William Hague explains why he green lit Cameron for the cabinet

knew about it uh a few days before um and spoke to David Cameron to to brief him about my views on Foreign Affairs and the front office but it wasn't my idea you know you read these things I set it up in some way it was my idea that that's not the case I know richy soon I can David camera very well but um sometimes in politics things are simpler than they look sometimes somebody just asks somebody else around for a chat and says why don't you do this and they say well okay fine the former prime minister really is foreign secretary David Cameron's face older wiser pears out from the front page of the times this morning is this finally United Centrist government or has Rishi sunak made a mockery of his big Tory Party Conference cell that he was the candidate of change now one of David K's most pressing jobs of course will be to deal with a crisis in the Middle East in 2010 he famously called Gaza a giant open air prison what does he make of what is happening there now over 11,000 people are thought to have died in the Israeli bombardment how will David Cameron demonstrate that he is like Rishi sunak a friend of Israel there's there's two people no no two people I'd rather speaks about this and our next guests as we try and explore these massive political events that we've been experiencing over the last 24 hours our guests today are of course William ha the former foreign secretary hello good morning and kzia dugdale the former leader of Scottish labor hi kesa good morning at about this time yesterday almost exactly this time yesterday we spotted David Cameron at Dow Street what a difference one morning can make David Cameron is now back in government taking up the role of foreign secretary we spoke to Richard Holden the new conservative party chair who told us he was just as surprised as we were to see the former prime minister return to politics I was uh sat um watching the Telly and then I saw David Cameron emerge and I was I was watching I think it was sky or something was rolling in the on the Telly and and there's that sort of 10c Gap when nobody quite believed it really I think it was H it was quite a shock to everybody and uh you know in a traditionally in politics things are difficult to keep quiet but this one was uh you know a real shock to everybody I think and I really and I a really welcome surprise um as well to have uh somebody with that much experience returning to the front line of British politics showing just what a strong and United party we are across the country William ha is this down to you no what you mean no are we've been even selling you're the person responsible for this have you had anything you in any of the conversations around David Cameron coming William have we lost you oh no he's thought I thought I thought he was staring at me with Stony disregard but we've lost him for a second we'll try and get get him back k your reaction to this how surprised were you we were we were genuinely shocked when we were covering this yesterday what was your view of it all well it is astonishing isn't it when you try and think about the process that went on behind the scenes there you can see a bunch bunch of male spad sitting in a room going we need to have a reshuffle we need to deal with this SW braan problem who could be appoint that would get her out of the head lines get her off of the front pages and somebody has the ways of appointing David Cameron and that's the fix so in that sense it is a tactical Master stroke but it's an astonishing way to appoint a foreign secretary this is somebody who last week was a lobbyist Lobby on behalf of commercial interests companies in America all around the globe that now finds himself in the second highest office in the land and the most disturbing thing for me Ste and I do think it's disturbing is that we now have the second most senior politician in the country isn't elected that no MP can ask him questions at a time when Global Security whether it's the Middle East or Ukraine are such significant issues I find it just fundamentally undemocratic regardless of how much of a great political we is well let's let's we can talk to William heg also about I think we've got it back now um William did you have a role in this were you cons consulted about whether it would be a good idea to have David Cameron back in government still struggling with the uh reception anyway I think you're asking me what you asked me before can you hear me okay yeah we've got you now William I think we've got you back okay brilliant um no well first of all uh KZ clearly doesn't like this idea I do like the idea of David Cameron uh coming back into government and uh was very enthusiastic about it I I knew about it uh a few days before um and spoke to David Cameron to to brief him about my views on Foreign Affairs and the foreign office but it wasn't my idea you know you read these things that I set it up in some way it was my idea that that's not the case I know Rishi suak and David Cameron very well but um sometimes in politics things are simpler than they look sometimes somebody just asks somebody else around for a chat and says why don't you do this and they say well okay fine and you know it doesn't need any um intermediary or they just sorted out themselves so that's what happened in this case did the prime minister or David ceron ask your advice William about whether this was a good idea well I chat to the Prime Minister quite a bit and I never tell people what I've chatted about although a lot of my advice to him you could read in my times column of course it's not much different from the uh it doesn't differ that much from what I write in the in the newspaper um but uh no I I tell I told both of them I thought it was a great idea um because I think I have them having already agreed it though so let me stress that and um because I think David Cameron's experience in the foreign office uh brings huge experience of world affairs and as I've written this morning my experience of working in government with him was it was really the best experience of my time in politics because he was such a sane reasonable person to work with who listen to different points of view and then try to come to the best decision in a very you know in an intelligent way so I think it's it's got to be good having him back in government good for the country and I can absolutely take Kia's point that the there are disadvantages to having a senior minister in the House of Lords but there are advantages too to having some somebody of such experience and it's been that's been done before great foreign secretary Lord Carrington was in the House of Lords Peter mandelson was a senior minister in the House of Lords in a labor government uh so this has happened before without the Constitution you know without democracy grinding to a halt uh you're a senior uh figure in the House of Lords uh William hay close to the Prime Minister if there is a wee to get big figures back into government did he approach you at any point to say come on William stop just chuntering on the sidelines on times radio and in the times come and make a difference back in government are you really saying times radio is the sidelines I'm probably honest enough to say in comparison with controlling the government possibly yes but in comparison to nothing else no no look this prime minister he's a good friend of mine the Prime Minister and he knows me very well and he knows not even to ask uh that I am absolutely dead set determined that I do not go back to government I've been asked several times by different Prime Ministers and uh I came back you know I in 2005 after I quit as leader of the party I did come back to work with David Cameron for 10 years and do foreign affairs with him I'm very pleased I did that but that's once you I do that once I'm not doing another one I'm not Frank and arra it's not one come back after another I've now moved on to other things in life so I'm not available and won't be available at any stage in the future to um to go back into government but I think it's very good when some other people have uh have one comeback in them and uh David Cameron has has clearly got got that in him um kzia I want to ask you about what uh uh what William wrote in his column today Cameron's decency is an asset to aing tories uh making the point that you know the grown-ups are back um that it's been incredibly divisive uh not just in terms of different factions of of the Tory party but the kind of not I was going to say briefing against each other isn't that someone goes on on the radio and says something or says something in an interview uh swella bravman looking at you um and then lots of colleagues come up and say well I wouldn't have chosen those kind of words and it goes on and on and on and it feels like that's not a broad church that is that is a disunited party um uh and William is kind of arguing that this this kind of started really with Boris Johnson is there some something in that some value in that KIA dugdale that perhaps we are looking at a return to a polite um government that respect each other I very much hope so and I appreciate William lost his line for this a little bit there I wasn't personally attacking David Cameron in any sense that there's much about his record that for a conservative I have a great deal of respect for particularly stuff he he did around um equal marriage he is much more of a of a Centrist he is somebody who believes in and the power of politics and decency and using respectful language and I think that's all to be welcomed mean I've sat in object horror over the past couple of weeks looking at the language that sella braan used his home at secretary and considered it to be in sedentary at I think she's responsible for for much of the anger we've seen in the streets for the past couple of weeks and I don't think we'll get that from David Cameron or anything like that from from David Cameron my only objection to him is that he is unelected this is undemocratic this is not a way that you know a leading country in the 21st century should be operating making appointments in response to Psycho Drama within a political party rather than in the best interest of the country I mean let's be clear about this if SW bravman wasn't a problem David Cameron wouldn't be foreign secretary that's where my objection with it lies but yes I am hopeful that the politics and and the the tone of it the temper of it will improve from now on um William he there there are quite a few people some people are very nostalgic for for the kind of the good old days as they see of of David Cameron and other people are very very angry the ocracy is Alive and Kicking Cameron's decency he lost the referendum and quit where where is the decency another one here um Can William hake explain uh how Lord Cameron exemplifies decency after the Panama papers green sill lobbying the Libyan disaster and his over close moneyed relationship with China if this is the conservative party's idea of decency God help us what would you say to all of them well I'd say I worked with him for 10 years you know what can you go on better than your own experience I worked every day with David Cameron for 10 years um and I've known pretty much everybody who's led the conservative party in my lifetime and I found him one of the sanest um most decent people in that position you know but serer than me when I was leader of the conservative party I would include myself in that and uh I always found him very good to deal with taking into account every consideration thinking about everything and everybody he should I think when you've got him dealing now for this country with what's going on in Gaza and Ukraine and all the immense geopolitical issues we face at the moment we will get to that yeah and we will we will we will get to all those we we'll talk about them in a minute I just think do you think that his judgment after leaving office has been good well I it's easy to criticize um people and we all make mistakes um and I certainly made a lot when I was party leader so um I don't want to defend every single thing he's done in that period but I think you always have to come to a a balanced view you always have to weigh up well actually is somebody an asset to the country and the government or not and um I I think uh David ceron is an immense asset if you if you only have politicians and ministers who never made a mistake about anything or misjudged anything well then it would be you'd have great difficulty having a government with any Talent at all we need anybody at all it it just be anybody at all an empty table there was of course a whole cabinet reshuffle uh yesterday soel braan sacked James cleverly the new Home Secretary Steve Barkley is now in charge of the department for environmental and Rural Affairs and Victoria Atkins replaces him as health secretary so is the right of the Tory party getting purged the new conservative party chair Richard Holden was very keen to tell us repeatedly that the party is Broad and that this reshuffle reflects that I think actually the Prime Minister the for the the Prime Minister has made clear that he wants a broad party uh representing all parts of the country that's what this reshuffle is about people like me from the red wall people with great experience like David Cameron people from the uh south of England like Laura trop but there's people from right across the country people like Lee Rowley as well brought in as as housing Minister we also spoke to the conservative MP Jacob ree morg who said that the conservative party was a broad church but that it became more narrow when so government was sacked I think that Suella was a very important part of the cabinet uh in what she represented in terms of taking seriously the nation's concerns uh on migration and Law and Order which she may sometimes have put in a way that sensitive Souls found um a little too bold for them um William H is this the purge of the Tory right and is it also as some people are arguing the conservatives perhaps not giving up on the red wall but also keeping the blue wall in their sights well I always think on blue wall and red wall you know they're not as different as people think it's not like you can decide oh we're going to have the blue wall voters and not the red wall uh voters most of those conservative voters are quite similar across the blue wall and the red wall and having a competent well-led government with a good team matters blue wall and the red wall so I don't see it as that sort of choice nor do I see it as a sort of purge of the right because um as as I mentioned in my column uh you can be the home secret the previous Home Secretary sella rman could have continued in the cabinet I'm sure if you've been a a good team player you know you could be a forceful personality and you can be on a particular wing of a party and still be a successful member of a cabinet but you can't if you keep saying things that the rest of the cabinet have to disown so um I don't think it was a matter of right or left I do think a party that's got Rishi sunak Jeremy Hunt David Cameron those sorts of people at the top is a mainstream center right party it's not a party that's going to have anything to do with extremes and personally I welcome that but I don't see the individual changes as a purge of any any particular group do you think that Rishi sunak was um wrong in retrospect to give suel bravman another chance in the same job that she'd been sacked from um once before or did he have to and and if you think that he was right to do that did he um hold on to her for too long a whole string of questions that no I don't think he was wrong because when you first elected leader of the party uh which he was a year ago you have to try to include people um from all different group this is where Liz truss went disastrously wrong uh and really had too narrow a focus in her cabinet and that that Unwound very quickly so I think Rishi sunak tried to you know have the biggest tent uh possible in his cabinet well a year later that didn't work out in this particular case but um I I think it was right to to try that and this is not unusual in politics as everybody knows there are quite frequent reshuffles because Prime Ministers decide well actually that person hasn't worked out exactly as I was hoping um so that's not unusual I think he was right to to try that out and now he's got a significantly stronger Government after these changes than he had before but of course he has to try things uh KZ do you think that a government of Centrist dads is actually harder for labor than it was previously I mean this is the question isn't it one Theory that's been put forward on our program today which I kind of start to warm to is that the government think they're going to lose the next election and they just don't want to get massacred and so they're actually fighting for credibility that will keep them in the ball game in the future and I don't know if that's good or bad for labor but does this make a difference to how labor will approach things because the idea of boring Centrist competence so beautifully espoused by K starma it's another way that the the Tories are are are sort of stealing a little bit of of his Thunder but perhaps I don't think this reshuffle makes a huge amount of difference in in electoral terms if anything I might argue that it makes Labor's journey to power ever slightly easier because what people like swell rvan did was lay traps for labor around issues like culture wars and immigration that were sometimes very difficult for the labor party to respond to or or manage in terms of their own internal Party politics so with the language being torn down and the H conservative party pooling slightly closer to the center I think that's ground that K star will be very comfortable to campaign on on the basis that you know the conservatives have been in power for a very long time now and the economy is a mess and the NHS is a mess and people are really struggling to make ends meet I think he's also very happy to campaign against the architect of austerity that that David Cameron represents that said though I do think there's been a couple of clever Moves In in this cabinet where the Prime Minister has managed to resolve a few problems that were big today but likely to be even bigger in future months not not least Steve Barkley being removed as health secretary I mean he made an absolute diabolical mess that he broke every relationship he had with and health bodies the BMA doctors all the rest of it around pay deals and indeed to re coffee and and everything that she got into around the S problems and which is a big issue in those blue wall seats so there are some smart moves in that cabinet but I don't think labor will be concerned overall interesting um we just want to tell you uh of course that D David Carman he's been brought back to government put in the House of laws to help win an election sounds a bit familiar just like Gordon Brown did with Peter mandon and Lord mandon will be joining mattley for episode three of how to win an election alongside Daniel felstein and Polly McKenzie that's after this show at 10 um let's terms to Foreign Affairs and how the Tory position might change or otherwise um William obviously an area of expertise uh for you um and some of this I suppose is is on you as well because you were foreign secretary at this period some people have said Jacob re MOG I think said it on this prr was that in the world of Foreign Affairs David Cameron was not hugely successful um Libya was not a successful intervention the parliament stopped him intervening in Syria brexit was a total disaster for David Cameron does he have a set of views and values that will alter significantly how foreign affairs are currently being conducted well I think he's in the I think it' be very close to Rishi sunak views which is why you know this this will work very well then being prime minister and foreign secretary I think he knows the Middle East uh very well it's a completely Fair Point that we had terrible problems with Syria although part of that problem was the House of Commons refused to take our advice that we needed to take some action uh in in Syria so it wasn't that David Cameron didn't give the right lead um but David Cameron did he got to know a lot of the Arab leaders uh very well when he was prime minister and many of those leaders are still there uh so I think that will be very useful because the the anert in the Middle East really has to come from within the region you know that the the there's so much wealth and power being accumulated by Gulf States in particular they are going to have to exert themselves over the coming years uh to try to uh improve the situation between Israelis and Palestinians and and could he be really ambitious here William I'm interesting this because one of the reasons he's been appointed is these are very interesting times very difficult times globally war in Ukraine war in the Middle East could David Cameron say actually I'm going to go and try and become a peace Envoy there I'm going to say use British soft power and actually start talking about two State Solutions start talking about not only the humanitarian Paws but the future of Gaza after the war really place on his own head why not actually the chance to be a figure in the region that could be bring about something and and really sell himself as that figure as an ambitious act would would that be something he could do well that that is more I'm sure he'll be very very active on all of those things but actually you need you need leverage to go as a foreign secretary or prime minister to another region of the world and sort it out you need actual some power over it some leverage over it well Britain doesn't have that much of that and it we're not the empire uh anymore he did when he was prime minister and I was foreign secretary we decided for instance on Somalia and piracy in the Indian Ocean well that was something we could go and do something about and uh he presided over the conference we had in in 2012 where we got a whole International Coalition together that led to that stabilized that country uh got rid of most of the Pirates in the Indian Ocean so you know there are things that people don't remember very well about what what he did positively in foreign policy but you can only do that where you've got some real traction you know and that's why the United States is generally the outside power that makes that effort in the uh the Middle East my point is its powers within the Middle East that are now going to have to take on some of that responsibility so he'll do a lot but don't expect him to be the uh you know The Peacemaker of the whole world the British foreign secretary doesn't have the power to do that anymore um KY do deal is there one thing notwithstanding what William Hager said there about that the power not necessarily residing within the British foreign secretary when it comes to situation in Israel and Gaza but is there one thing that David Cameron could say or do that would encourage you um that that there perhaps was some kind of new way of thinking on on how we can have an impact on what's going on over there I actually think he said it already and I do really welcome this which is a return to talking about International Development and the role of Aid in securing peace I mean this is a guy who believes in 0.7% GDP being spent on Aid I hope that we get back to the value of that and you know I really hope that that's the case the end of the day though he he could well be foreign secretary for less than 12 months yeah in the dying days of the conservative government I worry that that that and it's s really limits his power and influence okay we're going to talk finally about one of the most important jobs uh we don't know what it is though is it Minister for common sense Esther McVey is back in the cabinet it was briefed out we didn't make this up that she is now the minister for common sense though her official title will be Minister without portfolio Richard Holden couldn't quite tell us what her job will involve as I said what you want is a real breadth of views we're a broad party which represent all parts of the country but what is she going to do as Minister for common sense that's what I want to know well you you know that's a uh I think her official title is a minister without portfolio and she'll be but she'll be um playing in on all sorts of uh all sorts of issues is she going to judge the wokeness or otherwise of policy I think they I think all of us will be looking at all all policy in the round and it's will you be judging the work of policy as always I think the important thing uh on this is what you want is views from right across uh the party so no idea then uh Jacob ree Mar does not approve I welcome esa's return because I think um she's highly capable and a good presenter of the Tory cause I think having a minister for woke is silly and I think it's deeply regrettable that a minister of the caliber and quality of Jeremy Quinn who was in the cabinet office has been lost to the government um and they brought in somebody with a silly title I I think it's extraordinary thing to do and is not serious but Esther is a very good person and have her at the cabinet is a good thing um William hay can you do any better than than Richard Holden I I don't know here but what what is your understanding of this um I know it's Minister without portfolio and there have been other ministers without portfolios but this is you know it was briefed out is that that's what her responsibility was going to be kind of Minister for for wokeness watching out for walk things in in in policy or whatever is that that was obviously Richi Sak's idea he felt that that was something that needs to be looked at or is it just a so to the right I can't do that much better than Richard hold they are this is not one that I was privy to or involved in like job I think estimate is a great person so I welcome that but um once you're the minister of common sense you're going to get a lot of letters from the whole country defining and uh we can all have our own version to me common sense is uh you know eat well plant trees and get plenty of exercise so maybe that will be part of them brief do you think we need one William William he look there's a good role there can be a good role for a minister without portfolio in the cabinet with a um who cuts across departments and helps the prime minister to make sure you know to police a bit what's happening do you need that regulation are you sure about that law I imagine it's that sort of thing that uh Esther McVey will be doing so but that all depends on how it's done and if they have the full backing of the Prime Minister on a daily basis to do that sort of work so they can really exert themselves on the department okay so I hope it's that it's that sort of thing um so yes every everybody will have their own view of what common sense well they certainly will H KY dugdale uh William haer shared what his view is I can't remember what it was something about grow growing plants and eating well I can't remember um what would yours be if you were Minister for common sense well look I'd be amazed if es mcve hasn't reheated the gender Wars by the weekend and that will be her role is to create and problems and traps and for labor and to be the minister for news night or the morning media round she is a good communicator I might not like and what she says but I understand she's got real skills in that regard and an accent that let's be honest really helps the party right now when you see so many well-to-do census Dan and S might I did say that yes Fair Point um thank you so much Kia dugdale and thank you to William ha

Channel: Times Radio

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Id: Q3fA7pBXNVk

Length: 28min 10sec (1690 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 14 2023