The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party

Episode Date: August 11, 2024

Does David Davis still think Brexit has been a success? Was he wrong on gay marriage and the death penalty? Is meritocracy in Britain now a thing of the past? Alastair and Rory are joined by former Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, Davis Davis, to discuss all this and more. 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 TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] Podcast Editor: Evan Green Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson 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 restispolities.com. Welcome to the Restis Politics leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell.

And we're here with, I think it's fair to say, one of the great survivors of modern British politics. I'm going to my next art attack. Yeah, and we should thank him for the fact that he went to the wrong address and he sprinted to be here on time. And as he said, he's 75 years old, just sprinted 300 yards at a remarkable speed. It doesn't look 75.

No, no, no. So David Davis, MP, a lot of ups and dines in his career. Rory loves a good backstory, and you've got a good backstory, which will come on to. But it is quite remarkable that you've kind of come through with 10 leaders of your party,

almost became one yourself, until that pesky old Etonian David Cameron came along and wiped the floor with you. Careless on me. but also played a big role in the evolution of the Tory's position on Europe and indeed your own evolution on the position of Europe. And yet still with a smile on your face, which is kind of nearly always there, I think, you know, it's going to be interesting to find out about that backstory, but also about

where you think the Conservative Party and indeed Britain go now. So thank you for being here. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for coming. And can we please start with your childhood? I mean, what we've done recently on the show, we've interviewed a lot of the Labour cabinet. And many of them begin with a story of growing up in poverty. And basically often the implication is slightly that the Tories are a bunch of privileged out of touch people.

But that's not quite true with you, is it? My first memories of growing up are in a prefab. If you know what that is. I mean, generations now don't know. We've got several at the garden. Yeah, probably. with these tenants in them, no doubt. It's an sort of asbestos box that used to be made in factories in the Second World War

to put on place where a bomb had dropped, you know, just sort of raised the house and stick a prefab on it. And that's best of very good for your health. Spesestals is fine, as long as you don't drill into it and breathe it. Anyway, the, as such, it's a bloody health and safety culture already. Anyway, I was brought up on my grandparents because my mother had me, she was a single mom. In those days, it was sort of a stigma. I'm interesting. Can I just stop you on that?

Because in fact, actually, quite a lot of the people we've been infuing, including... Bridget. Yeah, and Lisa Nandy was talking about the fact she had a single mum. And she is, you know, younger even than me, right? She was growing up in the 80s and felt there was huge stigma attached to being a single mum. And she blamed Mrs. Thatcher for it and said she became labour in a sense because the stigma against single mum. Unmitigated nonsense. I mean, it's been around forever.

I mean, the simple truth is that in the 50s, I mean, generally speaking, you were taken straight to an orphanage or adopted literally even before your mother saw you, right? It was really that fierce. And society's view of the mothers was barbaric, right? But my grandparents insisted on raising me. And when were they born? What was the generation are they? How could I reference it? I mean, my grandfather went to prison in the 30s.

And he went to prison because he refused to keep quiet. Basically, he'd had polio, so he couldn't work anyway. But he and one other guy had led a demonstration in North Shields to get an increase in the dull, in the unemployment benefit, because that was run by local authorities in those days, and they chose their own levels. And North Shields, this is all the time of the northeast of England, the Jarry. This is the 30s, the Great Depression, mass unemployment. And he's right up there on the edge of the shipbuilding areas of Newcastle. Well, yeah, North Shields is even worse than that in a way.

I mean, it was a really down, I mean, it was characterised in the 30s as a down-at-heeled place by the rest of the country. Anyway, he took his demo to the local authority. They refused to see him. So he did again. They went back to the beginning. They had another march, right? And they refused to see him again, so went back and had another march. And this is him marching with unemployed people.

There are thousands of people. Demanding jobs. Well, and actually demanding a better unemployment benefit because they were starving. You know, and there were various rules that said, for example, if anybody in a house. household worked. Nobody got any money, you know, and so on. And so he had podium. He wasn't working. His parents were from working class backgrounds as well. I think so. Don't really know much about that. I know his brother got shot in the face in the First World War. He was also unemployed. You know, he had half his face missing. His brain damaged. I mean, look, it was a gruesome.

I mean, somebody tells a story in one of the magazines in those days about North Shields. And they talk about people going down the fish dock, picking up fish from the ground that had been lost so they could eat. You know, that's, we have no countenance today. What poverty really means in those terms. And he was a communist. And he was a communist, yeah. He was a member of the National Unemployed Men's Movement, which actually, I think Orwell writes about in Wigan Pier, which used to go and protect these people if the bailiffs came and used to try and raise money for them and so on.

Anyway, that was him. And on their third, their third demo, of the morning or the day, the chief of police comes up. He says, Walter, that's his name, Walter Harrison. He said, Walter says, you realize if this gets violent, you will be responsible. And my grandfather laughs and says,

oh, you know me better than that, Chief Inspector. And at that point, the police batten charged the crowd. So there's something. Tory laughs at police brutality. Something. You know, I just thought just the conjunction of the conversation. And he said, all right, okay. You've taken responsibility for it.

Now we can, you know. I'm going to beat you. And lots of fighting and quite a lot of people end up in Dock the next day, including McGandad and his partner. And this is Judge Goddard. The man who was the member of his Lord Justice Goddard was responsible for the last capital punishment in the UK, that one, right? So he's not a softie, right, in any sense of the word.

This is early on in his career. And at the end of the trial, he says to my, I mean, I have to paraphrase, I don't know the exact words. He says to my grandfather and his party, he says, you two gentlemen are clearly just trying to help your fellow man. So if you are willing to be bound over to keep the peace, by which I mean not make inflammatory speeches,

then I will simply do that, bind you over, and that'll be it. Otherwise, I'll have to send you to prison. And my granddad says, I'm not going to make a promise I can't keep. So he goes to prison for six months. Do you know where you're kind of, what's the word, libertarian street.

I thought you were going to say cussetness. No, no, no. I think this sort of, I mean, even though you can sort of laugh about it now, you must sort of, one, I suspect you have massive respect for that, but secondly, it sort of, I think it does explain something about you, actually.

Well, I don't know. I mean, who knows? I mean, the, I know he was more responsible for my early education than the education system was, because I didn't read till I was seven. I was quite late reader. Partly, I think,

there's a disruption of living there then go to Catholic school, then get thrown out of that, and all sorts of things. But anyway, so, you know, and I can remember him quoting me the Rubayat of Oma Kayam. I can remember him also doggerel of all sorts, you know, sort of various things. But also, I don't know, I mean, for example, I don't know why this sticks in my mind, but a charity collector comes to the door, much more common in those days, collecting for one charity or another, and he goes, and bear my he's unemployed himself. And looking after a grandson.

And looking after a grandson. I'm looking after that's... He goes and gives him a shilling, 5p in today's parlance. He comes back, and I remember him muttering about saying, it should be done by the state, I shouldn't have to pay that. That was, you know, that was then. So something obviously percolated in. What it was, I don't know, you know,

but you're right, the whole family admires what you did. You went to prison twice. The other time for chaining himself, the ratings is number 10. He got closer than I did, obviously. But when did he change? He gave self to Renewson, I'm 10 late Thursdays. After a March. I mean, at one point, I thought it was the Jarrah Marches.

Then I looked it all up and it can't have been because the Communists weren't allowed on Jarrah March. But there were lots of marches. And actually the Jarrah Marsh, people don't realize it was the respectable one. When the Jarimarch got to Leeds, I think it was. The Yorkshire Conservative posters, it was known then, had a banquet for them. So your grandfather was much more radical than that? Much more, oh, yeah, completely.

So he's right on the far left of politics and you end up, let's say, not on the far left. On the far right. Yeah, that's right. I'm not going to say far right. People like him call me far right. Yeah, not far right. But David, so by the time you've got to know him, that's now in the past because you've been born 10, 15 years after these events.

And actually he's blacklisted at that point. You'll understand that. Tell us, tell us about blacklisting, but also tell us what he was like as a man, what he and your grandmother were like. He was blacklisted. In those days, employers would run a blacklist between themselves. So somebody had been an activist. So he's also an activist in the Coalfields during the war.

And a communist party member. So for all those reasons, he was blacklisted. And so he couldn't get a job. I think he eventually got a job. Clifford's Tower, the castle in York, selling tickets. And this is a man self-educated, but a man of formidable intellectual capacity. I mean, it makes me look like a dwarf. I mean, really sort of absolute formidable intellectual capacity.

And incredibly charismatic. He was a brilliant speaker. Could command crowds. And indeed, if you read the newspapers, he's such a figure in my first. family that one of my uncles, who I never knew for a long time, actually collected all of the writings about him and all of the local paper things and so on. So that's how I know about a lot of it. And they write about him, not awestruck, the wrong word, but very respectful terms. But by the time you knew him, you're a young boy. And did he seem quite old and frail to you?

Was he still quite young and vigorous when you knew him and when he were growing up? I don't, I just remember him as commanding. As I say, charismatic. I never thought. I mean, remember, if it's the first family you grow up in, that's normal by definition. If he had four arms, it would have been normal to my mind, right? But he was also very insightful. I remember many years later, I left home in a violent encounter with my stepfather. How old were you then? Just tell us a little bit about that, sir.

That was 18, 19. It was a day I took my hay levels. Stupid me. Day before I took my hay levels, I walked down the house. And why did you have violent confrontation in your stepfather? Well, this is interesting. This is why my grandfather's in. start on this. Afterwards, he talked about it. He said, David, he said, you have to understand

that you are the other man in your mother's life to your stepfather. That's how he sees you. You are the representative of the other man, you know. So every success you have is a rebuff to him. And who was the stepfather? His name was Ronald Davis. He was a working class man, semi-skilled. He's mostly a shop steward's father of the chapel when he died. When he died, I mean, his death was like his funeral. It was like a mafia funeral. 300 people turned up. We'll come in one to shake my hand.

And where was your dad? Your biological father? He lived in Wales. He was married, as it turned out, when he met my mother and had their affair. She didn't know that until afterwards. Did you have anything to do with him? I met him once. Probably an uncomfortable meeting for him, I suspect.

And what about for you? It's interesting, but no more than that. I only did it do the once. I didn't bother again. I didn't want to disrupt his family. You know, you know, you've got three or four other children. And David, so you had this, you did recently well, got your A-levels, had a violent confrontation with your stepfather. You then joined the territorial SAS, 21 SAS.

Is that because you were actually quite a sort of physical kid? I mean, what sort of sense do we have of you in your late teens? Pugnacious. Well, look, listen, it's working class South London's, a sense. society, for a start. It's a fairly no-nonsense society, should we say. Things are resolved quite quickly. So that's sort of how I grew up. That was the sort of the environment. I had a year to kill anyway. I need to raise money to get university because my parents weren't going to, in those days you had grants and you had a contribution that the parental contribution that was made.

And my parents wouldn't even fill in the form, so I couldn't get a grant, let alone get the parental contribution. That was never going to come. And so I thought, I've got to make some money. So it was a mixture. I always, I was laughing just, I was a mercenary. I did it for the bounty, the parachute, you know, you're 140 pounds. Sounds like nothing now. 140 pound parachute pound, tax-free parachute bounty. That was, that was half my annual grant or would have been if I'd had a grant, you know. So it was a mixture of, I wanted a parachute. I was interested. Nobody heard of them. You see, today everybody knows the SAS was nobody, nobody knew. And what do you remember about selection? What do you remember about the other characters who were there when you joined?

Funny enough, I had dinner with the remaining fall two nights ago at the special forces club. The, we have a meeter, we have it, we have what we call, I mean, sorry, this is a very bad taste. You're going to get all sorts of terrible comments on social media. We call ourselves the nuclear suicide bombers club, right? And the reason was our task was to jump in behind enemy lines, find the concentrations, the camps and so on, You remember that image of the traffic jam of tanks north of Kiev, try and make something like that happen by blowing a bridge or whatever, and then call in the weapons, which would probably be nuclear weapons, given that we would be losing by then, and run like hell,

but we didn't really expect to get out of it. I get the sense that the most significant character in your formation was this granddad, who's a communist. Your parents were Labor. So this is the question I asked most tories which Rory hates me asking, why on earth did you become a Tory? It was a sort of, its process took about two years, right?

And part, I mean, the army in part, we were learning about the Soviet Union, you know, and as a result, since I'm an assiduous lad, I also read lots of background data on the Soviet Union and didn't really like this extreme form of socialism, right? And I start to think about what made societies what they were. Mike. I did a bit of reading into the history of British background, and I came to the conclusion, actually, the most fundamental important thing about societies was the individual, not the state, the freedom of the individual, the rule of law, the institutional structure. a man called Landis, who wrote a book called The Wealth and Poverty of Nations.

And I'm grotesquely summarizing, but the outcome of that was really the most successful colonized nations were British colonized nations. Why? Because they took our institutions, whether it's India or Canada or Australia, whatever. They took our institutions, and indeed, for that matter, the United States. They took our institutions, our rule of law, our approach to things, our mindset. and that made them successful. So it was sort of a rather sort of theoretical thing.

And I was at Warwick University, which was a hotbed of student socialism and so on and demos. I led a demo on Biavara Rudy Dutsko. He was arrested by the German state for being two left wing, I think. And he was locked up and seemed to me that was inappropriate. So I led a demo, you know. You're always jumping in with left causes. It's like you and Shami on Shami Chakrabati on Civil Liberties.

It's like, as Rory was saying when we're chatting about you earlier, you have these, some of these weird combinations of positions that you took. Well, I just believe them was utterly logical. He's an establishment man. He doesn't require logic, you know. Just tradition. Exactly. You did PPE like Karen.

And I used to say to Cameron, you know, when I was teasing. I said, you know, what a Pee stands for, don't you? And he looks at me blankly. I said, piss poor economist. Although somebody the other day, and I was sitting next to an engineer, I've told that story, and he said, no, no, it stands with Pisspour, everything. But there is a serious point behind this badinage, and that is, a lot of people's politics is not remotely logical. It's by which pack you're in. You should know, but you're the best example.

You know, which pack you're a member of? Which team you're on? Which team you're on? No, you put it that way. But I prefer the biological, you know, it's a wolf pack. or whatever, you know. We should say for those who are listening, not watching, you were pointing at me not roar at. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. He's a lamb. You're a wolf. It's true. It's true. It's true. He has a wolf. And I sort of reject that.

I always try, I mean, let me give you the most recent example is Assange, right? Now, I don't approve of Julian Assange. I think I don't approve of many things he did. But that always in me triggers the first requirement. Am I applying the same standards, right? because many people will, if they don't like the person on receipt of an injustice, don't care, you know, or they care less, right? And one of my little internal triggers is, if I don't like the person, I've got to make very, very sure that what we're doing to them or with them is right. And so, Assange I don't like, but he wasn't a sort of cyber spy.

I mean, he didn't kill people, despite what they claimed the Americans. He just embarrassed the American government, as actually Joe Biden has now admitted. So, that's a classic case. And I was just applying the logic of, you know, what sort of approach should we take to somebody who's a sort of journalist, sort of blogger sort of thing. And that's what I try and do. And, of course, it does strike people as odd because it cuts across the pack mentalities. We was talking earlier about our conversation, right? When I was still working with Tate Nile.

Taiton Lyle for lessons, a big sugar company. Big a sugar company, yeah, that's right. And you still put three sugars in your tea. Three sugars. Is that as a homage to day a while? No, it's my addiction to white powder. This one's still legal until your lot. Yeah. Your commitment to big sugar is goes all the way.

All the way. It'd be like Ken Clark smoking 40 a day. But I said this story and I'd been to the city raising money for this. I struck how easy it was, right? I thought, I got 300 million in the morning. They just wandering around with one piece of paper. And I thought, God, these guys are sick. Talking about bankers.

Anyway, so I walked around. And at the time, the daily mirror. The daily mirror, yeah. Robert Maxwell had died. He'd asset stripped the pension fund, stolen money from the pension funds. Distinguished former Member of Parliament, Robert Maxwell. He was former Labor of Parliament. I was stressed this since we're on PACs.

He was that wolf pack. And he was standing looking a bit miserable. Actually, I don't know why, but he was still standing in a lobby. He missed. Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, I'm pointing at, Alison. I beg your pardon. And I thought, you know, and all my Tory friends, all my fellow MPs were delighted

about the demise of the mirror, right? Now, this offended my sense of propriety because I think there's always got to be at least two players in a game to work, you know. And so I thought, no, we don't want to. We don't have to die. It's important to keep it. Now, I said, I went up to him. And I said, could you run the mirror?

And he said, of course I could. And I said, no, no, no, Alice, I don't mean write a 30-page person. polemic. I know you can do that. Every day. I said, could you actually run it to get more customers? And he obviously realized I suddenly, I was talking. He said, he thought for a saying, he said, yeah, I could.

I said, well, why don't I buy it for you? And I'll chair it and you can run it. Okay? And he sort of looked at me completely perplexed. I said, look, the ball's in your court. If you want to do it, I'll fix it. And then two weeks later, I think Blair employed him. So history went

one way rather than another. But, you see, for me, that was just logical. It didn't matter he's a obvious labor supporter. It didn't matter that, you know, it was a logical protection of an institution which mattered. David, on the contradictory side, there have been times in your life when you've made statements in favor of the death penalty. You've had different views on gay marriage. Tell us about those more conservative positions. Well, the death penalty was always a theoretical position.

What I always said was, look, what's wrong with the death penalty is that you get the wrong person, that you, that you, that you, that you execute somebody and then find out afterwards that you made a mistake. And the British judiciary are a lot less, they're a lot more fallible than we like to kid ourselves. I mean, the whole judicial system is not more fallible. So my point was a moral one. If it's right for Obama to sit down every Thursday morning and sign off a dozen people to be killed by drone, possibly surrounded by their family or a wedding party or whatever, if we think that's right, then the people who think that's right,

to say, well, if you could actually be sure of your conviction, and there ways possibly are doing that, then it's logical. That was it. So logically, you thought if you could get the right person they were guilty, you'd be happy to have a murderer killed. Yes, that's it. And then you, I mean, obviously, I profoundly disagree with you, but that's not where we're going. But I was making, the point I was trying to make very badly, because of course, what happens is the media grab the headline, Davis in favor of the pet, definitely, and pay no attention to the sort of PhD thesis behind it. But there you go.

Sure, sure. Tell us a little bit about then your views historically, your views on abortion, on gay marriage, and these kind of issues. Well, let's deal with gay marriage because it's the most contentious one. And the irony, people tease me. I mean, I've got a lot of gay friends. They tease me.

You said, but you gave the speech at one of the first gay marriages, which I did. My point there was more about people who believe homosexuality. here's a mortal sin, in which you would find a large number of priests. And we're saying to them, you have to carry out this service. We're not actually saying that, are we? Because it was civil. We did an effect.

Because it's a civil service. Nobody's compelling a priest to take it to say. Look at the number of priests and no longer priests. I'm sorry, that's not right. I mean, at the time I raised the issue, nobody was interested. I mean, people... Wait, wait, wait, David, let me push back on this, because I was passionately in favour of this gay marriage thing. And it's about the separation of church and state.

What I said to the church and the priests is if you don't want to marry them, it's up to you. That's up to the church. All we're doing is in, no, we don't control the church. In law, this is a marriage and it's a civil marriage. That isn't the law. If you carry out marriages, you carry out marriages. And that's that, I'm afraid. So again, you're just being kind of bit contrarian.

What I try and do is if a case is unpopular, for, and very often it's because it's overgeneralized. This is a very good case in point. It's overgeneralized. People just say, oh, well, I know what I want. I forget all the details. Parliament's there to make sure the details are right. That if you do that, you've got protection for somebody who refuses to carry out a particular institutional thing like a marriage.

And so, contrarian may be, it's more I just don't, I don't, I don't. Listen, I don't think my profession is very brave, right? And so I try not to allow myself to flinch if it gets difficult. I try, I don't know. I'm not always successful, but I try not to. David, it's a very much way of putting it, but another way of putting it is that you were wrong. I mean, history's past you by. No, that's just you and the establishment thinking I'm wrong.

It's normal. I'm used to that, Laurie. Basically, no, it's not a music establishment. It's most of the British population, David, now recognises that game, marriage was the correct thing to do. The support that you would have had 30 years ago for that has vanished. There are vanishingly few people now left in Britain who would want to reverse that. It's done. I mean, the damage is done. It was done in the first year. But you still see as damage. What was the great damage, what was the damage?

To people who, you know, have that faith, no longer can carry out a marriage, you know, and that's that. It's got me. Do you mean they can't carry a marriage? They can continue to marriage. Go back and look. Go back and look. It's not the case. Anyway, there are. And David, do you ever admit you're wrong on another thing? Oh, never, never. What have you been wrong on? What I've been wrong on? What I've been wrong on?

Because actually, I think on the death penalty, you're getting towards saying you were wrong and you regret it. No, no, no, no, no. I mean, I made the point. Oh, no, look, you sort of make it sounds like I campaigned for death penalty. I didn't. I said, look, this is not logical, what you're arguing. But all these explanations make me sound as though you're less comfortable with that position than you were.

No. No. Okay, so what have you changed your mind on that? Well, let me give you an example of where you're wrong. Yeah, go on. Brexit. Oh, yeah, of course. I knew that. Come up. You too. I mean, this is the pro-Brexit station.

You said that we would have within two years a free trade area massively bigger than the EU. Yeah, well, I was wrong about that. Let me see you was wrong. But you did have a very, I knew you, I've known you since you're an MP in 1980. Pretty much, yeah. So you've gone through your own evolution on Europe. Because you'd been minister for Europe under John Major, and because you were quite good at the kind of, you know, the politics of that,

I think people had a sense of you being quite pro-European, certainly not a skeptic in the way that we saw Bill Cash or something like that. And then you became quite a prominent figure within the Brexit campaign. But unlike some of the others, you haven't allowed yourself to be kind of defined by that. No, well, firstly, I don't think it's the most important thing that's happened in the last five years. Oh, seriously? Yeah, well, the pandemic, there's Ukraine, there's all sorts of things.

You don't think Brexit is the most lasting change. Let me finish the thing. But the other thing is, of course, what you're talking about is, again, an illusion. In the early major days, the big issue was the Maastricht Treaty. Right. And the House of Commons before the 92 election has sort of signed off. the Master Treaty pretty much unanimously, including the billed cashes the world, right? Okay.

And then when we came back, they did the same again. And I was a whip. And then we started to have a real problem. The party's approach to it unpicked in a big way. Sometimes for quite reasonable reasons, but sometimes I think just because people fell out with the government. And I was whip. And I took the view, well, look, the government's decided this has been elected on this

in 92, and it needs to be delivered. And people deduced from the fact that I was effectively the person who delivered the Mastery Treaty in Parliament that somehow I was a great enthusiast for it. And I never was. I thought there were lots of flaws in it. But, you know, that was the decision and it was done. And indeed, when Major made me a Europe minister, I mean, I'm afraid I can't say on a public channel quite what the expletive was, but I said you must be blank,

blank joking, you know. And he said, no, no, no, I want you to do it. And literally, I was one of those horrible people who stalled the entire reshuffle for two hours while he tried to find somebody else that Douglas Herd would accept. And Douglas Herd refused a number of other ministers of state before insisting and I gave in. I done, did the job. And what were your doubts and what was Douglas Heard's insistence about? Well, because my view was that I was not at all sure about,

the political dimension of single market. I mean, the economic dimensions are fine, as far as they went. But the political dimension of single market I was not sure about. And it was just a hunch. There were no facts behind it at this point. But it was a hunch that was sort of proven right later. And that is that the single market became less and less important in the world at large. I mean, it cast your mind back in 95.

We had a spectacular improvement in world trade arrangements. lower tariffs and so on. It's probably the biggest, the most important thing that's happened in the modern history of the world. One and a half billion people came out of poverty, mostly in Asia, came out of absolute poverty, starvation type poverty, off the back of the world trade development, right? And as a result, a side effect of this, it may be by comparison a trivial side effect. from 72 until 95, our market share, the UK market share in Europe, had basically doubled from about 4% to about 8%.

From 95 until 2016, you halved again. Now, that's actually quite a healthy thing because the world was opening up and the common external tariff barrier was one of the things that came down. But one of the problems was, was what Europe did was replace the common external tariff barrier with regulatory barriers. and I don't approve of that. I think that's a bad thing. And I think it's going to kill Europe in the longer run. And those regulatory barriers are trying to ensure that standards. That's what they say, but I actually served for five years as a Europe minister,

and I watched them being made. I remember having an extra, I mean, I got on very well with quite a lot of my, well, all my colleagues, pretty much, one exception, my fellow Europe ministers. And I remember having a really quite sharp exchange with the Germans. He was a liberal, German liberal, i.e. free trader, right? And great pals. He was a tornado pilot in his reserve activities. And then the Germans blocked the import of cut flowers, I think, from Morocco.

I think it was something like that. And I just sent a little tech note around the table, because we all sit at this great table. And again, I can't say, WTF. What are you doing? know, and he sent back an apology note, you know. And that classic, every single blasted regulatory structure was not about protecting you from dying from sugar poisoning, so he holding up his cup, but to protect a piece of Europe.

And that's the driving force. And the way Europe is organized with big corporate structures, I mean, the corporates all had big presences in Brussels, as you know. I mean, the drive from the airport to the centre is nothing but big corporate signs. and it's the corporates are driving. It's not even a remotely democratic organisation we've never set up to me. All right, let's take a quick break. We'll be back in a minute.

Hi, everybody. It's Dominic Samarach here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics when Rory was away and I was filling in and enjoying Alistair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Restis History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s,

a period with a lot of uncanny resemblance. to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise. People are arguing about Europe. The government has got a few issues with the trade unions. And we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain,

and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we're looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and 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 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. On Brexit, I don't know if you remember this, on the night of the referendum, as the results came in, you and I were both ITV,

and I was in the studio with Liam Fox when, I think it was Julietchingham, announced that it's now past the point at which Remain cannot win. And I walked out of the studio with Liam Fox, and you were waiting to go on. And Liam Fox said to you something along the lines of, We did it.

And you said, what do we do now? I don't know that, but go on. And I said, problem is, neither of you have a effing clue what you do now. So what's your take on it now? I mean, you can't pretend it's gone well, can you? A bit, but go on. It's not as good as it should have been. But go on.

And you had a kind of central role at one point because you were Secretary of State for exten the European Union for two years. you had that famous photograph with Michel Barnier. We talked to him about it, by the way. He gave you more credit than you got. Oh, yeah. Well, it was a fix. But go on, yeah. Anyway, so...

As he knows. He well... Michel knows that as well. Anyway, so first of all, your general take on how it's gone. Secondly, the deal that's finally been struck, would you accept as a very bad deal with the UK? And thirdly, how do we fix it? All right.

Point one. I mean, I can't remember the phrase, but I can guess what I was thinking, because on the night, because the previous three months I've been to see George three times, George Osborne, right? And the first time I went to see him,

I said, George, you're not winning this because it was quite a fierce battle going on. And I said, you're not winning this. I've been out in the country. I mean, I wasn't part of the formal Gove run operation. I just did my own debates and so on around the place. So there was Boris Johnson campaigning eventually. There was Gove campaigns, Dominic Cummings campaigning.

And there were bits of it. I mean, if you want me to tell you something that was wrong, I thought the side of the bus stuff was ridiculous. And a number of us refused to use the $350 million number because we just thought it was misleading. It's not a straight lie, but it was bloody misleading. Anyway, I went to see him and I said, you're going to lose? He said, no, we're not.

I said, yes, you are. And as you do, I just plucked a number out the air, right? I said, you're going to lose. It's not a big number. It's going to be something like 52, 48, you know. And I had literally done that, you know, just plucked a number. number at the hours. But I wanted to

sort of make it crystallize his mind. And then the end of meeting. I went back about one month ago, thereabouts or six weeks ago, same conversation. I said, George, and this is where I think I might have been thinking about

on that night, George, you're going to have to decide what you do if you lose. How are you going to do it? You can't negotiate it. Cameron can't negotiate it you're going to have to give somebody pretty much absolute power to do a negotiation and why can't they negotiate it?

Because they've been saying all the arguments that they have been making would be played back to them in the negotiation Cameron had already failed let me finish I've done more European negotiations probably anybody in the world not over Brexit but prior to that

and Cameron had done a terrible job of the attempted renegotiation of the immigration. Indeed, that's probably what was the mother and father of Brexit, was actually that poor prior negotiation. If he got that right, there probably wouldn't have been even been a referendum, and if he had, he would have won it. But I said, you know, you're not going to be to do it. Somebody else, you could have to give somebody else a power. You don't go for whoever it is. I wasn't thinking me. I was thinking because I wasn't completely outside that gilded circle. And he said, well, maybe we'll have to go. And I said, no,

that's the wrong response. You'll need stability at home while you're doing this because it won't be a straightforward negotiation because the French were already shaping up to be antagonistic, as I'd put him gently. And then I had the same conversation again about two weeks before the outcome. And I reran my number plucked out of the air, which now would look magical to him, but it was just a guess. And again, he reiterated, well, maybe maybe, maybe, we'll have to go. And that's probably what was in my mind at the time. So what was the second other question? Yeah, just to, because I think the one of the things you're about to say, because I've heard you say it before, is it could have all been done much better. There's nothing wrong with

Brexit. The problem was the way it's implemented. That's why I resign. Yeah. That's precisely why resigned. But it isn't just saying I acted at that point. Many, many of the, many of the arguments that you and other Brexit supporters make seem to me, in retrospect, politically naive. It was, obvious, I think, that many of the things that went wrong were likely to go wrong. Betting the country on a path where everything's going to go right, where you're going to land exactly the right kind of Brexit, given the realities, the Tory party, Cameron, Theresa May, all this stuff is being overly optimistic. The chances are when you trigger something like that, it's going to be messy and nasty.

Well, no, it might be. I mean, look, whichever way you go you're betting, you know, staying in is a bet as much as leaving is a bet. Sure. All right. And staying in, I mean, one of the issues here is we're doing better in aggregate economic terms on technology investment than everybody in Europe put together. We're doing better in growth terms in Germany, France, Italy. We're doing better in export terms than we've ever done before in total terms. Where's the million unemployed that was supposed to be coming? That was, sorry, that was a CBI bet. The Treasury Forecast. was 800,000, but where's all that? It's rubbish, right? Now, you know, so both sides made mistakes in this argument. No two ways about that.

I thought, I hope both sides would see that. But the, the catastrophic collapse hasn't happened. That's not, that's what I'm saying, but I'm not... No, no, no, but I'm making a point to you. You said... I still think it was a catastrophic decision. No, well, you do, I don't. I mean, and, you know, we can, we can talk numbers till the cows come home and bore your

your listeners and viewers to tears if you want, but... But, you know, because, unfortunately, I'm... Despite myself, I'm expert in these bloody things. The simple truth is, whichever way you went was a bet. Let me interrupt something. I think your biggest mistake was you bet on a world of free trade at a moment when the world was becoming protectionist. You launched this in 2016, and it was all about big markets in China, US, India,

Europe's not growing quickly, these other places are growing quickly. And you entered a world in which Trump was throwing up tariff barriers. The US have now got 110% tariffs on Chinese vehicles. Trump is going to come in if he comes in November with 60% tariffs on China, 10% tariffs on the rest of the world. We're in a world where Modi, Xi Jinping, all these major economies are not the dream of the 80s and early 90s of free trade. It's a protectionist world. And we're in a very exposed position. The hard truth, the hard truth is none of it is as bad as it was before 95, firstly.

I mean, you go back. But it's reversing dramatically. Wait a minute. Go back and look, right? There is a different issue, which I think you've got a point on. but it's over and above Brexit, right? But in terms of free trade, still the Pacific is going to be a faster growing entity than Europe will ever be ever again in our lifetime. I'm not saying it's not growing fast.

What I'm saying is that unfortunately we've ended. No, what matters to us is yes growth. All right. But also the question of how much. So why are our manufacturing, of course, as high as they've ever been? How much of this can we access? And it's not just protectionism. It's also that international security is changing.

There are other reasons why opening up to China doesn't look as much smarter. It's not an advantage to that. Listen, on international security, I'm afraid, Europe trying to interpose itself as a sort of second NATO is a bad idea, an absolutely bad idea. And it's not a bad idea if Trump comes back and J.D. Vance comes back. NATO itself is a better entity for that. I'm afraid.

It really is. The point I'm making is that we're decoupling, risking from places like China because of international security. No, no, well, we are, well, we should be. No, no, no, yeah, so you're replacing wish with, with actuality with wish. Well, the whole world is decoupling. Where are you going to, de-risking from China? Really?

How are they decoupling? How are they decoupling? I've just told you. The United States is about to put 60% tariffs in place against China. How are they decoupling? Do you have a computer? 60% tariffs against China. Do you have a computer?

Yes, I have a computer. You know, right? The graphics chips in it will come from Taiwan. There is nowhere else in the world they come from. So you're not decoupling that. You're not decoupling your electronics at all. Nobody's putting tariff virus against Taiwan. They're putting tariffuras against China. No, but that's where it comes from. Most of our trade is with Taiwan. That's the first thing to know about this. Secondly, of course there is an issue there in terms of dealing with free trade in a security challenge world. That is an absolute truth. And no one would go around. And it's not one that she talks about in 2016.

If you think being inside the European Union with our hands fettered is a better way of dealing with that, I'd like to take you back to the 90s when I've tried to do it. I want to come back to your kind of journey through the Tory party. Because I wrote down this morning a list. So you've gone through, not you personally, but the Tory party has gone through. Thatcher, Major, Hague, in Duncan Smith, Howard, Cameron, May Johnson, Truss, Sunak. who was the best, who was the worst? Thatcher was the best by a long margin.

And the worst? Well, trust. But, yeah, trust, I guess. Who was making you pause? Well, I was pausing whether you counted trust in the league at all, really. I know. She was prime minutes to five minutes. But I mean.

Lose your runner up on both? I mean, there's such a gap between the Thash and the rest. It's really hard to give a runner. Really? Yeah. This is interesting, I think, in the context, Rory and I were just talking about, because you see,

1975 is the last time I can remember the world being so chancy as it is now. Because Rory is right about the security trade interface. That's really important. But we've got that. We've got domestic problems, health service in particular. I mean, West Street, I think, is a good man.

But I think you'll see. still struggle. We've got just so many challenges, right? And the last time we were in this position like this was when we dropped Ted Heath and replaced as a leader of the party with Margaret Thatcher. At the time, it looked like a very long shot. I was a student leader. I'd known her when she was education secretary and I'd been the leader of conservative students in the country. And I was one of these people Always argued with her She always picked a fight with me

And I never really knew why But nevertheless that was That was the side of affection I think on her part And we wondered Whether we made a terrible mistake More than once But she set about

These spectacular Strategic aims With incredible tactical caution Something I think Blair copied In a way You know And she sort of salami Sliced every problem

To divide it down deal with it very analytically. She would very often dismiss the conventional wisdom altogether, the sort of what I talk about views as the establishment wisdom, but she dismissed that and to start from fundamental principles.

So she was an order of magnitude different in her approach, in her analytical capacity, in her methods. If you had to go and see her about something which was in any way controversial, even if she agreed with you, Ian Gow said to me,

once explaining when I was about to go and see her and go through this process. My boy, you have to know your arguments, you have to know the footnotes to your arguments, and you have to know the footnotes to your arguments, and if you don't, there'll be a pair of tire tracks across you, and she'd be gone, and it was exactly right. And that's how she assessed policies. It's also how she assessed personalities. Why her cabinet was full of what other sort of as left-wing people like Waldegrave and pattern, both patterns, and so on. It was because they stood up to her. And, of course, if we go back to the point where you

almost became leader, when David Cameron followed. 2005, yeah. Michael Howard. Why do you think you lost that and why do you think he won? A mixture of things. I made a bad speech. Had a conference. Yeah, that was the sort of nub of it, but it wasn't the only part.

I mean, the system didn't want me. It's very simple, you know, and there were lots of handicaps long away. But there we are. Why did the system not want you? I don't really know, but I mean, I've had a number of people come to me out as oh, well, so-and-so, this funder, whatever, told me not to support you and so on. I mean, I wasn't aware at the time.

I just, you know, blithely plowed on. You'd been in the lead. You were the favourite. Yeah. You had a lot of votes amongst members of parliament, and suddenly the whole thing kind of collapsed in a few days. And Cameron had started with something like five or six supporters, I mean, a tiny number, and somehow come roaring through.

What would it have been like if you'd be in prime minister? What would a David Davis premiership have been? What would you have done with the country? I shock you. But tell us, or imagine you became Prime Minister in three years' time. What would you be doing in the country? Well, I'd shoot myself. I wouldn't know.

I'm not interested in doing it at this point in time. What would be different? Probably less than you think. More worry about meritocracy. I mean, I think one of the great tragedies of modern times is I grew up in an era when meritocracy was at its maximum in this country. I mean, we had the middle class was growing like. Matt's opportunities were growing. The schooling system with grammar schools meant a large number.

So many kids go to grammar school, a large number of working class. And that now, today, irrespective of government, by time to get to 11, 35% of children, their English and their maths are not good enough to make progress. So in essence, the state has failed them by the time they're 11 years old. If you take that number for free school meal kids, i.e. the poorest desal of the population, that's 50%. That is a scandal on the grounds question. To me, anyway. And why did Labour not fix it under Blair?

I think we did. I think we made massive progress on those issues under Labour. Not in that number. Not in the number I was given you. It's stayed much, it's got slowly worse over the years, you know. I don't really know. So you're saying you to put education at the heart of a... David's coming in the way.

I'm just saying, look, social mobility, meritocracy, if you like, as in my view, faded. over the years. It's not got better in Britain since. And that's not the story that Britain tells itself. That's not the story Britain tells itself. I mean, no, the little, what happens is governments pick out little pieces that suit them, all right? And they're often legitimate. So, for example, the last government will reasonably point to reading standards, right? Why do they do that? Because they introduce phonics,

Gid, junior minister, probably made the bigger difference as any ministering in government the last decade, by just introducing phonics. But that's one piece of the puzzle. It hasn't solved the overall problem. And I think now we're actually at a time where we could do something about that. I mean, the new government's talking about using AI much more, right?

Schools, you know, you can easily introduce the system whereby kids get taught absolutely to their own capability. What tends to happen today is the bottom 20%, 30%, 40% fall off the bottom because the teacher's got to teach to a centre somewhere. It'll teach to the ones that are in the IQ 100 group, if you like, you use an old-fashioned measure. And you could actually change, completely transform the classroom. And that would deal with my problem that I've just talked about, but it also would deal

with the young David Davis sitting in physics reading a novel because physics is too easy and he should have done it two years earlier, whatever. So, you know, it's, it's, it's, that would be one area I'll be, I'll be very keen on. David, let's come back. It's bigger than just education. Let's come back. So give us your pitch to be prime minister. What would have been efficient?

Let's be clear. I don't want to be prime minister. Okay. You did want to be prime minister in, so you ran to be leader in 2005. You could have been primacy in 2010. You wanted to admit a mistake. There we are. That was a mistake.

You ran to be leader in 2005. Could have been prime minister in 2010. What would you have done with the country? What's your vision of what you would have, different to what David I take an meritocratic issue head on. Internationally, I would have been, I would have, I would, I don't like foreign wars generally. They don't like wars, and foreign wars automatic, that's tortological. But I didn't approve the Iraq war, as you know.

I didn't approve of what we did in Libya. I actually campaigned to stop as bombing Syria. Not because I think I like the Syrian regime, it's a horrible regime, but we're just going to kill 300 conscripts for no purpose, you know. So there'd be a very different approach on that. front, I'd be a bit more assertive with America. I mean, we have tended historically to behave like a colony, frankly. The most recent example, Assange, the extradition treaty, things like that. At home, I would tend to be a low-tax Tory, but a balanced books low-tax tory, not a speculative low-tax Tory. You know, that's a sort of picture, but, you know, I haven't thought about

this for decades. And this picture, so anti-establishment, you talk a lot about the establishment, don't like the establishment, anti-establishment. Well, I think with respect, Rory. Don't you think I'm part of the establishment? We've done this. No, no, no. But, you know, but we've had a couple of prime ministers. We've been Newtonians, Oxbridge, you know.

And truth be told, I mean, Cameron was okay domestically. I think it was a disaster internationally. But David, we don't disagree on this. You have a weird picture that somehow I'm like Cameron. No, no, no. You're all part of the same class. You're all part of the same class. You're going on to the second.

And the other old Ettonian? was Boris. And him? Well, don't you remember the phrase in the name of God go? I mean, you know, I wanted rid of him because I just thought he was morally not up to the job. Let's put it that way. So let's Luke better say. I don't want to get pulled on this.

No, no, no. You enjoy this idea. I'm just teasing you. Go on, go on. It's dark. Listen, I work with other members who are all the time. David, it's staffed. I mean, it's completely daft.

I, unlike you, left the Conservative Party because of Boris. Yeah. Right. This idea that somehow I'm part of that is ridiculous, right? And I disagree with David Cameron profoundly. And these kind of things. I'm winding you up. Come on. Successfully. Successfully, because I think it's daft in this particular view. But anyway, you're anti-establishment. You're very suspicious of foreign wars and foreign engagements. You're in favor of low taxes. You're in favor of Brexit and leaving the European Union. Some of this seems to echo with a whole trend in politics, which, which is a form of gentle populism, no? Well, what we've got at the moment is a mixture of unpopular populism, partially popular populism. No, this is the last thing.

I mean, who was it? I try to think who it was. Oh, yes, it was Jonathan Dimbleby. I was talking to about assisted dying. He was one of his big campaigns. I basically persuaded me that he had a point, really. And I said to him somebody had written to me saying 80% of your constituents think,

And he roared with laugh. He said, you're the last person in the world to pay attention to that line of argument. And it's broadly true. I don't pay attention to that line of argument. Populists who are populists because they think it's going to be popular are a disaster, generally. They go down the Pugetist route. I don't need to explain to you that. We've got a maximum of about 30% of the population ever support some horrific sort of simplification.

So, no, it's not populace. Occasionally, it touches on things that people agree. with, but it's not popular. And why do you think Donald Trump is in such a strong position? Why do you think he's in a poll position to potentially win in the United States? Well, because he does make simple calls, but I think it's a bit like the last election. I think it's a rejection of what's already there, that it hasn't worked for people for whatever reason.

And at the end of the day, democracy is more often than not about what's right for you and your family, right? And if you and your family are suffering, got a bad job, paying too much taxes, can't afford to pay the bills, can't get a place in hospital, your kids can't buy a house, I'm talking British things rather than American things, but all those things tend to make you reject what's there and then go to whatever else is there which seems to meet it. And it's very easy to talk about the answer, as you know, but you both know, it's a thousand times easier to talk about the answers and to deliver the answers. And that's where populists have a short-term advantage

until the moment they get power. My final question, thanks for coming in and thanks all your time. Where do you think the Tory Party should go now and where do you think it will go now? Well, I think it should take some time doing a lot of rethinking. I mean, you will remember, better than anybody, the first couple of years in opposition,

in a way, or a sort of waste of time for an opposition, trying to talk to the public because they're not listening, you know. I think Peter Lilly said it, you know. when we lost in in 97, you know, the public would like not to hear of you for the next year or so. And we should use that time to think very hard about a whole range of policies, housing policy we haven't touched on. I think our housing policy has been weak or cowardly. I think the new Labour housing policy will crash into other issues because, ironically, it's unplanned.

know, I would go down a route of the post-war housing commissions and whatever, you know, Newtown commissions as well. You take time on that as well. Yeah, yeah. So those sorts of things, schooling, as I talked about, I think one of the real failures of the Blair Times, other than the international ones, and the real failures of Blair time was the higher education issue. I think we've got that wrong.

I don't like student loans. I don't like tuition fees. I don't like the way we've handled that. So there's a whole series of things of that sort of nature as well, which needs to be drawn. So you're basically saying you think, Rishi Soon actually hang around for a couple of years while the party's sorts of over. I've told him that. I've told him that.

I've said, well, not a couple of years. I've said to him, look, you must hang around for long enough for us to make an intelligent assessment of who should be the new leader, for us to see what the candidates to succeed you are like in opposition. Because if they're no good opposition, we'll stay in opposition until we find somebody who is. Who would you back if you had to vote now? At the moment, none of them. I've got no dog in this fight because I literally want to see how, I mean, I would go for the one who can actually make a, you know, make a strong argument from the dispatch box in these circumstances. There are no more difficult circumstances than now.

So that's the test. And I don't like the right wing grouping. I mean, you know, I think Braverman's done real harm. I think, and on the left, I'm not terribly impressed. I'm afraid. So I'm going to measure by performance. And Farage? Oh, well, I think those are my colleagues who want to strike some sort of deal are whistling in the wind.

I mean, my comment, which sort of caught people's imagination was, if somebody burns down the golf club, you don't give membership. You know, well, that's a symbolic way of characterising what I want. My final one. What have you learned? I mean, you've now been in the House of Commons. you're just one term behind being farther of the House. I mean, the oldest people in the House. You've had a huge experience of the House of Commons.

What have you learned, practically, as a politician, if you were just the bruising experience of those decades in politics, what have you learned makes a good politician, what makes a bad politician? That's my final one. God, I thought. We started out talking about PhD thesis. The simple thing is, when most people come in, they're altruistic.

most people come in, they're altruistic, and that dies with time for not everybody, but about 80%. And it's eroded by careerism and the vagaries of life. And the first lesson is you've got to hang on to the reasons you came in. That's what matters. And you must always revisit that. That's my argument earlier about trying to be logical rather than necessarily part of the pack. Second thing is treat Parliament seriously. Almost nobody does. Almost nobody does. And it's getting weaker. It's actually much weaker now than it was under Thatcher. The third thing is remember who put you there. This is why I started talking about social, about social mobility, meritocracy and so on. Because it's very, very easy, again, over time, to disappear into the inwardness of the House of Commons and lose track of the outside. And the fourth thing is, think three times before you accept an easy solution to anything, because they almost always fail.

Thank you very much. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, David. So, Rory, what is it? I mean, I take the piss out of you being a member of the establishment all the time, and it doesn't bother you. What is it about David Davis? He just lobs in a few establishment hang grenades and, whoosh, off you go.

Well, it's a good question. I think one of the things is it's a bit like you interviewing Jeremy Corbyn. These things feel much more raw and personal when you've been part of the same party. So obviously I spent nearly 10 years in Parliament with David Davis. And we were on different sides of almost everything. We were on different sides of Brexit. We were on different sides, the type of leaders we were supporting. We had different visions for the Conservative Party.

And part of David Davis's push. And there's a sense these very innocent world. words like, I believe in meritocracy and I'm anti-establishment, were in fact used by people at David Davis to attack the kind of Cameron center-left direction of the party and to try to drag it back more towards the Brexit right. This meritocracy thing was the great line of Dominic Rob, who was David Davis's chief of staff and very much took up David Davis's mantle. So what you're seeing there is my, on the one hand, getting slightly itchy about the fights within the Tory party. And on the other hand, thinking, listen, okay, yes, I went to the same school as David Cameron and Boris Johnson.

But profoundly, I'm not the same person as Boris Johnson. And unlike you, dear Mr. David Davis, I actually resigned from the Conservative Party and protest against him. Well, you stuck around. But you can't call him Mr. David Davis because he is Sir David Davis. I saw, you see, if I had been involved in a sort of battle of establishmentism, and I said, hold on a minute, Mr. David Davis. I didn't take a bloody diet from Boris Johnson. Anyway, I quite enjoyed it. I stayed out of that bit. He is an interesting character, though. He is a real survivor.

Just tell us about your relationship with him, because I think he's one of this group of people, along with Alan Clark and Nicholas Soames, that you hung out with 1980s. It's a really fascinating vision. So here's this left-wing journalist from the mirror, ultimately very close to Neil Kinnock, John Smith, Tony Blair, who for some reason has a real ponshire for going out with these rather kind of colourful, indiscreet right-wing Tories. What's going on that? Well, that is exactly right. And when Alan Clark died, I remember the two people I spoke to about it were Nicholas Soames and David Davis. I remember David Davis. It was David Davis who said to me, It sounds like he's just turned his face to the wall and decided to die, and he couldn't face anybody seeing him.

I was very friendly with them. I mean, David Davis is one of the few Tory MPs who's been in my kitchen. I think you've even been in my kitchen, Rory. So, yeah, it was, and I'd completely forgotten the thing about how, at one point, he was had access to all these people in the city, and he was going to put together $300 million for him to buy the mirror, and I would edit it. Can I come on that? Because this is another fascinating thing. One of the themes is that these people at Alan Clark and David Davis seem to have really taken a shine to you. As far as I remember, Alan Clark was trying to give you a Rolls-Royce, and David Davis was trying to give you a newspaper. It was a Bentley. Nicholas Sobes never gave me anything. Nicholas, my most memorable exchange with Nicholas Sobs,

was when he stopped me by a cashmishing in the House of Commons. This was when we were in government, and I was working for Tony Blair. And he said, how would you feel if I tried to pass a law banning Burnley fucking football club? I said, well, I wouldn't be very happy. He says, well, that's how I feel about your fucking fox hunting. And stormed off.

No, I was very friendly with all three. them. But listen, I was a journalist, Rory, so I had to, and a journalist on the Daily Mirror, a paper that was not very well disposed towards the Conservative Party, but I think they saw me as useful in the little sort of interneasim battles that they were all fighting in. Alan Clark was just a wonderful gossip. You like going out with people who like to good gnatur. David Davis has got that about him as well. And the other thing I quite admire about him is he just sort of keeps going. He's 75. I mean, if Labor do pass this bill that stops anybody sitting in the House of Lords after the age of 80, he's going to be, he's going to miss his seat in the House of Lords. And that's another thing you should have said, Jim Roy. Come on then, David. Is this great hatred of the establishment? Would you go to the House of Lords? The things that I think wow me up probably most were his arguments on the death penalty, which I thought were disingenuous. I think he's somebody who came out strongly in support of the death penalty and got.

a lot of applause from the right wing of the Conservative Party for being pro-death penalty, at a time when it was actually quite brave of some of my colleagues back in the 80s to be anti-death penalty. And he now produces this very sort of strange justification. Oh, well, you know, I'm in favour of the death penalty, but you know, I'm worried about whether the legal system would be able to carry it through. And the other one was on gay marriage. For the record, priests in the Church of England are not obliged to conduct gay marriages. In fact, they're not actually allowed to conduct gay marriages in the Church of England. So the argument that he's trying to make that this was somehow putting unfair pressure on priests, forcing them to conduct gay marriages

when they wouldn't want to, is just not true. Is that right? The priests don't do gay marriages. Priests don't do gay marriages in church. The gay marriage bill was a civil bill. It was a civil bill. It's about being able to get married in the eyes of the state, not in the eyes of the church. And it's up to the individual churches to decide whether or not they want to follow through on the marriages. And David Davis is one of the people who's leading the opposition to this bill and leading it on completely disingenuous grounds and continuing years after it to try to insist that I'm wrong. Okay. What else were hired you up? Well, I think that the, I thought it was interesting because I'm sympathetic towards his civil

liberty stuff. I admired the stance that he took. I was interested that he became close to Chakrabati. I think we share similar views about defence and security. I kept hoping as a conservative that I could find common ground with that side of the Conservative Party. And it's a real kind of, it's kind of body blow to be perpetually reminded that they really dislike people like me. They see us as wet establishment lefties. And they're always right about everything. You will never actually get them say, I was wrong about gay marriage. You know, I was wrong about the death penalty. He admitted Brexit was not going very well. I don't think he said he was against Brexit. I think I'm pretty sure that was it's not been implemented right, but I'm still in

favor of it. Anyway, I thought it was very entertaining to sit watching you get more and more aggravated by his. The more aggravated you got, the more he led back at his chair. I thought he was going to fall over the back of his chair at one point. Anyway, good fun, Rory, good fun. And let's hope the list has enjoyed as much as I did. Very good. Thank you very much. See you soon, bye. Bye-bye.