Jacob Rees-Mogg on Tory ‘psychodrama’: Badenoch and Farage must work together

0:28The Telegraph With me, Tim Stanley And me, Jacob Rees-Mogg

0:37Jacob,

0:44welcome back to The Daily Tea. How are you, sir? Extremely well, thank you. And how are you? I'm very well. Enjoying the New Year. Enjoying the New Year. Have I not seen you since the New Year? I think we have. And do you still view it as Christmas until Candlemas, or have you taken down your decorations? I'm afraid they have come down, but in my heart it is Christmas. And why have they come down? Because, of course, people collect Christmas trees so early. So if you want it collected and taken away, you have to submit to the secular dictatorship. And have it taken away even before Epiphany? No, no, no, afterwards.

1:11After Epiphany? It was a good week after. And thank you to the Hospice and the Will for doing it too. Jacob, this morning I went to see Kemi give a speech. We had no idea what she was going to say. She unloaded on those who had defected to reform. At a time when NATO is under threat, at a time when we were trying to stop Labour surrendering British territory in the Chagos Islands and fighting to save Britain's hospitality industry, what were other parties doing? Psychodrama. The Labour Party scheming to bring in a new contender to challenge the Prime Minister. Reform UK, distracting everyone from Labour's mess, dressing up a defection rally as a veterans event.

1:54Everyone is fed up with this style of politics. We need to get serious. Daisy, we're moving on from defectors and defections. These are drama queens. This is psychodrama. If people will give an answer about defections, if you ask them about defections, We need to start talking about what is going on with the country. Well, I spoke to her afterwards, and here's what she had to say to me. Kimmy Beidnock, thank you very much for being on the Daily Tea. Some readers were distressed that when you went on Desert Island Discs, you chose Love is All Around by Wet Wet Wet. With all these right-wingers leaving, and with Andy Street and Ruth Davidson announcing they're going to drag the party back to the centre, are the Tories in danger of becoming a wet party again?

2:37Absolutely not. Your readers know that I have always been on the right and fighting for the values of the right. When I was in government, I got stuff done. I wasn't complaining about how it was too hard and everybody was trying to stop me. I fought them and I delivered, whether it was on sex and gender, reducing the ZEV mandates, that whole thing on electric vehicles. I was doing that, getting some postmasters, their compensation. I fought and I won. So yes, my song choices might be quite cheesy, but I am not wet. There are some people who are thinking within the Conservative Party, I look at reform and I don't hate them.

3:13I agree with them on a lot of the policies as well. Is there a risk with your rhetoric of trying to shut down the defectors and the critics that you're going to alienate some of those people who just don't know why we're having this fight? So I think it's really important that everyone understands the difference between us and reform. Many of the policies which they like are conservative policies, leaving the ECHR, stopping mad net zero plans that are making China rich while bankrupting the UK and destroying our manufacturing capacity. The difference between reform and conservatives is about what kind of people we are.

3:47We are the kind of people who knuckle down, do the hard work. We're there in Parliament fighting day in, day out for veterans. We make sure that there's a vote and we turn up. Reform, don't turn up. The last vote we had to support veterans, Robert Jenrick didn't vote. Nigel Farage didn't vote. This is what I'm talking about. Who is the party that is stopping this mad surrender of the Chagos Islands? It's conservative peers in the House of Lords. The reformed peer, they've got one person there. He didn't vote. What's the point of them? It's not about being on telly. It's about doing the work that you've been elected to do.

4:19Final question. Also on Desiree and Discs, you chose two pieces from Hamilton. And of course, George III sings, you'll be back. If Suella came to you tomorrow and said, I've made a horrible mistake, would you take her back? I'm afraid not. I think this is all part of the psychodrama. I want a new generation of Conservative MPs. 25 % of our party wasn't there during the last government. We have great new MPs and even more are going to come. And yes, the George III song is correct. We will be back. Conservatives will be back in government. That is what I'm working hard on every single day. And I also asked Jacob about your comments saying the Conservatives should step aside in the Gorton by-election.

4:59By saying that really voters should just coalesce behind and support reform, it sounds a bit like Jacob is telling people to vote for another party. Is that grounds for him being disciplined or suspended? I don't think that's what he's saying at all. I think that he is trying to punch Labour and looks at a seat where we've never really won and thinks, well, maybe these guys can win, should we try? Jacob Rees-Mogg is a Conservative. And I want people to know that as long as there are people out there voting Conservative, they're going to be Conservative candidates. Jacob, I was really hoping she'd say you should be suspended because then this would be breaking news and everyone would watch this podcast, but she didn't.

5:37Well, you're just a troubleman. And Kemi has taken the trouble, which is very impressive, to know what I'd actually said. Right. You didn't seem to wish to do. Because I said extremely clearly that if there were a conservative candidate, I would support that conservative candidate. But that in a seat we never win, it is more important to defeat Labour. The right has to unite. I think it's fundamental that we get a conservative with any type of CU-like government in 2029. and that means reform and the conservatives are going to have to work together and I know that neither Nigel Farage nor Kemi Bader not wish to say that at the moment but that is the political reality and I was following on from a brilliant piece by Trevor Kavanagh in The Sun yesterday explaining why we should do this as an act of generosity to show goodwill to try and bring the right together and I elaborated on it in a in a little YouTube video that I did and I'm very impressed that the leader of the opposition knows her onions.

6:38But you're a gentleman, but the problem is that politics is becoming ungentlemanly. And while you wish to show generosity, Kemi today clearly showed that she feels no generosity towards reform. How do you feel about her tone? Her tone is glorious. One can't help but admiring the sheer feistiness of tone. I've got the quotes here. I mean, I'm sorry you didn't win the leadership contest. I'm sorry you didn't get a job in the shadow cabinet. I'm sorry you didn't get into the Lords, but you are not offering a plan to fix this country. This is a tantrum dressed up as politics. This is very funny. It's great knockabout stuff.

7:21Yes. And I wouldn't take it too seriously. Because remember the Downing Street Garden, when Nick Clegg and David Cameron came together. And Cameron is asked, didn't you say Nick Clegg was the biggest joke in British politics? And Clegg pretends to walk off. And actually, they worked very well together for five years. People say these things about each other in opposition parties. Of course they do. But it doesn't imply a fundamental hostility. And the way Cammie phrased herself was just brilliantly funny. And does succeed in, at least I hope, bring a little bit of redness around the cheeks to some people who've defected.

7:58I don't think one should take the drama queens out of politics. I don't think you can. Anymore, her complaints about psychodrama, well, almost anyone who enters politics is a dramatic psychopath. That's the very nature of the vocation. And what was it Canning said about a way with this cant of measures, not men. If you have to choose one, it's always men, not measures. It's always the horse, it's not the carriage. And that is politics. Politics is about strong personalities disagreeing, clashing, being ambitious, wanting things. And this is true of democratic politics. It's true of monarchical politics.

8:34It is always how public life is organized. So, yes, we all say pious things about not wanting psychodrama, but we all love the psychodrama. That's why people are listening in to the Daily Tea, because they want a bit of psychodrama. If we were just saying, oh, it's all going swimmingly, marvellous, marvellous, no one would be listening. No, I think you're right, unfortunately. But you have been critical of some elements of the tone. Now, for instance, when Suella defected, someone at CCHQ put out that there were concerns about her mental health. Kemi has apologised for that. Quite right. And says she has spoken to the person who said it.

9:07But that does speak to when Jen Rik and Suella went over, the strategy has just been to just trash them personally, it feels. and is that the right tone to set when you're trying to persuade people to stay in the party who are tempted by reform? Look, I think both sides have taken entirely the wrong tone. The mental health question was beyond the power. It should not have been made and the person who said that should not be writing press releases for the Conservative Party. I think that is a sackable offence. I think that's serious. It's almost illegal, surely. It breaches confidentiality. But then Suella's speech, when she defected was ridiculous.

9:49She was saying the Conservatives were liars. Well, if they are and were, she stood in 2024 in her seat proposing that she would back Rishi Sunak to remain as Prime Minister. That's not quite fair. It is fair. Because I interviewed her in 2024 and she didn't really enthusiastically endorse the Prime Minister. She made it clear you were voting for me, not necessarily Rishi Sunak. But you're not. Everyone knows you're voting for the party leader. The MPs are a means to an end. Everyone knows that. People in her seat, Waterloo Bill, were not voting personally. The personal vote in British politics is estimated by Philip Cowley, who I respect greatly, to be 2%.

10:31So yes, 2 % of people were voting for her. The rest were voting for the Conservatives, who she now says were lying at the time. That includes her. You can't entirely disassociate yourself from the party you have just left. I thought that Robert Jennerick having a pop at Mel Stride and Priti Patel was simply inelegant. They were colleagues until a few hours before. It's not the way to do things. That it seems to me that people are entitled to change party, but they should recognize that what they're leaving has virtues and that this is a decision of nuance, not of absolutes. Would you think Suella Braidman will be missed from the conservative party?

11:10Oh, certainly. Very popular in the party, very welcome at association events, therefore important to association fundraising, and a capable public performer. I mean, okay, so when we broadcasted about this yesterday, Camilla and I received a message, I won't say who it's from, but a well-placed insider with experience of the last government, who said Tim's completely wrong about Sweller-Braveman. She was useless at her job. Was that your experience when you were dealing with her? I sat in cabinet committees with her when she was arguing to reduce legal migration. She was very clear about what she wanted to do.

11:48How good she was at running the Home Office as I was in other departments, I didn't see firsthand. So I don't know. I did a bit of work with her when she was Attorney General and found her to be very competent in that role. Okay. Okay. Kemi has also had some bad luck with timing. on the very day that Suella defected, a bunch of One Nation conservatives, I dispute that title, but we can discuss that separately, declared that they wanted to help the UK to prosper and that they were coming back to reform the Conservative Party and take it back to the centre ground, people like Ruth Davidson and Andy Street and Amber Rudd.

12:23And it gave the impression of one right winger out, an awful lot of wets back in. Is there a risk that with all these right wingers leaving, Kemi is just left with Cameroons. Well, in what sense are they back in? They're not running the party. Well, none of them actually had elected office. I mean, I noticed there wasn't a single MP in the room. But they are claiming, they're giving the impression of that and they're causing quite a stir online. Online. In their own heads, in their own living rooms. Right. I don't think they've really broken through. It's a bit like, wasn't there, there was a funny party that got set up in...

13:00The Change UK. The Change UK party. What happened to that? They were going to storm the barricades and nothing, nothing, nothing. I assume they're working on the tills somewhere right now. A lot of those people have just vanished. Vanished. Chukka Ramunna. Who was the coming man and Chris Leslie and all sorts of... And Anna Soubry, where are they now? I don't think this is relevant. The Conservative Party has lost its Lib Dem wing and that's a thoroughly good thing because its Lib Dem wing was holding us back when we were last in office. Kemi's been absolutely clear that we will leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

13:31And I don't believe any of this middle muddle, fiddle fuddle lot want to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. And if they don't want to do that, they can't be conservative candidates. I also thought listening to them when they were asked about specific policies that they have moved to the right as well. They were also critical of net zero. They were not in favour of flinging it. Yes, I saw you rate that. Net zero is mad. Right. But it's no good saying we don't think net zero should be done by 2050, We want to do it by 2055. We've just got to forget net zero altogether and build gas-powered electricity generation stations and possibly coal ones too because we need cheap electricity.

14:09We are ruining the nation with the loony net zero policies. So that they've moved a little is too late. You must know the reform candidate in Gorton quite well. Matt Goodwin, he's one of your colleagues at GB News. Yes, but one doesn't know all one's colleagues well. I mean, he tends to be in Paddington. and I tend to be in the Westminster studios. I've met him once or twice, but I don't know him. I would like to quickly play a clip from a Labour attack ad on Matt Goodwin. I was lucky enough or unfortunate enough to be in Manchester a few days ago, and the energy in this room is ten times what it was in Manchester.

14:42So congratulations. So this clip implies that Matt Goodwin was saying that he hates Manchester, that he'd just been in Manchester and he dislikes it and he's relieved to be out of there. They'd actually clipped it. he was talking about the Conservative Party conference in Manchester. This is now politics's outright lie. What's your response to that ad? This is what the Liberal Democrats do and have professionalised. You know, the Liberal Democrat bar charts showing how people are voting, which are complete invention. Oh, they're very funny. Only the Lib Dems can win here. It's a difference between 1 % and 39 % or something.

15:18Yes, absolutely. I don't think this is deeply shocking. I don't think this has never happened before. All these things have happened before. The thing is that the internet makes it much easier to catch people out. So this is not outrageous, but it is stupid because it now makes Labour look dishonest, shady, as well as incompetent. It won't help their by-election campaign. And it will also promote Matt Goodwin's name to voters and reform. My general advice is never, ever mention your opponent. If you mention your opponent, you promote your opponent. And most politicians understand this. Clearly there are some young scribblers in what used to be Transport House who don't know this.

16:02But that sort of thing will turn it into a referendum on Matt Goodwin. And he might win that referendum. But they're making it all about reform. Labour is really all about attacking reform right now. So Labour will lose and it will become a by-election between the Greens and reform. That's what everyone suspects. It's going to be carefully all over again. Yes. How do they make cheese in Wales? So this is going to be a rerun of that. Labour will be also rands. And that will be an absolute humiliation for Sir Keir Starmer. I'm interested to know if you agree with Kemi that Starmer should not have gone to China.

16:38I do agree with Kemi that he should not have gone to China. I think when you're at the point that you so distrust your hosts that you don't dare take your telephone. and your former colleague, Chris Hope, even the journalists gang are using burners. They are using burners. Yes, it's extraordinary, isn't it? This does not indicate a country that we trust or have a deep friendship with. And I don't think we should be hobnobbing with them whilst Jimmy Lai is still in prison. Explain to us who Jimmy Lai is, by the way, because the name gets thrown around a lot by people. Jimmy Lai ran a newspaper in Hong Kong called Apple Daily.

17:10He is not a dual national. People lie and say he's a dual national. He has only ever had British citizenship. He was using the rights given to him by the Chinese and by the British under the joint declaration agreed by Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping, allowing Hong Kong to maintain its freedoms until 2047. China betrayed that deal, introduced a national security law that stopped free speech, and have put a 77-year-old man in solitary confinement for months on end, and are now imprisoning him for an extended period. It's absolutely outrageous. He is a British citizen who ought to be protected by a treaty done between Britain and the People's Republic of China, communist China, which is not being carried through.

17:55And all these international lawyers, Starmer, Herma, the lot of them, who wish to give away Chagos because some stupid invalid court says we should, do nothing about getting Jimmy Lai out, which is a much clearer breach of an international agreement. And isn't it a depressing standard that we are so vocal about some countries because they're dictatorships and they're poor, but we are not vocal about China because it's a dictatorship and it's rich? And we can be quite tough with China because we buy much more from China than China buys from us. We don't need, we are not dependent on the communist Renminbi.

18:35We could therefore be pretty rigorous and China respects strength. It's very clear that if you rail over it to have your tummy tickled, it just kicks you. It's not a government or an organization or a culture that respects weakness. Another foreign policy issue which we've drawn attention to is Shamim and Begum. Now, because of the violent struggle for control of Islamic prisons in Syria, it's possible that Begum will be freed from her detention camp in the northeast of the country. I believe that previously you have said, I don't want to get you wrong again, I believe previously you have said that you think she should be permitted to return to the UK.

19:11Is that still your view? Yes, I think if she's committed any crimes, she should be charged for these crimes in the United Kingdom and then, if found guilty of them, held in a British prison. She too is a British citizen. The idea she had Bangladeshi citizenship was fanciful. After Tory government trying to make that claim. Yes, but it was nonsense. She'd never lived in Bangladesh. She had – it creates two sets of British citizenship. I have no right to any other citizenship of any other country. Therefore, whatever I do, I can't be made stateless. Anybody with an Irish parent or anybody who is Jewish have the right to another citizenship and therefore can have their British citizenship just removed from them on this basis.

19:56And I think that's wrong. You see, Camilla is away today, which means that you're being interviewed by what a lot of people online think is a big wet. But I do happen to agree with you on this question. So let me channel Camilla, who I suspect would say, pull the other one, Jacob. She made a choice. She's effectively surrendered her citizenship by going to work for a terrorist organization. And she may well have been involved in some horrific atrocities. That means she is too much of a risk to welcome back into this country. And at a time when we're trying to secure our borders, it would be mad to actually facilitate the return of someone who we know is a potential danger.

20:32The risk argument is fundamentally flawed because the risk is from people that you don't know, not from people that you've identified. If you've identified somebody as a risk, you've already begun the process of neutralizing the risk. You must have done. And we have a system of laws in this country. And if you've broken them, then you can be put into prison. But she was 15 at the time. She was groomed, put into a forced marriage. Now, when we talk about the grooming gangs, we are on the side of the 15-year-old girls who were groomed. Oh, but there is a big difference, isn't there? She made an effort to get there to the point of leaving this country and secretly entering another land.

21:08Yes, absolutely. But do we hold 15-year-olds entirely responsible? I know they're criminally responsible. That's the age of 10. But a 15-year-old who is groomed and then does something? we tend to take a different view of minors who are caught up in crime who become the subjects of criminal gangs. And there was clearly a criminal gang trying to recruit young girls, offering them glamorous visions of what would happen. Do you think society should be open to forgiveness when it comes to this kind of offense? This isn't a question of forgiveness. This is a question of due process. Right. Forgiveness, mercy comes at the end of due process.

21:47It doesn't come in the middle of it. So you want to see her get it in a British prison? I think she should be tried by a British court. And if she's committed offences, then she should serve a prison sentence for them. And then she should be released at whatever time is appropriate. And then you can discuss whether it's right to forgive her or not. It's a case of saying she couldn't have a fair trial there. Oh, I've got great confidence in the British jury, much more so than Mr. Lammy. Well, if he gets his way, she won't face the jury anyway. But I do feel, gosh, this is going to sound terribly wet, but I do feel sometimes that our society is very quick to judge and very slow to forgive.

22:27And an essential component of a good society is a willingness to entertain that people can change. I also think there is a wrong side of populism. That is to say, when you ask people, do you want identity cards? They all say yes. When you go through the argument about why identity cards are a terrible idea, it swings completely and they say no. And that bad politicians go for the headline yes. The headline of everybody is never let Shamima Begum back in. But most people, when they've been through the arguments and they've heard that she is only a British citizen and that she could be tried in this country and that she was only 15, begin to change their mind.

23:09Yes. And has lost children. And has lost children. She says, yes. Oh, we know that she has. That's definitely true. Right. And I think it's really important that politicians work through their arguments. I'm not against populism. I think if you're in democratic politics, you want to be popular. That's the point. How you win elections. But you need to at least have bothered to think through what you're saying. There is a view among some on the right. It's emerged in the last few years. And I don't want to put words in Matt Goodwin's mouth, but I feel he's possibly adjacent to this view, that Britishness is not just about citizenship.

23:44It's actually about ethnicity. And therefore, people like Shamima Begum, their membership of their country, their Britishness, could be up for dispute. So it's a more ethnic kind of nationalism versus a civic one. Do you have a response to this? I think the policy of mass migration has been a terrible mistake and that we have taken in more people than we can easily and comfortably assimilate. And that has led to tensions within British society. But I think that British citizenship is a matter of fact, not of emotion. And once you've given that citizenship, unless it was obtained fraudulently, that is fundamental.

24:28It's not changeable. that it's like baptism. It makes a mark on you that cannot be removed. Yes, I like that a lot, actually. That suggests a covenantal nature to citizenship, which, you know, it's not just a piece of paper. It's not just a piece of paper. It's more than that. You are then British. You're in the family, and people can have someone in the family who's a black sheep, but they're still a member of the family. But I guess what some of these people would ask you is, is Shamima Begum British? Once you get to the ethnicity side of this, who is British? I mean, I think I've probably got a pretty good claim, as my family has been moldering away in Somerset for a very long time.

25:05But there aren't necessarily very many British people, are there? And suddenly you get things coming in that even in my own family, my grandmother was American, admittedly, with four Irish grandparents, so British Isles anyway. Once you make that the test, and then you say any people are British in that sense conveyed, that's great, but I can become dictator. I'm the only one left. I don't think that's a very good idea, do you? You're nodding. This is really encouraging. No, I mean, I agree. You won the mob dictatorship. Of course, we all do, I think. I think I agree with you. I think the idea that there is a binary choice to be made between an ethnic nationalism or a civic nationalism, I think is false.

25:42I don't think ethnicity and national citizenship are necessarily in tension. I am English and British. There is a reality to I am genetically English, and I'm also perfectly happy to share my country and my nation state with people who are not and who can fall under this very, for a long time, very successful umbrella of being British. Yes. And I don't make much differentiation between English and British. British is what I say when I remember not to annoy my Scottish friends. But I'm afraid I use English and British completely interchangeably as most English people do. Oh, we're terrible for that.

26:14But we have been a successful multicultural, multi-faith, multi-ethnic union for a very long time. And I think there's a risk that people forget that that is the case, that we've been a country of Scottish Presbyterians, Irish Catholics, There was some tension there. I mustn't push this too far. You mustn't push this too far. But you know what I mean. No, we've been... We mustn't overstate this. We haven't had mass migration for centuries. We've had small numbers coming in for the Huguenots and so on. But we've basically been a pretty stable society for a long time. And that's been the problem with mass migration, is the sheer numbers in a short space of time.

26:54The Labour government, sorry to jump about, but there's so much that's happened. The Labour government has rolled back a bit on pubs and business rates. Is it enough? The Labour government has no clue what it's doing. Right. On anything. So it rolls back a bit because there's a bit of pressure. There'll be a bit more pressure. It will roll back a bit more. This government has no guiding light of principle as to what it wants or is trying to do. And it also seems to be desperately in the hands of officials. And so you get the rating allowances that were introduced for COVID withdrawn. on why the Treasury has been desperate to do that for years.

27:26It is just officialdom telling what to do. You get the Home Secretary coming forward with the police reforms, which were last brought up when Labour was last in government and have sat on the shelf for 15 years, because again, Labour ministers are doing what their officials are feeding them without any real thought as to whether it's sensible or not. It's a very passive government in that sense. And it makes it very unsuccessfully politically because officials aren't thinking about how it plays in Peora. Have you got a local that you regularly go to in Somerset? Well, there's the Crown in West Harptree, which is an excellent pub.

28:04I go to occasionally. I'm not the most regular visitor. But thinking of, you're not the most regular. I'm not the most, but I must give an advert. I went recently to Wivaliscum. Now, in Wivaliscum, there is a place called the White Heart, proprietor one, William Sitwell, who writes for this illustrious newspaper. Of course, yes. And it is fantastic. The service is absolutely charming. The food is excellent. The pricing is fair. We had a most excellent dinner there. So I would recommend that. And Somerset's a big county, so we're quite a long way from Wivellisk, about an hour and quarters drive.

28:40It was well worth the hour and quarters drive together. Nigel Farage always likes to say that every pub is a parliament. What is the case for the pub? Why is the pub so important to English identity and harmony? Because I'm not a Puritan. I'm not a Cromwellian. I believe in people being able to enjoy themselves and people enjoy going to pubs. I wouldn't over-egg this, that England is not determined by pubs, but pubs are part of the way people relax and enjoy themselves, and that is a good thing. The other thing to bear in mind is in any village, and having been an MP in a rural area, this is absolutely true across northeast Somerset, You have two things in each village.

29:18You have the pub and the church. And they have for a long time, actually some villages had lots of pubs, but that's another matter. That's where English society is and comes from. I couldn't agree more. And on that note, we shall be speaking next to the Reverend Richard Coles about the confirmation of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mollally.

29:47We're now joined by the Reverend Richard Coles. Thank you very much for being with us. You were, in your past life, part of the very successful band, The Communards. You then later trained in theology, and you entered the church to serve as a priest. I know you've been retired from ministry for some years, but you have produced a hugely successful series of murder mystery books, which many of our readers know and love very much. I wanted to know your response, first of all, to the confirmation of Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury. She is the first woman. This is a historic moment. Putting aside all controversies around the CV at the moment, how do you respond to today's historic event?

30:33With warm and prayerful thanks, I think. I'm delighted that Dave Sarah Mullally has been confirmed today in her election as to the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury. I think for all those reasons you've listed, it's a good thing. But I think the interesting thing about Archbishop of Canterbury is not how they look when they begin, it's how they look when they end. And I don't envy Sarah Mullally or anybody, that particular job. At the moment, it's a job which tends to take apart those who hold it in its own distinctive way. And I think anyone taking up that office would do so with a degree of circumspection.

31:10She was heckled during the ceremony by someone called Paul Williams, who was heckling about safeguarding in relation to the tragic suicide of Father Alan Griffin five years ago. This is a different kind of safeguarding tragedy because this isn't so much about the abuse as it's about priests about whom there was gossip and false information put around and the church failed to properly handle their case to keep them informed. And in Alan Griffin's case, he felt that information, which I must stress was entirely false, was being withheld from him. What does this tell us about the culture of the church at the moment?

31:49It's not just letting down the abused, but it's also been letting down people falsely accused. Well, I think it's the scale and extent of our failures in safeguarding become clearer every day. And as focus has shifted onto people who have suffered abuse at the hands of clergy, I think perhaps what we have failed to do is to focus equally crisply on the church's failure sometimes in safeguarding the interests of its own, of its priests in particular. I think also it's to do with the culture of the way dioceses function or used to function, and that the casual exchange of gossip would perhaps go on to the record for turgy in a way which is completely contrary to best practice now.

32:30I think Sarah, in fact, or the whole current generation of bishops inherit a long and complex problem. And every good wish and prayerful blessing upon them is they try to untangle it. But I mean, we've got a long way to go with this. I think, you know, marking our own homework, which churches like to do, is often not the best way to tackle those sorts of problems. Do you think it's possible to be Archbishop of Canterbury, that you're given requirements to be responsible for things that happened before you became archbishop, sometimes before you even became a bishop of any kind, and yet you're not given the authority to do it and you're trying to hold together the whole Anglican communion with people who have very different views?

33:14Does the job demand too much without giving the authority requisite to carry it out? I think it's an impossible job, Sir Jacob. I think it does put upon you a burden that is tolerable. And as you say, insufficient means to really do anything particularly decisive with it. I think archbishops are at their most successful when they find a way, with the wisdom of serpents and the gentleness of doves, to negotiate irreconcilable differences, really. But it's not something which I think you would find taken up by other executives in other areas of human enterprise. It seems to me it's much easier to be Pope than Archbishop of Canterbury.

33:54If you're the Pope, yes, you have people who disagree with you, and yes, you have to make compromises, but ultimately you can say, thank you so much, I'm infallible, this is how it is, do as you're told. If you're Archbishop of Canterbury, you try that and people say, no, we're not taking any notice. No, and of course the Anglican communion, or the nature of the Church of England, is not so much an ecclesiology, it's a kind of personality disorder, I think. And we simply don't, it's not that kind of a thing. That's not how we operate. That's not how we work. There's something to be said, I think, for a certain hesitancy about being too propositional about things.

34:31But it is sometimes tempting to look to the Vatican and see a certain clarity and rigor in decision-making and the execution of decision-making, which we lack. Having said that, of course, there are plenty of people in the Roman Catholic Church actually report to me that the culture wars that play out in our own communion play out also in the Roman Catholic communion too, but they're settled or resolved or handled in a different way. I think that's absolutely right. I mean, one battle within the Anglican communion is over the church's attitude towards same-sex relationships and marriages. And the church has attempted to accommodate different views, but it has not yet really come out with a clear understanding for everyone as to where it stands on that question.

35:15Are you frustrated with the church on this? Well, I suppose I'd be frustrated if I kind of fostered unrealistic expectations. I mean, I still sometimes occasionally lapse into the notion that we move forwards towards a more just settlement, in my view. But it's a very complicated process. And as I say, we do contain within our ranks people who disagree fundamentally about all sorts of things. It's not the first time it's happened, it's not the last time it'll happen. But that debate is particularly lively, particularly gruelling at the moment, especially as through the proper means to settle dispute, we thought we'd agreed a very tentative step forward on an experimental basis.

35:56But that has been kicked back to the bishops due to resistance from kind of powerful constituency within the church. And the bishops have kicked that not so much into the long grass as over the long grass and into the never-never. But it's not going to go away, that problem. So I said you'll return to it in one form or another. We've done it before. We've followed that fundamentally over very significant things, fundamental matters of doctrine before. I sometimes think people of this debate speak about the unalterable doctrine of marriage to which we've always held, but we haven't always held, actually.

36:28We commit the remarriage of divorcees, for example, which now it's required legislation to get through. Some would say that was the fundamental alteration of the doctrine of marriage. Others would disagree. But that just seems very Anglican, really. So I imagine we'll kind of limp our way forwards if we don't topple back towards some kind of settlement. But it's very hard to see where that will land at the moment. If the church is agonised, is that really attractive to people looking for clarity and direction? Well, I suppose if you want clarity and direction, it might not be your first port of call, I would suggest that clarity and direction would be characteristics that would hallmark resemble Roman Catholic tradition.

37:09But I don't think Sarah Mulaney looks particularly agonised to me. I think Sarah, I know her a little bit. We have to be born on the same day, nor that means anything at all. But in London Diocese, I've seen her work there as the Bishop of London and have high regard for her. I also know her a bit through her nursing world as well, which is very highly regarded there. Each archbishop brings to the role their strengths and also their weaknesses, and her strengths might be that she can speak to people in a way that other archbishops would struggle to do so. She understands the extremely difficult politics of church management.

37:48But she's 63, and that means she's got probably seven years in post. I'm not sure that this appointment will be the key appointment. I suspect that the appointment following her should be the key appointment, and it remains to be seen how that will go. But I think the church in seven years' time, I think the grip of those who would want to remake it in their image will have become more assertive, perhaps. And maybe that will produce an Archbishop of Canterbury, the next one, the 107th Archbishop of Canterbury, who will move things along in a more directional way than Sarah Mullanigan. I want to ask you a final question about the Canon Clement mysteries.

38:26One normally thinks of clerics as being very gentle folk without a bad bone in their body. Is there anything about being a cleric that particularly qualifies you to write about murder? Well, I think like any incumbent of the Church of England, I've often fantasised about killing a parishioner, so that would give me motive, I suppose. That's what I thought. Well, you deal with the consequences of murder all the time, but one of the things I wanted to write was to slightly push against the kind of cosily crime genre. There is nothing cosy about murder, as anyone who's ever dealt with one, and the consequences of one will know.

39:00But I also think clergy make good detectives. I think it sort of comes with the territory in a way. You're often looking at situations and people and trying to figure out why they did what they've done, and sometimes even to try to anticipate what they'll do next. In fact, I found out the other day there were 200 literary clergy detectives in the canon. I have an interesting choice of work. So I'm not the first person to have that idea. Reverend Richard Coles, thank you very much. Thank you very much. And what a pleasure to meet you, albeit virtually. Thank you. Jacob, thank you very much for joining us.

39:35And to everyone watching or listening, we'll see you again tomorrow at 5pm.

39:52Thank you.