Wes Streeting on battling the Treasury, his plan for the NHS, and the reality of power

0:00This week on Outrage and Optimism, we look at the remarkable summer we've been having in Western Europe with heatwave after heatwave that has now translated into wildfires in France, in Spain and even in Scotland. There has been a conspiracy of silence in the media that is preventing us from seeing what is really happening. This week on Outrage and Optimism, we cut through to understand what's going on and how our society can and should change to deal with these issues.

0:30This message comes from Jackson. Taxes aren't something you can only think about once a year. With investments, planning for tax days year-round. Fortunately, Jackson offers tax-efficient products. Visit jackson.com for more information on how our products can make your tax bill a little bit less painful. Jackson is short for Jackson Financial Incorporated, Jackson National Life Insurance Company, Lansing, Michigan, and Jackson National Life Insurance Company of New York. Purchase New York. You're either all in on this model, or maybe you're building with another. You're either speed or is it security?

1:02You're either custom or are you ready to use? Or you're AWS AI. With hundreds of models, ready to use agents, speed and security built in, you don't have to pick a side. You can have them all. How will AI revolutionize your business? AWS AI is how. Hi, this is Kim and Penn Holderness from the Laugh Lines podcast. This episode is sponsored by Oli, your wellness partner for back to school and beyond. Back to school season is here. Packed backpacks, packed lunches, and packed schedules are officially back. Oli Kids Sleep helps little dreamers wind down with a gentle blend of melatonin, L-theanine, and botanicals for restful sleep.

1:48Translation, an easy way to put those school night negotiations to bed. And for the grown-ups, Oli's Sleep helps you fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up feeling refreshed.

1:57George Osborne: Because as you know, the morning mayhem comes early. Visit Oli.com and stock up on back-to-school must-haves today. That's O-L-L-Y dot com. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

2:32This is Political Currency with Ed Balls and George Osborne.

2:45George Osborne: Well, welcome to the studio here in Hoxton. And as you know, if you're a regular listener to the show, we sometimes invite in our Political Currency gold subscribers to take part in our show and we've got one right here we have got wes streeting who is not just a political currency gold subscriber but he is also the mp for ilford north and he is the secretary of state for health wes thank you so much for taking the time to come into our studio today first time call a long time listener so it's great to be here and you are you're in ed ed balls's chair you see you're you're you're his uh understudy today yeah i'm admiring the um studio and preparing for my life after politics.

3:24George Osborne: He's actually got a real golden rule here somewhere, which is like a metal golden rule I'll show you, and various pictures with Gordon Brown, and I've got my coalition stuff, and the books he's written, and so on. He is interrailing, I think, with the Home Secretary at the moment, so you are a stand-in. Look, we're not going to talk about the kind of day-to-day issues of politics. I'm going to ask you just to sort of generally reflect on your first year in government, because you were an opposition MP, a pretty effective opposition MP. I remember being on the Treasury Select Committee when I was Chancellor.

3:58And the thing I like most about you at the moment is you look like you are loving government. That is true. That is an accurate impression. And, you know, I spent nine years in opposition. I was elected in 2015. I came in with a majority of 589. We had bucked the trend. We were 83rd on Labour's list of targets. So Ed had to win over 100 seats to become prime minister. Mine was deemed to be the 83rd most winnable. And while we lost almost all of the seats in the top 10 and pretty much all of the others on the target list, we got the, I think, the biggest swing from Labour to the Conservatives of any seat that we'd won at that general election.

4:42To the extent where I'll never forget, I think it's like maybe first or second week. and I was downstairs in Parliament on my way to the Strangers Bar and David Cameron, as Prime Minister, comes bounding down the corridor with people around him. And as he passed me, he goes, good to see you, congratulations, brilliant result. And he sort of swarmed off. And then I went into the bar and I was like, David Cameron's really nice. I didn't think he'd be that nice to a Labour MP. He obviously just assumed you were a Tory because the Labour Party hadn't won any seats. and so from that moment I've always felt privileged and lucky to be an MP but the first nine years I mean I did nine years in opposition as well it's not a bad place to start in parliament you definitely learn but but compared to your first nine years I mean the country just went down the pan after I got elected by the way that was a coincidence not causation but you know you came came in 2015 we thought okay at least we know where we stand the Tories have got majority we didn't really expect that.

5:42But it's all about the next election in sort of 2019, 2020, where you'd hope Labour could bounce back and win. And instead, we elected Jeremy Corbyn as leader, we had the Brexit referendum, we had all of the general elections and all of the prime ministers since. And even after 2019, where Labour hit rock bottom, worst defeat since 1935, there was a sense of, let's hope the party now gets its senses together.

6:09George Osborne: I mean, some people were talking about creating a new party on the left, weren't they? I mean, centrist Labour folk were saying 2019 was like the end. The hard left had captured the citadel and we're never going to have a Labour government again. Yeah, and I never bought into the sort of the Change UK project for a whole bunch of reasons. Partly, I didn't get a sense there was a real political project that underpinned it. Partly, my tribal Labour politics. and partly because in a two-party system I felt it'd be irresponsible to surrender Britain's mainstream opposition party to the hard left and I stayed and fought but it was still I mean this is one of the interesting things about how people talk about Keir Starmer now as a leader it was not inevitable that he won the leadership election after 2019 certainly wasn't inevitable that he won the general election last time and so there was that sense of palpable relief when Keir was elected leader of the opposition.

7:04But then, of course, we were plunged straight into, well, we were already in lockdown restrictions and the pandemic. So it was a really weird time.

7:13George Osborne: But do you think you're a better government minister because you've been an opposition MP? Because there's something about being an opposition MP where you are kind of a self-starter and you have to, you know, if you're in the shadow cabinet, if you don't do anything that day, nothing happens whereas you know with all due respect to a secretary of state you know if you if you all sit for a day or whatever you know the department carries on and you know the momentum of government carries on for a quite long time i personally but you know i'm very party-free because this was also my career i think people who have their whole careers in government as maybe you'll see some of these depending on the results of the coming elections maybe some of these new Labour adventures, they'll never have that kind of the cut and thrust of trying to prove yourself as an opposition MP.

8:02It's really, opposition is a lot harder than it looks. And I remember some of my Tory mates before the election saying, well, you'll find when you're in government, it's a lot harder than it looks. And I'd always hit back with, yeah, and you're going to find oppositions a lot harder than it looks as well. And I think the Tories are certainly finding that now, not least because they're diminished in number as well. So trying to just cover the business and make sure you've got people in the commons people in Westminster Hall people at whatever big rally or event is taking place it spreads you thin and that's when you've got in our case we had still had over 200 MPs after 2019 the Tories and you know just over 100 aren't they so they're I think they're struggling to just cover all the bases but you do learn you learn a lot in opposition you mentioned the Treasury Committee I loved being on that committee that was a really great committee to be on.

8:51I learned a huge amount about the economy, about the political economy. Taking on the Chancellor. Taking on the Chancellor, as I did to varied degrees of success when you came in front of our committee. Of course, now we had Prime Minister Carney in front of us when he was the mere old governor. And lots of us used to joke then he had that kind of like, I mean, I used to sing Smooth Operator before he'd walk into the room because he just used to charm the committee around his little finger in a way that he probably shouldn't have been allowed to get away with. So I loved that period. But opposition is futile.

9:27You go in, you make some arguments, you lose. You go in, you make some arguments, you lose. Government is just completely different. And there isn't a single day, I think, in the last year where I haven't reminded myself that I'm probably doing the best job I have, well, no, certainly the best job I've ever had, but also the best job I'm likely to ever have. So it's an amazing feeling, even when things are really, in fact, especially when things are difficult, I remind myself of that.

9:58George Osborne: But I do like that attitude. I'm not just saying that. Because I come across quite a lot of your colleagues and some of them are quite kind of downtrodden and they're telling me how difficult it is. And, you know, they don't look like they've got a smile on their face. And look, you know, obviously you've got problems every single day. And, you know, we're talking while there's a doctor's strike underway. And, you know, you're still kind of positive. I get the feeling you're thinking every single day I do this job, I'm going to enjoy and get the most out of and find fulfilling. I try and move the dial in the right direction every day.

10:34And I always try and make sure there is one thing that I have done every day to move us in the right direction. And sometimes they're big things. Sometimes they might be small things. But just not to kind of waste a day and waste the opportunity that we've got.

10:51George Osborne: What do you think you've learned, though, in the last year? So I've got obviously the disadvantage of being in opposition. I only ever had one job in government, which was Chancellor. I was never a junior minister. I didn't do a departmental job. You know, you've gone straight in as Secretary of State for Health. What have you learned that you didn't know about government after 12 months? What are the things you go now? Although I was a close observer in Parliament, I didn't realise this or I didn't realise that. I mean, there's a lot. It is a steep learning curve. And I did the health and social care brief in opposition.

11:26So I sort of came in with a good understanding of the issues, the stakeholders, what we wanted to do, how we wanted to go about it. And that's definitely been a big advantage having done the job for that long in opposition. But there's still lots about the running of government that was a genuine surprise. I mean, for example, I hadn't appreciated the extent to which the Treasury is actively involved in the day-to-day decisions of departments. So when I came in the first few weeks and I decided to find just under£100 million worth of savings within my existing budget to spend on recruiting GPs because we had lots of unemployed, qualified GPs, lots of people struggling to find a doctor's appointment.

12:12And I thought this is bonkers. And I, maybe not unreasonably expected, that it was just as simple as saying, OK, I'm going to take£100 million from this bit of my budget and I'm going to put it somewhere else. And then the Treasury came back with a whole load of questions and actually quite a lot of institutional resistance saying, well, hang on a minute, you only just come in and you don't know what your outlook's going to be. And they had all of these. At the time, I thought it was kind of excessive micromanagement. In the sort of weeks and months that followed, I actually built quite a lot of sympathy for the Treasury as an institution and its relationship with my department and the NHS that I could understand why the Treasury was quite so cynical.

12:53But it took, you know, working with Rachel as Chancellor and Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary, to overcome that initial opposition from the institution to move the issue on. And I hadn't expected to have to do that much upward management and engagement with the Treasury as an institution as I've had to do. And I think I've always tried to apply that objectively. Do you do that only at a ministerial level?

13:22George Osborne: or have you got to know any of the Treasury officials? I've got to know the officials well and I think they've got to know me and I tried to look at this objectively and thought, okay, so I think the Treasury is excessively micromanaging but similarly, what is it about my department historically and the NHS historically about their behaviours have led to the Treasury behaving this way which is probably partly a benefit of having been on the Treasury Committee is seeing departments through a slightly different lens and there were some funny meetings with some of my officials in the department early on.

13:56I think it was in the run-up to Rachel's first budget and we were putting together our submissions and the various back and forth you have with the Treasury in the run-up to a fiscal event like the budget. And there was the end of one part of the process and I said, I don't know how you guys have done this to me but you've actually made me sympathetic to the Treasury. Oh my God, you've been drinking a Kool-Aid. Yeah, I think that was there. And I think it's also, I think, in no small part because of my kind of close professional and kind of friendship with Rachel and Darren, that there must be times when I appear to the Treasury as sort of classic health secretary trying to get more money out of the Treasury.

14:39But there must be times to my own department, the NHS, where they must think, oh, no, the Treasury's got one of their own in that seat. I do try and look at it objectively because I think it's the job of the politicians to come in with a clear sense of our own political priorities, a clear sense of our direction, but not to become absorbed into institutional behaviours and certainly not to adopt and champion just the sort of traditional white hallways of working. and I think some of the siloed nature of Whitehall, which I think is unhealthy. I think it's our job as a political team to sort of break out from that.

15:20And again, having been forged in the fire of opposition with the cabinet, there is a closeness and a camaraderie across the cabinet, which I suspect is fairly unusual. And certainly, I mean, I'm a big fan of political memoirs and diaries and things like that. And I sort of struggle to think back to a cabinet that's as close.

15:38George Osborne: Opposition teams often bring that. So I think the Cameron team, we were in a coalition, but the conservative end of that was close. Yeah. The Blair Brown team from what you could see in 1997 and, you know, with Robin Cook and Donald Dewar and David Blunkett, you know, there was a kind of camaraderie there that only frayed over time. Yeah. So that's true. But do you think, I guess, you know, given my own personal background in the Treasury, I used to sometimes think I'm the only person in the room who says we can't afford this. You're like the kind of adult in the family who says, I'm sorry, we can't just go on another holiday or buy another toy or whatever.

16:22George Osborne: One of the things that is kind of asked of this government is, is the cabinet aware of the bond market, of the pressures on the chancellor to ensure that Britain has fiscal credibility out there. It's all very well asking for more money for this, more money for that. You've got obviously noisy workforces who want more money. And there are lots of people coming forward with probably unsolicited ideas for new taxes. But is there a kind of collective understanding of the economic pressures on the government? I think so. I think one of the things that Rachel is very good at doing around the cabinet table is kind of sharing that insight with the cabinet about the different constraints that she's operating under.

17:10But I think, I mean, I sometimes sit there at cabinet meetings week by week, looking around the table thinking, who's got the most difficult job this week? because you look at the range of pressures that we're facing domestically, internationally, economically, public services, the expectations of the country, the pain that families are feeling in their pockets. And I'm always conscious that over and above everyone else, Keir and Rachel are carrying all of those pressures together. And so I think it is our responsibility to say to our own departments or own audiences or the people that we're responsible for, the services that we're responsible for, you need to understand that we can't do everything for everyone everywhere all at once.

17:57George Osborne: And do you find, you're obviously deployed on the media because you're a pretty effective media performer, not just on the health brief, but sometimes to sort of defend the position of the government. One of the things that is said about Keir Starmer, and I just don't know if it's true or not, is that, you know, he's quite a sort of loner in Downing Street. He doesn't have a kind of team of buddies. David Cameron had people like me and William Hague and Michael Gove back then, and so on, who were, as well as his sort of personal, you know, team in Downing Street, like Ed Llewellyn and Kate Wall and Gabby Burton people.

18:32George Osborne: You know, he had a kind of bunch of senior cabinet ministers who would lean in to help him solve his problems and sometimes put their own kind of departmental brief to one side. I don't get the impression that in that respect, Kierst Dahmer has a kitchen cabinet. I don't think he's ever operated as a conventional political leader. And I think he's brought in from outside politics, a way of working and a set of perspectives that can be quite liberating at times because it breaks you out of traditional, conventional political thinking and ways of working. And I wonder, thinking back to when we were in opposition and there were so many times Keir was underestimated in opposition and written off in opposition, he sort of confounded his critics.

19:19But there were a number of times in opposition where I thought, if we had a traditional political leader in this role, I'm not sure we would be changing as rapidly and disruptively as we did change in opposition. And I think the same is true for the way he operates in government. I mean, when you've earned his trust, but you do have to earn his trust, he is a very permissive leader and someone who will, like if I think back to all of the conversations I've had with Keir in the last 12 months there hasn't been a single one where he said well slow down a minute I'm not sure about that it's always been go harder go faster be bolder and I think that I think that side of his leadership we and I mean his team I think we need to show kind of more of that the NHS England abolition decision for example was a decision that we kept so tightly there were there was a handful of us who knew including the prime minister i couldn't have done it without a care uh and when i first went to see him about it and i gave him a range of options including we could do it more slowly if you like and he's like no no no no you you in my career i've never thought of a time where i think i wish i'd done that big change more slowly so he was extremely supportive um why do you think

20:43George Osborne: then, in terms of the machinery of government, I think most external observers, certainly my view, is that on the international front, he's performing pretty well. I mean, he's handling Trump, which is incredibly difficult for any foreign leader to do. You know, he's got the trade deal with the EU, you know, and he's kind of confident on the global stage. And he's got a pretty experienced foreign policy team of officials around him as well as the, you know, cabinet ministers. But on the domestic front, I don't think anyone would say the first year has been smooth, anything like as smooth as Tony Blair's first year.

21:21George Osborne: And it's not just these are harder times. He picked a chief of staff who he then had to fire a few months later. He's had to keep changing the personnel on Downing Street. We're talking on the day when there's another kind of new person who's been appointed to Downing Street. Why do you think the sort of central machinery has not operated as smoothly as it should? Well, I think on foreign policy, I think there have been a number of very demonstrable achievements and crucially, I think they're also wrapped in a story about what he's trying to do abroad, which is it's not being a world leader for world leaders' sake, it's spending time abroad, building relationships and alliances that deliver for people at home.

22:05And the great thing about the US trade deal, the EU reset, the India trade deal, particularly in terms of the US and India. I mean, India is famously protectionist. These are deals that have eluded previous governments and where we've had demonstrable and relatively, compared to other countries, outstanding and notable successes. And they're things that will deliver for people here at home. So the US trade deal, I mean, there are thousands of jobs at Jaguar Land Rover that have been saved thanks to the personal leadership of the prime minister. And with foreign policy, it's one of those areas where, yes, there's a whole team, but ultimately there's one prime minister who's in the room for critical moments.

22:51And I think he has objectively excelled in terms of that leadership. And when you talk to other governments about how Britain is viewed and how Keir is viewed, he's held in a lot of respect. And I think he has restored that almost traditional sense of Britain as the pragmatists, the problem solvers, the deal makers, the people you want in the room to kind of help countries come together and solve problems. And I think he's very good at it. I think domestically we have had a whole number of achievements and I think about the things that we've done in our first year. I could rattle off a whole list of NHS ones in terms of waiting lists.

23:35Child poverty, for example, the decision we've taken on free school meals will lift 100 ,000 children out of poverty. The last Labour government, which was lauded for its record on child poverty, did 400 ,000 over 13 years. So that's not a bad start. You've got a big public service reform agenda injustice. But come on, you know that. But I think we could wrap it. It's not wrapped up in a coherent enough story about the change that we're bringing. And I think the other thing is when the country, the starting point was so bad in terms of what we inherited. I think that it's fair to say I mean even in the NHS I'm always so conscious of this when I'm talking about waiting lists falling or more GPs being employed and some of the data moving in the right direction particularly on GP satisfaction I'm always conscious that whenever I say this on telly or on radio there'll be someone shouting at the telly or radio saying but I couldn't get a GP appointment this morning I'm still waiting and both of those things are true the NHS is beginning to move in the right direction but there are also lots of people that are still waiting and it's not yet good enough.

24:40George Osborne: But it's not enough to say it's a communication problem or that the circumstances are uniquely difficult. I mean, Britain changes its government when things have gone wrong. That's why they kick out one party and they put a new one in. But on some of the big domestic manoeuvres on the economy, on budgets, on winter fuel payments, discipline, I mean, discipline, huge amounts of political capital have been eaten up on making changes and then undoing those changes. And, you know, the end of the first year, it's not just that the prime minister's own poll ratings, despite, and I agree with what you say about his standing in the world, his own personal poll ratings are terrible by historical comparisons of other opposition leaders who've become prime minister.

25:25George Osborne: And as I say, there's still this feeling that there isn't, as you say, a coherent narrative or enough of a coherent narrative. The domestic sort of machinery isn't working properly. Now, maybe it's all being fixed now and maybe there's something of Keir Starmer which is he's sort of a slow starter but gets there, which is what happened in opposition. But I think there's a lot of frustration amongst Labour's supporters that things haven't gone as well in the first year as people hoped. Yeah, I'm trying to answer this question as well without just sort of blaming the people who came before, because people say, well, you would say that, wouldn't you?

26:08But it's really easy to forget. I mean, it felt like the state was a total standstill when we came in. And there were so many problems that no incoming government should ever face. I mean, the fact that prisons were weeks away from being literally full and the country being in a position where we couldn't lock up thugs who were rioting on our streets. I mean, that is a bad place for a country to find itself in.

26:34George Osborne: But it is often like that when you get a big change. In 97, I was working 10 Down Street, I can tell you, the government was utterly exhausted. Yeah. Right. And in 2010, you know. I'm not sure that, you know, to be fair to the Tories in the mid-90s, even with all of the kind of the internal chaos in the Conservative Party after Maastricht, I don't think that the British state itself had been run into the grounds the extent that it had done post-Brexit with all of those different prime ministers who came in and the sort of, you know, the Borgia years of the Johnson. premiership and then the absolute calamity of truss uh and i think you know it'd be interesting to talk to the sunak people about how the machine was running for them when they came in because i think part of the challenge for sunak was that the damage damage was already done all the things he was trying to move in the right direction it was too late and he didn't have enough time to turn those things around i'm not sure he was making the right choices either but that's a different question i'm not sure he would have literally had enough time in any case i don't think he actually i agree with some of what you say there i don't think he made as much as he should have done of his first couple of months that is your moment do you do you look back on the first year and go well actually there's more i could have done now i realize although i'm becoming more experienced and i know how to pull the leaves of government more i can also see that some of the kind of very early windows have closed a bit for me well we came in i mean i i got some flat for it at the time but we had a sort of a plan for how we were going to bring about the nhs reform agenda so we'd prosecuted in opposition the argument the nhs needed investment and reform and that unless it unless it reformed then it would die and it would become unsustainable and unsupported we then came in and we commissioned lord darsey to do an investigation into the true state of the nhs and loads of people at the time were saying hang on a minute shouldn't you've done this in opposition but it was really important to have an authoritative independent and data driven analysis of the true extent of the challenges in the NHS and there were things in there that surprised me in terms of some of its findings particularly in terms of its observation on staffing and which areas it thought were overstaffed and understaffed but there were other things in there too the undercapitalisation of the NHS I think was laid out in stark terms um and then once you've got that analysis of what's wrong then you can write the prescription and i don't think we've wasted at all the first year in we've not wasted a minute in the first year in terms of the reform agenda what we've been doing the delivery that we're beginning to see reflected in the metrics but again taking time to do the 10-year plan to mobilise the whole system around it to consult extensively.

29:29We got flack for that too, but I think it was absolutely worth it in terms of having a clear story to tell about where the NHS is, where it needs to be, and the journey we're going to take people on to get there. Because I can't turn the NHS around on my own. I have to mobilise one and a half million people who work in it, and I have to get democratic consent for it as well. Obviously, you've got that at the last general election but you need to keep that public support and understanding of what you're doing and why and so we came in with a really clear sense of those things i think on reflection um the nhs england abolition maybe could have been something that we announced in the first week did you have that in your head in opposition no that was the problem no that was the problem um i sort of was only when you saw it i've got to get rid of this thing frankly yeah i mean i came in really resistant to doing any structural change um and i was really resistant to that yeah um to be fair andrew lansley had a he had it all worked out he just didn't he just didn't tell you and david cameron um and that was the other thing you know we we reflected really carefully on lansley and don't get me wrong there when you when you sort of read what andrew lansley was doing on why he was doing it it wasn't like completely mad but the way he went about it and the level of changing everything everywhere all at once i think was too was way too much

30:58George Osborne: we were in a we were in a coalition and understandably liberal democrats didn't like some aspects of it and then you know shirley williams in the house of lords started to fill it yeah but there was no pitch rolling for it either and some of it was ill-conceived i don't think it solve the problems it wanted to and it's been calamitous for the nhs and the way in which we're going about some of the structural reform is actually not too dissimilar to the way you approach metro mayors and i remember when you first went down that route i was a bit frustrated as a as an opposition mp looking in thinking why are you why are you doing this lopsided approach to local government reform why aren't you having a consistent approach to local government organisation and mayors across the country but i think if you'd done that it would have been a spectacular failure and instead you know setting up that manchester mayoralty having andy burnham kind of taking the lifeboat away from the bonkers nature of parliament at the time to go and lead it being so spectacularly successful in the way that he's led it that's meant that it's been held up as a model for others to follow.

32:06And so you've got now a rolling out of mayors that's been inspired rather than imposed. And we're taking a similar approach to NHS reform, whether it's GP models or...

32:16George Osborne: Devolve. Do what we did in Manchester. That's exactly what we're doing. We're devolving a hell of a lot more. I wish we'd done... We started that in Manchester. If I'd stayed in office... Overcentralisation is a really big problem with the British states. Not the only... I mean, that's the other big... Going back to one of your earlier questions, that's the other thing that's really... I suppose shocked me in a way is, I mean, I'm quite cynical about the state anyway for someone on the left in that, you know, I come from an unconventional background, shall we say, in politics. I grew up in poverty, two of my grandparents in prison, grew up on benefits.

32:51So I've seen different, and also I'm here because I'm a product of a great state education, council housing. So I've seen the best and the worst of the state, but it means that while I believe very strongly in the role of the state in providing security and opportunity for people, I'm also not dewy-eyed about the state either and I can see some of its real shortcomings. But when I look at examples of state failure, whether it's victims of the NHS in maternity, mental health and other settings, contaminated blood scandal, wind rush, seeing all of these examples of state failure and the inability of the state to own its failure, to acknowledge its failure and to remedy its failure, that I find shocking.

33:36The way in which the state relates to its citizens is really quite appalling in too many cases. And if there's one thing I'm driving at over and above everything else in the NHS reform agenda, it's the idea that the patient is king or queen and that we've got to give more power not just to frontline leaders and clinicians, We've got to give more power to the patient.

33:55George Osborne: I mean, that's often been a conservative message on health reform. It's maybe gone about in a different message, which is put the patient first, put patient choice first. I mean, Tony Blair, by the sort of latter part of his premiership, I think was getting his teeth into health reform and saying, OK, the NHS can be something. The NHS means two things, doesn't it? It's a national health service in the sense that it's free at the point of use, paid for out of general taxation. But it's also a national health service in that most people who work in it are employed by the state, the doctors, the nurses.

34:27That's why you have these big, you know, you decide the pay of tens of thousands of doctors or hundreds of thousands of nurses, which wouldn't happen in health care systems in most other countries.

34:39George Osborne: Blair was kind of eating away at the edges of that and getting, you know, private providers to do, you know, hip replacements, knee operations and the like, and getting the GPs to do more diagnostics. things but that all died basically didn't it died partly because of the you know change of labour leader it died then because of the problems of the Lansley reform yeah Lansley came in did his reform and then my senses and I had quite a lot of conservative friends say this to me during the last parliament but it sort of became the third rail for conservative politics no one wanted to touch the NHS after that because it was seen as just too toxic and the Tories were saying to me only Labour can be trusted to reform the NHS.

35:23And I think that is true.

35:25George Osborne: This is Nixon in China. Yeah, and I think to the nature of the reform, I see in the Telegraph and the Times from time to time, articles that pop up, Spectator pop up saying, Labour's bottle reform because they won't change the model of funding. And it's such a red herring. That is not the problem with the NHS. The problem is the model of care and the fact we have far too much of a hospital centric system. We're spending a lot of money in the wrong place at the wrong time delivering poorer value for taxpayers and poorer outcomes for patients. We've got to shift a lot more to primary and community, diagnosing earlier, treating faster, better for patients, better value for the taxpayer.

36:13on technology. We've got to do a lot more on making sure the NHS doesn't just benefit from, but actively leads the revolution in AI, machine learning, genomics, all those things that are going to completely revolutionise how we do healthcare prediction and prevention, as well as earlier diagnostics and earlier treatment. And then on the prevention and public health side, I mean, this is where I think the Tories can do their own version of Nixon in China. I mean, I was always really impressed with people like Sajid Javid and actually your sugar tax as well I was it's really funny I remember that we're going through and saying to Will Quince who was later a health minister but is a mate of mine on the Tory bench at the time and I remember saying to Will what are you doing all this nanny state sugar tax for it's not very conservative most of the Tory MPs yeah I remember but but you you got it through and it's been hugely successful and I think the Tories almost have more space on public health than Labour governments do but that that prevention public health side of things is absolutely essential to pushing illness into later life because at the moment we've got a society that's growing older but becoming sicker sooner and that is a big big sustainability challenge not just for nhs spending but for but but for the affordability of the state as well so pivoting a bit because

37:31George Osborne: we're coming to the end but you could use actually public health as an example to do this you know there was a kind of reaction wasn't there to the early Labour announcement about banning smoking outdoors and pub gardens and things like that um and you hear that Morgan McSweeney the chief staff in number 10 is absolutely clear that it's Farage is the real opposition you know that um it's not the Tory party anymore who's going to be our biggest opponents it's it's reform I mean there's obviously a bit of kind of game playing when you do that and you know helps to the right split. But I think a lot of the liberal left would say that Labour's kind of afraid of its own shadow on this stuff.

38:13George Osborne: And it's allowed itself to be intimidated, not on the whole set of socially liberal issues, immigration and the like, without getting into all of them in detail, because we don't have time. We're all kind of living in Farage's shadow. And you're like a Labour government with a huge majority, you should just get on with things. So I'll say two things. Firstly, I do think and fear that what we're seeing is major party realignment on the right of a type we haven't seen in British politics since Labour leapfrogged the Liberal Party to become the main opponent of the Conservatives. I think reform are in the process of doing something similar to the Conservative Party and the Conservatives feel less and less relevant in Parliament, even though they're much greater in number.

38:59I think that maybe one area where we haven't made the most of being in government yet is when you're in opposition. I say this to my team all the time. It's our job to grab the microphone because in opposition, you have to fight for attention. No one cares. I mean, the Tories must have found this in their first year in opposition because they go from running big government departments with huge, you know, agendas. I mean, there's always stuff coming out of government. And you put out a government press release, unless it is really, really dull, it will get picked up by someone somewhere. In opposition, you have to really fight to grab the microphone and get some attention.

39:42And I think that one thing that Farage is instinctively good at is grabbing the microphone and getting attention. And we mustn't forget that in government, you do get to set the terms of the debate and you do get to set the agenda and our most successful moments in the last 12 months have been where we have set the agenda where we've gone out and made arguments as a government are shown to be delivering as well because that's what people want people want to feel changed they want to feel like the government is driving the country forward in the right direction so we shouldn't forget that in government you do have the microphone and you do get to set the question, the terms of the debate, and we mustn't fall into the trap of letting Farage set the terms of the debate for us.

40:27George Osborne: Now, you have a highly marginal seat. I mean, there was probably a moment on election night where you thought, Yeah, I got the trend in 2015. And in 2024, it turns out just in the other direction. Do you think that means most cabinet ministers or whatever party don't sit on marginal seats? That's the sort of nature of Westminster politics. Do you think that makes you more sensitive to kind of things that are kind of potentially going on i think you pull off quite a good trick as you know you're very natural on broadcast you know you never drop the ball you don't ever say something that you know is wrong i've and the number 10 has to correct you but you do quite often push the government a bit on your broadcasts like on the winter fuel payment you were saying long before kia starmer was saying it that something was going to have to be done on gaza you know which i know is an issue of well of concern to the people of gaza above all but and people in the world but you know it's obviously it's a big constituency issue for you i notice you you know you're very careful about what you say no one can say you're not following the government line but you are pushing the government to be more active in this space you you is that just you know who you are you're happy to kind of be a bit independent minded in how you do these broadcasts or you say look i'm actually the person on the front line here with my marginal seat and i've got to pull my colleagues along well i'm a team player um and i i like being a team player and one of the things that i did not enjoy in the corbyn years was being so off beam with the labour leadership at the time i'm not an instinctively disloyal person but there were so many things about that leadership from the response to screepal poisonings um anti-semitism in the Labour Party, the party's position on Brexit.

42:18There were so many fundamental things where I just thought, well, I'm not going to leave the Labour Party, but I'm going to be true to myself and to my values and to what I think are in the best interest of my constituency in the country. I have not had a single day in government and under Keir's leadership where I felt that same dilemma.

42:36George Osborne: Although, of course, he took the decision to serve in Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet. Yeah, look where he is now. So yeah, there you go. And, you know, and thank goodness he did, frankly. But I think that the, you know, the position I've sort of find myself in now is in some ways, a liberating one, which is a funny thing to say for someone with a majority of 528, which is, there's one thing I've learned over those four elections that I fought as a parliamentary candidate and won, each of them where I went into it thinking I'm out. So I didn't think I was going to win in 2015 when I saw the exit poll.

43:13I didn't think I was going to win in 17 and 19. In fact, when Theresa May, I'd just come back from holiday, nearly fell off the plane down the steps. I was so shocked that Theresa May had called an election and genuinely felt like I'd been handed a redundancy notice and thought, all right, here's my notice, I'm out. and then you know 2024 you know that near-death experience the ballot box it's it's just it's liberating in the sense that you never know how long you've got in politics my brush with kidney cancer taught me you never know what's coming around the corner in life either so you just have to live your best life put your best foot forward work hard show you're delivering not waste the opportunity and if i'm here after the next election brilliant um if my constituents have other ideas for me well you know um if there's a vacancy in ed ball's chair i'll give you a ring but you know i just think you've been a minute to win it we think you're gonna be around for a while

44:09George Osborne: we were the future ones we know there's a final question where do you spend your holidays aren't easy for capital we've discussed it on the show um and you've got you know all sorts of things like doctor strikes that can get in the way but you know if there aren't problems where are you going to spend the summer yeah so i was um i was actually going to be in france for one of my special advisors got married uh but i i stayed here for because it was during the resident doctor's strikes and there was no way i was going to leave the country during that but i'm hoping all being well to spend a week in italy and then a week with family in cornwall not the cotswolds with uh all these uh trumpian you know people and no no sadly that's uh not my scene not my scene no but Cotswolds are very lovely and I'm sure they'll have a lovely time there Wes thank you so much for coming in it is much appreciated and we're going to let you go with a with one of our kitchen cabinet red mugs I'm so glad you offered because I was just going to I was just going to take it to be honest it's Ed's I don't mind sorry Ed I'm taking your mug well thank you very much Wes for being in the studio with me today taking the shoes of Ed Balls but coming up next is a segment that Ed and I recorded a bit earlier.

45:34Why can't we get AI to production? Our competitors are all ready. How do we keep data secure? AWS AI cuts through the noise. With ready-to-use agents and the broadest set of AI tools, stop overthinking, start building. AWS AI is how. Hi, this is Kim and Penn Holderness from the Laugh Lines podcast. This episode is sponsored by Oli, your wellness partner for back to school and beyond. Back to school season is here. Packed backpacks, packed lunches, and packed schedules are officially back. Oli Kids Sleep helps little dreamers wind down with a gentle blend of melatonin, L-theanine, and botanicals for restful sleep.

46:12Translation, an easy way to put those school night negotiations to bed. And for the grown-ups, Oli's Sleep helps you fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up feeling refreshed.

46:21George Osborne: Because as you know, the morning mayhem comes early. Visit Oli.com and stock up on back-to-school must-haves today. That's O-L-L-Y dot com. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Back to school is busy enough. The last thing you need is shopping that makes it harder. Whether you're moving into a dorm, your first apartment, or just getting organized for the semester, Wayfair makes it easy to get everything you need in one place. Furniture, bedding, storage, decor, study essentials, all at prices you'll love.

47:00George Osborne: With fast shipping before move-in day. Get everything you need for back-to-school season. Shop wayfair.com today. Wayfair, every style, every home.

47:15So welcome back. We do hope you're enjoying the summer. I don't know whether you are by a pool with a drink, whether you are on a train or a plane on the way to a fabulous holiday, or whether you're still powering through working in August.

47:32George Osborne: Maybe a driving holiday would be relevant to what we're about to talk about. Well, it could be, because we thought that we would pick a few kind of political topics and then muse about them, you know, in a sort of, you know, vacation August kind of way. Yeah, so we are going to talk, aren't we, today about ministerial cars, which are an obsession, I would say, of both politicians and the British media. The politicians who want them and the British media who basically think the politicians shouldn't have them. And there have been quite a lot of stories generated by cars in politics over the years.

48:08George Osborne: and so we thought we'd take a look at like how is it that ministers get cars how they allocated how they used and what's happened in the back of them well see that is a really good starting point what happens in the back of them or sometimes in the front you know i am okay first question when you were a minister when you're in the cabinet did you choose to sit in the passenger seat at the front which is you know the very kind of egalitarian thing to do or did you sit in the back so the first government car i had um when i was a cabinet minister um it was a an environmentally friendly jaguar driven by a great driver called steve and i had quite a short journey home in the evening i didn't take about 20 minutes and i would often go home quite late and i would be really tired and i never wanted to kind of work in the car because it's quite a short journey so i I would sit in the front and would put on either Magic or Smooth, and we would both sing along all the way from Westminster.

49:10Carpool karaoke. I know, carpool karaoke. There were definitely times when I was on a long trip.

49:18George Osborne: Did Steve have to take part in this? He loved it. Has he filed a complaint with his union? He didn't, no. He loved it. There were times when I had tons of papers and I would sit in the back. but that was pretty rare um i was a front seat traveler um but i think if you are did you have a car when you were a junior minister in the treasury um no yeah i think you would have did i i was a junior minister maybe i did a prius no i did and actually it's funny i can't even remember the chauffeur he's had in his life i know now that's all coming back to me so yes i would have done had a car then as well but it's not as imprinted in my mind as um the jag the jag and um but i think i think the so-called environmentally friendly jag i'm not sure they were producing in 2008 9 i think the reason why this is so interesting is that um and this is us in some ways giving advice to um the next generation of politicians as well what happens in the back i mean the thing about the relationship between the driver and the cabinet minister, it's so sensitive.

50:32Because when you are in the car, you'll first of all be having conversations on the phone about papers you're reading of high government, potentially, security sensitivity, not the most secure, because you wouldn't do those in the car. Often very politically sensitive conversations. Then you might be having conversations about politics with um you know with colleagues or you know the chief whip or whatever things which are undoubtedly need to be confidential but also you know if you're a politician who's having you know an affair then um you'll be on the phone you know not to your partner but to your partner uh on the way back um you know if you've got a drink problem then you're probably getting in the car half cut you know basically if you're a bit of a wanker the driver is going to find out quite quickly um because um it all happens in the car and it's also i think a time when you know unlike being in parliament or in the department where your guard is down where you you do relax a bit so in the end you know your your government driver will know more about every aspect of your life than pretty much anybody else um more than a private secretary would um more than you know even your best friend might because they see you in such an intimate place doing so many different different different sensitive things and um so that relationship is you know really important if you get it wrong if you behave like a tosser if you are disrespectful or thoughtless um then this driver's got a lot of ammunition on you i mean a lot of ammunition and they always say that the drivers know first when there's going to be a ministerial reshuffle because they can tell from the conversations in the cars what's going on but they also are probably the ones who can give pretty good advice as to who should be reshuffled i think they know first

52:32George Osborne: because they get repositioned. You know, they get kind of moved. So you're now picking up this person who's about to be the chancellor. That is so interesting. Lots more to talk about. But first of all, we'll take a break.

52:54Hi, this is Kim and Penn Holderness from the Laugh Lines podcast. This episode is sponsored by OLLI, your wellness partner for back to school and beyond. Back to school season is here. Packed backpacks, packed lunches, and packed schedules are officially back. Ollie Kids Sleep helps little dreamers wind down with a gentle blend of melatonin, L-theanine, and botanicals for restful sleep. Translation, an easy way to put those school night negotiations to bed. And for the grownups, Ollie Sleep helps you fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up feeling refreshed.

53:26George Osborne: Because as you know, the morning mayhem comes early. Visit Ollie.com and stock up on back to school must-haves today. That's O-L-L-Y.com. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Back to school is busy enough. The last thing you need is shopping that makes it harder. Whether you're moving into a dorm, your first apartment, or just getting organized for the semester, Wayfair makes it easy to get everything you need in one place. Furniture, bedding, storage, decor, study essentials, all at prices you'll love with fast shipping before move-in day.

54:07Get everything you need for back to school season. Shop wayfair.com today. Hello, I'm Monica Reinagle, host of the Nutrition Diva podcast. Summer is here and with it, the hot and sticky weather. A morning working in the garden or maybe on the golf course can leave you more depleted than you realize. And plain water isn't always the most efficient way to restore the balance. That's where Liquid IV comes in. Its science-backed formula is clinically proven to hydrate faster than water alone. Whether you're exercising, playing outside, or simply surviving a summer heat wave, it's an easy way to stay hydrated.

54:44Shop now at liquidiv.com. Liquid IV, hydration that goes wherever life takes you.

54:55George Osborne: Welcome back. So we should basically take, first of all, I think we've dived in with all this stuff, which is great. But I was looking at this using that well-known source on British politics, ChatGPT, to look into this. So the government car service, which is this bit of government that runs the cars, the cars, you know, the drivers are employed by the government, they're civil servants. And that was set up in 1919. So it was a long time ago. I thought it would be a more recent post-war thing. but uh it's been going you know for over 100 years and i'd say it's been sort of pared down a bit because you know oppositions always make these foolish promises to cut down car use and certainly the conservatives in opposition when i was there made this foolish promise it was all part of our kind of you know labor's got out of touch and when we get in we're not gonna have as many cars i remember saying well don't include me in this initiative because when i'm when i'm in government i'm gonna have my car and um ed vesey right i love ed vesey but he he made himself unpopular with some others when he said i was a junior minister i'm not going to need a government car so we came in and suddenly there were pooled cars so the junior ministers didn't all have their own car and it was just to my point a pool car is a nightmare because every day it's a different driver yeah and i think that's now have the conversation you need to have if it's a different driver every night because you have to be so careful it's like being i think all these junior ministers and the permanent secretaries who also used to have cars they're all now there are very fewer cars than they used to be um and there's various points although it kind of comes in and out of fashion there's been sort of environmental drives to you know reduce car use or switch to electric cars um very bad for productivity yeah but the cars are interesting because you know i think there's there's a kind of tendency in the british state you know egged on by the british media to sort of, you know, um, take away all the trappings to sort of reduce the grandeur of the state, not actually the head of state, not the monarchy, although there's often calls for that.

56:59George Osborne: But, you know, the whole kind of shtick of 10 Downing Street being where the British Prime Minister lives rather than some palace is all about like, you know, it's supposed to be not grand. And so there's always these pushes to get rid of cars and why, why can't people take the tube and all this kind of thing. and ministers who commute along from out of London have often been done in by the media for taking cars rather than trains, particularly when there are problems with the trains, which they're supposed to be sorting out. But, you know, I mean, I guess I would say this, wouldn't I? Although I did also edit a newspaper.

57:33You know, you do want a little bit of kind of formality and, you know, you want the British state not to be totally

57:43George Osborne: like the sort of bicycling monarchy of the continent. And I think when a minister arrives somewhere, they're often in a representational role. So they do their kind of policy work in the department. But when they're driving around and traveling, they're turning up to open a hospital or they're turning up to speak at a conference. They're representing the British state when they do that. They're not doing it really in a personal capacity. So what you're saying is you don't want your leader to arrive by bike. with a car behind with the box and the shoes and the boot that's not the ideal combination if you're trying to make a point that you're young and vigorous against uh you know decrepit aging administration you can get on your bicycle but not once you're the prime minister and um okay that's good point that but the uh i think once you're the you know i think you want a bit of formality and the people inviting you want this is a special occasion the minister's turning up so the car you know i think it's a bit it's a bit sort of unnecessarily sort of um what's the word sort of hair shirt hair shirt to cut down all the car use and the ministers have to you know but it's just really inefficient because the truth is if you're doing a three-hour drive at the moment yvette does a lot of car driving um and she's got security as well that's another by the way i mean the home secretary always had security but since we that's right have left politics you know individual mps have faced what you know of course two mps joe cox and david emis have been murdered in the last 10-15 years so there's also security considerations um but no it's a kind of classic there's a huge amount of work on long car journeys and it would be very hard to do that if you didn't have um you know a secure environment all of those things yeah but listen what's happened tell me i want to hear some fun i'm going to start with my first exposure to ministerial cars which was when i was a special advisor uh in the uh 1990s in the john major government and we had a ministerial away day in the countryside and uh so all the ministers in the department were being driven to this place to do this away day like we're all going to think about strategy and there was going to be a dinner as well and then um after dinner the cars were driving everyone back to london and it was like a couple of hours away from london and basically you know everyone was like had a good time at dinner and got a bit drunk and i was this 24 year old special advisor so i'm like well how am i going to get home i know i'll grab a lift in one of the cars with this minister and the ministers have been able to bring to this away day dinner their spouses or partners and so i get jump in this car with the drive i sit in the front seat as a special advisor and then the minister junior minister in the back with his new girlfriend because he'd recently got divorced and on this drive down the a1 way back to london they basically made out in the back of the car and he got more and more heavy petting and i'm sitting there in front of this car looking at the driver going like is this actually happening in the car while we're sitting here in the front seats um so that was a sign like in swimming pools when we were young no running no jumping no bombing no heavy petting there was a lot of heavy petting going on who was it you've got to tell us i can't say oh come on i was thinking before i told the story i really it's very unfair but i've learned on this podcast if i ask a number you know enough times you'll give in i'm not gonna do it i really give us just a clue no no clue what what was their ministerial kind of um that would be a clue what was the ministerial brief or were they debriefed well i mean i didn't actually turn around but i got the feeling there was a bit of debriefing going on yeah that is shocking i am so ministerial car journeys i'll give you two one was beat that I can't beat that.

1:01:58We had done a runner from the Oslo summit in a small plane, a glass of wine on the plane, landed at Heathrow, back to Gordon's flat. Me, Gordon, Tom Scholar, who was at the time the principal private secretary, and we were starving. So we went to a fish and chip shop in Earl's Court. And Tom and I went in, bought the fish and chips. Gordon said he didn't really think it was appropriate for him to come to the fish and chip shop. So he sat in the back of the car. And then we ate fish and chips all the way back to Downing Street.

1:02:34That isn't as good as heavy petting. I've got a really interesting one. My first visit - What's the punchline to your story? There's no punchline. My first visit with Gordon Brown to a school when he was Prime Minister and I was in the Cabinet, we went. And he, of course, didn't just have a security. He had a police motorcade he had eight outriders around him and then we had to get back to some important meeting which we were supposed to be at and so the um the um the police or no or at least i had to get back for an important meeting and morsel gordon was going to it and um because you you're

1:03:09George Osborne: the only person who did the important meeting no they so they the ministers were out there just announcing the things that you had devised i don't remember the details of this story what i remember is that it was agreed that my jag would go in the motorcade oh wow we set off so we're driving behind the premises car and the land rover behind us with all the police motorbikes and we suddenly realized that they were going to a different place the way we needed to go to and so we got to a junction my driver just pulled out of the motorcade this is absolutely terrible protocol because of course these motorbikes are going up and down the whole time and so i mean there was there was an inquiry i mean you know it had to be investigated how could this have happened i mean it was it was like really bad so we got we got into terrible trouble for that yeah no i mean when i was chancellor um in fact that started off with a ministerial jag which i'd inherited from our starting but i soon thought like you know what i'd much rather get like a land rover with like the same company british company all that thing by the way about whether you she had for british cars you know the very senior the ministers with the most serious security uh challenges like the home secretary the foreign sections they had bmws because only bmw made these armor-plated cars apart from the prime minister's car which was specially made but said that they could drive around in a british car but anyway i i didn't have all that so i had i said i don't want to sit in the jag i want to let's let's get jag and land rover to give us a land rover which they were happy to do as a kind of advert for the country and i had these great driver had ray who very very sadly died uh and i went to his funeral as chancellor and then sean and john and they drove me around for those years and i think your point earlier in the podcast which is if you're rude to these people it gets back because i would often in the car go come on sean come on john what are they saying about x or y they say well you know the driver says he's a total tosser exactly and then i go back to cameron like well we don't want to provide have you heard like in the car you know he's rude to everyone like i'm not sure we want him so uh it does get what goes around comes around and um and the kind of yes the ministerial car having a good relationship being seen as someone who's you know a nice person is is quite important i was trying to think of other kind of moments when the cars have actually been important i mean there was john prescott's jaguar caught in the special bus lane on the m4 that he as transport secretary had like you know ordered and forced all the other car users not to use it you know there was all this traffic this is on the m4 coming into london there was prescott's jag you know in the in the in the lane i was thinking of andrew mitchell my friend choosing as chief whip uh say i don't need a car you know i'm i'm still you know i'm just andrew and i i cycle ever and i'm going to continue to cycle ever and that that led to all the problems uh with getting out of downing street with a bicycle which uh there was jack straw as home secretary yeah um his ministerial car being done for speeding on the m5 which is not what you want well unfortunately i I was in a car that we stopped at a service station in South Wales when I was doing a visit around South Wales.

1:06:37George Osborne: And unfortunately, the driver chose to park it in the disabled parking bay while we went into the service station. And that was on the front page of the newspapers. I'll give you another really good one. We were up in Manchester when I was in the cabinet doing a school visit. And we had this like people carrier and everybody was hungry. We'd done like four school visits. and we said can we go to mcdonald's and the driver said i know where they all are took us straight to mcdonald's it was it was an expert and we said how do you know um you know so much about the mcdonald's of greater manchester and he said well their company as well as doing government car driving because this was like contracted government cars when we were on this trip they also did the england footballers from the northwest and when they would travel down from the northwest from liverpool and man united you know wayne rooney Stephen Gerrard, all very disciplined.

1:07:30When they would then finish a Wembley game and get back in this people carrier to be driven back to Manchester and Liverpool, they would stop three times on the journey home at McDonald's. One when they were at the M25, one halfway, and the one coming into Greater Manchester or Liverpool because they were so hungry. And that was the only thing you could get at 11 or midnight. And so as a result, these drivers all knew where all the fast food restaurants,

1:07:54George Osborne: on the way all the menors were i don't know if you did much international travel you maybe didn't so much when you're education minister but um i did with gordon in the treasury right so i would say the times in my life as when i was in politics when i was most at risk of serious harm was on foreign trips when i was being driven in foreign government cars i don't want to appear too xenophobic but i always felt i just genuinely did feel very safe with the government car service in britain they didn't drive too fast and you know i didn't have those police outriders but when i traveled with david cameron we would sometimes and you know i felt sort of secure when you went on some of these overseas trips you were driven at like a hundred miles an hour in these convoys with the other car only about like you know meter in front of you and i used to think crazy so dangerous yeah motorbikes going over i was on some several times i saw people flying off these motorbikes you know crashing and the convoy doesn't even stop to pick up the poor policeman and um i just thought this is absolutely lethal when you went to these summits and they would close anyway and you you felt the very opposite of secure and you thinking like i mean if the car in front stopped we are going to like smash into it so um it doesn't know you know if you're think sitting there thinking that all these ministers are going like this is wonderful the traffic stopped to the here i am in my limo uh you know carving my way through the traffic you know quite often they're sitting there shitting themselves things going far too fast it's really interesting you don't have the confidence you don't have the self-confidence it's weird isn't it you might be the chancel exchequer or whatever prime minister you might be you don't actually have the confidence to say to the driver can you please slow down this is a really interesting point this which is if you are a um a cabinet minister in the back of a car um and you are on a three-hour journey and you need to work and to read you need to get there as quick as you can but there's a huge skill in being able to drive a car so that somebody can read and concentrate and doesn't have to keep looking up at the road all the time and the great government car drivers the great chauffeurs can drive both at pace but also with a smoothness which allows you just to to to forget about it and once you've experienced brilliant driving if you're ever in a car where you have a non-great driver where they think they're fast and being a boy racer but as a consequence every time they have to break or make a move you have to look up and look at the road that is terrible so there is a huge skill in being a um a great driver and part of it is to allow your passenger to have no awareness for the fact they're in a car and uh to be able to just kind of think about or work or read or do other stuff what do you think i think i think we've given our listeners an interesting insight into government cars but more importantly a few tips for aspiring cabinet ministers as to how to make sure that you you know if you're having an affair don't have it in the back of the car while your advisor's in the front seat well or pick the kind of advisor who's not going to spill the beans on who they are on their podcast subsequently you haven't spilled the beans 25 years later i know i still i mean was it was it um was it lean fox No, it was not Liam Fox.

1:11:16George Osborne: I was never working with Liam Fox. Were you actually working for them? Well, I was a special advisor. Oh, so you were the special advisor to this? Oh, my God. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The net narrows. I said junior minister. Oh, so it was a junior minister in the department where you were an advisor. I didn't say that. You got pretty close to it. Anyway, it's not Dr. Fox. I'm going to go and do some research. That is all for today. and we hope you've enjoyed this special summer edition of political currency yeah i hope we haven't contributed too much to the silly season but we enjoyed doing that um we're going to be back with emqs on monday and if you're a gold or kitchen cabinet member you of course can listen early and ad free tomorrow and you can find the link to subscribe in our show notes we hope you'll keep listening to political currency throughout the summer and beyond and um we're available wherever you get your podcasts you can also watch our episodes on youtube yeah and you can leave a review for the show that helps listeners find us and you can contact us at questions at politicalcurrency.co.uk to ask about ministerial calls or anything else we hope you're having a fabulous summer goodbye thanks for listening to political currency this has been a persifonica production

1:12:47George Osborne: Back to school is busy enough. The last thing you need is shopping that makes it harder. Whether you're moving into a dorm, your first apartment, or just getting organized for the semester, Wayfair makes it easy to get everything you need in one place. Furniture, bedding, storage, decor, study essentials, all at prices you'll love with fast shipping before move-in day. Get everything you need for back-to-school season. Shop Wayfair.com today. Wayfair, every style, every home. Your team just added its 67th AI tool and also your 67th security blind spot. The good news? The Vanta agent works like a GRC engineer in the background, finding every app your team uses, scoring the risk, and drafting fixes for you.

1:13:30Vanta is the platform used by over 16 ,000 fast-moving companies like Ramp, Cursor, and Harvey, who are shaping the future with AI and staying ahead of AI risk. Get started at Vanta.com.