The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 79. Nadhim Zahawi: Iraq, Conservatism, and why he backed Boris Johnson

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

What does the former Chancellor make of the current Conservative election campaign? What was his experience escaping Saddam Hussein's Iraq? And does he stand by his support of Boris Johnson and Brexit? Nadhim Zahawi joins Rory and Alastair to answer all these questions and more on today's episode of Leading. 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 LIVE TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] 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 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 restis politics.com. Welcome to The Restis Politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alist Campbell. And today we have with us, Nadim Zahawi. Nadim is a friend of mine who joined politics with me in 2010. We rebelled together on votes in the House of Lords and found ourselves. left on the back benches together. We traveled together to Iraq after ISIS had taken over, created this caliphate stretching across the Iraqi Syria border as mini envoys for David Cameron and we went and met the Iraqi government and the Kurdish government at the time. And we've remained in touch a great deal since. He is somebody with extraordinary backstory. It says that she's been a theme for a loss of the politicians we've interviewed. I feel actually increasingly sorry for politicians, And some of whom, you know, like me, have pretty boring middle class backgrounds because the world now is just dominated by people with extraordinary stories. But his life takes us from a childhood in Iraq, arriving in the UK, age 11, unable to speak English, settling down, developing a deep romantic affection for Britain, becoming interested in conservative politics, a slight kind of ponshire for people who I think are slightly roguish figures in British politics.

We didn't get to you. Jeffrey Archer. And, you know, Jeffrey Arch from Boris Johnson. We can get to that a bit later and, you know, what he thinks they were and what what attracts him to them. Set up a very successful company, UGov, a polling company, which again, we should touch on a little bit because this is the rest of politics.

And, you know, nothing's more central to modern politics and the question of polling. Join politics, I said with me in 2010, rebel was left on the back benches. And then his career took off belatedly, initially as a junior minister, then as a cabinet minister, then briefly as Chancellor of the Exchequer for a tiny, tiny period before the whole thing kind of blew up again. So he's seen every bit in, I guess, 14 years of politics. He's seen backbench exclusion. He's seen massive promotion. He's seen getting the keys of number 11.

He's had huge challenges in terms of media scandals. He's had great moments of affection and success in some of his ministerial jobs. So there's many, many things to get into. And we're very grateful that you've come and join us. for having me. That was the longest intro we've ever done. Told the whole story there, Rory. Can we start with Iraq? Yes. I was thinking last night reading up on you that Iraq clearly plays a very, very significant part in your life, as it does in mind, but in very, very different ways.

Although, to interrupt, he's sympathetic towards you. No, I know. You're on the same side in this, I think. Well, we're on the same side in the, I think we both had very similar views about the reality of Saddam Hussein. Indeed. But just tell us about that childhood. What Iraq was like, why you left, and what your first impressions of Britain were. So I was 10 years old when I sort of begun to understand what was happening politically. Saddam was then deputy to Ahmed Hassan al-Bekar, who was then sort of the new Barthus president. And I'm being very mean because you're just beginning, but just to bring in lists as a little bit more. You're born in 1967.

Yeah. And you stay in Iraq, I guess, till 1978. Yeah, 78, 79. So this is a country that had been a British protectorate. And then in the 1950s, the king of Iraq was killed in a sort of revolution. Brutely. Brutely killed. Revolution government takes over.

And by the time you are a child, the Ba'ath Party has taken over. And this very young man, Saddam Hussein, is the vice president, but is very much the power behind the throne. You're living in Baghdad. And you're from a family which maybe in some ways would not be wealthy in modern British standards, but also is quite distinguished. You had a grandfather who'd been the governor of the central bank. So you're part of the sort of establishment of Iraq and presumably have seen this very odd transition through your grandfather

from Britain to monarchy to Bath and now this guy who's emerging as a dictator. You're absolutely. The bit that was missing in my knowledge is my grandfather passed away at the age of 52. We have a history of hypertension in the family and high blood pressure. So before I was born. But obviously, I lived the stories of that time in Iraq when actually things were moving in the right direction rather than the wrong direction. And right direction, this was a society famous for its education, for its books. The cradle of civilization, as you say, for culture books, not just in Baghdad, but in the Kurdish areas in Soleimania and Bill and elsewhere.

And then you have a series of brutal revolutions that end up. with the Bath party taking control. Saddam was a thuggish character and by the time he came to power, they had pretty much effectively destroyed any other political movement, whether it's the sort of the socialists or the monarchists, pretty much gone. And I was sort of probably too young to understand the full implications of what was about to happen. But luckily had a father who absolutely got it. One of the few Iraqis in those days that absolutely got it, he happened to be Kurdish, married to my mother, who's actually originally from Basra. And he was simply trying to sort of keep his head down, be a businessman, rather than a political

activist in the way his father was, my grandfather, but didn't want to join the party. And in Iraq, and this is the bit that actually then we can talk about sort of what happened, post the removal of Saddam and the mistakes we made. Alist and I are probably on the same page that, you know, Saddam needed removing. I think where I would differ is the consequence of what happened afterwards, the lack of planning and their lack of pushback, certainly from us, as in the British government, on the Americas to say, well, hold on a second, what are we going to do the next day?

And can you show us the plan type of thing? Just wondering, why did your father choose Britain? And I guess my other question is, why did you become a conservative? So my father had deep links to the United Kingdom. In fact, when my grandfather was busy being governor of the central bank and then becoming trade and industry minister. And actually, I think he was interim oil minister when OPEC was set up. He sent my father to boarding school in England for a short period of time.

And that was the link. So your dad spoke English. So my dad spoke reasonably good English, but obviously had gone back to the Middle East again. And that sort of link with the United Kingdom. And he had agencies from British businesses in Iraq, which was a treacherous path to tread anyway, because Saddam had passed legislation that if you were found to be taking commissions in the private sector, as a businessman, that is punishable by hanging in Iraq. So it was the natural place for him to come because he had a re-entry visa to the UK because of his history and because he did business

with British companies. But also it was a pretty easy target to come after because the easier accusation to make of anyone is that they are a British agent, you know, if they happen to represent any British brand or any British company. And what happened is that one of his employees, in his business, who was a member of the Bath Party, had written a report because he was disgruntled. He hadn't received a promotion or a salary increase that my father was a British agent. Fortunously for him, on my mother's side, her sister was married to someone who was actually quite high ranking in the Bath Party, long past now, who clearly got or was in receipt of the message that they're going to come for my father. And so we had about 24 hours warning over lunch

at my aunt's home where they took my dad aside and said look they're going to come for you tomorrow so you try and get out and you're left and then you followed correct exactly right and he deliberately set up a decoy so he called his office and said I'm driving up north to the Kurdish areas because he had a project there and instead he went to baghdad international airport and got on the Swiss air flight out of Baghdad and why did you become a Tory so he said completely accidental and I tell you for why so I had zero interest in politics growing up in school in England. I was much more interested in wanting to become a show jumper. You were riding horses.

I was. Yeah, very much so. And when I got to university, I got to University College London, and I read Chemical Engineering, Torrington Place, crossed the road into the University of London Union, Ulu, as it's referred to. And fresh as weak, I'm walking into Yulu, and there's a big bloke outside, and I was about a third of the size. I was quite slim when I was at uni with goofy teeth and a sort of full head of hair.

And this bloke was handing out the Socialist Workers Party magazine. And all I did, and I promise you this, all I did was politely saying, no, thank you. Not because I knew anything about it. I just had no interest in politics. At which point, this guy decided he's going to literally physically attack me. I thought I was going to get beaten up because he was so angry with me for not taking his magazine, especially someone of my colour, which really offended me. And I thought my way of getting back at him was to go and find out.

what the other party thinks. Well, that should have been the Labour Party. So, well, I walked around Freshers Fair. There was a little trestle table with a concerted collegiate forum. You said, hello, Dominic, hello Tobias. I went and had a chat,

and the student behind the desk happened to be captain of the show jumping team, and that was a good start. Then I began to understand about freedom and opportunity. And those two words have defined my life in many ways. Just come back to this little boy.

So you speak Arabic and you speak Kurdish? I speak Arabic better than I speak Kurdish in many ways because I was born in Baghdad and having a mother from Basra, my Arabic was much more polished. I understand Kurdish. I'm reluctant to speak of it. I sound like a six-year-old, but I speak fluent Arabic. I'm interested in somebody who speaks three languages and two languages very well, might see the world in a slightly different way from the way in which other politicians do.

So let's take the great cliche. Anisle, what's this phrase that Rishi keeps producing? Clear plan, bold action. Okay, so how would you say a clear plan, bold action in Arabic? So chottajaria, amal wadha. Okay, now imagine now for a second, Saddam Hussein or an Arab politician saying that. Does it sound different to the way that it sounds to an English audience? Is there a sense in which moving into a different language and different culture

gives a completely different resonance than an echo? Yeah, I mean, it does, obviously. Chottagheria means a brave plan. So it's a sense of machismo. Correct. Yeah. almost inescapable in Arabic culture. And Jarat is bravery in a much more sort of animated way.

And Amalwada is that you have a clear work rather than plan if you know what I mean. Pretty good. Now, Nadim, talk of bravery. Yeah. Thank you for being here because I have it on very good authority, as does Rory, that Tory High Command has basically said they don't want any of their current big hitters coming on this podcast. And heaven knows why, because we're very nice to our guests, as you can see. I'm surprised.

Well, whether we're nice or that... No, I'm surprised. Not more of my colleagues are coming on. I think it's a terrible mistake. But I wonder whether it's because your party has always been a little bit obsessed with me. And I just want to play you a very short clip. I know what you're going to play. And I want to find out what was going on inside Dowdy Street while this was happening.

The people, by the way, who are egging us on to divide and to turn on one another. People like Alistair Campbell. And wherever Alistair Campbell is, you want to be on the opposite side of the argument in my. The people who are egging us on to get rid of our leader and have this bloodletters in battle are people like Alistair Campbell. I can say she is wherever Alistair Campbell is, any good on purpose to be on the other side of the argument. Okay. The people who are egging us on to turn on each other to form a circular firing squad are people like Alistair Campbell. I can tell you wherever Alistaira Campbell is, no conservatives should be in the same place.

The people egging us on to turn on one another are people like Alistair Campbell. And in my view, wherever Alistair Campbell is, any Conservatives should be on the other side of that argument. Mr Sirhal, we were talking about the resignation of senior conservatives. It is frankly insulting for you to suggest that this is a crisis created by your political opponents. Look at who's egging us on to keep attacking one another and to do all this bloodletting. People like Alistair Campbell. And I think where Alistair Campbell is at, any conservators should be on the other side of that argument, in my view. What was going on?

I tell you what was going on. I'm a former thing. No, you're not. First of all, you are a communication genius, right? You have many flaws, but that is not one of them. And you and I both know that. You are a communication genius. And you have, clearly, as I'm sitting here in probably the most successful podcast in the country,

have adapted to new media in an incredible way. My colleagues, certainly the 2010 intake, didn't have the privilege that Rory and I had, which is years of being in Parliament with the wiser heads, learning, listening, engaging. They'd been locked down because of the pandemic. This is the 2019. 2019. And therefore, in many ways, easier spooked if there is a social media storm than where the real world is. Let me give you an example.

When I was, Chancellor, the Duchy of Lancaster, you know, second day in the job, we got the news that Her Late Majesty had passed. In the cabinet office, we've got this whole communication floor, giant screens, which you probably are both familiar with. And if you believed Twitter that day, you'd think half the nation was Republican. Yeah. Right.

His majesty gives his first address to the nation the next day, 98% approval rating. So Twitter was not the country, clearly. The reason I was making that point is you were so smart at using social media to drive the whole storm around number 10. Better than anyone else.

So I was giving you as an example, example of the ability to spook my colleagues into a place where the herd just then stampeded, which was my, what's why I said to Boris when I went to see him to say, I'm afraid you've got to go now because the herd is stampeding. Let me come in, because I think this is the one moment where, despite my immense affection and admiration for you, I think we've always a bit differed. I think there's a bit of you, if I was being cheeky, that has a sort of, actually, Alistair has a bit of this too, which is a slight sort of affection for slightly roguish figures.

In his case, he's sort of fond of Alan Clark and people like this. In your case, you have a sort of soft spot for Jeffrey Archer and ultimately Boris Johnson. I never got it. I mean, I remember you ran for leadership. I ran for leadership. And I remember trying to reach out to you when you dropped out and said, you know, come in behind me. There's a different fish and stuff everybody.

Whatever you do, don't get behind Boris Johnson. And we'd had private conversations before where you'd explain why, having backed Boris the last time, you weren't backing him again. You had serious reservations about this guy and where he was going, right? And then in the end, you sort of got on board, and I couldn't understand it because I'd worked very close to them. I'd been the minister's state in the foreign office when he was the foreign secretary. I'd seen day in day out, just how bad he was at the job. I mean, he just couldn't concentrate. He couldn't take in any information. He'd ask, and he'd say, you know, Rory, go and sort out Libya. Libya is a bite-sized British

problem, and I'd try to come back with any plan, and he'd lose some attention immediately. He'd wander on. and we do a deal with the Kenyan government, and then he'd come back and he turned it on a set, et cetera, because I don't need to tell you all the problems right. So what is it that led you and so many colleagues to get him behind this guy? Because I actually think the reason we're about to lose this election is partly him and Liz Truss,

that this decision to bring these people in has come back to bite us. So what is it that made you feel you wanted to get behind it? Well, let me try and answer the question in my experience of him as a boss. So when he called me to say, I'd like you to take on the vaccine deployment role. Of course, I said yes, but I said on one condition.

And he said, what's that? What's that? I said, I need to speak with your authority. And what I mean by that is I need to be able to get access to you in minutes and hours, not days or weeks. And he said, you've got it. And I have to tell you. And I've worked as a junior minister under Theresa May.

And then, of course, I did this a little bit of work. for Cameron, not for on apprenticeships early on in my career, the apprenticeship, czar, as he called it. But his ability to make decisions, when you have his attention and he's focused, I thought was incredibly impressive. He was brave, but also, contrary to what actually most people think, he was on top of the detail. We would brief him every week on the numbers, on the vaccine programme. And he would literally say, can we just go back to last week something? Hold on, this is so at odds with... Everything that everybody one speaks to about him says,

and that everything that one knows, people like me who've known him for 40-odd years, knows to be true. Or indeed what came out in the COVID inquiry, where Simon Case is sitting there, sharing WhatsApp's messages with his head of comms, with Dominic Cummings, saying this guy is a shopping trolley lurching around.

He said one thing today, he's changed his mind tomorrow. And, as I say, I'm probably going to say something that people find extraordinary, but he could have been, I wasn't there, I wasn't around the table in the early days of the pandemic, but when we got to vaccine deployment, he was incredibly good to work for because he actually empowered me to cut through some of the bureaucracy where I needed to. I can give you many examples where we did that. And he was literally on top of the numbers in a way that I found surprising.

But Ben, that's just, that's like saying the bus driver knows how to drive a bus. No, that's not fair. That's just the job. That's the job. That's not true because there are... If you're the prime minister in the middle of a pandemic, to say that he knew the numbers, and when often we saw that he didn't.

But also to be able to back his minister to say, let me give you an example. So I took on the job and every morning we had this fantastic piece of software from Palantir where I can see exactly he's been vaccinated the day before. And I went to the team at the NHS, Simon Stevens, and said, look, we've got to publish daily data

because you're expecting to be on television every day. I can't just ask the nation to trust me on this and we're going to only give them fortnightly data or weekly data. We have to do daily data. And initially, the pushback from the NHS was like, we can't do that. We're the NHS.

The data has to be perfect. This data will need cleansing. It takes days to do that. It might take resource away from something else. But I see it every morning. Why can't we share it? And actually one of the lessons of the pandemic, I hope we'll come out through the inquiry, is transparency helps you reform complex systems. And I think it's one of the lessons I hope we learn going forward that by treating the nation as adults saying, look, here are the numbers.

Within those numbers, you'll see some stuff that the red tops will be shock horror. For example, very low uptake of vaccines in Post goes around Tottenham in North London. But at least it allows us to focus on those challenges and then fix them. Boris backed me on that because initially the pushback was no no we can't do that and he said hold on a second but Nadim's right on this

let's get this stuff out there that people need to see it because they're they're hurting they're locked in I get that but I mean there is a real problem with this because I as I say I've known him for a very very long time and I think we have a real

problem in our politics if people who are liars people who really have difficulty knowing what is true and what is not true and not really caring about the difference. I think unless they're expelled for good from public office, I think we're in real danger as a democracy.

And you cannot tell me, hand on heart, that Johnson is somebody who's not a deeply untruthful person. He was exposed as such during the pandemic, ultimately over parties and then over the whole pincher thing. But he's not somebody who tells the truth. That's unforgivable as a prime minister. I can only speak from my own experience. You don't think he's untruthful?

And every time we talked about things that we need to tell the country, he would never stand in the way and say, no, no, no, for political advantage. Look, you and I are probably in the same place on the removal of Saddam. But I think you've been attacked about the sext up dossier. I think that's why I take it seriously. Whether that's deliberate or otherwise, those are the perceptions, right? And perception can become reality. I just think my experience of the man in the way he backed me and then, you're not. when he made me Secretary of State for Education,

when I took serious challenges to him about how the department was on, what I wanted to do with the department, he was good to his word. He said... But, Bendeam, I think this is why I take it so seriously because he was, at the time of the Iraq situation, Boris Johnson, Andrew Gilligan,

they were part of this right-wing sort of cabal constantly trying to portray us as liars over Iraq. When I knew that we weren't, you can argue whether the policy was right or wrong, we presented it wrongly or rightly, well or badly, but I know we weren't lying. So we get labelled with this liar stuff. And yet I don't think anybody who's seen Boris Johnson through his life as a journalist or as a politician can truly hand on heart say the guy's not a liar. And that's why when you said recently, for example, you think that you made a mistake in getting rid of him.

I think it would be terrible for your party if he came back. Truly terrible. I think my party needs to, at the moment, focus on this general election and flirt. with ideas of leadership is the terrible error in my view. The point I was making in that interview for the Sunday Times, I think it was, when asked, was it an error at the time to remove Boris? I still would contend it was an error because I actually think in many ways he'd learnt from the early mistakes of the pandemic. He'd come through that. The vaccine deployment actually allowed him, in my view, to mature into the role of the

Even on that, though, he couldn't resist lying. It's all about Brexit benefits and all this. He didn't need to do that. And now you have a situation where he's saying that Trump's trial is rigged. There's something here which I think is very interesting. You're a profoundly loyal person, right? You have these heroes. You throw yourself behind Jeffrey Arch.

You've now chosen to throw yourself behind Boris Johnson. What is it? I mean, it's odd. I mean, I understand. I admire you for your loyalty. But tell us a little bit about this loyalty. Why is it that you choose these impossible, very unpopular, very peculiar characters and then decide you're going to attach yourself to them and defend them

to the hilt. There are no superhumans in politics, government, in business. Everybody's deeply flawed, in my view. And I just look at how people have treated me. You mentioned Jeffrey Archer. He knows that he has some deep flaws, but also some really great attributes of identifying talent. When he wanted to run for mayor of London, he literally picked up a load of young conservatives and around the table where Tobias Elwood, Robert Halfon, Saddamov, we were all literally

kids, right, in politics. I was a local councillor in Wonsworth, I think, at the time, an incredible ability to identify talent and back it, being completely colourblind, when actually my party at that time was much less welcoming, let's put it that way, for people of my background. We've just been through it, with Boris. It was my experience of how he backed me. You spoke about it at the outset. You and I, our face just didn't fit with the Cameroon team for different reasons, very different reasons. But they kept us on the backbenchers for the best part of six, seven, eight years.

And so I admire that. I admire people who will actually say, you know what, there's a job to do here. I'm going to bring the best people in to do this job. They may not be my clique, but they're good people. But it's interesting. So it was Jeffrey Archer, whom a younger less. may not know, but most of our listeners will know is best known as an amazing multi-million pound bestselling author, but also Tory in the House of Lords. So there's Johnson

hounded out of office for lying. Jeffrey Harchie who goes to jail for perjury. I mean, I'm so a detective that you don't have a problem with people who are not too familiar with the truth. No, no, no, that's not. I just think, I don't know whether maybe it's the breaks I've been given, and maybe a bit of it is my own sort of flaw, the imposter syndrome. that I have that I sort of, you know, when I first joined the cabinet, I sat there, I'm thinking, you know, how did I get here? What do I know? And then you realize actually you're quite good at fixing some of these things within your department or government and you get rewarded for it. So I, again, I go back and say to you, I think there are no superhumans. And I'd much rather

work for someone who may have flaws, but will get the job done, you know, worry about outcomes rather than just inputs than someone who has the sort of the halo of, the, the, the You look at Paula Venals and the post office stuff, which I was obviously on the backbenchers and the select committee on... Start in the drama. Indeed. But there's a bit of me that gets slightly wound up by people who sort of live a life that looks perfect, but actually never get anything really seriously done. And I just instinctively are much more attracted to the people who actually want to get stuff done, but may be flawed.

Okay, Nadine, Roy, let's have a quick break. Hi everybody, it's Dominic Zavrick 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'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 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. Let's push forward then and let's look at policy.

Where do you think Britain's going the next 10 years? What are the fundamental challenges? What would you do if you were Prime Minister to turn this situation around? Where are we? Where should we go? I worry. I genuinely worry. I was a Brexiteer and 60 seconds on that. The reason I was a Brexit is because I initially wanted us to stay in and reformed from within. I had a wonderful dinner with Heirschwebler, who was then the finance minister of Germany.

Actually, we ended up in the same place. but his solution was more Europe, not less Europe, because once you set up a sovereign with the single currency, you know, we have the most successful transfer union on earth because the Bank of England stands behind Sterling. We transfer wealth from London and the south to less well-off parts of England to Scotland and wealth of Northern Ireland. But we have emotionally brought into that because we've had civil war, war with the Scots, but we accept the fact that we pay our taxes and transfer wealth. Will the German people accept transferring wealth to the less well-off parts of Europe for the next hundred years? I think they will if their Chancellor is able to tell them that but we control the budgets of those countries in the way they did with Greece and Ireland, where they were forced to swallow a pretty bitter pill. Now, in all of that, once you accept that the British people never accept someone in Europe setting their budgets for them,

then we should come out. That was my hypothesis. But it's been a disaster. Well, no. And I tell you what I think worries me is we are now a mid-sized economy. The G7 is not our competition. Three of the G7 are in Europe. I listened to Macron out there when he had his investor conference saying, look, if you want to come and take advantage of a market of 450 million people,

then, yeah, of course we'd be competitive, but we don't have to be as competitive as some other countries on taxation. The fourth is the US in the G7, which is a continental economy that is extraordinary because it's ability, because it has devolved taxation to the state. that competition between California and Florida makes the economy so dynamic. We need to be much more competitive and I don't think we're in that space yet.

No politician is talking about actually we need to reform whether it's health or welfare and look at what is really costing us versus what is coming into the Treasury. You look at where the national debt is versus the real national debt. If you take into the unfunded pension liabilities of the civil service, we will be

insolvent by 2035. That worries me. And I don't think we are yet in a place where we're talking about this stuff. No, what you're basically saying is the scale of the challenges are not being met by the current debate, and I would agree with that. But can you hand on heart say

that another term under Rishi Sunak is going to answer the scale of the challenges that we've got? One, do you think it's going to happen? And secondly, would that really be a good thing for the country? I know you're a lifelong conservative, but can you really say that? He has a mountain to climb.

As an expolster, you know, being 20 points behind is a massive challenge for him. In saying that, Labour need a 12.5% swing to have a majority of one. So it is a challenge for Kirstama as well. I tell you what, I do think Rishi would certainly, I would have him absolutely in the room to deal with these challenges. Why? Because he follows the evidence. He's forensic when it comes to understanding the economy and what needs to happen with the economy. Let me push back on that on Brexit. Prissy Sunat was on record as saying

I did that very old-fashioned thing of looking at the numbers and I worked out this was the best thing for the economy. Nobody can pretend it's been the best thing for the economy. You see, I would respectfully disagree with you in the sense that... I'll tell you for why. No, I tell you for why,

there was always going to be friction as you end a deep relationship that was pretty much frictionless. We tend to look at most political events in our lifetime, right? Sometimes you've got to take the long view beyond the sort of five, ten year horizon. But the long view is about the big powers.

But, well, I think if the direction of travel in Europe does not alter, right, there's going to be massive challenges and possible fracture in Europe. And what worries me is that, I mean, you're somebody who knows about international affairs. I think the big problem

that you face is that the world in 2016 is very different to the world today. So there were people, including Rishi and some of the things that some things you said at the time, which said, you know, the European economies are growing slowly and here are this huge growth in China, huge growth in India. So what we need to do is we need to integrate more with those economies, more free trade, but that it can be better from this in Europe. And then the world changed. The world changed in two ways. We had a war in Russia and Ukraine. We become more aware that China is a national

security threat, so we're trying to de-risk and decouple. And the world moves away from free trade towards increasing protectionism. At that point, this whole calculation becomes very difficult. And we begin to see that there might have been national security and trade benefits are staying close to Europe rather than bedding the house on a shift towards the Pacific, which now looks much more risky. So I think the national security element to this will remain where we are core and front and center to the European security. You see it in Ukraine, without going into too many details, but we play a leading role,

a coordinating role in the effort to protect Europe. But I'm talking about the way in which now security ties into economic derisking and decouper. You know, every board is now, how do we get out of China? 2016, you guys were all about how do we get into China? And I don't disagree with you. But of course, ultimately, there are risks associated with any decision. I still think in the long term, if we have a government that looks at competitiveness beyond the G7, then I think we're in a good place.

You know, I spoke last night in the city of London, and I normally use my sort of opportunities there to almost run it like my own mini focus group. They're all doing well. You look at FinTech. What are they voting? Actually, and this is really something that you might want to take back, Alistair, to the team in the Labour Party. They're worried because they're hearing mixed messaging from Rachel at the moment. And I don't want to obviously turn this into a party political argument here. But there is a bit of a apprehension as to what could happen.

My biggest concern, I've got to tell you, and this is a cross-party, and I hope Rory agrees with me, is so few of my colleagues in Parliament have. actually got any real experience outside of the world of politics. It is now dominated by people who are either special advisors or work in unions and elsewhere. You can't say that about Keir. Coming through. Keir is actually, you know, as I say, is probably the exception to that. I just worry that very few people understand that entrepreneurs lose money before they make money.

So it's really hard to make money. You guys are a perfect example of a startup. You know, you didn't know where this thing is going to go with this. podcast. You had no idea. It could have been, you could be sweating here all day long, making nothing. No, we'd have given up for a week. You've been incredibly. Well, you look at what happened to Pierce Morgan, right? These things happen in business, right? And I just worry that the whole construct of Parliament and Parliament's democracy is so important that the quality of human being entering it is on the decline. 100%. That is what led to people like Johnson

Trust, I think, getting to the top. People who genuinely don't have the qualities that you need. I must bring up the old tax thing. You've mentioned tax a couple of time because, let's be frank, your career came to an end. It did. Because of the difficulties you got into of your own tax affairs. And I just wonder, back to Jeffrey Archer, the Barclays who you now work with, is there a part of you that just thinks, well, you know, you kind of do what you can get away with? No.

Because Dan Needle's stuff, I mean, I read Dan Needles, I know that name must trigger you. But Dan Needles is the tax lawyer who really took you on. And his account of it is a pretty grisly account of bullying lawyers and obfuscation and stories changing. And in the end you did end up paying back several million quid, which if you'd have paid up front, you'd probably still be here as a minister rather than as somebody to leave the parliament. One, you won't be surprised. Some of the stuff Dan needs to written is inaccurate and incorrect. But you haven't sued him. And, well, as I say, it's inaccurate and.

I genuinely don't want to go into the user right, who's wrong, I just want to get to how that happened, how you feel that happened to you. So from my perspective, I was dealing with HMRC on this. My real mistake was I was not specific enough on my ministerial declaration on the settlement I had reached with HMRC. And that was my mistake. And we own our mistakes ultimately. I should have been much more specific to say this was the settlement. They found that there's a category called Careless,

which is non-deliberate, but it still carries a fine with it. And I wasn't specific enough to say, by the way, there was a fine attached to this category, which then gave in many ways of issue no other choice but to say, I'm afraid, you weren't specific enough, although you've declared it.

Rory and I know this when you become a minister, you go before pet, and you say all these things. That was the real mistake. But the story is it developed? and particularly I think the kind of bullying lawyers and that sort of stuff, you must regret that because that was not a good look for a cabinet minister. So again, on that, when you are in the eye of the storm, and when I said to you, for example, Dan Needle was inaccurate,

he accused me of tax evasion. He accused me of, you know, an investigation to me by the SFO, or someone else, maybe not him, by the serious fraud office, which is completely untrue and alien to me. I was like, you're getting bombarded with these attacks. And then what happens is you put up your defences. When I reflect on it now, I think actually, you know, maybe I should have been up front and say, actually, by the way, yes, I have settled. My settlement is this and this is what happened.

That was my mistake. Can I sort of come towards an end with a sort of more positive thing? Tell us a little bit about what you learnt as a minister about the business of politics. What made you less good minister at the beginning, a better minister towards the end, two or three, three, three, three. things that you learn about what was different about being a minister from being a business man, for example? Really great question. And one of the things I'd like to do, I hope, in the future is, if I can convince all party

leaders to agree to this, is to be able to reform how Secretary of State are able to bring in additional talent to help, whether on a project basis or a more long-term basis. So the great lesson I learned, there's a couple. One was, we talked about earlier, which is, you know, actually transparency in open up data, it's the best way to reform complex systems, right, whether it's education or health elsewhere. The real challenge was, you know, if you want to bring talent into Whitehall, it's really hard. I wanted to bring Sir Peter Basiljet into the Department of Education. I thought it had some really good ideas around, you know, the creative industries. It took me with a really

supportive Permsec in Susan Ackland Hood. It took us 12 months to get him into the building. I was actually leaving the building to go to the Treasury, to become Chancellor, when he was then allowed to be a non-execist on the Department of Education's board. No serious human beings is going to wait 12 months to be told, you know, please come forward and bring your talents to help, you know, this country deliver better services. So one of the things I'd like to do is, if I can get cross-party support for this, is any Secretary of State should be able to bring in a Kate Bingham, you know, people from the private sector. who can contribute, you know, within, I know,

four to six weeks of vetting would be normal, and then you can bring them in. But I'd go a step further. At the moment, you can, but you have to make them a special advisor, right? Which means the reporting lines. I refer to most of my perm-sex as the CEOs, right? Because actually, as a secretary of state,

you're probably more like a chairman rather than a CEO. And all the sort of levers lie with the machinery of the civil service. What I'd like to be able to say, look, I'm going to bring in Rory Stewart, and he's going to do this job, but he'll have the same levers. as a director general, so that actually they can, you know, make decisions and stuff will happen in the machine. I think that will make a huge difference in outcomes, because if you can do that,

whether it's on large-scale infrastructure projects, on whatever the government's trying to achieve, then I think you'll deliver better outcomes. And Kate would be the first to admit. It wasn't just her. The magic of Kate is she then found five or six people who were brilliant, absolutely brilliant at understanding vaccine, vaccine manufacturing. And then you got a bit bruised by the machine. And then got brilliant machine. Can I just close up by going back to the, Rory skillfully moved you off when we were talking about the issue of how I was inside your head. Because I think you lost perspective there.

You said that you were trying for the young people not to lose perspective. Not the young people. I was trying for the 2019 intake. Yeah, but they probably thought Alice to come to some old has been. No, no. I tell you what you were able to do brilliantly is you fan the flames of the storm on Twitter. and on social media so brilliantly. But you just said that people weren't kidding about the church.

It's not in the world. That people just buckled, right? Because this thing to them became so big because you know how the ecosystem works, right? You fan it on social media, it gets into the mainstream media and keeps going. And you were brilliant. I was sitting at home thinking, God, I wish I had power. I wish I could do something here. And of course, when I was watching it, I was thinking, well, this is a bit awkward.

Because, of course, the person who's doing all this with him is me, right? your friend, right? So the one thing, so then I'm thinking, what's in Adam's head about me? Because I'm saying Boris Johnson is a terrible human being, he's a terrible prime minister, which is a far more affected than me saying it. So was there not a little bit of you thinking, wait to say, what the hell has happened to Rory? You know, he's lining up behind Alistair Campbell. No, because I, you and I go back far enough to know that you've always had your, you know, very strong opinions about Boris. And there are those in our party who will take a different view to me on Boris. And so that was sort of logical. I thought,

His genius was this man is probably one of the best communicators the country has. And he worked out that there was a moment in time, right, where social media was young enough and powerful enough to persuade a bunch of members of parliament who literally have not had the ability to be in the same building together, to panic. And I thought it was a genius, you know, musical.

Music to my ears. Incredible ability. I still think you're not. Hold on a second. Let me evidence it for you. You guys are smashing it out of the ballpark. Rory's head's big enough. What is the truth? Look at what's happening here, right? Yeah, but we both. You've been Nadine, we both feel like we're sort of effectively political eunuchs. We're out in the wilderness. I think you're being far too modest, honestly. Well, no, thank you. Thank you for your time. It's been great. I'm sorry it wasn't longer. So many things that we could. Yeah, we should get you back again and do a full thing on Iraq, actually, because I'd love to.

Well, Rory and I did two hours on Iraq a while back, and it's still one of our most listened to episodes. And I think actually to do, we should get you back in the future and just to Iraq. This man was amazing. For those who are listening, not watching, he's now pointing at Rory's tour. Because that short trip you refer to to Iraq as mini-envoys for the then prime minister, I watched him operate on the ground and his ability to just cut through and very quickly focus. because are people on the ground from the foreign office on what really mattered? What was material would be a positive outcome,

which is obviously the destruction of ISIS, ultimately. Those three short days, I think, in total, we had to get phenomenal. That's why your friend and hero, Boris Johnson, shouldn't have kicked him out at the Tory party, because you are lost. That I would agree with. I think maybe one day he'll be back with us. Thank you for joining us and thank you for all your time. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. Well, Anastair, what did you think of that? I mean, it's sort of strange, really, because he's a very, he is an interesting guy. There's no doubt about that. He's had an interesting career. It's pretty amazing. He didn't speak English to the age of, what, 10, 11 or something? No, I mean, clearly a very interesting backstory.

I mean, there is something a bit sort of, a bit kind of cavalier about it. Can I put it that way? Jeffrey Archer, the Barclays, still loves Boris Johnson. I mean, it's quite compelling. I didn't want to get the whole thing bogged down in some of the sort of scandals and what. have you, but he sort of feel he was a bit of a, maybe a scandal waiting to happen there? It's such a, he, so he joined with me. I loved, you know, he talks about our trip around Iraq together when we were traveling on behalf of David Cameron doing stuff after ISIS had taken Mosul.

And I really liked him. I felt this is a real human being. He's somebody I can go through a checkpoint with guys with guns. He'll be calm. He'll be relaxed. He can deal with the driver. He can sit presidents. He's somebody who had skills. A lot of MPs didn't have. He's a quite a worldly guy. And he's capable of being maybe less than an interview, but one-on-one, kind of funny, frank, engaging. But I cannot get over the Boris Johnson. I say simply still struggling to process. I remember when his kind of leadership ambitions collapsed, Natham's collapsed. And he had been on record explaining why he was not endorsing Boris Johnson. And he'd said to me in the week before, I made the mistake of going with Boris Johnson last time.

I'm not going to do it again. He's no good at this, that and the other. So I said to him, we were in the margins of today's studio. So come and join my leadership campaign. And sure enough, a few days later, he was again behind Boris Johnson. Yeah, yeah. And I got the feeling that if Johnson were to try to get back in, that Nadim Zahabee would be right alongside him.

Yeah, and this whole thing about the fact that he, I mean, the sort of big elephant in the room, which we didn't get into, is you're teasing him about him being out on television. television and radio day and day out saying it's Alastair Campbell, it's Alastair Campbell, it's Alastair Campbell. But the big problem with that is that he's not taking on board the possibility that Boris Johnson may have objectively been a catastrophic Prime Minister whose end had come. He's still telling himself, sorry, it's very flattering to you, but it's only a partial truth

that the only reason he came down is that Alistair Campbell was an able social media operator who convinced a bit of the 2019 intake. I mean, I just, I can't. Because he can't see the big picture. He can't see the broad thing that actually Johnson's net popularity ratings the country are catastrophic. No, but what he sees in the same way as Nadine Dory sees it and some of the media stills here, they see the Boris Johnson, parts of George Johnson that they want to see. And they don't see the things that the rest of the public who don't think he's a very attractive personality see now so clearly.

All the 56 ministers who resigned and who were just like, I can't put up. Do you remember those days? Half his entire ministers are like, I can't handle this man anymore, I'm leaving. And Natham's a Harvey still somehow believes it's a clever social media trip. But I think he's got this sort of attraction to that sort of character, which makes you think, well, you know, he's got something in himself that sort of is a little bit, what can I get away with? Anyway, Dan Niedl is going to think I'm a complete whip that I'd absolutely tear up to shreds over the taxes. I'd also like to thank Natham for coming on because it was just been a call by a barren and type. when a lot of conservatives have been reluctant to come on the show

and CCHQ seems to be, the Conservative Central Office, seems to be stopping them from coming. So thank you, Natham, for coming on and exposing yourself to our questioning. See you soon. See you soon. Bye-bye.