The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander)

Episode Date: September 22, 2024

What was the rivalry between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown really about? How easy is it to find work as an ex-politician? What can the Labour Party do going forward to strengthen the UK's relationship with the EU? Rory and Alastair are joined by Labour minister, Douglas Alexander, to answer all these questions 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] Assistant Producer: India Dunkley Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producer: Nicole Maslen and Fiona Douglas 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 restispoletics.com. Welcome to The Restis Politics leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alist Campbell.

And with, I should declare an interest, somebody that I've been a friend of for many, many years, who was an MP from 1997 to 2015. and the reason why I thought it would be really interesting to talk to Douglas, Alexander, is partly because he's had a very long and interesting career, but also I think in the context of my podcast co-host here, Rory Stewart, I think you've got some similarities that you may not have thought about, not just the fact you were both international development secretaries,

but I think both quite idealistic about politics and what it should and could do. But where your paths differ is that the system kind of saw off Rory, and he's now doing all sorts of weird and wonderful things like this podcast, whereas the system saw of you and that you lost an election to marry black, and yet there was something within you that made you determined to come back. So now here you are back in Parliament. So I wonder if I can ask, by way of starting and a way of giving you a chance to sort of just tell us a bit about yourself,

is what is it that has kept drawing you to politics, labour politics, parliament, as the kind of driving thing in your life? For many years, I've not just wanted to observe the world, but to try and change it. I think that's common for a lot of politicians. I was extraordinary privileged in, as you say, being elected in 1997 and being part of that extraordinary wave of which we were both part,

that first changed the Labour Party and then changed the country. And then in 2015, it was a bit like an amputation. There was, what, 41 Labour seats in Scotland, 40 of us lost. And in that sense, there was a sense of unfinished business. And truthfully, for what's almost a decade now, I've lived far away from politics and public life, have been working and learning in other areas and domains

and really enjoyed myself. But you're right, the fire still burnt. And part of that was, I think maybe something we share, Rory, a kind of old-fashioned sense of duty, just a sense we can be better and we should be better as a country. Douglas, one of the things you sweetly did when I stepped down from Parliament, I remember I was teaching at Yale, is you very kindly called me to talk through options available for people who are former MPs. It's a club none of us wanted to be in, Rory. Can you remember a little bit of the advice that you give and why you called me and why you thought it was worth reaching out and talking about what to do after a political life?

Because I think when you lose your seat or when you're rejected from politics, you see the worst on the best. of people and I was determined to try and exemplify the best, partly because my own experience is pretty tough losing. It sets a very high bar for career trauma. Whenever any of my friends are having problems at work, I'm like, come on guys, you've not lost your job in front of 17 million people live on television. But even when I was standing on that stage, I saw the best in people. So someone you know, David Petraeus, sent me a text message while I'm on the stage saying he'd just been fired from the CIA. As I've discovered recently, it's not how high you soar,

but how you bounce back after adversity. I'm thinking, what does one take back to a five-star US general? So I sent back a message saying, thank you, David. It's a time for grace and courage. And he came straight back and said, grace and courage will carry you so far, but you also need your friends.

I'm expecting monthly sit reps. And he was entirely true to his word. The other example I would give you, which was part of my motivation for calling you, was about a month after the election. I was having an admittedly very dull lunch in Mayfair. I was out kind of talking to people. John Major was at the next table.

I had never spoken to John Major in my life. I'd campaigned hard as a Labour Party member to see him defeated in 1992 when he won the election. And he sent across a message saying, would Douglas Alexander like to join me for coffee at the end of the meal? So it was a great credential stamp for whoever it was I was meeting at that lunchtime. And he was faultlessly decent and generous

in spending a... about half an hour saying, very sorry to see you lose your seat. I've left politics myself. I just wondered, can I offer you any advice? And in that sense, my call to you was paying it forward, a sense that there is a core decency amongst people in public life. And if you can repay that, you should. If I remember correctly, part of the advice was saying, don't overrate your chances of getting a job as a former MP and minister. I think part of what you were saying is that, I was trying to be plight, Rory. But if you remember, what you actually said was I quite fancy being the British ambassador to Nito.

Oh, and I said, with great respect, Rory, my experience suggests once you're out, there are two circumstances in which you might be appointed the British ambassador to Nito. One is that the governing party really likes you, which, respectfully at that point was not the case. Or they really fear you and they want to get rid of you. And I was trying to be diplomatic in saying, I'm not sure you're in quite either of those categories at that point. You were very charming and polite about that. But I think you had a broader point, which is,

that you weren't quite sure how much the market there was for ex-MPs and ex-ministers. And you seem to say that you'd talk to a lot of people. Many of them had really struggled to find work. I mean, I think you've spoken very eloquently about this on the podcast. The assumption is if you've been a member of parliament or indeed if you've been a cabinet member, you're bound to walk into any number of interesting, remunerated, exciting jobs. That's honestly not the case for quite a lot of our former colleagues. certainly in 2015 there was nothing as X as an ex-S Scottish Labour MP.

Those of us who had networks Firth of Scotland found it much easier than if you were looking in the jobs market within Scotland. And in that sense, I mean, listen, Michael Ashcroft had paid for two opinion polls in my constituency, saying I was underwater and was bound to lose. So I couldn't credibly claim that there were no data points or evidence that I was going to lose. But psychologically, I thought you've got to campaign in defiance of those numbers, if not in. denial of them, because otherwise, if you anticipate your defeat, you guarantee your defeat. And truthfully, that was really psychologically adaptive. It meant I was able to motivate my team all the way through the 2015 campaign, although we were in bad shape. And it's great until you lose. At which point, you're like, oh, I have no plan. What am I going to do? Did it make it any

worse that you lost to the SNP, not a party that you're very fond of, and whose main cause you're very unfond of, and that it was Mary Black, very young? And also, I wondered, did you reach out to Mary Black when it became clear that she was actually reaching the point of saying, no, this thing is not for me, I'm out. So the politics and the personality, in terms of politics, yeah, it's not a world exclusive that I'm not a great fan of nationalism. My politics is about cooperation and interdependent solidarity. But I've always known from the very first time I stood as a Labour candidate that there is, if you like, a mortal struggle between the S&P and Labour in Scotland. because ultimately they know they have to destroy the Scottish Labour Party if there's a prospect of securing their goal of independence.

So in that sense, it was only ever going to be the S&P if someone was going to win in Paisley and it wasn't the Labour Party. In terms of Maree Black, even on the night I had an overwhelming sense that it was happening to both of us, but it wasn't about us. In the sense, I'd never spoken to her. The only conversation I've ever had with Mary Black

was on the stage in the leisure centre that night. There'd not been any hustings, we hadn't encountered each other. So in that sense, I was very careful during the campaign to never utter a disobliging word about her. I was admiring of the fact that this was a young female candidate who did the gumption guts to say, I want to represent the SNP. I've never uttered a word of criticism over since. I sought on the night, despite my own disappointment to be faultlessly generous in wishing her well.

And in that sense, I know that she's now transitioned away from politics herself. I've got nothing but goodwill towards her. Can we wind back to pre-politics and just get a little bit about your background and parents, family, region, culture? Okay, I'd probably start with my grandparents. On my mother's side, my grandparents were both medical missionaries in China. Unusually, my grandmother was a qualified doctor as well as my grandfather. So they taught medical students in Manchuria in China before the Second World War. My mother herself was a doctor.

She's a hematologist and worked in the health. service in West Central Scotland for 40 years. On my father's side, my grandfather was an engineer in Glasgow, famously had his theology books on his lathe and re-qualified as a minister. So he was a church-scolten minister, my grandfather, and my dad was a minister in the church of Scotland as well. So there was a very deep sense of public service in the household. There was never an expectation you'd go down that road. I've never been a proper minister. I've only ever been a government minister. Can I on the minister thing? So my colleague in, um, Carlisle, Conservative MP in Carlisle, John Stevenson's father was a minister.

Gordon Brown's father was a minister. Theresa May. Theresa May. I come from... Andrew Merkel. I come... But particularly Church of Scotland ministers I'm talking about here, not Anglo-Mircle. Theresa's not...

Angola-Mircle. And in fact, I come from Kreef where the Kreef Hydro was a great place for people going on a holiday. I know Kielf very well. I stood for Lieber in Kreef in 1995. As I like to say, I fought Kreef for Lieber, but Kreef fought back pretty effectively. Did you ever go there as a child with your parents? Yes.

There was a special deal at the Creightro for Church of Scotland ministers. I remember bonding with Gordon Brown about this. Yes. What is it that brings the kind of sons, the mants, into politics? Have you ever spoken to John Stevenson about this? Do you know John at all? I don't know John directly, but I've talked a lot to Gordon about it. And I think one of the reasons we kind of bonded in terms of writing speeches and budgets

was Gordon was very sermonical in the way that he wrote. Like he literally figured out what he thought by the discipline and process of writing a sermon. And if I remember growing up in the man's, my dad was constitutionally incapable of finishing his sermon before about 1am on the Sunday morning. He cared deeply about the written and spoken word. In the tradition of the Church of Scotland of which I'm part, when the Bible is carried into the sanctuary, we all stand. It is a reverence for the spoken word. And in that sense, I think I certainly got that from my dad and Gordon got that from his dad. That was something that we shared in common. But I think also there's a broader sense of being part of the common life,

depending on your theology. My parents graduated in 1959 from Glasgow University. Four days later, they got on a plane for the first time in their life and traveled to what became JFK was Ida Wild Airport in New York at the time. My dad had a master's to study for a scholarship at Union Theological Seminary in New York. My mom was working at Mount Sinai. In the April of 1960s, so just a few months later, they traveled on a bus to rally North Carolina for the inaugural meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee, one of the key civil rights organizations. And they told me that my dad told me this story on the night Obama was elected, he was in tears,

that they had stood on that Sunday morning waiting to get into the congregation to listen to a young Baptist preacher, and that was Martin Luther King. And my dad, one of his great regrets was he didn't shake his hand because he said, at the end of the service, after this spellbinding sermon, Martin Luther King was sitting in a chair at the outside of the sanctuary just completely spent by having done the speech and having delivered the sermon. And my dad, out of respect, didn't want to interrupt him by shaking hands. But they left America, came back and were heavily involved in a very radical interpretation of Christian theology at the time. So those roots ran deep and that very much informed the kind of conversations we had around the kitchen table. One of the things that people sometimes say about having a clergyman as a father is that as you're growing up and as you're a teenager particularly and as your own faith gets tested, it becomes quite problematic. I mean, we live in a very, very secular society. There must have been times when you lost your faith in God. And that must provide a very odd relationship to someone who's entirely invested in something that you may lose belief in. I think honestly I'm deeply countercultural in a secular age as today, in that even many Christians are culturally ill at ease with the institution of the church.

I look back at the parish ministry of which my father served for 40 years and I'm a practicing member of the Church of Scotland today. And you've never lost your faith? No, well, as I say, I did not rebel against the Donald Jure used to call himself a cultural Presbyterian. I was very comfortable within that tradition and I mourn the fact that as the number of ministers decline, the likelihood of being able to retain that sense of a parish ministry goes with it. And I've got friends in the church who are much more optimistic and say, listen, something good will come in its place.

I'm afraid I'm doing God, Alistair. I can see your eyebrows rising as we speak. I'm fine. But in that sense, I've got friends who genuinely believe something better will come if we lose parish ministers. actually what I found when I was an MP after 1997 was in a way I would never have predicted the way my dad served his parish

informed a lot of my thinking about how you try and be an MP in the sense that one of the maxims my father lived by was that he was called to serve the people outside the walls of the church as much as the people inside and in that sense fundamentally what are you as a Church of Scotland minister? You're both serving a community but you're also serving a cause

You're serving something redemptive and different from simply the day-to-day worker. Exactly. You didn't use the word God, which interests me. I mean, you made it quite a set. Very happy to use the word God. But do you feel in your politics that you're serving God? I think it informs me. I think I have imbibed deeply from your maxim that it's not a subject to spend a lot of time talking about.

I don't think people like politicians who wear their religion on their sleeve. But I was sitting in church on Sunday morning. It's a big part of my life. you mentioned Gordon Yep Big part of both of our lives Big part of both of our lives And if I go back to

I can't remember the very very first time I met you but we go back right to the first I can tell you It was the Labour Party conference In 1992 When you were still I think Politic letters of the Daily Mirror Yes

And I was working with Gordon At the 92 conference So when I first came across you You would have been very much part of As it were Team GB Yep As was I helping him with his daily records

columns and all that sort of stuff. I don't know. I was saying to Rory earlier, I think you're one of the very, very small number of people. I think I'm probably another one who's always managed just about to keep a foot in all the different camps

and all the different sort of factional groupings that have sometimes come along. So can I just ask you to give me a sense today of your relationships with Gordon, with Tony, and with what became known as the TBGBs? How you

navigated that. And give us the background because Alice is very coy about this. But what was the division? What was the nature of the tension? So essentially, I joined the Labour Party in 1982. I met David Miliband before I met either Gordon or Tony and indeed was holidayed with David because he was a great friend of one of my sisters. And then in 1990, I graduated from Edinburgh University. Two weeks before I graduated, I started work for Gordon Brown. And my senior honours tutor at Edinburgh University had supervised Gordon Brown's PhD, credentialed me, knew that they were looking to take somebody on, it would be far too dignified to suggest I was a researcher. I mean, I was just doing anything. And actually, I think one of my breakthrough moments was in that November when Gordon

was giving a lecture in St. Stephen's Church in Glasgow about theology and politics, and I wrote the lecture with him and for him. And I think at that point he kind of began to think there was something that I could contribute. I was holding over a place at Cambridge and Edinburgh to do law and trying to decide what to do at that point. And Gordon said, listen, we need you to travel with us in the 1992 election campaign, which is where we met. And I travelled that year with Tony and with Gordon. And so when I went back to Edinburgh University and studied law, I'd been with Gordon professionally there for about three years. I said, listen, would you be willing to be a referee for my traineeships with Edinburgh law firms? And he said, listen, I don't know.

any Edinburgh lawyers. Tony knows all the Edinburgh lawyers. He was at school with them. Get Tony to be your referee. So actually, the very first reference I had for my first jobs were all written by Tony Blair. So I benefited immensely from being around and being part of a team of people when they were literally thick as thieves. So we felt even from 1990 onwards, Gordon and Tony would be the last two to turn up to Neil Kinnock Shad of Cabinet. They were restless and impatient about the rate of modernisation, they felt that there was a project that was nascent that needed to be accelerated. And if you like, the person they would ask to speak to immediately before they did the Today Program or Newsnight would be each other. And so that was what I was

immersed in. It was not a politics of faction or of I'm for this guy, I'm for that guy. 1994 happens. By then I'm back in Edinburgh studying law. And I get a phone call from Gordon at 10 to 8 that morning saying John Smith has died. So I was not around at the point of fracture in terms of whether Tony or Gordon were going to stand in London. I was helping Gordon write obituaries that day for John Smith. And so in that sense, I think Callaghan called his biography time and chance. It was time and chance that I was in the right place to start that work. How does that then play out? Observing at very close quarters, the team who were leading new labour, I personally think there is like a PhD to be written about high performing teams in politics. I was thinking

about this before the interview. I think with respect, Alistair, if Philip Gould, you, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson were in the same room, you were just better at electoral politics than any equivalent team that the Conservatives could field at that juncture. And it was an immense learning and privilege for me to be in that room and to be observing you guys doing your work. But I very quickly reached a judgment that it was not an environment in which you could ever play games. If I tried to play Gordon off against Tony or Peter. off against you. That was like the third real. You would just get fried. And that served me very well in terms of my subsequent relationships. So you're quite unusual in that because there were others

who were playing that game. Yeah, totally. And I would argue a lot of them with Gordon. Yep. Maybe some on our side as well, but I think much less. But you did manage to kind of straddle that in a way that, I think it's to your credit. Yeah. But I just wondered what you were what you were feeling and thinking about the various people involved in that while that was all going on. Well, as I say, I learned an immense amount from being part of that. And I think also that's shaped how I think about politics, which is ultimately it's about a project. It's about people. It's about processes and it's about principles being aligned in the same direction. That's how you do politics and politics is a team sport. But it also teaches you quite a lot about the bad side of politics. You know, if you look at what Rory's written in terms of colleagues in Parliament, there were a lot of people who didn't have the best interests of the Liberal Party at heart, but were trying to preference or advantage individuals. people. So in that sense, yes, I think the way that I commend that commitment to Labour Party that preceded knowing either Tony or Gordon really helped. But there were rough moments. You know, Rory, you were pushing me earlier in terms of when the bumps happened. I mean, you probably

will not remember this, Alistair, but Tony once put me on the National Executive Committee and Gordon didn't speak to me for four months. Like literally, no contact, because at that point, I think he wanted to be on the National Executive Committee for some reason. So there were bumps and scrapes. And was that Because he saw that as being a Chinese person. Yeah. Yeah. Literally. Just going in the deep freeze for months.

So this is where I have to come in on behalf of the listens because they will know as much as I do about all of the stuff. Yeah. So there's some sort of inside baseball going on here and some kind of complicated mafia family that none of the rest of us understand. Right. So broadly speaking, what you're talking about as far as I understand is that these two people, Tony Byr and Gore-Brown, were incredibly close before Tony Blair and. Blair ran to be leader. Then Tony becomes Prime Minister, Gordon Brown becomes Chancellor to the Exchequer. And then the impression we get from the outside is that Gordon Brown then believes there's a deal that he's going to be Prime Minister at some point. Tony Blair's going to

step aside. And then there are various camps that form my right that kind of Ed Balls is sort of with Gordon Brown and David Miller Band is with Tony Blair. Can you give us some names? I don't really get what you're talking about. Your broad arc, I would draw a couple of exceptions is true. One is, I think if you look at that history of Gordon and Tony working together, actually it was generative and productive until at least 2001. In that sense, I think it animated and drove the government forward. Of course there were tensions. Of course there were arguments. But actually, I think it was basically a positive phenomenon. And I think as a Labour Party, we were extraordinarily blessed to have two politicians of that scale, significance and capability.

Of course, then, you have people crowding around them who are always looking, to advantage themselves. But if you look at, you know, who were the people who were deemed to be close to Tony? David Miliband, great personal friend and Romaine So I co-chaired his leadership campaign. Pat McFadden, and I spoke to yesterday a profoundly serious, thoughtful, impressive politician. Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, again, big substantial figures in terms of their own thinking on the Gordon Brown side. So actually, I think if you like the press dimension, which Alastair knows more about than any of us, often did a disservice to the fact that internally, there was a lot of good work being done.

What I do regret is just the exhausting emotion involved in being in that inner circle. It was immensely exciting. Once you won Gordon's Trust or Tony's Trust, they were remarkably intellectually generous and open. And in that sense, it was literally, to my mind, the most exciting room to be in in Britain in terms of being able to make change happen and contribute. But on the other hand, it was claustrophobic, it was emotional, and frankly, there was a lot of energy wasted on the TBGBs, as they were called, which would have been better service directed towards other goals. I also, what do you think? Well, I think if we'd have been able to sort of be far more together, you talked about teams in politics. I think we're genuinely being able to stay as a team, I think

would have been far more successful and I think we'd have endured. I don't mean to now, but I think we'd... But personality is destiny, Alastair. Like, you know how we did this new Labour documentary a few, a couple of years ago just at the time of the pandemic? I basically at that point had no thought about going back into politics and I thought, my

obligation is just to turn up and tell the truth. I want my kids to know what I spent 20 years of my life doing. And when I watched the documentary series, I thought it's like a muscle. These people can't stop exercising. Everyone is seeking to bend history to their account. So, I have immense respect for Gordon and Tony

but I think if Gordon had gone on to that programme and said yes there was a deal and I was pretty frustrated when that deal was not honoured but when I became Prime Minister I came to a realisation of just how difficult a job it is to be Prime Minister and a new appreciation of how good Tony Blair was as a Prime Minister I think that would enhance his reputation and similarly if Tony Blair had said

yes actually I did have a conversation in Grenatis truthfully I shouldn't have had that conversation it wasn't a deal for me to make. And when I got into Downing Street, I found I quite liked being Prime Minister. I was quite good at being Prime Minister. And I regret that, but ultimately that caused some frictions and tensions at the top of the party. Now, it's for them to decide their account of history, but I basically agree with you. I think you put Gordon Brown and Tony Blair together. They're like two giant rocks in a stream that just forced kind of nonsense to the very margins of the Labour Party. They were literally an unbeatable combination, Lennon and McCartney. They were extraordinary figure.

I think on Lenny McAarney, we should take 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 Rest Is History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks, generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy,

when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise, people are arguing about Europe, the government has got a few issues with the trade unions, and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues, and people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain and the Britain of the mid-1970s.

So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we'll be looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson,

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

Douglas, welcome back to the rest of politics leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alastair Campbell. Tell us a little bit about what you learned about the world when you left politics. You were out for a hell of a long time. I mean, Alastair's, you know, saying we weren't on different paths, but, you know, he left politics five years before me.

So to be on the same path as him, be me coming back in four years' time. It's a long time out. Sure. And as you say, I remember unless I'm being misremembering, I think there were definitely times when I didn't think you did think you were coming back. That's absolutely true. So tell us a little bit about what the world looked like outside and what you learned from stepping outside and what you realized about Parliament that people who never left Parliament might not realize.

So listen, there are lots of different ways that you can learn and make a contribution. But one of my observations is the chance to travel, the chance to work far from politics, the chance just to learn has been extraordinarily been. for me. I tried very hard not to lose my seat, but I've learned a whole lot more because I did, not just about myself. I think you learn more from defeat than you do from victory, but also the opportunities that that gave me. So literally every time I know that you're at Yale, now every time I stepped onto the Harvard campus, it was like a software upgrade. And that was from the students, never mind from the faculty. So you can learn a lot in terms of the people that you work with and the conversations that you have. I then kind of moved in different worlds in investment.

in law and consulting, just I've learned so much about how business works, frankly, because I hadn't spent time in the private sector. I'd been a lawyer before I was elected to Parliament, but how do these major investment companies allocate capital? How do they judge whether a country is investable or not? What premium do they place on political stability or economic stability? Just if you've sat in investment review committees,

you know a whole lot more than if you read about it in the Financial Times. So in that sense, I've been extraordinarily fortunate in terms of, those opportunities. But I think I've now worked in more than 70 countries in politics and out of politics. And distance, I think, can lend perspective. One of the things that actually ultimately re-ignited that fire and said I really do want to come back was how consistently I would meet people abroad who looked at me with a mix of kind of pity and derision about what had happened to the UK. They would say, we thought you were a serious country. Like, what's happened? And actually, I just think if you feel that you can make a contribution to try and show that the UK is coming back, that's a very compelling contribution.

What do you see is the differences between the politics of that era when you lost and where we are now? Probably a couple of things. Firstly, I mean, I was elected, as you say, in November 1997. The UK economy was bigger than the Chinese economy in 1997. So in terms of the global economy, that's the world. That was, you know, and we were still ruling a major Asian country in terms of the city in terms of Hong Kong. So it was a very different world. And if you think of the world that we're in now in terms of Russia's return, China's rise, it's just fundamentally different. Secondly, I've spent a lot of time in the States in the last eight or nine years. Like 2007, the Eurozone and US economy were broadly the same size.

We're now in a position today where the Eurozone is half the size of the American economy. You know, when Biden says don't bet against the United States, the United States is an extraordinary innovation, investment, productivity, profitability, machine. And so the chance to spend time in California and Silicon Valley and elsewhere has been a huge education for me in terms of, if you like, how the world has changed. And it's not all been good news for the UK. So we talked on the podcast recently about whether the scale of challenge that the country faces are met by the policy solutions that are currently being. being debated. And what you're essentially saying is we're weaker, we're smaller, we're less rich than we were. And yet the political debate feels very, very similar. I just wonder if you can reflect on that. I think you're right. I think one of the central conceits of the Brexiteers

was that after Brexit, we would walk taller in Washington or in Beijing or in Moscow. It's just not true. You know, the fact is we are looking at a world that's very different from the world that was promised to us in 2016. If you look at trade policy that I'm now working. on, you know, we're in a world of the big three. It's the US, it's China, it's the European Union, and the kind of free market buccaneering vision of Brexit is very, very far away. So what do we do to fix it? We get ourselves elected and get down to work. That's what we do. What do we as a country do to fix that decline? First of all, we change the government. I'm very grateful to the people of the United Kingdom that on July the 4th we did that. It's not insignificant

that we have, I say this as a school, a majority in Scotland, in Wales and in England now. So it means, for example, the risk premium that's been attached to, is there going to be another independence referendum in Scotland, has just vanished. Secondly, I think it's arguable that we're now going to be the most politically stable G7 economy for the next five years. You talk at length in terms of the challenges that France is facing or indeed what we're going to face in November in the United States. Political stability doesn't guarantee economic stability, but it sure helps. So in that sense, kind of point one political stability. On that, you need to build economic stability to be judged in. investable. There is a wall of international capital that frankly just thought, what the hell's

happened to the UK in recent years and priced the risk associated with British politics in a way that would traditionally be associated with the emerging markets rather than a stable OECD economy. So in that sense, how do we do it? I think we start the hard yards of improving our trading relationship with Europe. You look at what Keir's already done in terms of the EPC meeting in Blenheim and being in Berlin and being in Paris. Is that just not touching the margins? It's a start. And we've got to. to start somewhere. And I know, because I listen to your podcast, you're going to say, why haven't we done more on Brexit immediately? I think honestly I see that from a slightly

different position in Scotland, where not only did we lose in 2015, but we lost in 2017 and we lost in 2019. And my sense is people like Deborah Matheson and Kier Stammer and Morgan McSweeney made a very important strategic judgment, which was to change the conversation when he became Leader of the Labour Party in 2019. And that was because, as we've seen in Scotland, these referenda burn like battery acid through old affinities and identities being Labour voters, where 45% suddenly voted for independence in Scotland. I think what informed that choice in 2019 was if we don't get these red wall seats back in one cycle, we've lost them for a generation.

And how are we most likely to get them back? Is it by talking a lot about Europe? In which case, that is, if you like, a trigger and a reminder to leave voters that their primary political identity. is Leave, which worked very well for Boris Johnson in 2019. Or, frankly, do we shamelessly change the subject to talk about other issues about the state of public services, the state of the economy, in the hope that people see their primary affinity as prospective Labour voters? And the effect of that has been triumphantly successful in not only vanquishing the Conservative Party, but giving as a political platform on which to build.

Trenfally successful in vanquishing the Conservative Party, but potentially not brilliant at giving you a political platform on which to build, because what, in order to win that election, and it might be smart short-term politics, but by ruling out customs union single market, by ruling out raising income tax VAT and corporation tax, you've basically come in with your hands tied behind your back on the most fundamental levers of government. Okay, so first of all, if you're wanting me to implicitly suggest Brexit is a small deal, I'm going to disappoint you because I accept, as you've been arguing on this podcast for years, Brexit's a very big deal. And as someone whose politics was shaped and tempered by the experience of the referendum in Scotland in 2014, where we were on the same side, Rory.

If you like, as much as 2014 and the defeat of nationalism in Scotland was for me an affirmation of a politics of cooperation, internationalism, solidarity. 2016 was a defeat for that politics. It was a profound and significant shift in how the UK accounts for itself in the world and shows up. What is our responsibility, though? Our responsibility then is not to do the kind of performative diplomacy that we've seen, certainly in the department I'm now in in in recent years, Liz Truss having a photograph taken in Australia or New Zealand. It's doing the hard, detailed, painful work of seeing,

how do we try and improve trading relationships at the border? How do we try and make sure as part of the broader political reset that we not only have a defence and security treaty, but we have confidence-building measures, frankly. I mean, because we often forget in this debate, but there's politics on both sides of the channel. You know, we have to re-earn the trust of the European Union if we're going to improve the trading relationships between them.

But frankly, I think it's a bit early to blame the firefighters when we've just got rid of the arsonists. But there is stuff. I mean, Europe reached out generously to offer what seemed to us, at least, the two of us, a pretty attractive deal of young Europeans being able to come over here on short-term visas and vice versa. And you rejected it out of hand, right? It didn't seem to me particularly wise, respectfully, of the European Commission, to drop that proposal in the middle of a general election campaign if you were wanting for it to be received well by a government in waiting or a government that was seeking to come to power. I genuinely think if I was in the European Commission, I would have said, if you want a youth mobility scheme, let's wait and see what happens on July the 4th. But if you like, it was almost guaranteed in the white heat of a general election that if the commission drops a proposal for a youth mobility scheme, of course the opposition is going to say, we have our red lines, which we do. One last chip at my hypothesis. Now I'm going to give back to us.

I guess my big anxiety is you won the election well, but you won the election by tying your hands behind you back. You were so keen to reassure voters that you weren't going to get close to Europe, so keen to reassure them, you weren't going to raise taxes, that you now have a real problem. You've got public services in terrible position. There's a desperate need to raise government revenue and spend more in public services. You can't really do it because of all these things you said to win an election. Listen, again, I absolutely agree with you as to the disastrous inheritance that we're facing. And I'll save you the talking points about how much that is and everything else. but I take a longer view. I'd say a couple of things. Firstly, in what you say, Rory, I hear an echo of the conversation we were having two months into a Labour government in 1997, in the sense that you've accepted Conservative spending plans of Ken Clark, who incidentally was a very effective chancellor before 1997, you've basically guaranteed that you're going to be cutting the benefit of loaned parents. We are at a very early stage of a different chapter of politics. And one of my lessons, I have to say, from observing the last Labour government, is that the character of the leader matters at least as much as the detail of the manifesto.

If you look at Tony Blair, he didn't anticipate that Iraq was going to define foreign policy for his prime ministership. In the same way, I don't think Gordon Brown anticipated that global financial crisis would be so definitional to his. So actually having people of common sense, decency, goodwill back in office is not a small deal for me. It's a really, really big deal. That would be one point that I would make. And the second thing I would say And honestly I loved your book I genuinely did But if I had a concern about it

It's that despair is not a strategy That I've if you like I'm taking a bet in trying to come back into public life And say that despite a broken machine Despite civil servants that were not always What you would have hoped for Or colleagues who were not always what you hoped for All of which I recognise and understand

That is still worth Changing your life Putting your heart and and shoulder to the wheel. And in that sense, I can't give you any guarantees that it's going to work, either for my small contribution or the bigger contribution of the government. But when I faced a choice as to, is this a meaningful and important contribution that you want to make? I was so dispirited by the state of the country in recent years. I was so down about how Britain, which had been such a powerful voice in the world, had allowed itself to be shrunk and just embarrassed by the leadership

that we'd had, that I thought, listen, it's worth having to go. And I might be wrong. And have me back in a few years' time, and you may be able to say, listen, you know, you made the wrong calculation. But for me, it's an act of hope to say we can try and make this difference. But with your big three, America, China, European Union, yep. We're down here somewhere.

Do we have the, and we're never going to compete necessarily with those, but do we have the policy levers necessary to get us to a place where we know, longer have to have that sense of traveling around the world and people saying Britain is not what it was, which is kind of what it's, I think we've all experienced that in recent years. Can we really get back from where we are? David Lamy is in Kiev as we speak with Tony Blinken. The fact is we are still in the P5. I mean, there are ways that we can make ourselves a more substantial, effective middle power than we've been in recent years. I honestly think the country internationally lost its

bearings in the last few years and there are practical, challenging ways that... Large because of Brexit, possibly. Of course, listen, Alastair, I campaign to remain as surely as you did. And if you want me to say, listen, the economic consequences of Brexit have been profound and negative, I'm willing to say that because they have been. But we've got to start from where we are. And in that sense, you know, the channel is 21 miles wide. I said in my... first interview as trade minister, geography still matters in trade policy. The idea that doing trade deals on the other side of the world will compensate for us leaving the deepest and widest free trade agreement we've ever been part of, which is the European Union, is a post-imperial

fiction of our opponents. And what we need is a trade policy based on data not delusion. So I'm with you, but I am respectful of the people who won this election for the Labour Party, because it's not a small thing to win and we tend to lose a lot more than we win. So I am humble in the face of the strategic judgments that the leadership of the party made. If you'd said to me most of the last three or four years that Keir-Snamer could do what Neil Kinnock,

what John Smith and Tony Blair did over, what was it, three, four parliaments, in one parliament, I wouldn't have believed you. Corbinism was a catastrophe for the Labour Party and for the country. And the fact that within, what, three years or four years of 2019 in Kear assuming the leadership, We're in a position where we've got a majority of labour government and a credible plan for the next five years.

It's extraordinary. What have you learned about looking back on your first period in politics? What have you learned about your flaws as a politician? What were you less good at in that period from 97 to 2015 that you wished you'd been better at? Oh, so many things. I think first that I was in a very unusual position where I got given a pass to the Treasury when I arrived. as a backbencher and indeed to number 10. And I spent a lot of time in number 10 and in number 11 over those years.

And I think that meant I was pretty careless about my relationships with a lot of colleagues. I think I'm quite shy. That's maybe something that we share. And that could easily have been perceived as arrogance. And actually, I was just, I was working 19 hours a day. And in that sense, I didn't take as seriously as I should have being part of that intake. I also came in in a by-election. So I didn't have a whole number of peers to stay.

start with, but I think I was certainly not good at that. And second... That was a Tony Gordon thing going on with that one, wasn't it, the by-election? Yes, yes. I remember. That's right. Well, basically, I, again, it's time and chance. I was sitting in my law office in Edinburgh, and Nick Brown, who was then the chief

who phoned me saying, I've just told Tony in the garden in Downing Street, that Paisley South is now going to have a by-election, and he wants you to be the candidate. So in that sense, yes, that takes me back. But in that sense, one thing was, I think I was careless in some of my relationships because I was just so busy. Secondly, I think I was so young when I was elected. I did. How old way? I was the week of my 30th, 30.

My wife was very good with me about this. She said, listen, it's a big deal when people meet their MP. I was so keen not to seem pushy, arrogant, kind of brash that I kind of underplayed my interactions with constituents and others. And she said, you've got to show up and do that. So I think there was stuff about both personal interactions and kind of personal style. I think also it was dazzling and extraordinary to have the privilege of being in the room with people like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. But when it came to probably the vote I most regret in my life, which was the vote on Iraq, I think I placed too much faith in the judgment of others and should have placed more judgment in my, more faith in my own judgment. So in that sense, I think like anybody, you, you, you.

learn and you mature as you as you grow older. And I certainly think I will, I will be a changed politician having had effectively a decade outside. I hope, honestly, I'm a better politician, not just because of what I've learned, but because you learn more about yourself as well. Maybe my last question. You mentioned earlier that you ran David Miliband's leadership campaign lost to his brother Ed. So that's another kind of chapter in your story through the various leaders of the Labour Party. I know it's impossible to sort of answer this with any accuracy, but what did you think was going on inside the Labour Party that David didn't win? And what were the consequences of that? Well, we really are raking over old calls. I think honestly the Labour Party

was just weary of the discipline and responsibility that power demands. It was just like, this is just too hard. And I was haunted during that campaign by the sense that if you were going back to your constituency Labour Party on a Friday evening, it was just easier to say to the members, I'm going to be voting for Ed Miliband and for David Miliband. And with David, great personal friend who admired, I think there was a sense of, oh, are we going to have to eat our greens all over again? This is someone who's going to demand that we recognise those disciplines and those responsibilities of power. And ultimately, you know, it came down to the willingness of quite a lot of MPs to be willing to have those conversations with their membership.

question that I want to ask you, but I don't think I'm going to get an honest answer out of you, but I'm going to ask anyway. I'm not asking you. I'm leaving chin on this. But you know, you've been a sexual state and you're not a section of state now. And that must feel a bit weird, right? Honestly, it's not that weird. One of the things that I've been shocked by is how similar the civil services. I thought, you know, I was last in government 14 years ago, that it would be radically different. It is unnervingly familiar. But you've come back as a junior minister having been in the cabinet.

Yeah, but, but Roar, you have to understand how fundamentally improbable it is that I'm without 100,000 miles of government. You know, the truth is, there were 40 out of 41 of us wiped out in 2015, as you absolutely accurately see, for most of the last 9, 10 years, I've not given serious contemplation to coming back. If you'd said to me at any point in those eight or nine years, in 2024, you'll be sitting in a studio with me and Alistair, you will have not just a lot just a little bit of, you will have not just a Labour seat in Scotland, but there will be 35 of you that you will have a majority in Scotland

in Wales and in England. After the worst election defeat for Labour in decades in 2019, Kier Stammer will not just have a minority, but a majority Labour government. And on the day after he's formed the cabinet, he invites you to be the trade minister. I would have respectfully recommended Alastair's psychiatrist to you. And it's just so fundamentally improbable. To become the first Minister of State invited on to to the country's number one podcast. He would never have predicted. That's true.

I don't think we've ever had a minister of state on. Well, I'm humbled and honoured. But the truth is, you know, in Jonathan Reynolds, the Secretary of State, somebody I genuinely like and admired. Kier Stammer, I nominated and voted for him and was delighted when he became leader of Labour Party. If you're part of a team,

which takes us back to our earlier conversation, that's what makes politics good. And in that sense, I am beyond thrilled to be part of the team in whatever role. Good. Well, thank you for coming in. See you soon. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. So, Rory, our first serving minister of state from the new Labour government.

Yeah. Well, I don't know. I mean, I think he's a very likable chap. I am interested in this weird phenomenon. I should have done more work on it, but I think there were a very surprising number of children of Scottish ministers in the House of Commons of which Douglas Alexander was one. Maybe we could have got a little bit more to his sister, who of course, was a really big leading politician in Scotland. It's also, I sort of love the vagaries of memory. So I've known Doug Alexander, obviously not for as long as you, but pretty long time. I remember pitching him when he was sector state for diffid, and I was running a charity and trying

to get some support back in the day. So that's going back, I guess, 20 years more. I also had different memories of that funny conversation where I was getting advice from him what to do when he stepped down. So he obviously inspired by our mutual friend General Petraeus had reached out to me to give me consolation. I was largely complimenting him on the compassion and the sweetness of it. What he seemed to remember is that I clearly had got really big-headed and convinced myself

I was about to be the British ambassador to NATO, and he really thought I needed putting in my place. I've got to say, by the way, I think, Rory, having briefly worked at NATO during the Kosovo War, unless it's changed a lot, I don't think you would enjoy that job. Well, the thing I was saying to him about it, because I'd been briefly, they'd reached out to me to talk to me about whether I might be interested in job. I think largely in order to try to bribe me to drop out from running as an independent as mayor of London and endorse the conservative candidate. But the thing that put me off it was the thought that I'd have to be at the airport and four in the morning meeting Boris Johnson and then showing him around and standing behind him while he blumbled his way through every conceivable NATO meeting.

Yeah, yeah, you would enjoy it. Tell us a little bit about Douglas, though. Was he, I mean, he was quite sort of earnest and on message. presumably he's not quite as much like that when he's not a minister? I thought he was on a lot. We didn't really talk that much about current government policy. And I think we agree that any minister who comes in at the moment, if you're under back government policy.

So, for example, Brexit. But he didn't hide the fact that he clearly still thinks Brexit was an absolute disaster and a tragedy. But then he sort of sticks to the line. I'll tell you where I found him very interesting. You mentioned the son of the manse, and I always knew that he was a son of the manse, like Gordon. But I hadn't quite realized that his faith was such a big thing for him.

Yeah, it obviously was. And I'd obviously got that wrong because I was trying to, I was assuming that he'd lost his faith and what that made him feel about his father, who believed so strongly. And of course, what he was coming back and saying, he hadn't at all. He was very keen to know that he was in church last Sunday, he'll be in church next Sunday. And it does very much inform his politics. And I also thought he was very frank, more than you claim that I am, even though I think I'm pretty frank about these things,

on the whole sort of Tony Gordon thing. Because I think that if I could sort of track back through the various stages, Douglas was always very much seen as being part of Team Gordon, but he wasn't in that sort of Charlie Whelan bracket of, you know, Team Gordon at the expense of Tony, team Gordon going around putting the boot in. Just to remind people, Charlie Whelan was communications director, right, for Gordon Brown? He was Gordon's press guy, yeah.

And I think that he was, for me, there were far too many people around Gordon who basically thought that the way to promote Gordon was to sort of go around the place saying how much better he was than Tony. Can't have been very helpful for you if you were trying to run a press operation for the Prime Minister and the government. It was draining and it was unnecessary and it was ridiculous. And I've always felt that politics is a team game, government is a team game and you have to kind of try to stay with the team. And Douglas always managed to navigate that really quite well. I think that's when I was aware that he had pretty serious heavyweight political skills. Even though he was part of the much closer to Gordon in terms of his job, in terms of sometimes in terms of policy and so forth,

he was always totally accepted by us, if you like, as part of the core team around Tony. And that became very, very helpful. Because the other thing about Douglas is he does have a very good strategic mind for campaigns. And that that meant that he was somebody that we could bring in when talking about some of these broader campaign issues. So I think it's, and I think it's great that he's gone back. I really do. I mean, the reason I wanted him on podcast is I think, and I enjoyed the conversation that you and he had about, you know, how you both dealt with leaving and the changes that you make in your life and the different challenges and how they open up. But I think it's great that he's gone

back. And as we discussed on a recent episode of question time, you, of course, left as soon as the interview was done. But Douglas and I hung around a bit and chewed the fat. And, you know, he was sort of genuinely enjoying being back. And I don't think he is thinking, oh, I should have been a cabinet minister, because I've been a cabinet minister before. And I think in politics, there's not enough of that. It's quite rare. I mean, I remember Leon Fox was, I think, offered a minister of state position by George Osborne and David Cameron and turned it down, Liam May challenged this, but I was with George Osborne at the time when the conversation was happening. And certainly the version I got, so he turned it down because he said, this is ridiculous.

You know, I had that job 15 years ago, and I've basically been demoted. And I know it was tough for quite a lot of people that I knew. I mean, Damien Heinz took a step down, Matt Hancock took a step down. This trust took a step down. Rob Jenrick took a step down. But often the politicians who are successful and survive are those who were prepared to take a step down. I mean, it's often rewarded by the party. I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't find himself back in the cabinet at some point. People like seeing that, don't they? Well, the other one that's worth mentioning in this context, we had something during the really bad times

when things were not good. We had this thing where Douglas and I were part of what was called the group of death. And the group of death were these meetings that we had between Tony, Gordon, Ed Miliband, Ed Balls. I think Ed Milibin was there. Ed Balls was definitely there. Me, Philip Gould.

And this was when we were trying to sort of, you know, really re-knit things back together and get people on the same page again. And so Ed Miliband, he's been the leader of the Labour Party, and he's stepped down. Yeah, he's now a member of the Cabinet. And I think, I think, you know, in most walks of life, you know, people go up and they go down and, okay, people like a sort of never-ending rising trajectory. And in business, that doesn't happen. In schools, that doesn't happen.

You have people overtaking each other or have you. So I think it's good. And also, Douglas has got a lot of experience now, which I think he hopefully will bring to bear in a way that helps other ministers as well. Well, the big example with us was a guy called Michael Fallon, who'd been in Parliament, I think, since the 1980s. David Cameron got elected. He'd been a minister under John Major. And David Cameron didn't even make him a minister. And you would have thought that would have just made him sort of go into permanent rebellion,

instead of which he became, from 2010 to 2012, the most loyal backbencher attack job for David Cameron going out on the news supporting. And it was rewarded by giving a junior ministerial position in 2012. and then eventually ending up in the cabinet as Defence Secretary. So I do think people like it, the sense of people can subjugate their egos, get back in at a more junior position, prove themselves, and they often get rewarded. Maybe in the first by-election, in a Tory winnable seat, you should get in there and then say, I'd like to be parliamentary undersecretary, PPS to... Shadow PPS. Exactly, shadow PPS to came back and knock. And I could be eventually rewarded and get by that.

The only thing I'd like to grumble with, finally, which showed Doug Salisandum was very, very skillful, but I also thought it was a bit naughty. I twice tried to pin him down on what I think has Labor's major mistake, which was that they had gone into an election saying they weren't going to raise taxes. And they now find themselves having got Alexid in trouble. And he kept saying, yeah, but that was essential to get elected. And I was trying to say, well, maybe you could have given up a bit of your majority to actually be able to get something done. And he managed to spin it in the most beautiful way. I remember, he'd learned this from you. He said,

Rory, you know, I've been reading your book. And one of the things that I noticed in your otherwise excellent book was the sense of despair. And for me, despair is not an option. Spare is not a strategy. Dispair is not a strategy. And I just thought, my goodness, that's quite a way of completely avoiding to answer my question twice over. Yeah, yeah. He was basically saying, we're going to make change anyway.

But no, and also that's where you're right about this thing about, serving politicians. You know that in some areas, they sort of have to stick to the line. And any Labour politician at the moment who says, we made a mistake by ruling out all those tax rises, they're not going to do that, are they? Yeah. But they don't necessarily have to get out of the question by suggesting that the man they're talking to is a sort of pathetic pessimist who's given up on life. There might be another elegant way of triggered. No, Rory, Rory, Rory, you completely misunderstand what he was doing. He was basically thinking, if I plug Rory's book, and say that I really enjoyed it, he's not going to press me a third time.

And he was right. I see. Very good. Yeah. It's brilliant. Genius. I get it. I get it.

As Camilla Harris said to Donald Trump, you know, flattery and favors will get you a long way, boy. And that's what Douglas was doing to you. And I was pleased to see you felt right. Definitely worked brilliantly. Yeah, felt for it beautifully. Well, thank you, Alistair. And thanks for getting him on.

Bye-bye. See you soon.