Rory Stewart On Empire, Austerity & Why Corbyn Was Right About Iraq | Ash Sarkar meets Rory Stewart

if you think as many people seem to that the Tory party is a fundamentally kind of Evil operation it's where we're literally rubbing our hands together being like how do I this morning how am I really gonna over poor people how I'm really gonna make people's lives as miserable as possible because what I really get pleasure out of is destroying things killing people I really want to kill 150 000 people with austerity that's my aim right that we are somehow kind of genocidal Maniacs um it's not true I mean let me just begin with it it's just not true and I think understanding the truth and focusing on the details and caring about the details and Truth is really important for engaging with the political system foreign it's not often that I get to interview someone who's also been personally denounced by Boris Johnson but today is my lucky day I'm joined by podcaster and formatory MP Rory Stewart and we talk about his time on the conservative benches why Jeremy corbyn was really kicked out of the labor party and just what are the relationships between the intelligence services and our elected officials um Rory thank you so much for joining us thank you very much for having me there aren't many former tourists who'd be brave enough to step into Navarro HQ are you confident in making it out alive I think it's no you do feel Brave um the um we're here because as you remember you and I uh did a thing together at the BBC which ended really with having a rolling argument on the pavement that went on for about 40 minutes so I I definitely come in quite nervous oh don't worry it's going to be I think um less weird because Lawrence Fox isn't here so no one's going to be asking anyone what color their underwear is um I mean just to get started by talking about the book um I mean there tend to be like three broad kinds of political Memoir there's I'm getting my skeletons out of the closets I want to run at high office there's I'm settling old scores and there's I'm setting myself up for secular sainthood I mean where do you sort of see this one well so I I'm really interested I've never seen anyone analyze it in those three ways so you think it's about kind of getting your dark secrets out or it's like taking revenge on other people or it's like projecting yourself and saying I think there are two types of political member I think there's the I'm going to try to defend my record and vindicate myself or I'm preparing myself for another run so usually I find the thing with political man watches is either a really boring and slightly over detailed account of the blow by blows of some piece of political Administration that nobody can remember by the time the book's published like I want to put it on record that you know 20 years ago with my new design of welfare policy I was trying to do the right thing but the Civil Service screwed me over or this is The Audacity Of hope this is dreams my father I'm setting myself up for see I thought that was skeletons out of the closet so that was Barack Obama being like okay yes I did drugs and you're not going to get me on that for the campaign Trail but this tells us a lot about about um about about your views on politics because I think you should be a politician and I think you're too worried about skeletons in the closet so you imagine that what he's doing there is trying to get the truth is nobody cared nobody's interested really and in that book this wonderful book right I don't think anybody really cares about the fact that he did cocaine or that he had dreams about men or any of this stuff I I think that might have been true 30 years ago I do think that politics got many many problems but one way that it's got better is it's really easy as a politician now to say I've taken drugs I've had mental health problems uh I I'm going to reveal my sexuality I mean this stuff is is not an issue the issue is other stuff I mean we're held accountable for other stuff being your personal lifestyle choices uh were things that killed people in the 1990s in terms of their political careers and now I think I can't think of any politician active really in British politics today whose personal lifestyle choices has any impact on there well the charges hypocrisy that gets you so I think if you put it all out there and you tell the story on your own terms you could kind of you know have done some pretty but but even then I mean you know when I when I came out and said that I'd um smoked opium in Iran when I was running for leadership and then Michael Gove was out for doing cocaine and people said oh you know this guy goes was very very strict on crime and was all about like putting people away for touching drugs or maybe these very moralistic speech it was like a four-hour sensation it had no abiding impact on him at all why do you why do you think that is because your sense that political culture's changed totally changed I didn't think people are interested in personal life so we're so used now in a celebrity drenched culture where everybody's confessing all the time where every book that anyone reads by an actor a sports star a politician is basically about you know the fact that they're up that they so I I think that's that's the one thing that I mean when we were talking before I came on about how you sometimes think that what would stop you being a politician is that you've made funny comments about Kent or that you've um or that you've you've um taken drugs I I really don't think you need more about that at all I think there's many I think I think I think I say that because I'm being glib and that's an easier way to say I don't want to do this then the truth which is that I don't want to do this ah well it's that's that's good that's good because I live too exciting a personal life whereas actually I just I don't really want to I mean I want to kind of come back to what this is though like what do you want this book to do I want this book to explain how shameful politics has become how much worse than any conceivable version of ourselves we've become and maybe that's too too Grand but the the Gap I suppose between the way in which we perceive politics and the reality of what it is the kinds of corroded personalities that are formed not just in conservative party but in all parties the way in which campaigning and the media cycle and the whips and the parties turn you into something you don't want to be so it's about the moral damage of politics and the ways in which I believe that moral damage stops you from being able to govern well that there's a connection between kind of dissolution of these institutions and the very poor quality of government and I suppose the hope is the politics on the edges also designed to try to by making people focus on the problems begin to think about what the solutions to these problems might be when you're talking about the degradation of politics and the kind of moral disintegration that comes from being a politician you're talking about you know it made me this kind of venal and obsequious and insincere person um and I've read that and I was like I think all those things might be true and I think that if you detect a change in your personality you'll go this is the degradation of it but other people will point to a voting record and go well there's the degradation of politics it's not really about how you feel about yourself it's about what you did with power when you had it I mean how do you feel about that kind of retort so um well let's start I mean so many interesting things let's start with version record so the voting record I know this is something I try to explain in the book there's a lot about voting records moment I mean the basic deal on me is somebody says something nice about me and then Twitter is full of people like saying look at his horrible version record right the voting record tells you nothing really about me what except for the fact I remember the conservative party ditto if you were to put up the voting record of a labor MP it doesn't tell you much about them it tells you that they're on a lab party there are a few exceptions now Jeremy corbyn rebelled a lot Jacob Reese smog rebelled the wrong excited party but by and large the British political system and I try to explain why For Better or Worse is a system where parties are very disciplined and people don't Rebel and they deliver on the manifesto so for me I accepted that when people vote in a constituency for a conservative MP or labor MP they are not voting primarily for me as an individual they're voting for a party and they expect the party to deliver that Manifesto and in some ways if you I mean let me sort of flip it around if you were a labor voter and you had voted for Manifesto which included I don't know a wealth tax and an increase to welfare benefits and your labor local at Labor MP was like in the agonized depths of my soul I've decided I don't want to do that because you know my view on the physical position the country is different you would legitimately be pretty angry you'd be like no I voted labor I want a laborator barely know who this person is and if they've actually done that um they've actually betrayed the whole thing so I think systems which believe and this is what the you know they work for you voting record stuff believes that every individual is making a principal decision on every vote uh 18th century systems they're not how democracies work they're not how parties work there's systems in fact where you end up often as the point of book makes about the 18th century with corruption because you end up with individual MPS selling their votes on every subject and the whole thing gridlocks while I sit there stroking my chin insane oh I'm not really sure about you know line seven of the budget but maybe you know if you pork barrel to your weight you know dueling the a66 and my constituency I could find my way to voting for The v80 on past it so I think for me you keep your rebellions against your party for the really big issues and for me there were constitutional issues and ultimately there was an issue about Boris Johnson and his version of brexit which I couldn't support and but at that point you have to understand that that's not staying in the conservative party that's leaving the conservative party so I reside from the cabinet I was thrown out of the concerted party I became an independent that's what the cost of rebellion is so the voting record tells you that I'm a Tory and if you hate Tories you hate me but it doesn't tell you much about me I mean I hear what you're saying in terms of you know the problem would they work for you is that it's not taking into account that maybe there's a different kind of democratic expectation that I will carry out the manifesto that I was voted in on and I understand that and I understand that there's another part of you which is saying look don't hate the player hate the game the game is that I have to do these things otherwise I'll be really really punished and there's a structural issue here it's not not just punish I actually uh it's um I mean to take it the extreme as the government minister there is collective responsibility if you vote against the government once you have to resign as a minister so you simply cannot in the period from 2015 to 2019 when I was a minister uh every vote is the choice between either continuing to do your job as a business minister or an environment Minister and get your policies through or resigning but isn't there also a case that having rebellious backbenches is healthy for a democracy I mean you mentioned Jeremy corbyn but it doesn't have to be Jeremy corbyn it could have been it was Jacob really small you know Kate hoey even someone who has very strong opinions on things and is like I'm going to vote the way of my conscience and they might have constituents that are frustrated with them but in many other ways they can be a kind of lightning rod for a dissatisfaction with politics as it is I do recognize that that is also a valuable thing to have in Parliament um yes but it only works if very very few people are doing it a system in which uh the majority of MPS are doing that on every vote is an unworkable system the labor government would not be able to deliver its Manifesto you have to think about the structures rather than the individuals made different choices in different parts personal question I could have decided that I could come in and be Jeremy corbyn okay so I could have been a backvention applauded by a group of people who developed a little Rory cult I would never be a minister I would never be in government I would never have been able to achieve any of the things I want to do I'd gone into politics to change things not to be a commentator and I think backbenchers who take those positions very understandably essentially become commentators they're not governing is there a part of you which looks at the role you have now which is as a commentator you know you talk about politics and the rest is politics you're no longer pundit and you feel that that's an impoverished yeah part to play in politics yes of course of course I mean obviously in in um you know I didn't I I left school and I joined the army and I joined the foreign office then I run NGO then I work in University and then I became a politician I never um wanted to be a contender like running things um and look I'm I'm very lucky to be able to talk on the podcast but if you honestly said to me would I rather be prime minister or would I rather be presenting a podcast I would rather be prime minister I once spoke to Johnny Mercer who told me that he'd never voted conservative until he became a conservative MP had he voted um I don't think he had and he was just quite open with saying I thought this was the best route for power and so that's why I joined the party um is that how it was for you it was less about a deep ideological affinity and more well if you want to get things done you back the winning team no I was uh I was a conservative I'm not this type of conservative not a Boris Johnson Liz trust Rishi suno conservative but I'm a sort of old-fashioned Tori which is a very difficult thing to explain um so what what did it mean to me it meant that I had seen in Iraq and Afghanistan new labor for being a technocratic centralizing project that was projecting rigid fantasies onto people's lives that was in Afghanistan insensitive to local communities to landscape to texture to culture and I feel as a lived experience that I believe in tradition particular kind of love of country I believe in a restraints at home Prudence abroad landscape the wisdom of local communities these are the kind of things that that made me a conservative I mean it's a phrase you use a lot in the book you talk about love of country what does that mean because I would say I have love of country and I think you say you have love a country and I wonder if we mean the same things or very different things I think we mean very different things I mean people often say to me I don't know I mean I don't know you well enough but people often say to me you know why are you not a labor MP and yes it's true there are many things I agree with the labor party on I agree that we live in a shockingly unjust society that extreme poverty is probably our most shameful problem that I agree with some labor MPS but apparently not with Kirsten that our prison system is a complete disgrace and that we should be much more liberal in our criminal justice policy obviously I voted for gay marriage I voted to increase International Development spend 0.7 GDP I've heard it from Net Zero et cetera so the question then is well why are you not labor probably the same answer you'd get from Johnny Mathis although he maybe doesn't articulate it like this that like me he was an army officer his army was so much longer than I was a very brief period but if you think about um how I feel walking to a war memorial for example my little kids and my constituency which she did every November with my little medal on my chest and I think it's different to how Jeremy corbyn feels I mean these are these are these are different versions of what do you know when you approach the war memorial like what is the imaginary of Britain that's working for you there and how is that different from Jeremy corbyn's imaginary Jeremy corbyn but my sense is that the tradition that he comes from from the left is deeply skeptical about many of the things that for me I think he almost certainly is deeply skeptical grew up in a tradition that was um more pacifist more skeptical about military more um doubtful about Tory Countryside I'm not very interested particularly in the sort of things I'm interested in the fates of small farmers and rural areas didn't and and above all I think the difference between the left and the right in the traditional thing is that the left is dedicated to progressing to transforming to to changing the world whereas the my form of kind of Burkin conservatism is largely about venerating the past it's about saying this is a miraculous wonderful country and we're going to change very cautious and very slowly I mean that's the basic tenor of difference he he starts from a position of um and I think it's even true without us to Campbell right I mean ask Campbell's you know obviously right on the right of the labor party but even he and I are completely at odds on these things you know he he instinctively class is important part of this right instinctively looks someone like me he doesn't like people who have accents like me who go to the kind of school I went to he he he's celebrating a different vision of Britain yeah but again bringing this back to the idea of love of country and what does that mean for the left versus the right and the nationalism sorry let me add to this so the left has never been very comfortable with nationalism understandably it arose out of a movement of international solidarity in which borders were not deeply significant the working class has no country is the Texas phrase you know a lot of the left-wing tradition owes an enormous amount to those intellectual roots and was very suspicious of of people trying to uh talk about country it was much more about looking at Material facts you know what are the economic truths about the difference between working people and capitalists would be a classic question it's much less about Flags regiments uniforms the monarchy I'm I'm incredibly proud of the British Monarchy and I imagine Jeremy corbyn isn't I mean you know he probably went through the ritual of seeing the queen but I don't imagine in a heart of hearts if you shine to think of him he's particularly excited do you have to love these institutions to love this country because of course when I think about um the difference between the English History that I'm proud of the English History that I think needs to be interrogated and criticized and learned from I think about things like the Lancashire cotton famine an incredible Act of solidarity on the part of Lancashire cotton mill workers who refuse to work with slave produced embargoed cotton even though that meant for themselves starvation right in some cases and writing and I think about that and I go what a beautiful thing that happened in this country that I never learned at school never learned that in school never learned that in history classes so actually I mean on that I think our schools are much too rigid I think our narrative needs to include that very much and I think we need much more local history and I think there's an opportunity for teachers particularly in teaching local history to tell those forgotten stories I think that is something to be proud of something I'd be deeply proud of in British history it's not something to push aside but but my version of History includes that and it includes other things that I don't think would interest you then if you need me well it doesn't it's not that it doesn't interest me it interests me very much but I come at it from a more critical angle I look at the Army I look at its recruitment in deprived impoverished areas of the country where there aren't other economic opportunities I look at the role that the Army has played around the world the British Army in many cases think about how that intersects my own family history and for me a war memorial is a reminder of the tragic loss of young life rather than something that instills me with pride apart from I think World War II then you go you guys were doing something really good here you know but I think you put your finger on it I mean these these so when you say you know why did I join the conservative party these are deep differences which in many cases go back to our childhood the books we've read our beliefs some are all values and they make me a conservative a sort of conservative left of wet ramatory wet I'm you don't think Mrs T would have rated you very much no Mrs T would not have rated me and I think and I think I'm not really a voice for the technocratic center either so I disagree intellectually with the way Tony Blair looks the world and I disagree morally with the way that people like Boris Johnson behave I'm trying to hold a particular tradition in politics but but obviously it goes without saying that that is a different tradition to yours I mean I want to move on from Jeremy corbyn but I mean it's kind of striking that he's another 2019 casualty right um in the early chapters incidentally I think it's disgusting he was thrown in our labor party just as I also think it was pretty peculiar that Boris Johnson kicked out two chance to six Checkers six cabinet ministers Winston Churchill's grandson and the rest of us out of the conservative party I mean it's mad Jeremy corbyn whatever you think of is a major figure who represents a very significant part of Labor history and Heritage he was the leader of the party why do you think herestama did it I think he is running a very controlling business with about three or four people trying to micromanage the labor party I think he lacks confidence I mean I I believe in in politics as being about embracing difference and compromise and persuasion and conversations amongst different people I was proud to be in debates on Afghanistan with Jeremy corbyn I listened to him carefully Paul Flynn I likes a lot and I think that Parliament is better when it encompasses those people now I don't think that's necessarily about the voting record but I definitely think it's about voices and personalities in the early chapters of the book you talk about your intense interest in foreign affairs and you also talk about feeling very marginalized in lots of ways from the party that you're in and I thought about Jeremy corbyn you're both individuals who could be accused of having more to say about Kabul than Carlisle I mean do you ever feel that that there is a kind of similarity or kinship or shared experience I mean I really liked him I mean I really liked him and I found him thoughtful courteous and he was much closer to being right about Afghanistan Iraq than most of the labor or conservative parties I think like all of us and probably true of me too sometimes ideology got in and sometimes these simplified things but broadly speaking his fundamental Insight which was that these things were a mess that we entirely lacked we the United States and Britain lacked legitimacy lack knowledge like power and that our presence there was fundamentally unwelcome and that the idea of putting in a hundred thousand troops and spending 150 billion dollars a year to try to Nation build someone else's country was mad um was correct I think where I differ from him is is is that I still believe that there is a possibility for a more thoughtful nuanced form of a liberal Global Order I don't I think he sometimes has Tendencies towards isolationism he tends to assume that Afghanistan just be much better off we just left and my view I guess was there was another way but maybe this is always my problem apologize right I'm trying to chart a third way I had a vision of a very light footprint with a few troops but where the Afghan government was actually running things and where you didn't have to choose between an insane american-led occupation on the one hand or a Taliban government on the other I mean is there a version of a Global liberal hegemon which doesn't require having very deep ties with deeply authoritarian and illiberal states I mean I'm thinking here about Britain's relationship with Saudi Arabia I'm thinking about Bryn's relationship with Israel thinking about um the sort of historic role of America in terms of right-wing power militaries in South America I mean is it just a bit of you know the liberalism is is a nice Garland around what is actually a very Bloody Business I mean I have to believe that there is a sort of middle way between doing too much and doing nothing at all I think that the collapse of the liberal Global Order which has basically happened since the early 2010s hasn't made the world a better place I think the it's true that the Centrist liberal Vision was completely discredited the economic Vision was discredited by the 2008 financial crisis the particular vision of prosperity and democracy by the rise of China that the idea of This Global policeman by the humiliations Iraq and Afghanistan so I can understand why the response to that has tended to be to turn away from all those things but since that period you know the number of democracies in the world has begun to drop dramatically we're talking when we've just had seven military coups across Africa in the high day of this period that I'm skeptical about kind of blairite Clinton period in 1989 to 2005 the number of democracies in the world doubled Global poverty significantly decreased the world was getting more peaceful every year and since 2014 the world has been getting more violent every year there are more refugees more displaced people the number of democracies has been falling so I don't think that and I'm worried that the right and the left are sort of combining on this that the right because they don't really care about other people and they think it's none of their business and they really don't want to get involved in other countries they're cutting International Development they don't want to know it's the kind of trumpian view and the left because the left has become so idealistic and guilty and self-conscious that they feel that everything we do in the world just makes things worse and that we need to go through some period of um self-abnegation and that somehow by implication Somalia would be better off if we just left and handed over to ashbab but again thinking about the relationship between liberal and illiberal states I mean isn't there an extent that the things that we enjoy come from some of these horrible relationships I mean you know in the 90s and the 2000s most of London got sold off to Russian oligarchs and we're belatedly trying to correct that mistake now but doing the same with you know the Saudis when I say I still think there's something that can be done between doing too much and doing too little it's a vision of compromise it's a vision of working with lesser evils it's a version of if you were working in sub-Saharan Africa saying yeah um you know maybe we actually can work with the government in Zambia or Malawi maybe in the government in Rwanda but we're not prepared to work with the government in Zimbabwe and we're not prepared to work um I don't know with the government and Central African Republic so now does that mean that I'm saying that the governments with which you're working our governments that you can defend on every moral grounds absolutely not your your but but then of course they might flip that around and say as you've just pointed out our own countries are hardly perfect either so I think you you I'm not talking about perfection I guess I'm thinking about what the real material webs of well let's let's turn Alliance and financial support that's entailed Uganda for example which is a very interesting example moment so Uganda um was a sort of darling of the West when 70 took over and it felt like this sort of much more progressive pro-western government was coming in and we didn't pay much attention to increasing authoritarianism and movements against opposition parties and solidification of that kind of one party rule and then when he began to take action against the lgbtq community suddenly Uganda became the number one thing that everyone wanted to talk about and it was very interesting because it it implies that our values can shift quite quickly and what we consider to be a bad country or a good country how do we evaluate civil rights against political rights against economic rights in these context and I don't think we have any steady apart from that and what I tend to experience is that we tend to be most moralistic about the weaker poorer countries and we find it very difficult to be critical of the China's the Gulf States or countries which really have real economic heft and power and where our interests at sake it's very easy to look at a country in sub-Saharan Africa and be like ah this is a very very bad government we know we're having to deal with them um it's much more tricky to work out how you respond to Narendra Modi in India I mean I want to move on just a bit I mean one of the things that was quite striking about reading the book is that it seemed to me that your that what you saw of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove and how they behaved in power it had a profound impact on how you saw them as individuals would that be a fair characteristic of how you felt yeah yeah um and I guess there are others like Theresa May Amber Rudd who maybe felt were more honorable honorable yeah or David gork he's one great heroes in the book yeah yeah um why what's the difference between a Theresa May and a Boris Johnson um so I think one of the problems I mean I may be being unfair to to you and people watching this but I think from the point of view of somebody who's radically and profoundly out of sympathy with the conservative party there's literally no difference I mean these are tiny Nuance differences which if you're looking at it from 10 000 feet up you don't care right they're all as bad as each other um obviously I'm seeing it much more intimately I'm there so what I care about is that Theresa May is genuinely trying to towards the end reach out to labor and get a compromise soft brexit deal across the line and she's not falling into the Trap of either going for hard brexit or trying to push for a second referendum she's not she's not putting herself behind the kind of u-shape in British politics where all the votes from the extremes she's trying to reunite people she's trying to compromise or David gork you know he works with me to renationalize the probation service which had been privatized by conservatives now it doesn't seem like a big thing but it was a very big thing right because the colleagues who did that were still sitting in the cabinet it takes political risk to do that or we decide to bring together a paper to abolish short sentences and prisons to reduce the present population again you're taking risk against the Daily Mail you know I had a big front page saying Minister gives green light to criminals Etc so I think a bit like anyone listening who works in any Institution you begin to get a sense in your office or your charity or your company or your department that there are good people and bad people um now structurally maybe we're all bad people um but obviously I believe in the importance of moral character I I don't fundamentally see the world in terms of fundamental economic structures I I don't know what the moral character of Theresa May is like and I don't know what the moral character of Amber Rudd is like but when I think about them as politicians I don't think about it from 10 000 feet up I think about it from the perspective of a man who we interviewed for an article who because of hostile environment policies was driven to the point of removing his own teeth and I think about people whose Grandparents were deported to Jamaica their families were broken up and some of those people died overseas many of them are still waiting for compensation and I get that for you Theresa May was playing a very different role that you saw in terms of protecting the fundamentals of the British constitution and trying to protect the Integrity of our democracy but for me when I look at those things and their impact on ordinary britons I also hate that phrase ordinary britons because there's no such thing like we're all bizarre as a country um but when I when I think about the impact of those policies on people without power I've got no love for Boris Johnson I've got no love for Jacob Rhys Mark but I think that maybe the evils they did to their parliamentary colleagues aren't as bad as the evils that were done because of the hostile environment so it's not the evils the Parliamentary colleagues it's that Boris Johnson from my if I try to describe what I find wrong about him he lied to the queen in order to lock the doors on parliament in order to drive through a brexit deal that had no consent from the legislature he was overruled by the Supreme Court then he attacked the Supreme Court these were people who claimed that they'd done brexit because they revered an independent British Parliament and an independent British court and as soon as those things frustrated them in the classic moves the populace they just rubbished those institutions he lied to Parliament and then tried to change the ministerial code which said he should resign from doing so to prevent himself from having to resign he took and did not declare an eight hundred thousand pound loan guarantee from Canadian businessmen he enabled MPS that he knew to be um people who've been involved in sexual harassment to return to office and lied about that too he set and broke his own covert regulations he showed a total disregard for the most basic competence of government he presided over brexit that undermines Security in Ireland that impoverished our economy I mean so he represents for me something that where the moral character of the individual and the calamitous impacts are one and the same they derive from the same immorality the same irresponsibility the same lack of seriousness but do you see my point about this kind of very direct and visceral impact on someone's life that the hostile environment had and that may be some of the things that you're talking about I think um Security in Northern Ireland and the impact of brexit on the economy aside a bit like an elite conflict no because I was the protection of our liberties I mean the we don't have a written Constitution uh Unwritten Constitution uncodified Constitution depends entirely on convention it's vital to democracy that you don't lie to Parliament if you lied Parliament voters have no way to make an informed choice if they're being fed lies if you undermine the Supreme Court you're undermining the root of law if you I mean these things are much more fundamental structural challenges to the way a democracy Works they are the route to a moral authoritarian populism pose if you're somebody whose family was caught up in the Windrush crisis you might say Boris Johnson lied to Parliament but we were lied about you called us illegal immigrants and you deported us and our Landing cards were shredded and that is worse well on the record that was the most terrible thing to do I mean I'm not defending the hostile environment I mean I'm not defending shredding people's immigration cards or lying about them I mean that is a terrible thing to do but I suppose the thing I'm I'm getting out but you can't but I think you also have to say look that is a terrible thing but that does not mean it doesn't matter that Boris Johnson lie to Parliament because that's where populism comes from populism is about finding a Justified complaint right a wrong a real ROM and using that to trivialize the protections of our constitutional democracy things are so bad I don't give a flying F about Parliament lined Parliament rule of law the Supreme Court because things are so bad I want to change it it's the instinct to the populist it's the Instinct of the Revolutionary it is everything that I'm against but I think to lead back to the start of the question it's about how you view people as individuals and for Boris Johnson his behavior his time and power really profoundly impacts how you see him as an individual but when it comes to people who you feel more ideologically aligned with or doing things that you thought were very important to safeguard the Constitution and who also these policies don't change how you see them who also seem to me to be diligent serious honest uh people who if they made decisions that were deeply damaging I felt were able privately to discuss those things to own them to acknowledge their mistakes they may not always have done so in public but that was not true Boris Johnson confronted with some calamitous error that he'd make he would just make a joke about it I think if you sat down with it she's ever prepared to open up but if you sit down with treesman you were to make that thing I imagine she'd feel very defensive I'd imagine today but I also believe that she's somebody who's capable of reflecting on that in a way that I don't think Boris Johnson is do you think that maybe you and I have very different views of the responsibilities of people in power because in a way I'd feel relieved that Theresa May or Amber Rudd would have the capacity to feel a sense of guilt or remorse or shame for things that went wrong when they're in power but ultimately I don't care that much because what I care about is the Injustice and the lack of action to fix it but I think the risk of that I mean I can understand why you don't care it seems like a kind of luxury to care but the risk of that is that by not being attentive to the individuals and the way that the system works these solutions that are produced are not solutions to the real problem I mean our democracy relies on people actually understanding how it works not othering people you know we are projecting onto MPS a very peculiar Vision which we would never project on to a doctor or a teacher or any other human being right when it's really important that we can empathize and criticize them as individuals and their moral choices because if we can't do that we're not understanding what's going on if you think as many people seem to that the Tory party is a fundamentally kind of Evil operation it's where we're literally rubbing our hands together being like how do I this morning how am I really gonna over poor people how I'm really going to make people's lives as miserable as possible because what I really get pleasure out of is destroying things killing people I really want to kill 150 000 people with austerity that's my aim right that we are somehow kind of genocidal Maniacs um it's not true I mean let me just begin with it's just not true and I think understanding the truth and focusing on the details and caring about the details and Truth is really important for engaging with the political system and I think projecting onto people a vision of them I think is not helpful because it's it's um I mean the interesting thing I mean it's actually true in the fundamental relationship between concern and labor party right fundamentally the my conservative colleagues think the labor party are well intentioned but misguided the labor party basically think conservatives are evil there's something this is something I hear an awful lot um and I think that like I'm not a labor party member I was for about three seconds and then I wanted the four pound a month to spend on curly worlies um but I think this is something which is often said of the left is you think we're evil you think that we're mustache twirling villains we're dick dastardlys and I think what that doesn't make room for is that there is a left-wing critique of the structures which is I'm sure that you think you're doing good things but this is what it's resulting in in terms of inequality of the impacts on people's lives so it's degradation of the environment and I think that those outcomes are evil it doesn't matter that you think that you've done good by participating in them the problem is the outcome and would you feel the same way about voting records say look at the voting record go all this does is tell you as a Tory MP you could look at Oxycontin prescriptions from a doctor in the early 2000s which may have killed hundreds of his patients or you know resulted in you know terrible addictions for them and you'd go well all this tells you is that I was a doctor in the early 2000s so so the question is how much evil is an institution doing I mean that's what defines out the question I mean obviously I do not think it's an excuse for an SS officer to be like yeah sure I signed up to the Nazis but what was I supposed to do I was an officer in the German Army it's not good enough right uh the question is when do you reach a point at which your moral integrity and your view of Good and Evil makes you break them and for me that point came with a hard brexit and Boris Johnson that's the point at which I'm like no I'm no longer prepared to say I'm part of this tribe I'm a Tory MP I'm leaving I think you reserve that for the moment in which you can see with real moral clarity that this is not it it's not what you're prepared to do but on your bigger point I agree with you on structures I think we disagree on what the structures are but fundamentally this book is about structures it's about the fact that our first pass the post voting system is screwed and needs to be gotten off that the labor and conservative parties are sclerotic horrible old-fashioned things that the institution of the whips is mad that the culture of the House of Commons is abusive bullying that the workplace practices are beyond belief I mean I'm describing people who when I make a speech in the House of Commons that they disagree with come up for me or highlights because Sharon say they're going to punch me right this is not normal I tried to guess who that was but I couldn't work it out this is not normal in the workplace I'm obviously not telling you um so I think the system the structures are fundamentally screwed but my alternative to them is something that feels more like a New Zealand proportional representation electoral system uh with smaller parties fresh blood more coalitions it's a system where I want ministers to stay in for a minimum of two years instead of being reshuffled every few months and I suspect from your point of view that's tinkering around redshirts because I'm still defending an improved version of a liberal democracy now look I think that some tinkering can be a good thing right I'm not one for letting the perfect be the enemy of the good but I think that when you look at countries which have fairer electoral systems but are still deeply unequal this is why I'm a Marxist and I'm not a liberal it's because I believe that the politics you have are an expression of the class forces that you have in a society I understand that yeah yeah I'm I am I am part of the liberal center right yeah not for now we've still got half an hour left of this interview um I mean we had a previous conversation when we met for this BBC thing and one of the things that you talked about was that you viewed the 19th century as a kind of parliamentary golden age and that there was a connection between speaking well and governing well um could you tell me more about what you think about that yeah I think that For Better or For Worse a country that has an Unwritten Constitution and this kind of Parliament is deeply dependent on the particular too dependent on the particular values and Unwritten conventions of the people in the place and Parliament Parliament literally means a talking shop in French and this thing was set up for oratory and rhetoric and debate the way in which people process things the 19th century was through talking very very deftly and precisely and beautifully about problems if you read the debate in the 1860s on an intervention in Afghanistan the level of knowledge the fluency of the arguments I think actually really helped to prevent what would have been a catastrophic British involvement between the first and second and glove gumballs and and that's utterly lost and it's been lost for a number of reasons it's been lost because there are no longer people who've been trained to do that it's been lost because the newspapers don't report I mean you know the times used to carry parliamentary speeches on its front page you'd read every word of them we've gone to a world in which Parliament is marginalized it doesn't really matter I mean it's one of the things he was saying to me on them outside um outside baby seed so I thought was very interesting you were saying listen really part of your problem is that you still think that Parliament matters it doesn't matter it's about money it's about media it's about you know Bankers is about big Financial structures and really the story of the 20th century compared to the 19th century is that actually in the 19th century Parliament was a much more significant Institution with fewer competitors and we now live in a much more complex vigorous world with a much richer more diverse Civil Society surrounding is not very surprising that what happens in Parliament doesn't really matter I suppose I've been thinking about that conversation um ever since we had it and then again when I was reading this book and I was thinking okay so what accounts for this change in terms of oratory do you think that oratory has an inflated importance when there's fewer people you have to persuade because the 19th century is a period of time where the majority of adults couldn't vote they couldn't participate in the Democratic process or even even more in the 18th century I mean I've been reading a biography of Lawrence Stern who wrote The Amazing book Tristram Shandi and he was a political activist for the Whigs in Yorkshire in the mid mid early to mid 1700s he the most important thing in defining these campaigns will be a eight page incredibly beautifully written elaborate um satire uh using Latin quotes bizarre references uh pokes at other people's anonymity I mean it's a really complicated bit of prose and when it works and a broadsheet it's like reprinted in the London broad sheets and everyone's like oh we've just lost the your collection because this guy's just written something which today you would really kind of struggle to get into the Paris review so and why is that that's because the electors of York are a few hundred doctors clergyman School teachers and property owners who think that politics is about reading six page screeds and newsletters um we obviously do not live in that world we live in a mass democracy in which most people spend about nine minutes a day thinking about politics that's another big change right the 18th and 19th century was obsessed with politics particularly men because men were voters really felt that this was the subject they were born on about it at dinner they would read books about it they would you know they would Gladstone would address crowds of kind of 20 000 people I mean one of the things that my partner accuses me of and it's very annoying because I think he might be right is that I'm obsessed with how people talk because ultimately I've got too much love and psychological investment in Bourgeois Norms right he'll say that this is just class politics writ large here's the barrier and it's Latin and you're obsessed with what's on the other side of the barrier and so that's why you like William Shakespeare and Chaucer and stuff like that he'd say that this is class writ large yeah I hope I hope not Jacob reesmock um the um uh yeah I mean I think also Michael ignatia who's this friend of mine who ran to be the leader of the liberal party in Canada acknowledges his head on and he would say and he says and I quote him in politics on the edge of this book and he's just never written review in the Atlantic in which he basically says as far as he's concerned that he and I are basically the same person we come from these sort of liberal in his case can Russian aristocratic background and that we are living out fantasies of Public Service which have more to do with our parents and grandparents and it really has to do with them in the modern world and that this is doesn't make any sense because you end up thinking and maybe you know he's analysis the book is this is somebody who thinks he's sort of too clever and too honorable for everybody else and that um and that he doesn't get you know what he would say is that's almost the reverse of what she would say he would say Rory doesn't get that Politics as a team sport he doesn't get that it's all about loyalty that he doesn't get that what he should have done basically I think the implication is I should have buckled to uh Boris Johnson and stayed in the cabinet might probably be prime minister by now play the game until you get an opportunity to stab someone in the kidneys yeah yeah that's good some of the kidneys yeah um and I will send a few by an empress he was just like I don't get you at all so that I mean I'm in an odd world where obviously from your point of view I'm nothing like idealistic enough I'm complicit an entire system where my voting record is horrible at the same time the critique coming to me from most working politicians is Rory you're a complete weird non-team playing overly idealistic person who just doesn't get how the system works and if you just stuck with it you know you would be foreign sexual by now you'd probably be prime minister by now who knows right but you but you know why for example I keep getting tests why for example I'm not running to be the Tory canned up for marijuana well not only be the Tory can of the Maryland because I'm not prepared to sign up to attacking Sadiq Khan's Euless so I don't know what this the story is in politics whether the story is that I'm a horrible compromised person who's just about everyone else or whether I'm not compromising enough and not Mac event enough what's for sure is I'm not succeeding as a politician well let's get away from like what story you you have in politics and maybe I want to ask you about something which isn't in the book there's no mention in the book at all about the fact that you're a chair of Le Circle which is an invitation only foreign policy Institute and you were at the time sitting on the Foreign Affairs committee and then the defense committee so relevant committees to disclose this activity why is there no mention of it in the book and why didn't you declare it um well I think I mean I haven't actually been asked about this before so I'm trying to get my head straight on this it's an organization which has um which I was I took over from I think Norman Lamont who I think in turn took over from a Tory MP called Julian Emery it was a um a kind of I guess conservative leaning pretty pretty conservative leaning a foreign policy group that includes uh people from around the world and I think had originally been set up in the 70s and 80s probably pretty aligned with the view of the Cold War and it was quite a sort of rhyming View but it's very anti-communist very supportive of apartheid South Africa less for the race stuff and more because of its role as a ball walk against socialism in Africa by the time I got to it um it wasn't that at all by the time I got to it it was something that met Uninvited speakers and those speakers were um you know American bureaucrats administrators professors experts on China experts on Middle East so it was a sort of um I think if I had a complaint about it I'd sort of question was it achieved it was two days of sitting and listening to um the sort of people that you might hear talk at Chatham house so uh so I would why is it so secretive if it's not a big deal it isn't secretive I mean it just I for some reason it's tradition is that it's members uh and this is true also for other things I've been to Bilderberg is another example I've just been to a conference in the United States which is organized by Silicon Valley which is another one where you're not allowed to say who attends I'm not quite sure why they do those things I mean I'm very comfortable saying that I've been to those things I've also been to the trilateral commission I'd tell you if I'd been to Davos I was a young Global leader at Dallas I mean I'm part of all these things I mean I go to all these things but I I don't feel that I given I'm not paid by these things I don't think I'm declaring that I've been to the trilateral commission or I'm doing something with a circle oh no no I'm not I'm not asking like why don't you declare it all the time every time you come into a room be like by the way so when you were on to relevant committees so you're chairing this organization fine so the question is conflict of interest you declare if there's a conflict of interest you declare if you feel that anything that you're doing in the Foreign Affairs committee or as chair of Defense committee is in any way a conflict of interest with the fact that I am spending two days a year listening to different people talking to me about China Russian rest or that I'm going to The Goldberg which incidentally is a bigger version of the same thing right nobody's asked me to declare that or maybe they are or the trilateral commission but isn't it it's you that gets to make the call of whether that's a relevant conflict of interest rather than their beasts rather than there being some kind of oversight yeah there is oversight yeah the call is made by the Parliamentary commissioner that's the person who determines whether something needs to be declared or not and after years Nadeem zahawin again I'm still not sure what this organization does and I'm not saying it's all it's Cloak and Dagger and poison pens but what is it it's it's a it's exactly the same as a kind of mini little Davos it's a group of people who sit in an overheated seminar room in a hotel and invite speakers and you know they are many of them are academics many of them are Specialists so normally the agenda would be we need to get someone to give a speech on China and people sit around and ask them questions he goes away again I mean it's not it's not um I mean that's why I don't feel it's a conflict of interest I didn't feel I needed to declare it because I guess the reason why I'm asking is that one of the things that it's hard to talk about is the relationship or the extent of a relationship between elected politicians and intelligence Services you try and open the box and suddenly you sound like you've got a tin foil hat and then the very sensible things to never talk about it at all if you want to have a nice career in journalism sure well I think these are good questions to ask I think the intelligence services and their connection to politics is a big question I think there is a tin foil edge of that um I mean there's no doubt the intelligent Services appear to have been involved in bugging politicians in the 60s and 70s were deeply involved in all NaNa policy will often provide off the Record briefing two members of parliament that I'm suspicious of because it seems to me that they're relying on their Charisma and their James Bond reputation to be able to sort of not on wink you know this is what's going on it's what you need to know about the world you know I felt that with Iraq and Afghanistan that often when I said to politicians this is a disgrace we're not making any difference this is a failure people would say oh I know Rory you know I've had a chat you know the intelligence services or the Army and then give me an off the Record briefing and it's all going swimmingly so I think there is that problem I didn't personally in my whole time in politics encounter British intelligence agents coming to try to tell me what to do or pay me money or threaten me or any of that kind of stuff um and I don't think that and I think that whether any of the off the Record briefings uh I I got uh briefings when I was a foreign office Minister Daphne um I went into CMI 6 I was briefed on what they thought was happening in Africa um I was briefed on their position Middle Eastern Asia I was a member of the National Security Council I read classified secret reporting but I think you I my instinct is you're more on the money when you say that the problem in British Society is that it's run by finance and capitalism then that it's run by intelligence agencies I I wonder how you make sense of your own class position and involvement in politics because when I was reading this book it seemed that all of the people who had heroic roles were a kind of Posh person who I would summarize is smelling a bit like dog so not flash quite humble self-deprecating um owned dogs like to get muddy and that's kind of a type actually it's interesting I mean so uh David gork who's the real hero of the book is the son of a police officer um and not very senior police officer and I think went to a state school I think Theresa made the son of a clergy one and also didn't go to a fee paying school I mean in fact probably my Heroes and class terms are people who traditionally would be described as the lower middle class not not sort of dog-smelling Posh people but do you see what I mean by the type that it's a sort of recognizable type in yeah I think these are types where what we have in common is almost all of us have parents who were civil servants clergy people police officers army officers rather than parents who were journalists bankers plutocrats I mean thinking about the role of parents I mean it's very very different but my mom's uh career was in Social Services and child protection and as a result I really lionized Social Services I really think they're as close as you can get to angels on Earth because that's my mum and I love her and I think her work's very meaningful um your father who who you talk very very affectionately about in the book was a colonial official in Malaysia during a time where the British army was doing some really nasty things and and then a British intelligence officer and then a British intelligence officer um yeah I don't want to invite you to talk smack about about your dad but it's more that so I can do you romanticize this role that Britain had in the world perhaps because you really love your dad yes partly um I can also see that there were things that were badly wrong about the way that he viewed the world and we didn't view the world in the same way I think that I saw in a way that he wouldn't have seen almost immediately when I arrived in Iraq that it was unjust that we were there and that we were not doing any good I think he probably would have continued to believe because actually those things were I mean that's where Jeremy cool was completely right when he says these things are sort of Neo Imperial Colonial indistinguishable and my father recognized everything that was happening in Iraq and Afghanistan through the lens of being a Clinton officer there and saw the choices in the same way and I realized I think in a way that was more difficult for him to realize that how radically the world changed and that this is entirely illegitimate and I'm not a defender of the British Empire he was at the moment he died he was full of you know we made so much difference we built all these schools we built all these railroads he went back to the 50th uh anniversary of the independent celebrations and in Malaysia was invited to sit in the stand along with other um along with other former Clan officers and remain very very close to relations he'd worked with did you ever talk about that period of colonial history with him yes yes yes yes yes then it was pretty disturbing I mean he he um you know he as far as I could see seemed to be um open to the idea of torturing Witnesses to get information how do you relate to a parent when they're saying these things how does it feel well it's difficult it's difficult I mean it's difficult because I loved him very much and he was a very very wonderful father and I got a note a week ago from one of his friends saying that he'd been a bit troubled by the way that I was talking about my father and did I remember how much my father loved me of course I remember how much she loved me he really loved me and he was for a small boy he was the most effect she'd wake up but you know I was allowed to go down as soon as I woke up in the morning which is before six morning and poke him and he'd roll out of bed and he'd spend the first three hours of every morning playing with me before he went off to school before I went off to school he went off to to work um but yes at the same time it's not pleasant to take on side those sides of his personality I mean I you know he and he talking about projections I mean his vision for me is he felt I he wanted me to be Archbishop of Canterbury which I think was his way of saying that he saw this small boy as being somehow not really worldly and for him being worldly I mean he would never have if Jordan was born I mean he said this to me at the time you know George Osborne said to me you know if you go and vote against me I'm not going to promote you for five years so I went and voted against him and my father was like what are you doing this is ridiculous you know vote with the government get a job get stuff done and you've got to be inside the tent um so that's difficult because I made a big moral decision that's left me on the back benches for five years and he doesn't agree with it so I think but it's also I think having somebody that much I was 50 when I was born he'd fought in the Second World War being in the British Empire he's almost like a Victorian figure having someone that you love deeply who's that different than that anachronistic I think it's part of my affection for tolerance for all those other bits of British history do you ever feel suspicious throne desire for power or saying that public service and you achieving a powerful position of the same thing yes I mean the basic um alibi for the upper classes for two or three millennia has been to say we're privileged and as a result we're going to go and do public service that somehow that makes the privilege okay I think that's better than the Boris Johnson Jacob response view which seems to be we get the privilege and we'd think of monkeys about any of the other stuff we're just gonna have we're just gonna have fun um but I'm very conscious that it's um that it is not an excuse for privilege that I can't say I've been incredibly Lucky in life and I'm in a very fortunate position and that somehow that's made okay by the fact that I go work for charity all right gun you know serves an MP um and I struggle all the time because I don't know whether I'm doing any good I mean I failed to defeat Boris Johnson I failed to stop medial breaks I failed to stop my party lurching towards the populist right I'm deeply deeply unpopular with many many people in the country on both right and left who think that I'm a sort of pusillanimous insincere um fast talking huckster who's somehow trying to present themselves to secular saint so I have absolutely no idea whether my will it make sense to say that I have a duty in life to try to continue to engage in public service or whether I just walk away from the field and say all I do is cause trouble and I think this relates to our earlier conversation about you know what what's the position of the global North against the global South are we saying got all this privilege and therefore we have a duty to try to make the world a better place or are we saying actually the whole thing is so screwed this Injustice is so extreme our position is so compromised we'd be better just backing off and not pretend to get involved my solution to this is radical decentralization my solution to this is to say we need to smash up the power of Westminster and drive powered down to much much more local level that where I think both the labor party and the conservative party are part of a conspiracy of Madness is that they're centralizers they're people who are trying to draw Power into the center and give it away talked about your dad's dream food being the Archbishop of Canterbury which is in a way him saying I don't want you to have to get your hands dirty I want you to have this kind of you know more cerebral and moral experience of the world when it comes to your own kids you go I actually don't want you to do what I did and maybe I just want you to be or definitely happy I definitely want don't want to be published I I wouldn't recommend it to anyone I'm certainly teasing you by trying to encourage you to do it it's the I think that's a Exquisite form of Vengeance for everything I've tweeted about you exactly exactly it's of taking Adventures it is the most painful unpleasant job imaginable and I really think that encouraging people to do it you you encourage people to go to politics because you feel you ought to encourage people to go into politics because you want to live in a world where good people are going into politics right I like the idea of Someone Like You go to politics but if you honestly said to me if you'd flipped it around and said Rory I'm thinking you're going to politics what's going to be like I would have given you a one-hour lecture on why you are making a massive mistake and it's a horrible thing to do to your life seems like a really good place to end thank you so much for joining us thank you [Music]

Channel: Novara Media

Views: 516,681

Keywords: socialism, politics, Novara Media, Novara, current affairs

Id: Dw6ZyJ-3H8g

Length: 72min 18sec (4338 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 17 2023