Boris Johnson's Abuses of Power | Rory Stewart | Interview

[Music] Rory Stewart now it used to be quite easy to introduce you I would have said Conservative MP I can still say former Minister we can say you did try briefly to become Prime Minister but what are you now I have literally no idea what I am I mean I was as Emma says I was until recently a leadership candidate with a nice group of conservative members of parliament who were voting for me and supporting me to be the leader of the Conservative Party and I thought well maybe I won't won't be the leader and then Boris was become Prime Minister so then I thought ok not gonna be the leader and now Boris is Prime Minister I'm not gonna be in the cabinet anymore so I resigned from the cabinet there's a very good sack yet before he could sack me yep exactly and then I have now discovered I'm not an MP anymore an 18 out of the 21 of us who voted against No Deal brexit were people who supported me for the leadership campaign so it's like a sort of purge of the Mensheviks and the in the Russian Revolution we've all been kind of thrown out and now I seem to be somebody in a in a sort of her in what looks like an enormous yellow fire risk in the middle of Hampstead well you've got some military experience so we're all safe I'm sure and on a serious note I asked for some questions on social media this morning for you got some brilliant ones so I'll go to those in just a minute but have you been invited to rejoin the party that you love and have served because apparently a few deals are starting to go down and I wonder if you've been approached by the chief work by Boris Johnson's office so there are lots of rumors about this and we got a letter from the chief whip but it wasn't an awfully friendly letter the answer to be honest is that it would be very very difficult for most of us now to rejoin the party because if you think about it imagine your Kem Clark he's the father of the house he's been in the House of Commons since well since I I guess the time I was born and he has been in Edward Heath's government and Margaret Thatcher's government and John Major's government in David Cameron's government he's been home secretary Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Chancellor he's voted against the government I think once in his entire life and has just found himself thrown out of the Conservative Party so what exactly would be the route back and this is what I think the Conservative Party hasn't really thought through to imagine that they can somehow now say okay we'll give you the whip back on the condition you do what right because from our point of view it's a bit like we've been kicked out of the marital home were sitting in the garden shed at the bottom of the garden and there are different strategies from getting back a 1-1 strategy seems to be my friend Philip Hammond strategy which is that you sit in the garden shed and you you sue the person in the house to let you back in again right the other strategy which seems to be the strategy of sound G mer which is that you walk out of that garden shed and you move her next door with someone else right that's the Lib Dem strategy are you thinking of joining the live dance I'm not thinking I don't like that strategy I never like that stress she um a third strategy I suppose is to sit in the garden shed and try to pretend the garden shed is the house that's kind of the strategy that I'm that I'm pursuing at the moment but but the one strategy that doesn't make sense is for the person in the house to say you can come back in provided you publicly humiliate yourself and agree to lock yourself in the bathroom for the next 20 years are you upset though about it on a personal level as someone who has stood for the Conservatives how does it actually make you feel you're obviously able to paint these pictures of how there are strategies but when you had the wit withdrawn how did that feel to be so it feels very strange because I I went in to see Boris just before he became leader to say look I'm going to resign you must understand that I can't be in your cabinet because I am against the No Deal brexit but I thought the understanding that I had with him was the normal understanding which is that you can't be in the government if you oppose the main part of government policy but I still believe very strongly that Parliament could be independent from government that there wasn't much point having a parliament if they 100 percent always do what the Prime Minister says you might as well get rid of Parliament entirely that it's a fundamental principle of our Constitution that members of parliament are able occasionally to vote against government so it was astonishing to me to discover that really when I thought we'd agreed that what I was giving up is my role as sexual state for international development that what I was really doing is giving up being a member of parliament at all and I also think that it's bizarre that our Constitution even allows him to do this you couldn't do this in the United States the president Trump would not be able to deselect you as the Republican candidate for Tennessee that would not be within his power right that would be something that would rest with the local parties so there is a you know there are many constitutionalists who's coming out now but on the subject that I was asking in terms of my personal emotional reaction yeah it's completely bewildering I mean you know this analogy of sitting in the garden shed it's correct I mean I am going yes I feel it's an abuse of power but I think also personally although there are many times when I feel cheerful and many times when I feel okay I'm gonna stand up for a different type of politics obviously at some level I'm going through the emotional experience to somebody who's just lost their job or has just been kicked out of the house and that does have an effect on your self-confidence have an effect what you're doing and it raises questions all these people you've been working with for nine and a half years you know local councillors in my constituency who I've been with through difficult family troubles who I've campaigned with now turning against me members of parliament who were my friends now appearing on television saying that they think it was the right thing that I get fired so it is it's a it's a tricky personal time and one of the challenges is that were sitting in that garden shedders we're not necessarily psychologically in exactly the right position to make the decision on what we do next and that the decision to jump next door or go back into there or sulk in the shed is being taken at a time of where psychologically we may not be calm enough to see clearly one of the things that we know about our new prime minister yet to be elected by the people is that he doesn't like being disliked they're actually one of his great weaknesses which is a weakness in a leader regardless of your view of the leader is that he really struggles personally with the fact that he is now a Marmite divisive figure since backing brexit to leave on that side because he was a very popular figure nationally when he was on things like have I got news view when he was London Maire when he was a journalist he may not have liked some men either but he certainly had that feeling about himself and these are people who've written about working with him say this I ask you then do you think it was Boris Johnson who made that decision to purge his party of you guys who he himself out it against for instance threes and Mays deal twice out of three times he went with her once at the end but he didn't lose the wit Theresa May didn't do that to people that cabinet that you sat in and on with Boris Johnson for some time or do you think it's the work of an even more unelected official Dominic Cummings the mastermind of the leave EU campaign the official campaign who is it is it Boris Johnson that's the puppet master or is it is it Dominic doing this so I think it's very important to understand that in the end the buck stops with the person in charge now it may be the case that this is a strategy driven by Dominic but the premise that appointed Dominic the premises supports Dominic and the premises signed off on the strategy and the this is something that often happens in regimes Annie Archie used to happen traditionally with medieval English kings the story was always oh that the person at the top is fine it's their advisers that's the problem if only the King knew the terrible things that their favorites and advisers were doing and people actually did this over with Nixon and Watergate it was an enormous focus on their chiefs of staff and the people under them and I I think it's I think the sort of simple view which is that you need to pin responsibility on the elected person at the top is the correct view and that although it's tempting to imagine there's some sort of secret Svengali who does the whole thing you have to acknowledge that the person at the top has empowered that person given that person the parent must bear moral responsibility for what that person does if the courts find Boris Johnson guilty essentially of misleading her majesty over the probation of Parliament next week is Boris Johnson's position as prime minister of this country untenable do you think his position is untenable I think the risk though is that we get into a form of trumpian politics in other words almost certainly were the courts to find against the prime minister he would like Donald Trump just try to shrug it off and say I don't care about the court so I've got the people on my side and we were getting a sense that already with his approach to progression his approach to purging people his statements about the fact that despite the fact that Parliament has voted for an extension he's not going to go to Brussels and request that extension so what will happen is not that his position becomes untenable but that British politics will become increasingly divisive and polarized because he will have doubled down on a tradition which I am also responsible for so I understand this cuts both ways that does I'm obviously criticizing Boris for being unconstitutional but remember I also participate in a vote I voted against No Deal brexit and that vote was made possible by the speaker breaking constitutional convention by allowing asked to introduce a positive motion on a particular type of special order of the house so that there is a bigger problem happening in British politics which is when it suits us far too many of us are trying to break the rules to suit our own position let me be provocative to a crowd that is is overwhelmingly a remain crowd how did you know about do they smell a certain way please please put up your hand if you voted remain it was a good guess okay so it's always good to check a lot of presumption in politics isn't always good absolutely we have to we have to have some intuitions as politicians so we can't really operate at all but the I mean with you know if you look at people's attitude towards the second referendum you can feel the same thing which is that for many of us we are beginning to get into a mindset that the end justifies the means that we are becoming increasingly determined to ignore process and outcomes we don't like in order to get to what we think is right and so I think if we're going to challenge what Boris is doing which is what I want to do we also have to be quite disciplined with ourselves and people like me need to be more careful about how I approach the constitutional process as well as attacking him on the other direction I think it's a very interesting point to make but I've particularly asked that question about Boris Johnson's position becoming untenable not just because it came up on social media it was one of the questions that came in but but also because people like Sabine Campbell former leader of the Lib Dems a Scottish QC a former Scottish QC has actually said he has to resign next week because you can't lie to the Queen about your real reasons for suspending Parliament not least when your defense secretary has been overheard saying at an event well the real reason we did it was because we need some space and a lack of scrutiny on brexit I'm badly paraphrasing Ben Wallace but that he's out there in the public domain if nothing else so I just wanted to understand why do you think somebody like that who no longer really does have skin in the political game would say that and he wasn't saying it in a mischievous way he's saying in a very serious so I think Emma that in the past Prime Minister's almost certainly would have resigned so but but we're getting into the this is why I'm drawing the analogy with Trump yes you basically if you were the editor of the New York Times you would have felt for the last two-and-a-half years you had produced the story every week that would inevitably lead to the resignation of the president and doesn't so Ming is correct I think in the past many of these things would lead to resignation but I also think that my reading of the strategy that Boris is pursuing is such that he's very very unlikely to respond to a court case by resigning because he probably feels that a chunk of the country I don't know how much chunk of the country but a chunk of the country will support him because the chunk of the country will feel here is this out-of-touch group of people sitting on the top of a pyramid I know who they are they're politicians that journalists they're judges and they're trying to undermine the will of the people and if he aligns himself with people against them and portrays the judges as being part of this out-of-touch conspiracy he can he can ride it through Parliament versus the people establishment versus the people's trust and and and he is the sort of I think for many of his own as he's a sort of hang grenade which is being thrown at that group and like a true politician you didn't quite answer one part of my question do you think he should so not do you think he will do you think there's arguments either side but do you personally think the honorable thing to do next week would be to resign in what you know about law politics and constitution well I think I mean in a sense he's too deep in now I mean he's steeped too deep in this I mean you where I in that position I hope I wouldn't have been in that position in the first place I mean I think the promise that all these moves are part of a total strategy which I've tried to call out from the leadership campaign even though the problem of the thing starts with the fundamental dishonesty the fundamental dishonesty was we're gonna leave by the 31st of October right he was never going to be able to leave by the 31st of October that was obvious I think how could he possibly I mean as I kept saying to leadership campaign you can't get a new deal out of Brussels and you can't get a no deal through Parliament so how can you leave by the 31st that word now I would if he got a new deal out of Brussels took it through and left by the 31st of October would be the first person to apologize I'd go down on bended knees in front of him and say you're actually your app see right I'm completely wrong so if he pulls that off pulls off this miracle of getting a new deal out of Brussels and getting that new deal through Parliament by the 31st of October I'm gonna be the first to say oh it's I mean II that I'm totally wrong that it's completely the end of my political project however I suspect come the 31st of October that will not be the case he will not get a radically new deal out of Brussels and he won't be able to get it through Parliament so and I suppose I've been certain enough of this for months now to think that saying that you're going to leave on the 31st of October do-or-die is somewhere between a fairy story and an untruth end of your political project we resign fully from politics hmm if he gets the deal through by the end of 31st of October I think I'm happy to say I wouldn't run again as a member of parliament yeah that is what we call a news line in my line of work if they're only journalists they're very interesting very interesting indeed we shall see one of my favorite things about asking for questions which I love doing and especially at my main job is on radio 5 live every morning and when I'm interviewing a politician and Rory's been on a couple of times some of the best questions come in on the text console as you're doing it and it's always you know sue who's listening at home while doing a bit of cooking or Barbies on the road whatever is going on and they just suddenly say it exactly how it is and this question came in Rory from a woman called Janet Rory Stewart I enjoy it she said she enjoyed you in the leadership contest as many did obviously in a number vote why haven't you started another Parliament across the road like you said you would if prorogation had taken place okay so that was it - no okay so the answer to Janet is that I said that we'd certain other Parliament across the road if he's suspended Parliament in order to prevent us blocking a No Deal brexit but what we did and this is why I've actually been kicked out of the Conservative Party and left the government is that through the votes in July we forced him to bring Parliament back in September and we were able to use that opportunity in September to vote to block a No Deal brexit so we've achieved our objectives so what would this Parliament do during those five weeks not clear to me so and as a result of that if I were to go across the road and try to hold another parliament and nobody would turn up because our objective has been achieved which is to block an ad or exit I mean some people may say oh no there were some politicians who've been trying to go in and sort of sit there and take selfies but I take the points I do take that point I think that's a it's a fair distinction on on what you said was the reason for it if you had one that leadership contest what would everything look like now where would we be I'd probably riots in the streets though I know in in the dream optimistic scenario of of winning the leadership I would hope that what I would have done is decisively moved the Conservative Party to become a party of the Center ground of the radical Center I wanted very much to find a compromise I was very excited by the idea of a citizen's assembly which is getting a group of people about the number of people in this tent but selected randomly scientifically across the country together to sit and spend three weeks in public talking through the details of Brixton and working their way towards upon price I wanted to get two million houses built and built quickly within a five year period I wanted to address out out social care in a cross-party way I mean it seems to me that is one of the real real miseries is that the NHS was a great achievement but for 70 years we've thought about how to deal with people who are ill but we've not come up with a solution to the frail elderly green papers white papers but nobody's been prepared to work cross-party on this so this I think would have been the things that I hope that you would have felt and I'd hope the process would have been a process of healing of trying to bring the country together towards the center ground and that small issue brexit what would be happening with that right now so we'd be going through the citizens assembly and we would have been working our way to what I believe would have been an outcome of a compromise in other words at the time to get the ideas from the citizens assembly to get to Brussels to get something back to Parliament or do you think we would have had to extend it a little oh we would have had to accept it yeah we would have had it said I never had this 31st October deadline in my head um have you read David Cameron's book yet no you in it I don't know I haven't looked at it well that's what your politicians do in each other rights but you go straight to the index it's it's true it's true panic paddy ashdown once gave me a copy of his book and I couldn't there was no dedication in it and then I flipped to thee to the s and the index and he'd written above it I knew you'd live you'd look here for love Hattie I've written a book about periods and if you want to talk about periods politics and power I'll be here at 3 o'clock I suspect the crowd may be small it may not be and you're not in it I just thought I'd clarify that but I did get asked would Rory happily sit on the tube and read a book about periods I think you would I definitely do he's got to say that yes right um I asked about David Cameron's memoirs because it's very interesting what he's been saying about the Queen Her Majesty's in the news a lot at the moment due to former Etonians and not listening you in that actually David Cameron and I'm Boris Johnson in terms of whether Boris was misled whether David has misspoken and it was David Cameron right to ask for the Queen even just to raise an eyebrow in the run-up to that Scottish referendum but he was wrong and he was a thousand times wrong if he did that to then say that he'd done you're not meant to find that bit out are you in politics of internalized totally insane I mean if he actually had had that conversation of the Queen and the Queen had been prepared to do that it is the most astonishing betrayal of that conversation to put that down what's wrong with David Cameron and when it comes to there is a there's a next bit right but when it comes to discretion over the monarch he's not got it has he where he once said she heard down the phone to me which made our monarchs sound sexual um I think he likes inside a gossip he thinks that one of the charming ways of dealing with a crowd is is to sort of let you into the secret of his glamorous life so he often in speeches will have a little anecdote about you know this moment he share but angler Merkel or this funny thing that he he did with Berlusconi I mean he wow that would be a good one yeah what did he do with bonus game well he his great his great gag was that the one thing that he he learnt in politics and he'd say this again and again in meetings is if Berlusconi invites you to a party never go if the Queen invites you to a party always go but this this is party he's not gonna be invited so anymore by the Queen but you're right but it but but I think this is part of the collapse of seriousness and politics you you don't actually want your leaders trying to take you into cozy little moments with Angela Merkel or the Queen right you there has to be discretion and seriousness of the basis what you actually want us talking about if possible is how to bring this country together and make it a better place not you know bringing you along with me and my glamorous little life so David Cameron's contributed to a lack of seriousness in politics I think our entire political system including David Cameron has got into a deeply deeply um serious space I think the if you wanted a way of really criticizing Britain you would say we are in danger of not being a serious country anymore the policy conversations are not serious are approach to brexit has not been serious our approach to our Constitution is not serious our approach to foreign policy is not serious this is a serious country full of some very serious smart people and we are so much less than the sum of our parts we are not being who we should be and that's about leadership but it's also about a public that enables leaders to behave in a non serious fashion in a moment I'm going to hand you over to this crowd not literally for some questions I do have some non serious questions which now sort of feels wrong after what you just said they are from a couple of other people online who wanted to know that they one of one of the women who got in touch had read your favorite books in this in this week in the Week magazine excuse me at Middlemarch is in there I believe she she was a bit worried that you don't have enough of a laugh in your life because of your very serious choices but what makes you laugh Rory Stewart that's a really good question um fleabag fleabag makes me laugh good choice alright and another one who would play you in a film I have the answers I've been dreaming of it since I was very young I am gonna be played by Danny DeVito you may have to lose a little weight just a little could we please have some of your wonderful questions straight up brilliant the banality of both of the major parties over this brexit issue shows a moral bankruptcy that I think both of them are going to have a hard time recovering from what's your vision of the political system in say you know assuming we can get past this in 10 years time do you see it as an ever increasing polarization between these two rabid tribes or do you see some new forms emerging okay it's a really good question so I think that there is a very strong logic towards polarization so essentially British public opinion which used to be a sort of bell jar with all the votes in the middle has now become a u-shape with all the votes on the extremes and nobody left in the center at least so it's so it feels right but we have to I think advocate for the center ground I mean my whole project now is to say these parties are finished ultimately that way of approaching politics cannot be sustained that there has to be a complete reshaping of our political life and that it must be possible to make the arguments for the center ground but to make those arguments we need to be prepared to use things like this in other words we need to be trumpian anti Trump's we need to learn how to make quite populist sounding arguments for non populist causes you need to resist the temptation to become sort of boring technocrats I mean that's the danger of my saying we need to be serious find a lively engaged way of listening and engaging and I think that the word that was most powerful in my campaign probably had the real energy but it's very difficult to learn as a politician as the word love because I think that's a word which is very very radical full of courage full of possibility but is in the end about empathy and bringing people together rather than dividing [Applause] thanks very much just a very quick one if you if you believe the centre ground of politics is where people really should be why wouldn't you join the Liberal Democrats they're really setting themselves up as being against authoritarianism so against extremism and in favor of liberal values so I think the thing that shocked me most about the Lib Dems and the reason that I wouldn't join them is this announcement that they're going to revoke without a second referendum I think that is insane I think for a program that began for bricks voters as here as these people at the top of the pyramid completely out of touch the elite just ignore us they're not interested in our views to then say we're gonna just remain and we're not even going to ask you again we're gonna completely ignore the result of the references you don't know what's good if you I think it's totally playing into that rhetoric mining is deeply deeply dangerous if you're gonna go for remain you've got to have a second referendum and I think actually for a party that claims to be anti-authoritarian that is a very authoritarian move Rory why no mention of Northern Ireland and the border there okay let me let me finish on this because that's a very very good challenge and a very good thing to end on in talking about why Britain is not a serious country one of the biggest elements of that is how little we talk about Ireland and Nolan is part of our country and yet often if you read British media or hear politicians over the last five years they talk about it as though it's located somewhere near Sarajevo right it's not really part of our political discourse and of course the fundamental problem with brexit from the beginning was the issue of Ireland and yet the remain campaign almost never talked about Ireland go to Derry Londonderry at the moment and you are aware of the fact that the peace there is very recent and very fragile those apprentice day marches are things that still have to be taken through with the most extraordinary care you will see peace walls still up you will see this a Protestant community in living in the middle of Derry Londonderry that is quite literally surrounded by 15-foot walls with Parachute Regiment flags that you go over those walls and you'll see big big images of Che Guevara this Good Friday Agreement was in the end facilitated by the removal of that border it allowed people to live in Northern Ireland and feel Irish or live in Northern Ireland and feel British without having to confront the question of which they were and the economy of Northern Ireland is deeply integrated into the Republic 85% of the sheep from Enniskillen go across the border to abattoirs in the Republic it's a single island health economy so amongst the many many reasons be very worried about a new deal Brett said Ireland and indeed I think for me as a Scot the consequences for Scotland and the United Kingdom are some of the deepest reasons why I think an OD or brexit would be deeply damaging deeply unnecessary and something we would regret for years to come my guess we'll do it in his pants for more debates talks and interviews subscribe today to the Institute of Arts and ideas at IAI TV you

Channel: The Institute of Art and Ideas

Views: 85,438

Rating: 3.751668 out of 5

Keywords: boris johnson, boris, johnson, brexit, conservatives, allegations, groping, prime minister, party, politics, right wing, rory stewart, rory, stewart, dominic cummings, european union, eu, britain, united kingdom, plan, no deal, deal, referendum, peoples vote, whip, prorogate, prorogation, parliament, rebels, theresa may, extension, defeat, queen, think, learn, talk, debate, news, current affairs

Id: cfkkfxT1VKI

Length: 31min 59sec (1919 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 01 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/SlowJay11]

Worth remembering that it's the abuse of power that upsets him, not Johnson's policies. Both he and Johnson are cut from the same Tory cloth and both of them fucking hate the poor.