The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 73. Kwasi Kwarteng: Boris Johnson, the British Empire, and Rwanda (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 12, 2024

"If I were 22 now, I probably wouldn't vote Conservative" - Kwasi Kwarteng In the first of two episodes with the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rory and Alastair speak to Kwasi about the future of the Tory Party, New Labour's conservatism, Rishi Sunak, Rwanda, Brexit, Liz Truss, diversity in politics, the British Empire, and much, much more. If you'd like to hear the second episode RIGHT NOW, it's already available to members of The Rest Is Politics Plus - sign up at therestispolitics.com. If you're not a member, it will be released next Monday (20th May) on the public feed. Podcast Editor: Nathan Copelin Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Assistant Producer: Fiona Douglas Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport 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. TRIP ELECTION TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Election Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] 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. Hello and welcome to the Restis Politics leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. And we're about to sit down for two episodes now with Quasi Quarteng, who was the Chancellor of the United Kingdom who presided over this mini-budget and a pretty catastrophic moment in the British economy. It's something that is tribute to Alistair, who managed, as he will explain, to seize him on the tube and get him on. Quasi is somebody I have known for a very, very long time. I first met him when he was 13.

We were at school together at Eton, as Alistair will be quick to point out. And I remember him as a really charming, really intelligent 13-year-old who was already, to put it mildly, larger than life. I remember huge conversations with him about T.S. Eliot and Wordsworth and D.S. debating poetry. I also remember him as a pretty ferocious figure on the sports field. He then went on to university. He won university challenge, which established his reputation as being very smart. He did a PhD in history, went into banking, entered Parliament with me in 2020. He was almost the only MP that I actually knew well when we entered Parliament together. And then we slightly, I'm afraid, drifted apart because he became an ever more strident Brexiteer. All right.

himself with Boris Johnson, who I really thought was a bad person, and then allied himself ever more strongly with Liz Truss, who I thought was even more catastrophic, becoming her Chancellor through that catastrophic mini-budget, and now finally is coming full circle, and it's standing down from Parliament. And as with a few previous interviews, we're going to do this one in two parts, because frankly, it's fascinating. He's very, very frank. I'm not sure he's going to make terribly comfortable listening for Liz Truss.

So here we go. Part one, Quasi Quartet. I think this is the first episode we've done with two Etonians. So my first question is this. If today is Friday, what is the day that follows the day that comes after the day? I've lost you. I've lost. Well, you once knew this.

This is from the Eater Entrance exam. If today is Friday, what is the day that follows the day that comes after the day that precedes. the day before yesterday. Is it Friday? That was just a guess, was it? What's your guess, Rory? And I was a guest too, yeah.

You have a guess? Yeah, I did. Okay, I'll say Saturday. Bad lights Thursday. How many, how many, how many even numbers are there? I don't know. This is a good one for a Chancellor.

How many even numbers are there? We both did this exam. What? I didn't remember those questions. How many even numbers are there from 100 to 1,000 inclusive? That should be easier. That should be. 451. Well done. He battered you there. So well done quasi-quate. Right, well, let's go, let's go right back.

Just tell us, just tell us. It's all going to be like this. No, honestly, it will get worse. The questions will get harder. So, by the way, thank you for being here. This interview arose because I bumped into on the tube. And I, I stood behind you while you were reading the evening standard. Yes. And I pretended to be a sort of random Londoner. Yes, you did. Stood above you and I just said, won't you go to apologise for smashing the economy then? And what did I say?

You said, I've already have. I already said that. I think I was fruity in my language. You were a little bit free of yet. Yeah, then you realised it was me. And then we said, why don't you come on the podcast? And you said, yeah, so that's great. Just let's go right back to tell us a bit about your parents

where they came from, how they ended up in the UK. So my parents were born. My dad was born in 1941. My mother was born in 1944. And the relevance of that was that when they were, born, the country of Ghana didn't exist. It was called the Gold Coast. And so Ghana became, rather Gold Coast became independent as Ghana in 1957. And so they were already teenagers, essentially when the colonial era ended. And I think that shaped them, like a lot of people in the colonies

and the empire, they were kind of brought up to really look up to Britain and really look up to institutions and what was called the British way of life. I think by the time the 60s came along, of course they'd left school essentially. They were looking to go to university and they came here, as many people did, to pursue their education. And I think they met in London. They didn't know each other in Ghana. But actually even then in the 60s, you had lots of communities from all over the world

in London. They met here. And he was an economist and she was about. Yeah, that's right. So my dad was, he studied at the LSE in the 1960s, very radical left. I mean, they were way more left-wing than you are, as you all remember. You might remember. And my mother was always more conservative.

I mean, she grew up very much influenced by the Methodist Church, and she became vaster. And she was actually, I mean, when I look back, she was called to the bar in 1976. She was one of the first black women to be called to the bar. And that was nearly 50 years ago, 1976. And I was born in 1975. So she was called to the bar when she had a small baby. That's right. So it was a very unusual setup in those.

days where she essentially was a mother, she was ethnic minority, she was female, and she got called to the bar then. And that was a big, still is a big source of pride for. On the politics, your dad was very left when she was... He's more left, he's more left, he's all very left. I mean, he's hung out with a lot of very left when he's right with him. Yeah. So she was, you know, he was much more influenced by the kind of, if you like, intellectual, anti-colonial movements, the 60s. So as you say, They grew up, as it were, in a British Empire world with some admiration for the empire. But I guess there's a different thing going on in their lives because Nekrumura in Ghana becomes one of the great symbols of the kind of anti-colonial movement.

And of course, your father was at the LSE. And you wrote actually a really powerful book called Ghosts of Empire, which is a pretty objective, cold-eyed look at many of the problems of empire. So tell us a little bit about that other side, along with being brought up to admire the empire. What did they feel and later you feel about the downsides of empire? So I don't think they – I don't know what words I used, but I don't think they admired the empire. They admired British values, and they had a sense of, you know, the English language, literature, those sorts of things. But I think that deep down, the whole imperial thing was going to die. I mean, even my father said in the 50s, you could tell.

even the British didn't really believe what they were doing. And so when Ghana became independent in 1957, the Brits just left. Unlike the French Empire in Africa, if you go to Francophone Africa, there's a big French presence. I remember a friend of mine 20 years ago saying, oh, the croissons in Abbegian are brilliant, that sort of thing. You heard this sort of thing in those days. But in a lot of Anglophone Africa, the Brits just disappeared overnight. They'd fled. And I think that in many instances, people were quite puzzled about that.

They just thought, well, you know, they've just left, you know, they've destroyed a lot of the local infrastructure. They've created their own infrastructure. And then they've just, you know, buzzed off. And so there was, there was always that tension, really. And in West Africa, you didn't have the kind of egregious sort of color bar apartheid stuff, mainly because there was never any kind of English settlement in West Africa. The English people you saw, the white people you saw, were essentially officials. There were no settlers in the way that there were in southern Africa. So it was just a sort of quite a thin administrative layer that when independence happened, they just disappeared.

That was my understanding of it. So you often associated with being on the right of the Conservative Party, and there are quite a lot of quite pro-imperial tradition. Yes, a handful. How do you, if you're talking sympathetically to someone on the right of the Conservative Party, how would you articulate in relatively simple terms what was good and what was bad about the British Empire if you're talking to a sort of Nigel Farage figure. Well, I don't know what. I've never discussed this with Nigel Farage. I don't know what he thinks about it. But I think the good thing is, or the good bits were rule of law.

So even in those days, the law didn't distinguish between different races. And that was quite a powerful, that was quite a powerful thing. It sounds bizarre now. But in those days, it was quite a powerful thing. And also, I think one of the best things, and I had this debate in India. I mean, you've been to India many times, I know, but there's a huge debate there about the English language. So the Hindu nationalists are saying, well, we've got to promote Hindi. But actually a lot of people push back and say, English is a bloody useful thing to know,

despite what we think about the empire, despite the debates. So I think there's law, language, very important. On the bad side, I mean, clearly, these countries were not independent. They were run by, you know, from London in many instances. The French Empire was even more centralized, run from Paris. And how competently run were they? Well, this is what I talk about in the book.

I mean, and the problem is that you've got huge, it's like politics. There's a huge range of competence. You said you couldn't remember your words. I'll give you some of your words. British Empire was not merely undemocratic. It was anti-democratic. Much of the instability in the world is a product of the legacy of individualism and haphazard policymaking. So the truth is, we left the world in a mess.

No, there were good bits and there were bad bits. Well, that was the bit I picked out in the book. Yeah, I mean, there are 150,000 words in the world. Yeah, yeah, you picked out ten of them. But that's quite a big statement. Yeah, it wasn't really undemocratic. It was anti-democratic. Well, it was.

I mean, you know, we can't pretend that an empire is democratic. I mean, the whole premise of empire is that you've got a power that subjugates other powers. That's the whole point of it. Go back to Rory's point a minute ago, why has the empire taken on such a hold in the kind of the psyche of the right? so that we talk about, and even our ridiculous honour systems that's the empire at the heart of it. And the history curriculum doesn't really give a proper picture of the history. No, so I think you would have been right about 25 years ago, 30 years ago.

I think when I go to my local association, we're not sitting around talking about the empire. I think that kind of... What you were 25 years ago? I think they weren't. I wasn't there, but they probably weren't. They were more... Because you've got to remember that, you know,

if you went to a Conservative Association 30 years ago, you'd have had a lot of people who had fought in the Second World War and who'd been stationed in all sorts of far-flung places. I mean, I knew a man who lived in my constituency who died at age 102, about four years ago. And he talks about signing up in Sheffield, a town hall in 1939.

And we were playing games. I love history. And he was saying, well, of course, it was the fourth of September. And I said, well, the war was declared on the third. He said, no, but the fourth was a Monday. So the war was declared on the Sunday. And then on the Monday morning, he turned up.

And there were lots of people that I used to talk about. these things. And, you know, this chap joined the RAF as a cook. He went to Egypt. He spent some time in Iraq. He spent, I mean, he traveled all over the world. And by 25, when he came back, he was extremely experienced. So they, we can caricature that experience. And a lot of them had very pro-imperial attitudes. But a lot of them had a huge amount of experience. And that's something that I know you've talked about in Parliament and in your writing. And it's something that we're losing. Do you not think the sort of slightly distorted view of our own history is one of the things that led to what I still think was a very, very weird debate in this country, which was

Brexit? I know you were very, very pro-Brexit. Yeah. And you and I had many arguments at the time. But I sort of feel that came through a distorted lens. Yeah. Look, I think every country has distorted myths about their past. And I think that people did tap into a kind of island, story. And that's what, I mean, you know the continent very well. One of the frustrations I find with British politics is that we don't look outside the UK. You know, a lot of the problems we face, you know, in terms of growth are European and Western problems. But the whole debate is centered around the UK as, you know, is understandable. But with that, there's a whole lot of myth-making, legends, stories that people construct about their national identity. But that's

inevitable. I mean, that happens in every country. It's just that in Britain we have a very particular focus. We don't seem to learn from it. Well, I think that we kind of do when we don't. I mean, the British establishment, such as it is, is completely different to the one where, which I grew up in. I mean, I look at lawyers, a friend of mine said we're old enough to remember when judges were right wing. You know, Lord Denning and all these people. I mean, it's a totally different world. So I think we have learned something, actually. I think the kind of blatant racism that you saw in the 80s isn't around. I'm not saying it doesn't exist. but that kind of open hostility is less than it was.

And if you look at my contemporaries in Parliament, but particularly in the Conservative Party, there are lots of people from different ethnic backgrounds. And there's a story, maybe we could discuss this, why a lot of people from ethnic minority backgrounds have gravitated the Conservative Party. And it's interesting to me that Rishi Sunak, we don't talk about it,

but the first non-white prime minister is a conservative of a Hindu background. That's interesting. And that is something that 40 years, years ago, I don't think it was unthinkable, but it just wasn't, it wasn't something that was like it. I mean, I think I'm right in saying that, till quite recently, there was nobody from minority ethnic backgrounds in the Conservative Party in the MP. So when I got onto the list in 2004, there were no ethnic minority conservative MPs. And that's not very

long ago. No, I was. Were you in the first coho? Yeah. So there was, Adam of Freer got in in 2005. Right. But that's, less than 20 years ago. And we've gone from that to a world now in Well, we've got an Indian Prime Minister, leading the Conservative Government, all of that. And we've had a series of Home Secretary, as, chancellors. So there's been change. And all I would say about that is that when we started off, you know, in the early 2000s, everyone knew the party was, we had 165 MPs. 90% of them were men and all of them were white.

And even at the time, I remember Oliver Leibwen saying, this isn't sustainable. And actually there was change. I think Cameron, David Cameron had a big part to play in that. And it's interesting that, as we said, David Cameron, did that, wanted to bring in a more representative cohort, and yet didn't really seem to think that you had... No, I mean, I was doing my thing. I wasn't particularly...

What was your thing? Well, I was writing that book. I mean, that you've quoted from extensively. Also, I had a sense that, which is dead now. I mean, I wanted to be an MP and I wanted to write. I like writing. And one of my big... He's not a hero because he's a Labour man, but he's someone I respected a lot, was Roy Jenkins,

who used to write as well. And I was very much of the view that... Why can't you have Labour Heroes? Well, I mean, I'm being flippant. Yeah, he's a good... Do you have Tory ones? No, no. Well, Abraham Lincoln.

Well, he's not a Tory. I know, he's not a Tory. He's not a Tory. He's almost one. And I was very much, you know, I was under contract to write this book. I wrote a book. The other thing you ought to remember was that we were in a coalition period. So, you know, I mean, you didn't become a minister until...

But Cameron didn't like me either. No, no. I think you're being polite about this, but my memory is you were not one of the ingang. No. And the sort of little Cameron in a circle didn't see you as one of the sort of golden children. But that's what politics is. I mean, too much of politics is like that. I think it's always been like that.

But you know, you were and I were probably out. And then I've done both. I've been an outsider. And then I've been on the in gang. And we might talk about this. But I remember when Boris stood for leader, I mean, you had your own personal issues in regard to that. But it was clear that he was going to win. And I did say to you, I said, look, you know, you can really influence things if you get on this train.

But, you know, being the man of integrity that you are, and I'm being serious about this. You said, no, you didn't want to do that. So you're not a man of integrity. Well, you were, but I didn't have, I didn't have a conflict that Rory did in terms of backing Boris, because I'd known him for a long time and I thought he was, at that time, he was the answer. What happened subsequently we can debate? But at that particular moment. And also, if we go back to one of the things you're associated with was that Britannia Unchain book.

You, Liz Truss, Prittipatel, Chris Kidmore, and Robb, and Dominic Raab. And, yes, just sort of very quickly, in that because, of course, this is all my intake. These are all the people that joined in 2010 with me. And of those, it was Liz Truss and Pretty Patel that Cameron really liked and Osborne liked and watched promote. That's right. I mean, Liz more than the others. Because, again, I think Priti only became a minister maybe three or four years in. Liz Truss was a minister within two years.

And was a secretary of state. was a Secretary of State within four. I mean, that was the remarkable thing. And that was what... And what was it that David Cameron and George Osborne saw in Listercies Trust? What made her the person from our entire... No, no. So what she was very good at, and she still is very good out,

is generating noise and headlines. But that's a feature of... And we can poo-poo that, but that's a feature of modern politics. You just generate enough noise and around you... But do you think one of the reasons why the conventional wisdom is that Kiyosthama is going to become Prime Minister

is because... actually he's doing something very different to that. Maybe. Maybe being more serious. Maybe an antidote to the Johnson Trust's approach. Yeah, but it's a global thing. I mean, Trump was the same, and they generate a lot of headlines around them.

And then people become drawn, and they think that's the shiny thing. And I think there was a bit of that with Liz. But just to go back to the Britannian on chain thing, and Cameron's view of you, that was quite a right-wing conservative perspective. It was. And he was trying to sort of project a more centrist.

He wasn't. He wasn't. So I remember the one time when I realized that the book had made an impact was in the Empire book. The Empire book. The Unchained book was, I think it was the Tory Party Conference in 2012. And George Osmond started talking about the global race. And even Jeremy Brown, you know, the Lib Dems, they started talking about this global race. And that was all, Britannian Unchained was all about this. Now, they might say they didn't read the book. But it was clearly something that was in the air. And all of this business of, you know, we've got to compete with China and all of that kind of stuff. The book that was written 12 years ago, 2012, was very much in that thing. And what did Britannia Unchained mean? Is it the sort of Singapore-on-Thames sovereign individual? I think it was, I mean, looking back, you know, it was 12 years ago where we knew MPs.

You're obviously trying to make an impact and you're trying to say something that's distinctive. You know, there's no point getting together and coming together with a book saying the leadership is brilliant. Everything we're doing is great. Yeah, the newspapers can do that. Exactly. So it was, you know, and it created a bit of splash. There were controversial things in it. And it was very much...

Called British people lazy. Well, it said the average... You've got all your favourites, haven't you? Just lobbing of it. But yeah, I mean, it was a kind of quite a bold book. Very much, I think, you know, looking back subsequently, you know, Liz was very much, very bold, dynamic person. And I think that the problem was that you can get all the theory right.

And this is the problem with a big problem with modern politics. You can get the positioning and the messaging right. But of course, how you govern is a totally different set of problems. And it's a different mentality that you need. You know, the person who can make the loudest noise isn't necessarily the person. You mentioned there Boris Johnson. He said, we can talk about him. So you did think he was the right person.

I did think in 2019 he was absolutely the right person. I mean, would you accept that his premiership has been something of a disaster and he's done? So I would go halfway on that. I think that the end of it, he totally lost his way. He totally lost his way. I think in 2019, because people forget this. 2019, the Tory party got 8% in the European elections, 8.8%. We were scoring lower than we are now in the national polls.

Theresa May hadn't got Brexit through. And we needed someone essentially just to slice the Gordian knot, just to cut through the gridlock. We had two years of that miserable parliament where we couldn't get anything through. And I remember I was a junior minister at the time. And I said, so what are we going to have questions on Tuesday? This is on the Thursday. I said to someone in number 10. What are we going to say?

He said, look, don't worry about Tuesday. We've got to get it through today. That was very much the approach. It was a day by day. And it was miserable for two years. If you could imagine, just going every day, day by day, not having any strategy, not having any clear idea of where you were going. And, you know, at that time, Boris and Dominic,

Cummings had easy answers and they cut through a lot of nonsense. And then I saw you. I remember seeing you again on the tube. I mean, you and I use the tube far too often probably. Immediately after that general election. So it was before the COVID period. There was that three-month period after the general election in 2019, which took place in December and before the lockdown in March 2020, where it looked as if Boris was going to

be there for a very long time. Because he had this enormous majority. He had this enormous majority. Nobody could see the future in terms of COVID. We had a majority of 80. and historically it had been unprecedented for a majority of that large to essentially be eliminated in one parliament.

And to be fair to Keir, and I think I do give him credit for this, he never panicked. I mean, at the time when he took over, he was a dud. He was never going to be prime minister. He was a caretaker, all of that sort of thing. And it's a credit to him that he's just maintained his head consistently through all that period

because people were saying had written him off. So Boris, the other thing, that I really liked about him, and I've been on the campaign trail with him. He's just the best campaign I've ever seen. I mean, better than probably Blair and Clinton, you know, when he wears, he goes to Billingsgate, he wears the market stall outfit, he's kissing fish, he's doing all sorts of dynamic things on the campaign trail. And people are flocking to him. I mean, I've seen him stand in the middle of the street, and people are coming to him. So as a campaigner, he was second to none. But what about the character flaws? Ultimately, the character flaws did for him.

Yeah, I think they did. I think he wasn't straightforward. I feel he should have been more candid about what was going on. And there was always that air of, is he telling the truth this time or is there more to come? And I think in the end, that did for him. And the straw to break the camel's back was this Chris Pinscher business. And everybody knew about Chris Pincher and his various issues. So for listeners, Chris Pincher was a servant minister and then a whip who had allegations against him of sexual harassment. and Boris Johnson's Prime Minister appears to have ignored those allegations and then allowed him to continue as a weapon, slightly covered up and then denied it. Yeah, well, critically, and this was the thing that destroyed Boris's government,

was that he said he didn't know. And I think Simon McDonald, who was head of the Foreign Office, had alerted Boris as Prime Minister to the fact that this man, Chris Pinscher, this MP, did have, there were allegations around him. And Simon McDonald did something which was not really, done, the dumb thing, he essentially wrote a letter saying that actually I did tell the Prime Minister about all the things relating to Chris Pincher and it is wrong to say that he didn't know. But I think if you have somebody at the top of government who is, as you say, you can't

be sure whether he's telling the truth. I think it does put people like Simon Donald in very difficult situations. But he became as a civil servant, he suddenly became an actor in this episode, this drama. So, Alistairquazi, let's take a quick break. back in a second. Hi everybody, it's Dominic Zavarik 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 Rest is History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war,

in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise, people are arguing about Europe, the government has got a few issues with the trade unions, and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues, and people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we'll be looking at these and other issues.

We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and we'll be talking about one of the grimest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time,

to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History, wherever you get your podcasts. Quasi, what was the moment in your life then where you remember first thinking,

I'd like to be a member of Parliament? Talk us through a little bit about what it felt to be a child when you began to be interested in the stuff. So I think I wanted to be an MP quite late. I mean, I wasn't one of these people who was dreaming about. I mean, I read about Theresa May she wanted to be a Prime Minister when she was 10. I mean, that wasn't my vibe at all. And as Alistair suggested, I was always very interested in history.

That was my real interest. You know, the empire, colonialism, kings and queens, medieval history, tutors, all of that stuff was what I was fascinated by. And really, through an interest in history, I became more interested in politics because a lot of past history, a lot of history is past politics. And then actually, I mean, and Alistair was a figure in this in my development. I was very interested, obviously, when New Labor came in in 1997. I was probably a Tory then.

Thatcher had a huge influence, not only on me, but on, you know, a lot of, ethnic minority conservatives, I would suggest, supported her by no means the majority. But there was a certain individualism sort of slightly contrary to the establishment vibe that she gave off that a lot of people, my mother included and others, were attracted to.

So, you know, I'm 21, 22, I'm thinking about the world. It's very interested in New Labor. But then, of course, I think after about 2001, the New Labor project, I think, slightly lost its way. And that was when I became much more interested in the Conservative Party. What was it you felt lost to win? I'm not going to give Alistra a chance to come in and challenge you. They'd come in in 97.

And I've said that I got in trouble for saying this in Tory Party conference in 2012. Fiscal it was the most conservative government since the war. You know, for the four years that they were in between 97 and 2001, the budget was either balanced or in surplus. And that was extraordinary. And then in 2001, understandably, given their electoral coalition, they started spending a lot more money. And you could see that. And they would say the money needed to be spent on public services. You know, we needed to reinvest in the country. That was the, and then, of course, there was the Iraq war, which was very controversial. I thought it was bizarre that the Conservative Party just support Gits, and she gave the government a blank check on that. And it was clear to me, and we can discuss this, but it was clear to me that 9-11 had nothing to do with Saddam. And that was the bit I couldn't get my head around, was that they were somehow trying to put the two together. Anyway, so you

Roll the clock forward to 2002-3. I'm very interested in politics. And that was when I sort of got sucked into the Conservative Party. Had you voted Labor? Never. I didn't vote conservative. I mean, I was in America in 97. So I didn't vote. How would you have voted in 97? Probably conservative, but it was, I wasn't a convinced conservative. You would have voted for that. I mean, I in 97. I mean, I voted Lib Dem. It's a very shameful. That's totally. What about 2024, Rory? That's the one that counts. But I remember thinking in 97, I cannot, I cannot possibly for this conservative government. They're embarrassing. And actually, if I, how old was I, 97, I was 22? If I were 22 now, I probably wouldn't be conservative if I were 22.

But I think that, and that you can see why young people, you know, we've had 14 years. So if you're 22, you would have been eight when the conservatives came into power. You know, that's a very, very long time. I was in a school the other day and this girl said something, which really, her friends all laughed, but I was really depressed by it. She said, as politics, always been this bad. And I just, and that's all she, because her first memory was. Yeah, of course, it was a few years ago. Yeah.

So it's been a very tumultuous time. I would always vote conservative, but I can see why young people. Why would you, if you say, if you said you'd vote Labor as a 22, why? I didn't, I didn't say I'd vote Labor. No, you said, sorry, you wouldn't vote conservative. I said I would struggle to make conservative. So why is it different? Because given my experience, I just feel that generally I don't think labor is going to be a land of milk and honey.

And I think the problem that they face, as a 22-year-old, you're probably oblivious to it because you know, you're not earning money. You've just left university. As, you know, 48-year-old, you think where are they going to get the money from? They're going to increase taxes. There's going to be lower growth. They'll be in hoc to, you know, unions or whoever. they're not going to do any reform and we're just going to run out of money.

If Rachel Reeves picked the phone up and said to you, look, you're one of the few people around who's actually done it. Done the job, yeah, yeah. And it all went a bit tips up. Would you help her? I talked to her. I mean, actually, again,

Rachel came into Parliament when we did in 2010. And it's less the case now. But I think in those days, you could have cross-party friendships. You know, we can't know. There were people like Tristram Hunt, I knew well. Rachel Reeves, we were quite friendly, Chukramuna, you know, and actually the two of them have left.

I think now it's much more polarised. You don't really have, it's sort of frowned on. It's much more sort of like that. I think it's dumb, but that's the way politics has evolved. You know, everyone's a lot angrier. And I think, I think that's where I would say Brexit was part of this conversation. If you had a referendum on a binary question, yes, no, on any subject, I think that's going to inflame and exacerbate. But one of the reasons this podcast does so well is because we've come together from different,

slightly different. No, quite different. Brexit, you're the same. Brexit. No, we're different. He was on the second referendum side. I was very angry about that. I mean, I'm one of these people that you deny exists, right?

I was somebody who... You're a really centrist. Listen, I thought, and I'd like to talk to you about this, because it obviously weren't catastrophically wrong, but I thought, listen, the referendums happened, people have voted to leave, but it's close, 5248, so let's work towards the customs union Brexit. And my offer to you would be, look, you get to leave the parliament, you get to leave the council, you get to leave any dreams of the European army, you don't have to accept immigration, let's keep custody. And my argument will be, amongst other things, it brings the country together. a bit more. It doesn't create this kind of crazy. But that didn't, but that didn't work. And it didn't work because people like you started pushing for sort of Singapore in Thames. And people like Alistair started saying, we need to have a second referendum. We don't want any

Brexit at all. It was polarized. That's right. And I had this extraordinary moment where Tony Blair came out and said, Boris Johnson and I are in agreement about, you know, the proposal that I was backing. This is the worst of all worlds. Yes, that's right. That's right. So it was a very sort of strange moment where I suddenly realized the centre ground in politics had collapsed. And I still think that if you were looking actually for something to do as a Labour Chancellor coming in, rejoining the customs union would be actually quite a smart, interesting thing to do. They won't call it the goods exchange agreement. There'll be some formula.

But I can see that happening. So why did it fail? Because as I said, I think, because that was what was so interesting when you stood for leader. And we, you know, I think we talked about this, is that everything's polarized. So you can't be a sensible centrist figure and win a party leadership. Even Kirstama did that. I mean, he ran to the left to win that leadership.

I mean, let's not, you know. Why is that? Because that's where the passion is. That's where the passion is. And we literally talked about this for about 10 years. I said, look, there are a lot of right-wing conservative voters who actually, believe it or not, want to vote for conservatives. They don't want to vote for people who are seen. Do you have a certain respect for the?

way that Keir has... Yeah, I think he's done... Go left and moved right. Because he gets quite a lot of criticism for it. He gets a lot of criticism for it. So in the old days before Trump, they always used to say, you know, if you're running for president, you run to whatever the base is. If you're a Republican, you run to the right, and then you come to the centre in the general.

And that's essentially what Keir has done. So if you take the leadership contest in 2020, he ran quite far to the left. He said he was essentially the heir of Corbyn. He said he'd nationalized a whole bunch of stuff. And actually he's tacked back. He's now presenting himself as a more centrist figure. So the Owen Joneses of this world hate that. So your advice to me at the time was I needed, the only way I could become prime minister is conceal my real views,

run to the right and then return to where I really was when I became prime minister. Well, I wouldn't have put it as cynically or coldly as that. But you've got to, because when you're a leader of the party, you're a leader effectively of a movement, you represent to lots of the base, the distilled element of what they're about. And if you can't connect with that as a leader, you don't have any support. And that's, I think, one of the challenges that Rishi's facing is that a lot of the right wing, you know, reform type voters who would like to vote conservative or have voted conservative aren't necessarily convinced that this guy is the kind of conservative they want to see. And you've got to, you've got to acknowledge that. Against that, I'd say the conservative party is tiny, whatever, 150,000 people.

It's got a tiny group of people. And there was a possibility of winning an election. in the centre ground and appealing to people who were not hardcore-riving conservative voters. I think you would have struggled. So the classic example of this was Boris Johnson in 2019. And I remember fighting that election. And there were three elements.

There was clearly Brexit. There was Boris and there was Corbyn, BBC. That was the formula. But each of those elements was important for that conservative victory. And what everyone forgot until reform came along was that the Brexit Party had stood down in 2019, which really flattered the Conservative vote. I mean, we got something like 45% of the vote in England and Wales and Scotland.

And that was partly because the Brexit Party stood down. This year, one of the fundamental problems we're facing is the Reform Party. And if you say they're not all conservatives, but if you say 60%, two thirds of them are conservatives, then you've got a problem because you're going to lose a lot more seats. by virtue of them standing. Do you see any possibility of the Conservatives doing really badly in a general election and reform, AKA Farage, doing a kind of reverse takeover?

I think that's possible. And actually, from my point of view, let us assume that the Conservatives lose and that Rishi goes. I think the future of the Conservative Party, for me, is one of the most interesting questions in British politics. I find that really interesting. Where is it going to be? What was you talking about? I think the right-wing populism

will be part of the party. I really think that. And you're more comfortable with that than me, right? Yeah, I'm more comfortable. But you're not as comfortable as Bruce Morg or Lee Anderson. But he's more comfortable than he's quite omitting because he's a very thoughtful. I'm more comfortable.

And we had this debate a lot. He's more, often, quasi, you would say to me, listen, you need to understand my voters in Spellthorn and you would make the case for right-wing populism. That's right. Because the voters in Spellville, it's not, you know, a million miles from London. It was 61% Brexit. And, you know, as the crow flies, it's about, you know, 10, 15 miles from here.

And you never... Where has populism ever succeeded? Very good question. Where is socialism ever succeeded? New Labour. Was that, well... Socialism. I think...

No, seriously, populism is going to fail. I think it's got to be an element. There's got to be an element of populism in the party. But if you look at... And why has there got to be an element of populism? Because the old... deal with the Conservative Party. You know, certainly before 63, before Profumers, that, you know, these are the people in charge. They're the governing class. You know, we defer to them.

Ken Livingston talks about this in his book, in his autobiography, says, you know, his parents were deferential. That's all dead, okay? There's no deference or anything like that, very little. So you've got to be able to mobilize, you know, millions of voters in the way that Boris did in 2019, in the way that we're struggling to do now. And I think in order for a conservative party to do that, there has to be some popular. But it has to be measured and tempered by pragmatic governing people. Do you think that some of the difficulty that Rishi Zunak is having is racism? I think very little of it is.

I think, I mean, if Jeremy Hunt were leading, it would be exactly the same problem, but it wouldn't be race. That was an issue. Talk us through ethnicity and race in the Conservative Party. Developed this idea of why we've ended up with such a diverse conservative cabinet. And I remember talking to Labour colleagues about this, you know, 12 years ago. 12 years ago. I think the thing that a lot of people like me coming from, you know, families new to Britain, essentially. And who else would you put in this group in the Conservative Party? James Cleverley, you know, he's a mixed background, his father's English, his mother's from

Cyrilene, Rishi Sunak is Hindu, Suella Brabman, family from Goa, Priti Patel. I mean, there are a lot of people. Sam Gima, but he left, you know, in 2019. Sadid. You know, there are lots of people. It's not just one or two. And I think for most of us, I think that sort of Thatcherite self-help individualism crudely, I think appeals to immigrants, to some immigrants, not all immigrants. Why? Because they're people who, they're bold, they're innovative. They've left whichever countries they've come from and sought a new life in a different. But this wasn't true in the sort of 60s, 70s, early 80s, where predominantly people of minority ethnic and converted labor.

So it can't actually be sort of logically true. But it takes time for people to come through the system. I think you're right. And actually the time in the 60s, you know, the Tory Party was pretty racist. I mean, you had Enoch Powell saying his thing. You had lots of people who were very uncomfortable with a lot of the language. But I think the Tory Party changed, has changed to an extent, not fully, but it has changed. And maybe the Labour Party took people from the United.

Exactly. And I think, you know, with social progress, social development, immigrants, sons of immigrants, people like me, felt more comfortable with the Conservative Party. And actually a lot of the things are Conservative Party. Because one of the things that people hate is being judged simply because of their ethnicity. And I think with Labour for too long, there was a sense, well, well, you're black, you're going to vote for us. And people didn't like, I mean, a lot of people resisted that. And then they looked at the other party and they said, well, they're treating me as an individual.

They're giving me economic opportunity. They're allowing me to be successful. I'm just sort of rehearsing those arguments. Can you explain to me why the government and soon I have, in particular has invested so much time, capital and money in this Rwandese scheme. So I think it's one of those things where his biggest problem when he became Prime Minister was that he hadn't won a vote with the members. In fact, they'd rejected him earlier that summer.

By voting for List Trust. By voting for List Trust. And some of them think, well, this was a coup. You know, the number of people in my constituency said, I voted for Boris, you got rid of him. Voted for Liz, you got rid of her. got this blown. And I don't think it's a race thing. I really don't. I think it's, they just see him as a figure who's been imposed from some sort of globalist, Goldman Sachs elite. I mean,

it's slightly crazy. It's the trust conspiracy theory. It's a version of a conspiracy theory. And what he had to do was essentially reach out to them and say, I am your leader. I am the head of this great party. And I think Rwanda, if he were to row back on Rwanda, but he doesn't believe it's going to work than people would say. But it's a totemic thing now. But it's cost half a billion. It's a totemic thing. I know you kind of spaffed tens of billions, but honestly, half a billion is still a lot of

money for a gimmick. Look, so I think you can't. Do you think it's going to work? I think it is working. I think people have read the story, people are going to Ireland because they're worried about being deported to Rwanda. Well, in the, in the, in the country. I thought we had control of our borders.

In the terms of its policy, it's not the, it's not the only thing, but in terms of what the policy is trying to do as a deterrent, I think it can work. Now, was it the best plan? Who knows? You know, it seemed like a fairly outlandish plan. And I remember, I remember when Boris talked and Pritchie talked about it in Cabinet.

It was, people were like, really? But we're committed to it now. And Rishi Sunaka said, this is what he's going to do. And he's doing it. A billion. Quid wasted. So that's all we've got time for in this episode,

but there is still an awful lot more that we have to discuss with Quasi Quarteng. So we're going to back next Monday to talk about his career, his spell as chancellor, what he thinks of Rishi Sunaq and Kyrs Stama, what he thinks of Liz Truss, and much, much more. If you can't wait until then, I've got good news for you. The second episode is already available right now

for members of the Restis Politics Plus. You can sign up by going to therestispolities.com and you'll hear it straight away. And if you're not a member, then we'll see you next week. Bye for now.