Narcissistic Harry has betrayed King Charles | Royal expert Simon Heffer

if I was a kid I would be so angry at Harry's Behavior not just because the sense of betrayal hello and welcome to offscript my name is Stephen Edgington as Harry and Megan continue their attacks on the royal family I'm joined by the historian Simon heifer to discuss the couple the coronation of King Charles and what the future holds for Britain in 2023 do you think that Harry and Megan are being fair in their attacks on King Charles and his son I don't know I suspect they aren't uh it's very dangerous to talk about other people's private lives their family lives one never knows what goes on inside of marriage one never knows really what goes on inside a family unless it's your marriage and your family and while there are many experts who are talking about what's going on at the moment with these two different branches of the House of Windsor no one really apart from those involved knows what really goes on I think what we can objectively say is that no member of the royal family certainly No One Born Into The Royal Family has ever behaved as indiscretely and as offensively towards the family as Prince Harry has I mean you know in the modern age in the media age no one has behaved like this and his conduct is pretty reprehensible he may well have opted out of the Royal Family but he should be aware that in no family whether it's rather one or an ornery one like yours or mine does anyone come up with any credit when they start slagging off somebody else particularly slagging off the head of the family and I think his attacks on his father and particularly is now his attacks on his brother are really very ill judged and very foolish of him to do them okay he's got a book to sell uh I'm an author I've managed to sell some of my books without going on and vilifying members of my family in the process and I think probably he should have thought long and hard before attacking the king not necessarily because the king is popular although I think the King has made a very good start to his Reign and is popular but simply because it looks so cheap and it looks so Petty and it looks vulgar and those are things that people who do not expect our royal family to be even semi-detached members like Prince Harry so I is he being fair to them I don't know I suspect he isn't is he behaving wisely certainly not now he claims Prince Harry claims that he wants to reconcile with his family he wants his his brother back his his dad back that's what he says do you think he's being genuine in this attempt to reconcile that depends on how stupid we think he is to be honest with you um I mean if any of us again has a fight with a member of our family and decides to conduct his in public and decides to release family secrets uh in public and then expects that member of the family who has been humiliated and vilified to come back and say well actually let's be friends then that's a very naive way of looking at it I mean I don't know Prince William but I suspect he's not Mother Teresa of Calcutta I suspect that Prince William's own views are very much that his brother should have played by the rules he's chosen not to do so in fact he's breaking the rules in a pretty comprehensive way that no other member of the royal family that I can think of has ever done in modern times and that it's going to be quite a long time and require quite a change of circumstances before there can be any reconciliation with any of them I think there's a distinction between the king as Harry's father looking at how he behaves and the prince of Wales is Harry's brother looking at how he behaves I imagine and again courtiers have said this to me that the the king as his father Longs for a Reconciliation but Prince William is not Harry's father he's Harry's brother and also he is the man who at some stage in the next 15 or 20 years is going to have to take the firm over and and run it and Harry is not making that process any easier for him and also appears to be making it difficult in order to make money you know whether it's the Netflix documentary whether it's the book this is all about the ringing of the cash register and Harry didn't need to put himself in that position he had a job for Life had he chosen to do it and it seems that his wife didn't like the terms upon which the job was conducted well that's fair enough no one can compel her to want to be a member of the royal family but maybe they should have thought about that before they got married and having made the break maybe it should be a clean break rather than a break where he keeps coming back like a very bad dose of food poisoning and keeps saying every few days some new atrocity about his family but this is his way of wanting privacy I'm sure that's what he claims Anyway by uh going out and doing these interviews is an extraordinary thing um what about these what about these uh these accusations that he's making I mean maybe maybe he is Justified in um in doing these interviews and writing these books and things if if what he says is true so for example he he talks about the palace leaking against him and him not being able to respond Through official channels and he also obviously talks more recently about these uh this idea that Prince William uh assaulted him or shoved him would that justify in any way Harry's actions now I don't think it's a good idea for people to wash their dirty Linen in public whether they're Royal or non-royal I don't think that others feel highly of the well about people who betray their family in that way if any member of the royal family had committed a serious criminal offense against the sussexes you know a serious assault a violence attack they're possibly fair enough but there's no evidence of that at all this seems to be like a bit of a a scrap a bit of rough and tumble between two brothers you know both of whom are former army officers they can look after themselves I mean this idea that you know poor Old Harry's sitting in a corner being beaten census by his brothers nonsense now I was in Madrid recently speaking to some Spanish students and they were asking me about Harry and Megan and they'd watch this documentary on Netflix and I thought it was interesting that even these people these Spanish students had seen this thing and you know they're having a big impact around the world what do you think the impact of their comments is having on on Britain's reputation and on the monarchy's reputation I felt until I suppose the Autumn before the Netflix series that it was having a pretty bad effect on our International reputation but then you realize first of all that the people who are complaining most vigorously about it are frankly rather crackpot people who write for the New York Times and who knows much about my country and the culture of my country as I do about you know Botswana so let's forget about them I'm also quite interested that and much of the media reaction in America to what's what was in the Netflix programs it's very negative they thought Harry was basically just whining which he was they hated the narcissism of it um and I saw that touch to rauna if I saw that the Dutchess of Sussex recently said that people who accused her of narcissism were racist well come on she is a narcissist nobody who portrays her life and in his case his life as openly as they've done in a broadcast can be anything other than a narcissist so um I think that the damage that's been done to the Royal Family's reputation has now been counted by the excessive behavior of the sussexes and by the rather dignified response to it of the king and the queen who just smile and carry on I mean if I was a kid I would be so angry at Harry's Behavior not just because the sense of betrayal but I would think that my wife the present Queen the queen consort put up with about 20 years of vilification from newspapers before and after her marriage to the king and she never complained she just got on with it and I think one reason why she is so admired now and has been such a success as Queen consort is that people remember what she and the prince of Wales to see them was had to put up with with newspapers and television documentaries having a go at her you know painting her some sort of scarlet woman and so on and so forth again presuming knowledge of the King's first marriage that they didn't have and it is I think a measure of how people expect the royal family to behave that the king and queen despite what they've had put up within the past have just carried on and not noticed this but I imagine that the anger is seething below the the surface having said that I still believe that if Prince Harry genuinely wanted a Reconciliation his father would give him one the problem is going to be his brother let's talk about another accusation that you mentioned there that Meghan Markle makes or accuses sort of Britain and the royal family in the Press of and that is racism do you think that we have treated her as a country as you know as tabloid newspapers or even as the monarchy I mean she makes these implications at the monarchy is in some way or racist or members of the royal family are racist are any of these accusations Justified I don't believe so I'm I'm no number of members of the royal family I've never heard any of them Express a racist sentiment the late Queen went out of her way to be what we now call inclusive I mean the Commonwealth for her was hugely important and you know she spent decades um treating black people as her equals as they were and as she should have done and she set an example to the family that there is one race of people they're human beings if everybody's the same um it's inevitable that an aggrieved person of color like Meghan Markle would want at some stage to play the race card but she's playing that card I don't think anybody else is I'm not aware of any obvious attack on her that is motivated by the fact that she has a mother who is a black woman let's talk about the coronation of King Charles now that's coming up in May it's an exciting moment exciting exciting ceremony for the country um do you think that there should be a scaled back coronation you know we've got high inflation with budgets are under a tight everyone's sort of trying to save money or should we have the full full fat version Oh I think the public have expectations of the coronation and that it's important for the health of the monarchy that those expectations are fulfilled don't forget in 1953 we still had various Foods on the ration um you know never mind High inflation inflation by the way which is going down at the rate of knots now no I think that there should be as big and as magnificent coronation as our history merits and I heard it said at the time of the late Queen's death that because of changed health and safety regulations since 1953. you can't pack as many people into Westminster Abbey as used to be the case or that may well be so so I hope the king will think very long and hard about who is on the Invitational list and that he invites people who represent the very best about our country don't just invite somebody because he or she is a member of parliament or he or she is a member of the House of Lords invite people who are special to this country and reflect the best about this country I think if you do have a list of people who are basically just also Ransom fellow Travelers um and you know people who ex who think they have a right to be there that could cause problems but in terms of spending money I don't worry about that there'll be so much additional tourism there'll be Americans over here Germans over here spending dollars and Euros like there's no tomorrow I don't see that there's a problem before the late Queen's death were you confident in Charles being a good King to be a good King I've always been confident about Charles being a good King for the simple reason that I think he knows better than anybody else the exact nature of his mother's Legacy I think he was immensely dutiful and respectful and loyal to the memory of his mother and he knows that he has this institution in Trust and he will not let it down but I think also he is very fortunate in the queen uh and that I think the queen has had the most marvelous effect on the king in the what has it done nearly 18 years that they've been married and she's a very down-to-earth person she's enormously popular when people meet her they instantly like her because she's completely genuine and I feel that he will be helped enormously in his conduct of the office of King uh by his wife and I think the country will increasingly realize how lucky it is to have both of them when you look at the elected or appointed heads of state of other countries uh I mean I often try to imagine who we might have as our head of state if we didn't have a monarchy and you know some of these ex-politicians I didn't want to be sued for libels of name any names but some of the idea of some of these former senior politicians of ours ending up in retirement as our head of state just chills the blood to be honest with you so I know he's only been king for a matter of months now but do you think he's handled it well so far I think he has handled it well um the only thing that's worried me was the reaction to the um arguments created by the the remarks of Lady Susan Hussey yes to a black lady at a reception I thought that for someone who had given 40 no I think 60 years of service to the royal family Lady Susan was treated pretty perimeterally so we would just remind viewers what happened yes this lady turns up very colorfully dressed uh clearly advertising an African heritage and uh Lady Susan who was lady waiting for the queen forever um says where are you from and she says she's from Hackney and then Lady Susan I'd probably rather him delicately says well where are you really from uh and I think by that she wasn't trying to say you have no right to be here she was saying forever you're dressed in very interesting costume I'd like to know a bit more about your heritage what is your heritage she didn't phrase it in a way that is now deemed to be correct and acceptable and that evening her um godson the Prince of Wales so well there's no place for racism in the in the royal family well of course there isn't but that implies that lady Susan is a racist which I'm absolutely sure she isn't and I think that the jerk of the knee was a little bit Swift there I don't think Prince William should have said that I think he should have said that you know if it was interpreted as being an offensive remark then it was deeply regrettable and he should defended his godmother and said I've known her all my life and I'm sure that she was not being deliberately offensive and it's a generational thing it's how people of that era I mean ladies Susan's over 80. um used to that sort of question they used to ask so um I feel that the I know that since the King has made gestures towards Lady Susan I think she's going for the coronation which is quite right she's a great servant for the royal family out of the country for as I say 60 years but that was the one moment when I think that a slightly firmer hand should have been on the tiller I'm not for a moment suggesting that this woman didn't have some right to feel offended uh but I think he could have been dealt within a much more measured way rather than the slightly hysterical way that it was handed there is a certain level of Hysteria in Britain surrounding racism and the royal family particularly with these attacks from Meghan Markle so maybe it's understandable that they felt that this issue was very sensitive well I can see that absolutely and you know if you've got the king's daughter-in-law wandering around basically saying that you know the royal family are institutionally racist then you have to be very sensitive to this sort of thing but I think it would have been much more it would have been quite straightforward to say that while we are deplore the fact that any offense was given to this woman um that we sincerely believe that lady Susan is not racially Prejudiced and was not making a Mark that was a remark that was deemed you know she deemed to be offensive well this has been a criticism perhaps that goes into sort of a broader level of criticism against uh now King Charles from some conservatives and they say that he's too vocal on environmental issues that he gives too much he's being basically too political in a way that the queen never the late Queen never was so do you think that that Charles has been a bit too political in his life generally or or what do you think well I think if you end up being uh as an adult he was 21 in 1969 Prince of Wales for you know 53 54 years um you're going to find it very difficult to keep your mouth shut about things that interest you and the prince of Wales doesn't have the Constitutional opposition of the monarch um since he became king I know he didn't go to cop 27 uh he understood then that his previous embracing of environmental issues was not perhaps something that everybody agreed with therefore he wouldn't he controversial about it I'm waiting to see whether he makes any more pronouncements about architecture I think it's quite all right for the king to say that a certain building is abominable I think if he would start criticizing shall we say the general standard of social housing in this country that would be a political statement because it's something it's a service provided by the government and he should be very careful about getting dragged into that however much he might object to some of the equality of our social housing we don't know what goes on in his private conversations with Mr sunac um I hope that when he sees Mr sunac he impresses upon him that he has worries whatever they may be whether it's about the Health Service whether it's about people being able to feed themselves um and Mr sunac might argue back that you know there's a limit to what you can do with the resources that the country has currently got so um I think at the moment it's absolutely fine and I'm sure that his prime minister because the king understands what a constitutional monarchy is if his prime minister ever certain one of their audiences and you and I will never know this in our lifetimes uh look sir I think you went a bit too far the other day in that speech then I think the king would say Okay I accept your judgment on that and I won't do it again he's new and when the queen had been on the throne as long as he had she was 26. she'd be a naval officer's wife she'd never had the opportunity really to go and embrace any great issues and speak about them and the late Queen was far from stupid but I don't think she had the level of intellectual curiosity that the present King has got I don't think that she found political or semi-political subjects that gripped Her Imagination in the way that his imagination is clearly gripped by the way that people live in this country I mean he's interested in you know when he was Prince of Wales in the prince's trust in business in the community uh the all the architectural uh projects and ideas he was really trying to make a difference with something like poundbury whatever one thinks of it and um I think you know generally the work he did there and with his Charities was was very good and you can't expect him to switch off now the lake we never had that Hinterland she never had time to have it because she was on the throne at 25. so um I think we need to give him a little bit of understanding now we did a whole hour talking about Queen Elizabeth II after just after her death and we talked about her Legacy and I think that she really was a unifying figure for many Brits obviously she came to the throne in 1953 is that right 52 52 and at the time you know Britain was a very different country and and and our views towards the monarchy was perhaps different I think that um our understanding of tradition and our culture and our history has maybe been eroded somewhat particularly among younger younger Brits maybe you just screw me on that do you think that Charles can be that same unifying figure that Queen Elizabeth Queen Elizabeth II was I would disagree with your contention that uh we have a should we say well maybe I'm putting words into your mouth but are less deferential or less respectful view of the monarchy than we had in 1952 I think difference in this country was largely killed by the Great War and certainly after a second thought there wasn't very much of it left I think that's a wrong reading of History I think of anything because of the Queen's length of service and the fact that she just kept on going and never put a foot wrong has enhanced respect for the monarchy I think there's probably more respect for the monarchy at the time of her death in the time of King Charles's succession uh than there was 30 or 40 years ago and paradoxically I think that's not least because of the ways she saw the monarchy through those difficult years in the 90s when the prince of wales's marriage broke up when Princess Diana was killed in a car crash um when Windsor Castle burnt um I think that people looked at her and thought my God you've handled this with dignity in the end however hysterical some people were at the time of these events in retrospect they look back and the queen did an exceptional job and so I think the King has had a slightly easier Legacy than might otherwise have been the case is HE capable of being a unifying figure yes I think he is I think he's shown that already I think he has shown an explicit understanding of the nature of a constitutional monarchy which is what our way of life is all about and I think that he has made it clear that he shares the values of most of the people in this country we have very few Republicans not least because the royal family family behave themselves quite well I also suspect by the way that the idiotic behavior of Prince Harry and his wife uh and their constant displays of narcissism and self-obsession are going to make people more sympathetic towards the king energy towards the Prince of Wales uh because they'll say well why on Earth should these people put up with that sort of attack so I think he has got off to a good start I think he is more than capable of being a unifying figure one other consideration was bear in mind is our political class and I've written about politics not just for this newspaper for 40 years is more unpopular now that it's been I think in my lifetime and more health and contempt that I'm afraid as a consequence of Boris Johnson uh Premiership and it was ended in shambles and then of a 45-day Premiership by his successor which for different reasons ended in a shambles and I think to have a head of state who is steady Charming dutiful it's a great contrast and I think people value it now you talk about British values or a child shares the values of the people in Britain the interesting thing that he that he faces or one of the challenges he's faces is is almost unprecedented for a monarch is the level of change in Britain's makeup in the last 70 years so we are more diverse than we have ever been we have more religions people you know coming from different cultures and backgrounds than we've ever had in this country's history and to be able to unite those sort of dive those diverse communities is is a challenge and I don't think there is one shared set of British values that everyone signs up to you know people from various different communities may have may hold slightly different values Etc that will be a challenge for him to to be able to unite these different sort of groups within Britain the Prince of Wales when he was Prince of Wales was always talking about his hope that he would one day be the defender of faiths rather than just defender of the faith now I don't undermine his sense of Duty in being Supreme governor of the Church of England and I'm sure in his coronation oath he will swear to do that just as his late mother did but he's also made it abundantly clear that he respects the right of others in this country to practice whatever religion they wish and you know we used to have a as it were a one-party state in terms of religion uh in 1829 we had Catholic emancipation we allowed Jews to sit in Parliament from I think 1858 um we allow people of all religions Hindus Buddhists uh whatever to take a full role as equal people under the law in the running of our society but these were very small groups of people in the 18 in the 19th century I think we can over stress I mean I think this country is still 85 percent white um so you know we can over uh stress how many diverse minorities there are the key thing is about our minorities is they're equal under the law and they should be equal under the law the king recognizes that the King has never said anything that I'm aware of and my God we would be aware of it to say that any other religion is not the you know as worthy of respect and the tolerance as mainstream anglicanism so you know he's very much got that view and you know he has over the years when things back to him going out into mosques temples synagogues and you know embracing representatives of other religions and saying look um you know you're part of our society and you know what people do in their spiritual life what they do in the privacy of their own homes that's you know what a deep British value is to respect their right to be different or we ask of all our citizens irrespective of their race color or Creed is that they buy into the rule of law into democracy and understand you know what we understand by a civilized society the indigenous population if you're like well you know what the evolution of value is really since the Civil War has been here and we asked him to subscribe to them and almost everybody does because they are enlightened decent values that make people happier and that's really you know what an ideal Society does it's a new year 2023 I'm sure everyone's aware of all the challenges that Britain faces are you generally pessimistic or optimistic about our future I don't know actually um I think so much relies on what's going on in Eastern Europe at the moment uh uh I would like the war in Ukraine to be over as swiftly as possible obviously I would like like it to be made clear to the Russians that they have lost and that they have engaged in an unpardonable Act of aggression which cannot be tolerated and cannot be repeated what I what I am pessimistic about is that whoever replaces Putin and I feel that Putin will not last that much longer I hope I'm right about that is it whoever replaces him isn't worse than he is I don't see why we can't be friends with the Russians I don't see why we have to um have this uh almost non-stop since the 19 1917 really since the revolution this non-stop tension and aggression between the west and the East the Russians showed themselves in the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall to be ready to embrace capitalism to be ready to embrace Western ways I mean most Russians had watched Western programs on television I thought gosh why did we have a lifestyle like that why don't we all have nice cars and I stayed at the art fridges on stereo systems and the rest of it uh and I I don't dispute that there are many Russians fighting in this war who are hating every second of it and wish they weren't there and um their families were obviously distraught I mean These Are People Like Us in many respects and there's a few lunatics who run the system who are determined to recreate the old USSR and it can't be allowed and I think if we can get that sorted out if we can get the war over and try to move Russia towards somewhere towards a democracy where it can be ruled by people who are accountable to the people and don't rule by fear then the whole balance of the world changes um but you know the Russians don't lose soon don't earn the war in Ukraine soon um and they start imposing you know energy restrictions on large parts of Europe then the Western economy is going to suffer quite seriously and that to my mind is the great obstacle to prosperity in our own country I don't like living in a country that is quite so highly taxed I think we have a far too large public sector and it's only going to be by cutting public sector payroll and it may include the National Health Service although I stress not people working in professions Allied to Medicine but bureaucrats we need to have a proper audit really of every job in the public sector and see whether it's worth paying for because we are still living far beyond our means we are taxed more highly than at any time since the second world war that is not a recipe either for liberty or for the advancement of our economy and something has to be done about it now there's sort of lists of things you could mention about being pessimistic so record levels of illegal migration record levels of legal migration as well obviously highest inflation in 30 years highest tax burden in 70 years massive massive public spending as you mentioned the economy is struggling perhaps we're going into recession perhaps we're going into a worldwide recession is there any reason to be optimistic I think if we can get this war over and done with as I've said then yes I think that that will improve the basis upon which our economy is is built um clearly the National Health Service has become something of religion in this country and its stewardship is pretty poor at the moment I think there's got to be wholesale reform of the National Health Service to ensure that genuinely sick people get care immediately one of the most scandalous things that hasn't happened in the last 12 years because it was 12 years ago that the dilmark report came out is that conservative governments have not acted on the dilwalk report and have not created a proper insured social care system the main reason it's quite clear why our national health services and functioning it's because there's a lot of elderly people who are incapable of being discharged from hospital but who are not actually ill um who are bed blocking and uh something has to be done about that not just for the short term but for the long term and everybody needs to start making provision for care we no longer all die at the age of 70. uh you know when I was a boy somebody who was in their 80s was a very old person indeed people in the races now have looked like people in their 60s looked When I Was A Boy 50 years ago so um we haven't the the need to provide for our society has not developed with the society itself and some that's a vision that is necessary I'm not talking about taxation I'm not talking about the state providing care I'm talking about people being compelled in the way that if I go on the road in my car I'm compelled to have insurance people being compelled to ensure themselves against the misfortunes of old age and that way we can have a fair society and a much better functioning National Health Service and no government's had the guts to do that it's about time that they did so if that happened I'd be very optimistic you talked about record levels of legal immigration I don't mind legal immigration that's absolutely fine this country needs people my God we need doctors for example and nurses so yes um that's fine illegal immigration does worry me greatly not least because of what police have been telling me about the high uh Coincidence of gangsterism in London with some of the people who've been migrating illegally into this country over the last two or three years and I don't understand why we can't Deport these people people who come here there are plenty of legal routes into this country and there are people that we need and we welcome them here and they again I go back to some point they live equally under the law once they get here and enjoy all the benefits that the rest of us take for granted but um why we cannot Deport people who are not fleeing persecution who've come over here for purely economic reasons for their own economic reasons and quite often to engage in criminal Enterprises I simply don't understand and it's the sort of thing that one day can bring a government down and I hope it doesn't but I hope to be treated before it gets to that stage but it's a grave problem that I think many ministers been transported around London and their Schaefer driven cars don't actually quite understand now conservative voters have for decades been promised by conservative politicians that immigration would become would become under control um you know brexit was a huge region that people voted for brexit was for Border controls and I think a lot of people feel a bit betrayed by that I mean if as I mentioned 1.1 million people came into the UK last year net was about 500 000 it was six hundred thousand around that number you know this is this was literally the highest on record numbers of people coming in so I think many people who you know most voters if you look at opinion polls want immigration to come down both legal and illegal um so so I think as I mentioned you know not just the NHS but it's the inflation it's um it's taxes it's all of these things and crime crime is a huge issue many crimes seem to have become completely decriminalized burglary for example um meanwhile the police are are wasting time on Twitter and diversity officers so I mean there's so many things I could talk about uh the problems in Britain can we blame the conservatives that I mean they've been in power for 12 years Services have been in power for 12 years and yes of course it's things that are going right over therefore you can't sit down and say oh that was called for Brown's alternative players for Harold Wilson's fault I mean that must be absolute nonsense um we I mean we've had a pitifully run home office for years and I've talked to home secretaries in the past and they've said to me oh it's about civil servants okay we'll change the civil servants you know remind the Civil sermons and nobody elects them but people do elect members of parliament they're to elect and the Home Secretary is always a member of parliament never in the House of Lords so you know they they have a a constitutional mandate to do something about this problem and I think the one reason why people get very nervous about discussing immigration is it always comes back to racism this is not about racism this is about a housing shortage as schools that are bursting at the seams a Health Service that can't function infrastructure that is collapsing we physically can't cope with large numbers of more people we haven't got the infrastructure we haven't got the Public Services to deal with it and until that is sorted out we're right to control immigration but also there are always going to be people that we need you know the labor market is a global market and there'll be people whether they are at one extreme Chief Executives of companies that we want to get in to run our companies better or people that we need to come and be plumbers or or um teachers or whatever people's skills who are less highly paid and we can't ever put up the pull up the drawbridge until you're not coming in but yes brexit has been in that sense a disappointment and you know it was the once brexit was as it was as Johnson put it done which um he thought was at the end of 2020. nothing happened to Embark upon enforcing border controls having that program of deregulation that might have increased growth and productivity you know people like me who are active supporters of brexit um sat around waiting for the politicians to take advantage of the Liberty that this gave us and we're still waiting so when is that going to change when's that going to happen and it's it's derelict Behavior by our political class I know there's been a pandemic but that didn't have to involve the entire government there were other people out there you know with trade portfolios with um you know in the treasury who could have started to look at ways of deregulating making this country leaner and fitter and better at doing business in the world and we've completely failed to take that opportunity which is shocking there are some countries who haven't relied on mass migration to fill labor shortages Japan is one of them they've invested heavily in capital Machinery et cetera but that's a completely other thing on the conservative party itself many conservatives conservative voters lifelong conservative members feel that the party deserves to be wiped out of the next election they feel betrayed as I mentioned particularly on issues like migration and crime and other issues first of all can Rishi sunak turn it around second of all does the conservative party deserve to die the conservative party doesn't deserve to die because um the forces have left in some in this country require an opposition now uh Richard Tice Nigel farage might say well we can do that well good luck to you have a go um any election is a battle of ideas and frankly if there's another conservative force in this country that can come up with better ideas and more credibility in implementing them than the conservative government of the last 13 years has done then good luck to them I'd be interested to see that but until the conservative party finally collapses no it doesn't deserve to die because we need to have a choice but is it a choice at the moment though I mean the conservatives and labor seem so similar on so many things well the labor party has been very clever in saying virtually nothing um since sunak became leader I know that you know starmer is about to do that but um they're both engaging in what I call the politics of boredom it's a battle of the boars at the moment it's which of us can be more cautious more boring more sort of downbeat than the other um because I think we have got to the stage after the Johnson years where we know that Reckless promises are very easily broken and that reputations are broken with them so I think that given we are in a very constrained Financial State and things are not going well in quite a lot of sectors of the economy that both the leader of the opposition and the Prime Minister are being very careful with what they say and what they promise to do I don't believe the conservative party deserves to die I think there are a lot of very good people in the conservative party um I'm afraid again I'm totally keep talking about him but Johnson did value loyalty overability and had one of the most mediocre cabinets imaginable which is why they did so little and did it so badly uh and I think if sunak can show by the middle of 2024 that he is a more serious more thoughtful are more responsible prime minister then there is a chance to limit the scale of the defeat that I fear the conservative party is heading for because the labor party at the moment show not many signs of being able to win a large number of seats in Scotland I'm not confident that we're going to get a majority labor government but I think a lot of the red wall seats will go I think the Liberals will win seats in um shall we say smart bits of suburban London on the west country where the Tories are currently the the city and tenants and we will end up with some sort of supply and confidence arrangement between the labor party and the liberal party after the next election with of course the SNP usually not voting against the labor party because they have a shared ideological view certainly of economic matters so I fear that sunac has come in to lead the conservative party to an Inevitable Defeat I hope I'm wrong I don't want to live in the left-wing controlled country but um the conservative party has made a rod for its own back I never understood at the time why so many conservative activists and I go and speak to them quite a lot uh came up and told me all the time what very brilliant leader Boris Johnson was and I would say well where's your evidence and the fact was well they thought he'd tell good jokes we've now learned I think categorically that being able to tell good jokes and that assumes they were good jokes is a measure of running a country well and we have been really abominantly governed um really all the way through this conservative Administration I mean the fact that Cameron in 2011 didn't Implement Dillard the fact that Osborne went on and on about austerity when there wasn't really austerity it wasn't that he was cutting public spending he was just increasing it less quickly than than had been the case in the past so there's been a a long-running confidence trick Cameron walking away on the morning of the defeat over the uh the brexit referendum I think was unforgivable I wrote a piece in the Sunday Telegraph the week before the um uh the week before the poll urging people to vote to come out I didn't regret that for a moment but also saying that Cameron if he lost should stay and sort out the mess because he called the referendum and he called it for cynical reasons he was afraid of Nigel farage and him walking at that stage handing over to in a complete incompetent like Theresa May who was incapable of taking a decision and then you go on to the the the the clownishness and dishonesty and incompetence of Johnson and the sheer lunacy of this trust I mean where that came from I still can't quite compute I know Liz truss thought she was a thatcher right but having lived through the Thatcher in years as I happily did um Mrs Thatcher never ever um borrowed money to cut taxes which is what Liz trust Was preparing to do so we the conservative party has betrayed the people who supported it serially over the last 13 years it's only got away with it because the labor party usually has been in an even worse State I mean you know Corbin wasn't fit to run the proverbial bath let alone a political party and let alone a country but we should still vote for the Tories I want to wait and see their Manifesto I've got a very good number of parliament where I vote and I almost certainly will vote for her if I if I lived in a part of the country where I had a uh well I think certainly any of the 102 whatever it was MPS who thought it was a good idea for Boris Johnson to come back and fight another leadership contest I wouldn't support that man or woman in a million years I mean happily my Member of Parliament is extremely good and he's too sensible to have even thought about doing that um so she'll get my vote but I don't presume at this stage to advise other people that they should vote conservative I want to see the manifesto I want to see what promises are made thank you so much Simon heifer for joining us thank you very much indeed

Channel: The Telegraph

Views: 1,626,054

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Id: -NPtKtELA94

Length: 46min 11sec (2771 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 06 2023