we managed to get like a million people out onto the streets to march for something.

And now I sort of think, well, where have they all gone? And where's the argument gone? And I just wonder if we're a bit sort of spasmodic about the things that we care about. I think if there was more leadership, frankly, right now, then the people are there. I mean, certainly on the issue of the EU, I think people still feel. massively strongly about the fact that leaving the EU was a disaster and that if there was some kind of leadership around what could be the steps towards getting into a closer relationship again with Europe, if that was being articulated, frankly, more clearly than it is today,

I think you could get that. Karen, I'm also interested in the way in which you deal with failure. So I guess that the thing that I was most closely involved in is trying to argue against military searches in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I felt I failed. I've put many, many years into trying to convince US policymakers to do things they didn't do. And I suppose looking back, you didn't manage to nuclearly disarm Britain. And I guess people's votes, another one that didn't really work out. Were there ever moments where you felt a bit kind of despairing and where you felt, oh my goodness, I've put so much emotional energy into something and it just didn't work out?

I mean, certainly one can feel massively frustrated and exhausted by being on the side of change and change not happening. But I guess I would also say that sometimes we don't know what the impacts of our actions are. And I don't think even the most, you know, the most sort of ardent protester necessarily thinks that protest A leads to change B in a certain time frame. It's about changing the conversation. It's about changing people's expectations. It's about demonstrating a level of support or concern about a particular issue. And therefore, I think I measure things maybe in a slightly longer time frame. So when it comes to nuclear weapons, the point of Greenham was very much about getting the US weapons off UK soil, which did finally happen.

And what role did the Greenham protests make in that? I would be hard-pressed to say there was any direct causality, but it was about a culture and a culture. and a way of looking at that issue that perhaps indeed made a difference. And when it comes to the Iraq War, which is usually the example that people give, when millions were on the streets of many cities around the country to protest against the Iraq War. And no, we didn't stop the Iraq War, but we did make it a lot more difficult for future international escapades of that kind. I mean, we can discuss whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. But I think it certainly changed very much, that sense of the UK having a right to,

to bomb poorer countries when it suits them. And do you feel on the climate, do you feel the dial has significantly moved, and do you feel more or less optimistic about the issue today than you did when you started, say, your European parliamentary career? I think the issue has changed in the sense that I think there's so much greater understanding

in the wider public about the climate emergency, and I think there is a huge appetite for the policies that would help us transition away from a dependence on fossil fuels. I think in terms of governments, it's been a much less easy trajectory to see whether or not there's been progress. Because on the one hand, you could say, wow, we've now had the British Parliament declare a climate emergency. That's extraordinary. That would have felt extraordinary to me even in 2010 before it happened, you know, some years later.

So on the one hand, yes, there are these moments where you can say a climate emergency or you can say Paris 1.5 degrees as the threshold and that's progress. but then you look at what our current government is doing in terms of their obscene handing out of licenses for more and more oil and gas in the North Sea, the fact that on our own statute book we still have a duty to maximise the economic recovery of petroleum from the North Sea. That's an extraordinary thing. We've got a prime minister who's rolling back so many of our environmental commitments and who is weaponizing climate as part of a new culture war. So I feel deeply, deeply disappointed about that. I think it's massively dangerous. I think it's reckless. I feel angry.

So it's to try and answer your question, I suppose the answer is it's not a simple. It's not simple. It's moot, but it's not got to where you want it to be. And in some ways, gone backwards. Karen, to come back to your life, so you told us a little bit about your time at university, you then went on to do a doctorate in English literature, I think women's perspectives on literature. Was it Elizabethan England?

It was. If ever anyone needs an expert in women and Elizabeth in England, I'm your woman. Have you retained all the expertise? Probably not, actually. It was quite a while ago. And then you joined the Green Party, very much inspired actually by a book. I mean, the books are a big theme in your life. And in this case, you talk a lot about Jonathan Porritt's books, seeing Green. You became, I think, only the second person from the Green Party to have a council seat in the UK

when you went on to Oxfordshire County Council in 1993. Then you became a member of the European Parliament for 10 years, and then you became the first Green Member of Parliament in the UK Parliament and joined with me in 2010. I remember you turning up. So tell us a little bit about the evolution of the Green Party and what it was like to be at the cutting edge and get all these firsts as a member of the Green Party and how that works and how it doesn't. Well, the one thing I think you might have left out was being the Party's press officer between

in 1987 and 1989. I remember the job being advertised. It was tough. And I have absolutely no qualifications to be a Green Party press officer beyond a PhD in Elizabethan literature, which might explain a lot. But anyhow, I got the job. And the reason for telling that story is that we started off, I think in 1987 with about 1.3% in the general election of 87. And of course, for those of you with long memories, in 89, we had 15% of the result in the European elections. I like to tell that story, not really because I think that was down to me, but it was a fascinating time to be in green politics and seeing what was happening because, you know, suddenly you had people, even like Mrs Thatcher, making incredibly important speeches about the seriousness of the climate crisis back in 1988, 89. So the history of the Green Party, I suppose, has been, again, one of steps forward and steps backwards, because right back then it felt like we were on the cusp of something incredibly exciting. But that 15% of the result that we got in 1989 delivered absolutely no seat.

because we weren't contesting the election under a system of proportional representation. And that's why in a sense there was such a sense of justice being done when 10 years later in 1999, the UK had been forced to contest the European elections under a form of PR, because basically the European institutions said if you're going to take part in these elections, you have to have a fair electoral system. So when we had that fairer system, then it meant that Jean Lambert in London and myself in the southeast were able to be elected as members of the European Parliament. So the Green Party, I think, has become much more professional.

I think it's important now that we have leaders or co-leaders because for a very long time we had a totally baffling number of spokespeople. And frankly, it was quite difficult, even as the press officer, to keep up with who the spokespeople were at any given time. So I'm pleased that there is that level of professionalisation. I think if you look at some of the results that we've had, I mean, continuing the theme of fairer votes for a moment, I mean, in 2015, the election after the one I was elected in, over a million people voted Green in 2015.

If that had been under a system of PR, we could have had, I don't know, 20 MPs, 25 MPs. I mean, that would have been transformative in terms of the visibility of the Green Party in terms of sending the message that we were serious, that we were people you could trust, that people could put their faith in the Greens on a national level. And of course, we haven't had PR,

so at a national level, that's not happened. But locally, the last local elections were our best local election results ever. We now have 750 councillors. I think we are in some kind of coalition on around 36 local authorities. And Carolyn, that's up from two in 1993, am I right? I think you're right, yes. So that's pretty amazing, two to 750. It's taken a while, but as a percentage increase, it's not bad.

And on Rory's point, though, about whether you feel as a politician you've succeeded or failed, if you think about, if you were German, you're German equivalents, like Yoshka-Fisher, Annalina Baerbach now, kind of very, very significant government figures. So is that all down to the – do you think if we had first past the post got rid of it and had a proper system of proportionate representation? Do you feel that is the sort of politics that we would have in government? If you added state funding for political parties, yes, I do, because obviously countries like Germany have that as well. I don't think there's anything particularly in the water in Germany or in Sweden or even in France in places where we've had greens and government that mean that it's more likely to happen in other countries than it is here. I think it is down to the fact that we have a totally unjust and unrepresentative electoral system,

which means that so many people feel disenfranchised for so much of the time. I think it plays in to all kinds of trends in this country around contempt to politicians, total disenchantment with the whole political system. It's part of a much bigger problem that I think we have here. But certainly I think it's been absolutely the cause of the fact that we haven't yet had more Greens in Parliament. Is the fact that we haven't managed to change the electoral system? Is that one of the reasons you're getting out? No, it isn't. No, no, it isn't. That is a very personal decision. And it's absolutely not about saying that we don't need greens now more than ever in corridors of power, if you like. We do need greens in corridors of power more than ever. And I'm spending all of my time just now trying to make sure we get more greens elected, including Sean Barry in Brighton, who's been selected as the replacement for myself. So it is a personal decision. And, you know, maybe we are getting a bit closer to. to PR. I mean, it was interesting that the Labour Party conference, they did vote. The members

voted, including the unions, for electoral reform. Sadly, Kirstama ignored them. And I think that was wrong on lots of levels. But I think if he's serious about the kind of transformative change that we need, he's going to need more than one term. So even if he thinks that in this election, he doesn't need PR because he's 20 points ahead on a good day, you know, I'm pretty sure after a term in government, he's not going to be 20 points ahead. And therefore, if he wants to have more than one term in office, it would be in his own interests to be adopting electoral reform, which makes even more frustrating, frankly, that he's not doing that. And one of the things I trace in the book, in fact, is, you know, how different would the world be if we'd had proportional

representation or even, yeah, and if you'd added up those votes from Labour and the Lib Dems in 2010, if you could have imagined that coalition rather than the Tory Lib Dem coalition, if you then trace what could have happened, then we wouldn't have had Brexit, we wouldn't have had this waste of space of a government right now. Things would be very different. But we might have had Nigel Farage in Parliament. You might have had him in Parliament, but I think what would have happened is the more you would have actually looked at their policies

rather than his kind of martyred self-image on the outside of Parliament, you might just find that actually some of his popularity went down. In your book, Honourable Members, you described what it was like turning up in Parliament for the first time. And as I say, you arrived at exactly the same time as me. And one of your arguments for Portia representation is that you think there's something fundamentally screwy about the way that Parliament works. Can you try to bring alive a little bit some of the weirdness of Parliament? Because listeners see Parliament through a very odd lens. So give us the

personal sense. What's the difference between being a member of Parliament and, I don't know, doing a normal job? What's odd about it? Well, just to say, I think you do a really good job of setting that out in your own book, which I very much enjoyed. But I think that sense of total functionality is something that so many of us, I think particularly maybe in that 2010 intake, because I think so many of us were coming from other walks of life and were just genuinely shocked at the way in which it works or frankly doesn't work, the way in which having an expertise in something is seen to be a positive disadvantage. I mean, I remember the story of Sarah Walliston, who was one of your colleagues, Rory, the Tory MP, who was elected really

because people loved the fact that she was a doctor and she wanted to change health policy. and she wanted to be on the select committee, or rather the bill committee that was going to look at some new health policy that the government was introducing. And she was told by the Tory Whips that she couldn't do that. They wanted her to go and sit on the committee for double taxation in the Cayman Islands or something. And when she said, but I don't know anything about that, they said, marvellous, all we want you to do is just to stick your hand up when we tell you. So this idea that scrutiny isn't wanted. No one expects a piece of legislation to be better when it comes out of the process than when it went in. the way in which we treat one another, just tuning into PMQ's, the kind of language people use about one another.

You say, how is it different from a normal job? If you did in a normal job what people do on a daily basis in Parliament, you would be out on your ear and rightly so. So it is, you know, one can kind of laugh about it, but it is incredibly depressing, I think, frankly, to see that being the way in which our country is governed. And kind of lean into this a little bit more because Alistair tends to be slightly more optimistic. about Parliament than I am and tends to be more pro politicians and have a more positive view. But I'd love you to develop this and just expand on it a bit because that Sarah Wilson's story could be a joke, but it's not really a joke, is it? I mean, it indicates a much, much deeper problem within the system.

Absolutely right. And I think one of the ways in which that came home to me was when I tried to make one very minor change, really, which was that when people put amendments to legislation at the moment, if they put an amendment down, it says in paragraph three, little A, change two to two and a half or something. Unless you've read lots of the background documents and spent some time looking at all of that, you have no idea what it means. And so in the European Parliament, when you put down an amendment, you have to put also an explanatory statement, no more than 50 words, explaining what the purpose of that amendment is. And I thought, what a good idea it would be if we were to have explanatory statements alongside our amendments in Westminster.

And the backlash was just extraordinary. The whips suddenly realizing how much power that could take away from them if, God forbid, MPs actually knew what they were voting for. I mean, there was a debate. It's in Hansa. You can read it. There's debate with all of these people arguing against being given the information about what they're voting on. It is extraordinary.

And yet, Rory, you will know that when the bell goes for a vote and we're running to get to the chamber, what you hear people saying all the time is what we're voting on. I know anyone know what it is? No one knows what it is. They're just doing what their phone has told them to do. from my office, I don't know what to do unless some poor person has sat there going through it all because I don't have a whip telling me what to do. So I'm often the only person who actually knows what we're bloody voting on. It's just a shambles.

And, Alison, can I bring you in on this? Because I think I'm wonderful to have Caroline on this. Why do you not see that as more of a problem? Why were you not massively affronted when you were in that Labour government from 97 onwards by the way the whips behaved by how disgustingly little your members of Parliament knew about what they were voting? on how totally trivial and meaningless so much of their lives were in Parliament. Well, very tendentiously put, may I say. Look, I think it is the, I guess maybe I sat there naively thinking that MPs would be taking interest in all these things in the same way that we were, and were sort of genuinely sitting there worrying about what this meant for the country as opposed to what they were being told.

No, look, I agree with you about the whip system. My worry, Caroline, about Rory's book is that I think it's a brilliantly written account of all that is wrong. And the danger of that is it just turns people off politics, where I think we have such a problem getting good people into politics that we, I feel we have to say there is a good side to politics, there is a good side to parliamentarians, and there are many good people in there. Yeah. It's just that in recent years in particular, we've had this succession of awful people. really high profile, not just in the UK, but around the world. And that has given the message that they're all terrible. I'd just like to say they're not terrible. But I think this, just to come back on this, Caroline, Alistair tends to think it's that we've had a bunch of terrible

Tories who've come in, and that's the problem. My sense is it's much more structural, that it's not just a question of there's been a few rogues that have come in in the last 15 years, that the whole system is rotten and that actually I can see these problems across all these parties, even if the individuals who enter are impressive individuals when they come in, Parliament wrecks them. The actual practices contort their brains and turn them into much less than they were when they came in. I do sadly think there's some truth in that. And I think it is structural. And I think what we've seen in the last five or ten years is that the kind of the norms that more or less stopped people from taking advantage, real advantage of the structural weakness.

have gone. And so suddenly you did have a prime minister who would lie regularly at the dispatch box. And the tools that we had to try to hold him to account were utterly, utterly pointless. They were so weak. We couldn't stop him lying. And so in a sense, I think what we've seen more recently is the fact that when the kind of old boy's school of how you do stuff is thrown out the window and when people just take advantage day after day, as Boris Johnson did, you know, more than anything, and actually preroguing Parliament when he decided it was getting in the way of what he wanted to do, then I think we've seen those weaknesses in a much more highlighted way because they have been taken advantage of so much. But I think they were certainly

there before that, as Rory said. And I think the whipping system needs to be looked at again. I think that even things like the voting, the voting takes so long because you have to go through the eye lobby or the no lobby. And on the one hand, you can say, well, that doesn't really matter very much. But actually it does because it limits the number of amendments that can be put to a vote. I remember when I first put my amendment down, it was on a debate on defence, the defence budget, and I wanted to amend the defence budget so we could talk about Trident Nuclear Weapons because it felt quite a big oversight not to be talking about them when we were talking about defence. And so I had an amendment down on the order paper so that we would discuss that. And the speaker just kind of

bounced over my amendment and went to another one to put to the vote. And I was busy kind of trying to get his attention to say, why isn't my amendment going to the vote? And I hadn't understood that the speaker gets to select a very small number of amendments out of a huge number that are put. And one of the reasons that we can't go through all of those amendments, as they do, let's say, in the European Parliament, is because we'd be there to Christmas if we did. If you're taking 20 minutes on a vote, then you can't do very many votes. Okay, Caroline, Alastair, let's take a quick break. Hi, everybody, it's Dominic Sauerich here from The Rest is History.

Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, the rest is politics. when Rory was away and I was filling in and enjoying Alastair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Restis History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise.

people are arguing about Europe, the government has got a few issues with the trade unions, and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we're looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject

that I'm sure Rory and Alastair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History, wherever you get your podcasts.

Your book, the latest book, Another England, you're not going to do very well in Scotland with that title, are you? I mean... Oh, I think the Scottish... I think the Scottish are going to love it. It's very much about England, isn't it? And what comes through the book, which is a really interesting mix, because it sort of combines not just your love of, but your knowledge of English literature

and its role in sort of telling the story of England with what's gone wrong in politics and with some of your more political views. And I think they weave together really well. But two things that come through to me very, very strongly, even though I know you disagreed with the last Labour government did, I do get the feeling that contrary to what Roy's just said about my assessment, that you do think that something changed very, very fundamentally with Brexit and Johnson

in our politics and therefore in our country. And you also think that Brexit was very much driven by whatever this English sense of England is. Can you just sort of unpick that of it? Yeah. So the book, really the starting point for the book, was that moment of understanding the result of the EU referendum, the Brexit referendum and hearing people saying, Remainers in England saying,

I don't recognise my country anymore. That made me really angry. I thought, frankly, bloody hell, you should know your country. And if you haven't bothered, if we haven't bothered, to understand the levels of anger and frustration in some parts of this country, then that's on us and we should have done. So I was struck by that and I was struck by the fact that the country they were talking about, by and large, was England, not the UK.

And of course, if you look at the results, of the referendum, then every region outside of London within England did vote to leave. So I went out to some of those places and took it upon myself to spend a lot of time with communities seeking to genuinely understand why they had voted to leave and what their aspirations were for their own communities. And what I found was, first of all, huge pride and sense of place and love of place, places like Dudley, for example. I spent a long time in Dudley talking to people. And they're really proud of its industrial heritage and so forth. But at the same time, they feel as if London could be a million miles away.

It could be on another planet. They don't feel as if they have any say in decisions that get made that affect them. They don't feel they've got any agency. And so then I was just trying to unpack a little bit about what is it, about what's happened to England and the massive centralisation that we have within England and the way in which so many communities feel as if they don't have a stake in it. and what are the stories about England? You know, is it the case, as I believe it is, that the left in general has just seeded this ground. We've become so squeamish about talking about England, and therefore the only people who do talk about England are the exceptionalists, those who are peddling imperial nostalgia and Brexit.

And unless we, on the progressive side, as I like to say, wake up to that and start telling a different story about England, then I do worry that with the rise of the populist right and, and so on, then the future of this country could be very grim. And the reason that I focus on England, just to be clear, is that we have no institutions, no political institutions where English identity and English decision-making can be pursued. You know, in Scotland, you've got the Scottish Parliament, and I would argue Scotland as a result has a stronger sense of its own identity. In Wales, they've got the Assembly, they don't have as many powers as they would like, but nonetheless, they have that sense of who they are. I think it's so important. interesting that in England, we muddle up England and Britain, you know, daily, hourly.

The one is meant to stand in for the other. We don't really make the distinction and we don't really celebrate what is good about England. We just kind of squeamishly think, let's not talk about it. What do you mean when you say in the book, the left must learn from the right's ability to forge myths to suit their own ends. What do you mean by that? I basically mean telling different kinds of stories about England. So it was really interesting to give a concrete example, Boris Johnson, during the COVID debate, one of Labor MPs, I think it was Ben Bradshaw had asked him about why test and trace was such a disaster because they hadn't put enough resources into it.

And Boris Johnson gives this extraordinary reply, basically saying that it's entirely un-English to be worrying about wearing face muscle. It's un-English to be thinking that we have to follow the rules. People in England don't follow the rules. And then he goes off in this whole spiel about how, you know, basically, he's not literally talking about how we won the war, but that is the subtext. And so that attitude and that sense of that story of England being exceptionalist, being better than the others, having won the wars and, you know, Dunkirk and all of the kind of stereotypes of right-win England enable that kind of politics and that kind of response. And so I think it's just really dangerous if we don't have a different story ourselves that we're challenging the dominant story with. I really agree with you just to start with that. But boy, is it difficult?

Because it's not just in Britain, but in the US and across Europe, the right-wing populists seem to have all the best songs, the best jokes, the most colourful stories. And the progressive left often seems a bit kind of geeky and technocratic and writing policy papers, taking best practice from Sweden. And against that, you've got these sort of larger-than-life charismatic storytellers. is there not something structural there which makes it easier for these populists on the right to play those roles and more difficult for the left to do that?

I don't know about that. I mean, I'd be interested to know exactly what you mean by that in terms of what it could be structurally because it feels to me much more that we haven't even tried. I mean, that's the point that I make in the book that we're so scared about talking about England

as if as soon as you do that then suddenly you're some kind of racist that we've just ceded the ground. We've not tried. We've not really told other stories. about some, and that's what's the joys of the literature in a sense, because it allows you to have something that is colourful and joyful and something that people can engage with rather than your policy papers from Sweden. But don't you think that Danny Boyle's opening ceremony in 2012? But that was, I felt that came from a period where we had told a much more positive story.

Not by England, I agree, but about Britain, about the UK. Yeah. So why do you worry that we should be focusing on England? because it's the biggest part of the UK or because it's the most problematic part of the UK? I think it's the most problematic part of the UK in the sense that, I mean, you know, the UK is meant to be a union of consent, isn't it? And yet the government in Westminster is now actively preventing one of its component nations from having a vote on whether or not it wants to remain part of this body. And that seems to me quite an extraordinary thing. So I think England is a problem because England is imposing its, or at least one element of England, the right wing part of England, is imposing its ideas of how things should be done on Scotland and on Wales and Northern Ireland. I think I focus on England because I think we could have an independent Scotland in 20 years. I think with Ireland, the island of Ireland, I mean, you had just a few weeks ago, didn't you? The fact that they're talking there now about there being a referendum on reuniting Ireland.

If that happens and if Scotland goes its own way, then I think we need to start thinking about what we're left with. And one of the things I was struck in Rourer's book, Rory, when you talk about how in the different departments, David Cameron had given you a rule that you cannot, you're not allowed to prepare for what the impact would be if we lost the e-referendum. Nobody is thinking, as far as I'm aware, of what might happen in England if Scotland achieves its independence, if Ireland goes its own way. And therefore we ought to start having a conversation, I think, about what is our view of this union of nations and how do we make it work as well as we can for all of its component parts? Karen, I guess that sort of may be exposed one of the challenges, which is that under the surface of what you're saying is a story which not everybody and the Progressive Central Left would buy into. And that's one of the problems for getting a single story. It sounds as though you are quite pro-S Scottish independence. I mean, the way in which you've characterised what I as a unionist would characterize as

we had a referendum very recently, people voted to stay. There isn't evidence that there's an overwhelming majority for independence, and we're not going to have another referendum and another generation would be the normal position for me and many people in the Labour Party. We're trying to keep the United Kingdom together. You almost talk as though you're sort of slightly looking forward to a day when Scotland achieves its independence. I mean, even that language hints to me that you're somebody who actually isn't very comfortable with the idea of the United Kingdom. I don't think that's true, although you rightly take me up on that verb, which I shall consider. But what I do think is that it should be up to Scotland.

I think Scotland should decide whether or not it wants to remain part of the UK. Scotland did decide, Caroline, and we decided we'd do it once a generation. Otherwise you end up in the Canadian situation where you have a referendum every three, four years, whenever the SMP wants to have a political level. that out within Scotland, don't come running to a government in Westminster to say whether or not you can do that. If there isn't a support for that within Scotland, then I'm sure that the party who is proposing that won't do so well and won't have the right and the power to introduce it. But what I'm objecting to is one component part of the United Kingdom, having a veto on whether another component part has the right to have a referendum on whether or not to leave.

But this isn't abnormal, right? This is what Spain would do with Catalonia. This is what the United States would do with Texas. I mean, nations are complicated things. And we went through this with Canada and Quebec. It's not a simple question of here's a component part of the country. And it can continually create this deeply destabilizing moves again and again. And also that the rest of the country doesn't have a say. I mean, I don't think it is only for Scotland, the question of Scottish independence. I think that. That's one of the things that makes the United Kingdom different. And this is where I think this question of stories becomes quite complicated. And where I think Alistair's right to say, you defining England as separate from Scotland, is problematic. Because I would argue that actually the rest of the country does have some sort of interest in the question of how nations relate to each other. It isn't purely for Scotland. I guess I would just say that I think the relationship between Texas and Washington is not the same as it is between the four nations that make up the United Kingdom, that Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland have greater rights and greater self-determination than a state within the United States.

Now, Rory, you two are getting on so well until this issue of the union goes. If I can further provoke the agreeable disagreement by going to page 144 of Caroly's book, where she's on the theme of who owns England, landowners, at the heart of these neo-feudal power dynes, is an issue that John Clare or Oliver Goldsmith would have recognised the disproportionate political influence of landowners. The whole system is held together by a lingering sense of deference towards those born to land, wealth and titles. The monarchy sits at the top of this pyramid, both symbolically and also through the very real power, wealth and influence that the crown wields. And you then go on to give some of the figures. You talk about the monarchy's ruthlessness,

effective ruthlessness at exploiting its assets. There is a helpful fiction that it's stinking which is between King Charles's personal estate, such as Bar Morrow, and the lands and other assets he earns as monarch, which includes the 16 billion-pound crown estate. So here I think you two are, I think I'm closer to Caroline on this one, Rory, but I found the chapter on land fascinating. And I hadn't realised actually that Scotland having done such a good job on right to Rome that actually the Blair government and indeed the Atley government had not quite done what I thought we had. But just talk us through that about why you think, you call it a neo-feudal power dynamics, but you're talking basically about a class system.

Yes, and one that is made even more visible through the issue around ownership of land. And I think it's been very topical just recently, hasn't it, with the issue of wild camping on Dartmoor, where you've had the person who owns huge swathes of Dartmoor, deciding overnight that he no longer wants people to come and wild camp on Dartmoor, even though they've been doing it for generations. I think that issue about access to nature is massively important. I think the issue of the way in which

landowners stop people having access is deeply problematic. I think with access comes responsibilities and certainly those of us who are part of the Right to Rome campaign would very much be saying that we recognize that you know, that you wouldn't be walking through fields of crops or animals and responsibility has to go alongside it as well. But it does feel to me and I'd be interested, you know, whether maybe Rory thinks it differently in Scotland, but it does feel like it's worked pretty well in Scotland, and I don't see why it can't hear. Karen, I'm really interesting how all these disagreements connect to the vision of putting forward a sort of patriotic. It's such a change, because I thought we had so much, you know, I was reading your book and thinking we had so much in common in terms of decentralization and small farmers.

Once you get to private education and Oxbridge and the royal family and landownership, Rory's his dad with the key. We have so much in common, but I think one of the, things that isn't often, maybe you talk about enough on the left, is there is a very traditional split between the, I guess, the old-fashioned patriotic left and a more radical progressive left. And it's true in all European countries. It's one of the things that's torn left-wing parties apart. And one of the reasons why voters who used to vote for Labour-type parties have ended up voting for the populist right. And this really came to light in Britain over the issue of Jeremy Corbyn. And I think what Jeremy Corbyn revealed is that there wasn't a single comfortable myth, which was the sort of myth that Ernie Bevin or an Iron Bevan would buy into on the one hand and Jeremy Corbyn on the other.

And it's quite revealing, I mean, I think, Caroline, that, you know, we agree on so much. But of course, I would say that if you wanted to produce a unifying myth for the nation that will mobilize a lot of people who are traditional labor voters, actually the monarchy is part of that. I mean, overwhelmingly in this country, people support the monarchy. And that's why I'm just going to quickly sort of bring this to light a bit. You know, in August 2015, you write in The Independent about Jeremy Corbyn, I've never felt so optimistic about a potential leader of the Labour Party. For the first time in my memory, the party of Keir Hardy and Clementately looks likely to be led again by someone who dares to stand up for the radical changes. It's a long time ago. Demanded by the challenges we face.

I think what that's a reminder of is that in the end, you're further to the left than me and probably further to the left than Alistair, although as he gets older, he gets ever more left wing. Well, I'm certainly sure that I'm further to the left than the new Rory. I wasn't suggesting that's not the case. And I stand by the article at the time it was written. And, you know, of course, Jeremy Corbyn basically cut and pasted huge swathes of the Green Party manifesto. So, of course, I'm going to be excited by that because suddenly seeing some of our policies being adopted. was very exciting. But it's interesting what you say about patriotism. And I think this comes into the debates about metropolitanism as well, isn't it? And some of the debates about, you know, to what extent did people in rural areas feel a kind of an affinity with a Labour Party that felt like it wasn't speaking to them and wasn't talking their language?

And I'm not sure how much of that, to be honest, is to do with the monarchy. And I think I would, of course, you know, in recent years when we've had the queen and then the death. of the Queenland, people understandably have felt incredibly sorry and sad and there has been a rise in loyalty to the monarchy. But I would be surprised if that gets maintained. And I'm not sure that people really necessarily want the monarchy to have as much money and as much land that it does. I don't know that they really want to know that the monarch can be intervening in some of the decisions around tax to try to make sure that they don't have to pay so much tax. You know, I think when some of this stuff comes to light, then that isn't necessarily a binding narrative

that holds the country together. And just while I still have the floor, just to make it clear, and I apologize if I was misleading earlier, I'm not talking about a single myth that's going to somehow replace a right-wing myth. I'm talking about a multitude of stories, but stories that are more resonant, perhaps, than the exceptionalist, imperialist kind of narrative that we're hearing from the populist right. In the book, you don't go much on that theme into the role of the of the media, and particularly the press in Britain, but I assume that you share our general view that we have a very biased and pretty trivialising media. The media is so fundamental to storytelling, that's what they do. So how are you basically saying that the left, progressive left,

needs to define its own media landscape as opposed to just having disparate stories to tell? I mean, that's a really good point. And I think in my next version of this book, I shall add in some page is about ownership of the media because that is massive, isn't it? The fact that so few people have so much control over so much of our media and that they have, you know, a particular view that they then peddle in that way. And so I would like to see, you know, a new Labour government properly regulating the media and looking at some of those media monopolies and breaking those up. And in the meantime, yes, for sure, let's make sure we've got some more media outlets where different views can be held. And this is also just about like, for example,

just now we've got Offcom, haven't we, looking at GB News and that particular interview that Rishi Sunak did. This kind of foxification, if you like, of media in this country is deeply worrying and it goes alongside the rollback of the right to protest, the rollback of some of the laws around the electoral commission, the new rules that makes it harder for people to vote. I think something really dangerous is happening in our country right now. And because, you know, we're so used to the myth, if you like, the story that in English, England, you know, we have a great government and a mother of parliaments, you know, things like that

wouldn't happen here. Well, they bloody well would and they are. Karen, I wonder whether there isn't a possibility that maybe your story, your national story doesn't need to be, maybe I'm pushing too much, but meet the story of the populist right a little bit more and find a bit more common ground. There's a risk reading through your book that you're talking about a lot of the heroes of the radical left. William Blake and T.S. Plowman come up and John Clare comes up and there's a general sense in which you're resurrecting a very interesting progressive narrative in English literature. But maybe the way to actually win elections and appeal is to blend that with a bit of the better bits of what that monster Boris Johnson does, which is being able to actually rediscover a bit of the sense

of humour, be prouder of some of the military and traditional history of Britain and not see these things as opposed to each other, but instead creating a rich, and more complex story that all these things are true. I mean, I really agree with you that it's not narrowly black and white and lots of things can be true at the same time. And I had thought really, particularly in that last chapter, when I tried to pull together what some of the themes are really when you're looking through the book and when you're looking at what can unite us, it's absolutely about standing up for some of those things that I should have thought that many on the right would want to stand up for two, you know, whether that is the independence of the judiciary, which is now under

attack, or whether it is. BBC. Exactly, the independence of the BBC or... Universities. I'll let you carry on, but essentially I take your point, Rory, and if I haven't done that, that's my failing not because I don't think it's important. I do think it's important to be trying to make those connections. And I do think, Many on the conservative side love our country and they literally, I mean, they love the grass that grows and the trees that grow. They love that country in a very visceral way, which I think some of us on the left could learn from.

So I'm not trying to be as binary about it as perhaps you've read and perhaps it comes across as. Just as we come into the end of this, Caroline, can I ask you two questions related to the Labour Party? First is whether you were ever tempted to see the Labour Party is the vehicle for your politics and also whether you are in what I define as the Rory Stewart camp that it now thinks there is no possibility at all that Labour won't form the next government that Kirstehrm was going to be the Prime Minister and how that makes you feel. I don't think I was ever seriously tempted to join the Labour Party, although there has been many a time when I've thought how nice it would be to have some more honourable friends

and it has been extremely lonely to be the sole MP for the Green Party. So, yeah, in some ways I would love to have been part of that bigger party. But I think there is an importance on having people on the outside pushing labour to be braver and bolder and better. And partly that's what I see the role of the Greens as being in the very likely event of labour forming the next government. I don't think it's 100% sure, but it's a good 95%, I would think. And so if Labour does become the next government, I just hope that Keir will be bolder than he has been to date. And if we've got some greens there, so hopefully Sean in Brighton and Carla Denia standing in Bristol, where she's got a really good chance of winning there, Adrian Ramsey and Ellie Chown's two other candidates.

We're really pushing in North Herefordshire and Suffolk. If we have a handful of greens, even just a handful, then I think there's a real role they can play in pushing Kier on things like the 28 billion of investment. the country is crying out for investment. Why is Kirstama adopting the framing of the Conservative Party about investment being somehow a, you know, splashing money up the wall? It is not. It's what the country's crying out for and business is crying out for come to that. Or whether it's on a wealth tax, why can we not have a conversation about that?

Why is Brexit such a, you know, a word that cannot speak its name? You know, the two-child benefit cap. Why isn't he not moving on things like that? So I think it is vital to have Greens there to be. pushing Labor to be that bolder better and braver party that it could be. Because without that, I really worry. And I worry as well, actually, it's not good enough simply to say that once he gets in there, he'll change and be more radical because, A, he needs to be not even radical, actually. Let's just be a little bit more, you know, social democratic about it. We need to enthuse people.

We need to give people hope. Otherwise, they're not going to vote at all. And I don't see much hope coming from Labour right now. And also he needs a mandate once he gets in there. And if he hasn't made that much clearer during the election campaign, then he's not going to have the mandate to do the change that needs to happen. Karen, very central to his vision is growth. He says his number one objective is for Britain to be the fastest growing economy in the G7. And that takes us onto something really important and interesting for the next 20, 30 years, because we've interviewed Kate Rowitz on the show and this question of endless growth, you know, infinite growth with finite resources, presumably central to your philosophy. Tell us a little bit about what you think about grace

and the problems of grace and the way in which if you were Prime Minister, you'd be approaching the question of growth. Let me just reflect for a second on what an extraordinary objective that is for Kirstama to upset himself. How does that resonate with most people that we are the fastest growing country or whatever? I mean, you know, if he'd said, you know, your kids can get a decent education and we're going to transform housing so that everyone's got a roof over their heads. Or if he'd talked about some of the fruits of economic prosperity, then perhaps people could get behind him. But the idea that GDP growth is by and of itself, the objective, that is what I find so problematic, because just knowing that you've got the fastest GDP doesn't tell you who's

benefiting from it, it doesn't tell you who's getting it, it doesn't tell you how it's been caused. We know that a big pile up on the M5 is fantastic for GDP growth because everyone has to go out and spend money repairing their cars or buying new ones. So GDP growth as a main indicator of anything very much, I think, is well past its sell-by date. So let's instead have a well-being economy. Let's measure things in terms of well-being. And the environmental costs, I mean, where are you in relation to Kate Rowarth and the more radical critique, which is that actually in the end, we've got to stop having growth at all? I don't think she quite, I was listening to her the other day, the great interview that she did with you. And I agree with her. But I don't think, I remember you had this debate about whether she's agnostic about growth or whether she's anti-growth. I think what she's saying is don't make growth the be-all and end-all of your economic policy. Make well-being it.

No, she's saying a bit more than that, I think, Caroline. I mean, I think she is a bit, she's a bit more radical. She's saying there's planetary boundaries. Well, I certainly agree. She's saying our resources are finite. And if you actually multiply what 2% growth would be over 20, 30 years, you're rapidly using up finite resources and you're leaving other places like that. So ultimately, the logic of that has to be that a time comes when you stop growing and you start distributing more to poorer countries. Yeah.

The reason I'm sort of pushing back a bit on this idea of stopping growth is that it means it sounds as if everything just gets pickled in Aspic tomorrow. Whereas Kate would say, as I would say, that some things need to grow. We need some massive growth in renewable energies, let's say. And if you're going to do that, then absolutely. You need to stop growing in other places. So I would say no more new roads. And while we're at it, let's not have any new airports.

Thank you very much. But I think the framing of it all in terms of whether or not its GDP growth doesn't really resonate with ordinary people and doesn't really tell us very much about whether or not the economy is allowing people to have meaningful, thriving lives on a planet that is not being destroyed. The concern I have right now is, and the one that she has, is of course, that our economic model right now is trashing the planet and isn't even in the process doing very much for the poorest people either, because the people who are reaping the benefits of the kind of extractive economy that we have are the richest, not the ones who actually need the resource.

So I think it's slightly more complicated than you say, but certainly I would be among those who would say that infinite growth on a planet of finite resources is not possible. and if you need to just any more kind of ways of looking at that, we need to decarbonize by 2050 at the absolute latest. By 2050, the global economy is due to be about three times the size that it is now. It is going to be hard enough to decarbonize an economy, the size of the current global economy by 2050. The idea we're going to be able to do it with one three times the size, however your heroic assumptions are about how much you can decouple energy use from output, But it's not going to happen.

It can't happen. So let's start preparing for it now and have a transition that is fair, that has workers at its heart, that makes sure that the price for that transition is not paid by the poorest people, but rather by those who can afford it. All of those things are the things we should be discussing now. I said right at the start, you won't disappear from public life. So what are you going to do once Parliament's behind you? You'd lose a big platform, don't you? I know. No, I do.

I genuinely don't know yet. I want to take some time to think about it. I want to work out how I can spend more time working on the nature issue and on the climate issue that really gets me up in the morning. Right now, I have to be the front bench spokesperson on everything, and that is deeply exhausting as well as not all that satisfying. So I really want to find a way that I can focus on nature and climate. On a personal level, I've become very interested in end-of-life work. I'm doing a course, actually, with a wonderful organisation called Living Well, Dying Well, in Lewis.

they train people to be what they call end-of-life dolers. And so I'm halfway through that course, and I find that incredibly nourishing. So I want to go on doing that as well. Karen, my final question then, and thank you. I mean, you've been so patient, and I'm feeling a bit guilty because I think I was being a bit sort of snippy with my questions. And this is a difficult one. I mean, did you notice the lack of rebuttal?

Exactly. Exactly. You've done such an important thing symbolically for public life being the Green Party member of parliament. I mean, you're a really important figure in parliament. You're very important for millions of people looking at you. And it must feel tough stepping down because there must be people who are saying you've got a massive moral obligation and a duty to keep pushing on because you do have this really important position. And how do you deal with that? How do you deal with people's expectations, their projections, their disappointment around your decision? Well, thank you for that. That's a nice way of putting it.

Thank you. I mean, I suppose I get round it or I respond to it by absolutely saying that we need to go on building the Green Party and the Green Movement and getting more Greens elected in Parliament. And in a sense, there was nothing particularly special about me. I happen to be in the right place at the right time in Brighton to win that seat. But I think what we need is that green voice. And I am totally committed to getting Sean Berry elected in my place in Brighton Pavilion, just as I am with our other target candidates. And I think that will be transformative.

You know, I think three or four green MPs will be a lot more than just three or four times one, if you see what I mean. I think the way in which we could then work in Parliament and be a real presence will be massively more significant. So I'm really excited about that. and whatever help I can give I certainly will. But I feel excited about a younger generation coming on and I'm wanting to pick up the baton. Which is exactly how I feel about politics, Rory.

As you know, younger generation has to come along and pick up the baton. Well, Lizzie Carole, thanks so much for all your time. Thank you. And that was a lovely conversation. And good luck when you're through. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Thank you for coming on.

Really appreciate it. Alistair, thank you for that. What did you think of Caroline? I thought she was great. I'm sure lots of people will be surprised here being saying that. But, you know, I think there's a clarity to what she stands for and how she expresses herself. And I really did enjoy her book, by the way. It's a very interesting political book because it's not primarily about politics, but you know, if you're into politics, you'd enjoy it. But she's very, very well read. I mean, if she's read all the books that she quotes from, Rory, she reads as much as you do, I would say. Yeah, more, much more.

What do you make of her? I think she's wonderful. I mean, one of the things. things that I'm struggling against in that interview, and I think that's why I sounded a little bit kind of snippy and argumentative, is that I think she's got such kind of impressive, moral, intellectual qualities. But I'm sort of trying to scratch away at the question, given how impressive she is and how thoughtful she is, why is the Green Party not sweeping everything before it? And I think the answer is this is what I was trying to get to is that it hasn't managed to do what the Green Party did in Germany, which is in the end, people that Yoshka Fisher were able to embrace a little bit more the center ground of politics. That's what I'm slightly getting at, which is that under the surface of this incredibly impressive person is the fact that in the end, she is, you know, a Corbyn enthusiast. She's very much on the left of the Labour Party. And I think that you could imagine a really, rich, successful green environmental agenda that was a bit more centrist.

I mean, it's true that if we didn't really get a sense from her, her own assessment to where she was on the political scale, it was interesting when you were reading out that thing she said about Jeremy Corbyn, she sort of whispered Soto Votchi to me, and it's quite a long time ago, as if to say, that's not what I think now. But, you know, but she was still holding the fact, she said she stood by it based upon what was happening then, because she saw a Labour leader coming along, embracing what she saw as the agenda she'd been fighting for us, you can see where that would be pretty exhilarating for them at the time. What I found interesting as well is that both the book and in the interview, she's much,

much more, she's developed into something much, much more than an environmental politician. And I thought actually her, you know, obviously she's a green who's trying to beat Labor in Brighton, but I think her assessment of labour is one that's worth Labour listening to. You know, when she says she wants to do bigger, a braver, bolder, I think a lot of people are feeling like that. And I think there's a, there is a desire, I think, there's such a desire for change. And she's giving expression to a change

that probably does feel a bit frightening to some people in the Labour Party. But I actually think for the public, there's a lot of mindage in it. Also, would have liked maybe to understand more, but I think she doesn't want to go into it, why she's stepping down and how she really feels about that.

I mean, she said to me that it was kind of me to frame it in terms of people's expectations and projections and disappointment, but I think she will be getting a lot of that. She means a lot to people. She's a standard bearer for a lot of stuff. And I think there will be many people who are really saying, you can't leave,

this is your duty, you've got to stay. And she sort of didn't quite engage with that because she got on to, I think it's important for young people to come forward and all this kind of stuff. But she didn't really tell us what's happened. And obviously it leaves me with the view that in the end she just found politics unbelievably unpleasant in Parliament unbelievably unpleasant that she's had enough. Well, maybe we should

have pressed a bit more of this, but am I putting two and two together and making five when she said it's a very personal decision and then she talked about her interest in end of life? I wonder if there's something going on family-wise that I don't know. I don't know. Right, right, right. There might be something more personal. Yeah. I mean, I think she's a real loss. I was so proud to be in Parliament with her. And I think this is part of my problem too. Remember, I'm also having to come to terms the fact that I also was quite impressed often by Jeremy Corbyn. I've been in trouble on the show from saying that I don't think Corbyn should be fired from the Labour Party. And, you know, as you say, you keep teasing me about the fact I'm saying he has beautiful ears. I like Bernie

Sanders. He only said it once, but you did put in one of the bestselling books of the year. So, you know, a lot of people now know that you have a thing about Jeremy Corbyn's ears. So I think I'd also be interested in you pushing back a bit, really, because I think there's parts of you that in another mood, if I said I'm really kind of excited and entranced by Caroline Lucas and Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn might say, well, get real, Rory. Because in a way, the New Labour project was about saying you can't really win power by just being on that side. Oh, yeah. No. But she was being very straightforward about it. She doesn't see her role, and she doesn't see the Green Party's kind of role as being a party of government.

government in our system. She sees it as being part of on the left, on the progressive left, holding the feet to the fire of the people who can get into power, which I think is a very different role. I think in a different political system, she very much would be a creature of government. I would see her as a sort of a bear bock, perhaps not Yoshka Fischer. I think you're right about Yoshka Fischer. I think he was a very, very special political talent. And was prepared to compromise and break with his base. Absolutely. Absolutely. In really interesting ways. And it worked for him. I mean, the extraordinary thing is he broke with his base and it didn't destroy the Green Party in Germany. In fact, it

really allowed the Green Party in Germany to flourish. Yeah, to grow to what it is now, yeah. Good. Thank you very much. See you soon. Hi, it's Dominic here from The Restis History and here is that clip that I mentioned earlier. The other thing is something else you get some Grantham and that's the Methodism. And actually this to me, I think this is one of the absolute defining things of Thatterism. 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 around.

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, you know, the evils of socialism, good versus evil, what the great religions of the past teach us, what life, you know, 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 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 of yourself as the goodies, to be told, actually, 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.