The teacher sacked for speaking out about Lucy Connolly and two-tier justice

0:04The Telegraph.

0:09Hey, this is Paige from Giggly Squad, and let me just say, Abercrombie's Active brand YPB is made for my summer workout routine. Their Active sets are so easy to move in and even easier to match. I've been especially loving the double-layered look in Activewear right now. it's so much more put together than your basic sports bra, especially in the YPB Studio Flex Collection. Because it's so lightweight and buttery soft, it keeps your summer workouts easy. So shop YPB by Abercrombie in the app online and in stores. Healthcare can feel complicated.

0:44Gordon Rayner: That's why Optum uses technology to connect the people and processes that make healthcare easier, more affordable, and more effective. We're making it clearer for you to know exactly what your benefits cover. And to help you better manage your health, we're coordinating care between your doctors and your technology. We believe better, simpler health care is always possible. That's healthy optimism. That's Optum. Visit Optum.com to learn more.

1:15Gordon Rayner: The Daily Tea has spoken to Simon Pearson, a teacher who was sacked from his college because of things he said privately on Facebook. Gordon Rayner has interviewed him and we'll also talk to Gordon about how this poor man's life has been ruined. Meanwhile, The Telegraph has been hosting a catfight between Liz Truss and Kemi Badenow. Over the weekend, they've been exchanging blows in the paper about who is to blame for the Tory party's problems. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Tim Stanley. And me, Cleo Watson.

1:54Gordon Rayner: We're now one year on from the appalling South Border attacks and the riots that followed as well as the sometimes draconian sentencing, which received criticisms of, quote-unquote, two-tier justice. The fallout of those events continues. We're joined in the studio by Gordon Rayner, who has interviewed a man called Simon Pearson. Gordon, tell us who is Simon. Well, Simon Pearson is or was a teacher at a college in Preston. And after the Lucy Connolly incident, he posted a message on a private Facebook group in which he criticised the way that Lucy Connolly had been treated. And as a result of that, he was accused of Islamophobia by a colleague.

2:36Gordon Rayner: The college decided that it was going to take the matter on, started a disciplinary process and ultimately he was sacked. Gordon, can you tell us exactly what was in that post just to give listeners an idea? Yeah, so as I say, this was on a private Facebook group with fewer than 100 people in it. So, you know, he wasn't posting anything publicly. It was just a friend's and also nothing to do with his job. He said that the way that Lucy Connolly had been treated was an example of a two-tier policy from the top down. And he said, I'll summarise slightly, but he said, the woman who made that appalling comment about the mosque in Southport is obviously wrong.

3:14Gordon Rayner: But how many Islamist plots and crimes have been experienced in our country? Certain sections of society calling for the genocide of Jews from the river to the sea are also free to express their opinions and make Jewish people afraid to walk the streets. He obviously thought that he was just making a personally held comment about current events. But as I say, he was then reported to his employers who decided they would take the matter on and he was eventually sacked. OK, well, let's now listen to your interview with Simon Pearson. So, Simon, thank you so much for joining us on The Daily Tea. Can you just begin by telling us why you decided to post your Facebook post that is now the subject of this problem?

3:56Gordon Rayner: Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I appreciate all your support. Basically, it was the case of last summer with Lucy Connolly and the Manchester airport attack. and it was just basically the concern because so many people were expressing opinions and being persecuted for it being like lucy connolly particularly that was the case that came to the fore then and i just felt compelled to to say something on the private facebook page It was just a friends-only area. There was probably less than 100 friends on there. And I just expressed what I was feeling about the injustice of, well, my family.

4:53Gordon Rayner: Originally, I was born in Southport. I was brought up in Southport, so I have an affinity to the area. I know the area and I know that the, for example, the mosque in Southport is very close to where the attacks happened. And I know I put myself in ordinary people's shoes. For many years, I've been a Nisal teacher, teaching people from all walks of life, all religions, all places that you can imagine in the world. I've worked in China, I've worked in Brazil. And it's from that background that I thought I could comment on the issue. And it's really from sort of a background of Christian Judeo-Christian values of fairness that I just felt compelled to say something, particularly in the case of Lucy and also the police in a situation with the Manchester airport's attack.

5:54Gordon Rayner: it seemed very initially very biased and then the full picture came out and it was just a shocking time for the whole nation I think and I just was expressing that on a private Facebook page never dreaming that I'd be in this situation. Okay so so let's just let's just talk about that point because the it's fairly crucial to your story isn't it that this wasn't you trying to make some sort of public pronouncement that was intentionally provocative. You thought you were just talking amongst friends. Do you know how that then ended up in the hands of somebody who decided to complain about it? Yes.

6:33Gordon Rayner: Well, some of my friends on Facebook, a large majority are from international places and things like that. So it was just a couple who were, I think, were looking out to to get me in trouble basically um so that's that's how this all sort of began just before we go on to what happened just tell me a little bit more about your work as a teacher because you were telling me there that you've worked all over the world have you always been a teacher 30 years i've been a teacher and i think you the the point that will become more relevant i guess as your story goes on but it's probably worth making it now is that you've spent a lot of your time teaching people who are from all sorts of different backgrounds, Muslims, asylum seekers, students, and you've helped an awful lot of people.

7:21Gordon Rayner: And you're very, not just open-minded, but you're somebody who has spent their lives helping people from those backgrounds. Exactly, yes. In fact, when I first came back to the country, I was working at another college. There was a family from Blackburn. I wrote to the then MP for Blackburn, which was Jack Straw, for supporting this family. And they were asylum seekers from a Muslim country. So I've had that background. I actually taught in a Muslim area of China. And I also posted on my Facebook about this area of China where the Uyghur people are being persecuted. And I wrote three articles about that on my Facebook just so people are aware of the issue going on.

8:14Gordon Rayner: And so it's ironic that I get labelled as being Islamophobic. You've explained to us that you posted onto what you thought was a private Facebook group. Some people that you worked with saw that. What happened next? I came off holiday that summer. This is last year. Last year in August. And I just got summoned into the office. And basically, they said I didn't really say much of anything. They just said, you've made posts that have offended some people in the department. And I'm here just to let you know you're immediately suspended. They escorted me off the site. This is at Preston College, yeah.

9:00Gordon Rayner: Preston College immediately escorted me off the site and took away my ID and all of that. And they said, you're not permitted to talk to any of your colleagues. Was this the day you came back from the summer holidays? Yes. And I didn't know what posts. I wasn't told anything. What was their concern? I just didn't know anything. I was just completely blindsided. Yeah. Okay, so you're sent home and told you've been suspended. What happened then? I was kept on suspension for five months while an investigation was launched. I think most of the investigation, it seemed, from the report happened very quickly within the first couple of months.

9:44Gordon Rayner: But they kept me on suspension for those five months, I think, in the hope that I may resign or something like that. So five months on, that takes us to when was the next thing you heard from them? It was really myself and the wonderful people at Christian Concern who are actually supporting me. My situation is that I couldn't have done this by myself. Yes. My wife has got sort of serious health issues and I'm kind of a carer for her as well. Okay. So, you know, it has been a very, very difficult time. and yeah I put pressure I wrote to the HR saying you know this can't continue I need some resolution to know what where my life is going you know I'd like to get back to work I love my job yeah I love the students I just never had any complaint by anybody I had an unblemished record for 20 years they couldn't put anything down to my teaching or my interaction with students there was no access to my Facebook from any student so they couldn't really claim like they are doing that I'm bringing the college into disrepute the only people that did were these two colleagues of mine who actually shared the post and made it available to the NEU representatives which was their representative, not mine really.

11:18Gordon Rayner: Yes, that's the National Education Union representative. So you'd been suspended for five months, you'd contacted the college and said, I need a resolution to this. At what point did they tell you what they had decided and what did they tell you? They then decided to have the disciplinary hearing. So they went into that. I would wait for five months. I sort of guessed who, had complained and made the complaint and um yeah i also sort of guessed maybe what angle that they were what posts they might be complaining about so uh which uh which i i apologized initially i i sent out uh well as soon as i was accused in a general sort of way i knew i'd offended somebody So I just put something out saying, I'm really sorry that I've offended you.

12:15Gordon Rayner: I didn't deny what I wrote because I believe it was a fair comment. I did delete the post. I took photos of them, deleted them. And I sort of said to the college, you know, I've apologized. I've deleted the post, but I can't deny what I believe is true and the right to express. If we don't have freedom of speech and be able to express our concerns about valid topics, despite even if it offends somebody, I mean, they could have just unfriended me or they could have contacted me. They're on WhatsApp. They could have contacted me. And they didn't. They just went straight through their union to the college higher management.

13:05Gordon Rayner: They didn't even go to my immediate line manager. Nothing like that. What can you tell us about the people who were on the other side of this, the people who had complained and the people from the union that took this up? Obviously, it has been reported that these people were Muslim members of either of your college or of the union. Can you clarify that? yes the neu represents representative was uh is a muslim and and i think they sort of generalized everything that i was talking about all muslims and i didn't even really mention didn't mention any race religion in the one it was a it was a free speech issue i mentioned islamist which was i meant extremists who've done acts of terror i didn't mean And it was obvious, so that's what I was talking about from the post.

13:57Gordon Rayner: It's a very specific term. So I think you were about to say there that after you'd been suspended for five months, there was then a disciplinary hearing, is that right? After five months? Yes. So tell us about the disciplinary hearing. Presumably, was that the first time you really were told exactly what it is that they thought you'd done wrong? No, they did mention the post in the investigation meeting earlier. I can't remember how many months earlier it was actually but they showed me the post I'd already brought a copy of the post to show them because I sort of figured from who it was and then they told me they actually didn't confirm in the investigation who it was who made the accusations and brought the complaint So after the disciplinary hearing which was in, what are we talking now December, January time or?

14:51Gordon Rayner: January, I think, yes. Okay, so January this year. So you presumably are then told that you're fired, are you? After disciplinary, it was February they told me. 13th of February they told me I was dismissed. So 13th of February you're dismissed. And what did they tell you was the reason for that? They just said it was because I broke college policies, that I could bring the college into disrepute from what I've shared. and so yeah I appealed of course and argued that wasn't the case and also the situation with another case recently as Christy Higgs case where she made comments on a private Facebook page and they overturned her yeah in the high court okay and what what was your understanding of the college's social media policy at the time that you that you posted what you did on Facebook well my understanding was as long as i i didn't um put it in public and i was on a private facebook page then i could make those comments that they weren't to do with the college yeah they weren't there were current affairs at the time current events and and it was of concern to the whole nation so it was something i i wouldn't have linked preston college i didn't say anything about Preston College with that and I guess most people on my friends only would know that I work for Preston College that won't be the only thing.

16:30Gordon Rayner: So you said that you appealed and you lost that appeal but you're now taking this to an employment tribunal can you tell us about what the grounds for that are and how that process is going to play out? Well the grounds as I mentioned the Christy Higgs case, it was on a private Facebook page. She made these comments and it was a similar sort of argument. And I think the High Court overturned that. It's basically to do with freedom of expression, freedom of religious beliefs, concern about current events. And if we're not allowed to make those in a private Facebook page between friends, you know uh i i don't see that the college can some sort of legislate on what our personal opinions are uh when they're made in a private facebook page obviously we we can't discuss what the outcome of this tribunal may be because it's ongoing but tell us what you're doing at the moment what are you doing about work what are you doing about sort of getting your life together yeah i can't really say too much about that i have a job now it's nothing to do with what I'm trained to do but it's I thank God that it's a job that I can do and that actually this company has given me the chance they were very supportive and I was always up front in whatever interview I went to, it's taken so long just to get into employment How many jobs have you applied for?

18:06Hundreds

18:07Gordon Rayner: Literally hundreds and I've applied for some teaching positions as soon as I of course mention they ask why did you leave your last job and as soon as I mention that I'm upfront about it I just said you know I made these posts and then being labelled as Islamophobic that's when they don't want to know which is something I'm not Yeah. What do you hope will be the result of the tribunal? Let's say you were to win the tribunal. What's your ultimate goal? ultimately is just to support my family uh to get back into the uh the job that i love and um to somehow be a blessing to to our nation uh that is going through this situation where we cannot talk about what the things that really matter and express our what's in our hearts about them and really to clear my name because there's nothing to do with what they've said.

19:15Gordon Rayner: They've labelled me as it's not true. Do you think that if you hadn't been overtly Christian, this would have happened at all? Probably not. I think it really stems from what I believed the injustice that was done at the time. so many people were just having that two-tier situation where there were some were imprisoned and others weren't uh you know the awful things worse things than lucy connelly ever ever could have said and they'd actually done them you know and uh and they're still awaiting justice some of them so it's not right yeah i mean how does that make you feel when when you when you think about what's happened to you do you feel that you've been effectively victimized because of your religion or is that overstating it i think that was part of it that was definitely part of that did come across uh through certain things that was said and the values that i hold so they they went into other things yeah that relate to my christian beliefs as well yeah the mention so Have you had any contact from any of your former students?

20:32Gordon Rayner: I say former, I mean, maybe there will be again, but... Well, my students are very low level. So I do go out and about in Preston and they do stop me and they don't really know about this situation at all. Right. And what do your students say when they bump into you in the streets? Do they say that they miss you or do they ask you why you're not there? yes a couple of them that I did bump into ask why are you not with me anymore well one of them actually gave up college because they they said that it's a chap from Ukraine and he just said I'm not I'm not continuing with the course because you're not going to be my teacher and he actually gave up that's a vote of confidence it's slightly sad but yeah it's sad but I did actually encourage him to go back despite all of that.

21:25Gordon Rayner: So it's not just impacting your life, it's having a knock-on effect on other people's lives. Yeah. Okay. You're obviously a very thoughtful man, as you've said. You're very religious. You put your trust in God and your faith but I assume there must be a large part of you that feels quite bitter about this. Do you find yourself getting angry? Yes, I'm angry at the injustice and the things that I've been through and my family's been through. But really, I do forgive those people, my accusers that have brought these accusations. I forgive the college. I don't have any bitterness at all. I just want to clear my name because that's not who I am and they label me as.

22:10Gordon Rayner: And I trust God with that result. Do you feel that there is a role that politicians can play in this? Is there something that the government could do to stop this sort of thing happening to people like you? yes i think uh they uh they should concentrate on being equal about about things like this this islamophobia uh discussion that they're having at the moment and uh i think all religions should be should be treated equally yeah and i also think in a way that the most persecuted religion on the planet at the moment is our Christians, as far as I know, it's a fact in a lot of nations. So yeah, I don't see why they should have special treatment just for one certain religion.

23:02Gordon Rayner: I think everybody should be treated equally. And I think that's what the Equality Act covers as well. So we hear a lot of talk about two-tier policing in this country. And obviously, this doesn't involve the police but do you feel that you have been treated more harshly as a christian than you may have been if you were a member of another religion who had made a comment that say a christian found offensive yes very much so yes i do just reading the investigation report it was read like or like a witch hunt than than anything else okay and that was quite shocking for me. The way that the questions were framed and asked, it was already assumed a bias, really.

23:50Gordon Rayner: Well, you've been very brave to talk about this and you've demonstrated admirable restraint. I think a lot of people would have been a lot more angry if they'd been in your situation. So good luck to you for the future. Good luck with the tribunal. Thank you very much. And thank you so much for coming on The Daily Tea. Thank you very much. It's a privilege. Thank you very much.

24:19Gordon Rayner: Gordon, listening to Simon Pearson, what's striking is how thoughtful and rational, cautious he is. This isn't a fanatic keyboard warrior. No, he's not somebody who's sitting at home having one too many drinks on a Friday night and then tweeting something that he later regrets. He is very religious, as you heard there. His religion is very important to him. He believes in values, Christian values, including fairness and respecting the law. And he was just very upset by the whole situation that was going on at that time in Southport, where he's from. And he just felt that he wanted to share his sort of outrage, really.

24:57Gordon Rayner: And an awful lot of people at the time were outraged. And he did it in a fairly sort of measured way, I thought. What's striking to me about this case is there have been other ones in which educators were sanctioned or lost their jobs for something they said in the classroom or a school location or in some relation to school materials. This is the first one I've heard of, at least, where what he said really was private, not to do with his job and not for public consumption. Yes. And I think that what you have to bear in mind here is that it basically offended one person. This wasn't something that was viewed by lots of people who then all took offence or complained.

25:35Gordon Rayner: One person decided they didn't like it. And rather than, as he says, just unfriending him or WhatsAppping him and saying, I don't like this or, you know, could you take it down? They just went straight to his employer through the union. And the college, for some reason, which I still find rather unfathomable, decided it was up to them to do something about it. And also, not just they did that, but he says in the interview he's applied for hundreds of jobs. Yeah. Other employers have decided, we don't want to touch you either. No. So somebody who is a very law-abiding man who has helped thousands of people, I'm sure, over his career, including Muslims.

26:11Gordon Rayner: He talked about how he once wrote Jack Straw to help a family of asylum seekers from a Muslim country. He is now living in fear, basically. He's living in fear because he is worried that the record that he has, it's not a criminal record, but as far as employment goes, it may as well be. because when he applies for jobs, they say to him, you know, why did you lose your last job? And he tells them and then the word Islamophobia comes up and then they don't want to touch him. To the extent that he won't even say, he has a job now, but he won't even say what kind of job it is because never mind saying who his employer is, he's so terrified of this rebounding on him again that he literally won't even say what field he's working in.

26:52It does have that echo of two-tier again, doesn't it? because he has lost his livelihood over this. It was a private Facebook group. It was not for public consumption. We're paid to write exactly this kind of stuff for tens of thousands of people to read. Millions. Right, and there were no such repercussions. And it does seem, you know, Gary Lineker, as lots of people will be aware of, has recently been ejected from the BBC for sharing an anti-Semitic video. He's been snapped up by ITV straight away.

27:32Gordon Rayner: Yeah, for an awful lot of money, I'm sure. Right. Yeah, I think, look, we are living in an era of thought crime, aren't we? And I interviewed a lady last year who was a Newcastle United fan, like me, and she had posted something on Twitter about LGBT issues. She's a lesbian herself, but it was about transgender. And she was banned from attending football matches by the club, even though it had nothing to do with football, nothing she'd said or done inside the stadium. So this is the era we're living in now. If you say something privately about something, then that can affect your employment, you know, entry to public places, even though it's got nothing to do with that.

28:10And it's fear on fear, isn't it? Because here is Simon, who's essentially frightened to say what he does now in case he's ousted out of this job. but there was a time when people, with the sort of birth of the internet, people were hounded out by keyboard warriors and a sort of Twitter mob, say. And now it's companies, organisations, colleges who are ejecting the staff that they ought to protect as though they are fearful of a mob.

28:40Gordon Rayner: Yes, I mean it's not so much cancel culture as the sort of HR blob culture, isn't it? And I think one of the other very important points that Simon made in that interview was that he effectively believes that if he had been from another religion and he'd made a comment that had offended a Christian, he'd still be in a job. And that's what he means, I think, by this two-tier system, that if you make a comment that offends someone who accuses you of Islamophobia, then people will come down on you like a ton of bricks. But if you were to say something about Christians which offended a Christian, that's kind of fair game.

29:12Gordon Rayner: I might be wrong, but I sense that the social media mob has died down a bit, that what we're seeing here is institutions internalizing the mob. It's professionals deciding that they won't work with that kind of person rather than responding to something that's going on on the outside. And that's even more frightening. And it's not coming from the government. Some people would say that Angela Rayner's employment bill has an element of this when it comes to policing water cooler chat and things like that. Yeah, the government banter. The government insists not. But either way, this institution is not responding to government legislation.

29:47Gordon Rayner: It's doing it itself because it chooses to do it. And it was a private row. This whole affair did not have to ever become public. There's no mob involved. This is an institution deciding for itself what is and isn't acceptable. And it seems to me ruining a man's life over it. Yeah. And they ultimately decided that he had risked bringing that college into disrepute, even though what he said didn't name the college, didn't have anything to do with the college, was entirely just a private chat among what he thought were friends. Which also has a sort of secondary fear to it which is just the idea of your friends snooping on you and there isn't a safe space to say what you're thinking.

30:26Gordon Rayner: No, and look, if he had said we need to go out and murder people then that's one thing. But if you just sort of are chatting about current affairs and you express an opinion then And where have we got to now that you can't even do that? I keep joking that I'm concerned. There are things that I might say in a private conversation that I can get in trouble for, that if I publish them in a column, I get away with. Well, yeah. And I think Camilla's keeping notes. I think she's keeping a folder on me and someday it's going to get whipped out and shown to HR. Well, because, you know, I think we were talking before we came on about how we are very privileged because we can say and write things.

31:03Gordon Rayner: We have lawyers on our side. Exactly. we have the protection of people who actually are looking out for our best interests, whereas there are a lot of employers who seem to be doing the opposite rather than looking out for their employees' best interests. So the freedom to speak your mind becomes an elite privilege. And not only that, his union hasn't protected him either, and they should be standing up for their members on particularly these kinds of issues. Well, they're taking sides. Indeed. Gordon Rayner, thank you very much. Coming up after the break, Kemi versus Liz, a battle of former and current Tory leaders.

31:36Gordon Rayner: We give our impression of whether this is about philosophy or is it about personality. The two ladies are more similar than you might think.

31:51Hey, this is Paige from Giggly Squad. And let me just say Abercrombie's active brand YPB is made for my summer workout routine. Their active sets are so easy to move in and even easier to match. I've been especially loving the double layered look in active wear right now. It's so much more put together than your basic sports bra, especially in the YPB Studio Flex Collection. Because it's so lightweight and buttery soft, it keeps your summer workouts easy. So shop YPB by Abercrombie in the app online and in stores.

32:23Gordon Rayner: Do you keep hearing podcast ads like this one, for example, but always wonder how you actually get involved with them for your own brand or organization? Well, it's easier than you think. We're Acast, and we give you the platform to do it all yourself. Browse thousands of popular podcasts, choose the shows that match your perfect audience, set your budget, and launch. And if you want a hand, our podcast specialists are there to help you launch with confidence. This is podcast advertising without barriers. Get started at acast.com slash advertise.

33:07Gordon Rayner: Kimmy Badenock has been leader of the opposition now for a year, but she's still not dealt with the Liz Truss problem. And Labour is still using it against her. Mr Speaker, I think she at the weekend said that she said that she would be getting better in the role. she could start with apologising for the Liz Truss budget. That would be better. So what do you do about a problem like Liz Truss? Well, Kemi is trying to turn the tables by using Liz Truss against Keir Starmer. Writing for The Telegraph, she said, For all their mocking of Liz Truss, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have not learnt the lessons of the mini-budget and are making even bigger mistakes.

33:45Gordon Rayner: They continue to borrow more and more, unable and unwilling to make the spending cuts needed to balance the books. Well, that's prompted a reply from Liz Truss, who also in The Telegraph has come back with, It is disappointing that instead of serious thinking like this, Kemi Badenock is instead repeating spurious narratives. I suspect she's doing this to divert away from the real failures of 14 years of Conservative government in which her supporters are particularly implicated. It was a fatal mistake not to repeal Labour legislation like the Human Rights Act because the modernisers wanted to be the heirs to Blair.

34:21Now, Cleo, none of this makes sense to a regular voter.

34:26Gordon Rayner: It makes sense Labour using Liz Truss against the Tories, but the Tories trying to use Liz Truss against them by saying you're just like Liz Truss. when Kemi, of course, served under Liz Truss. And then Liz Truss coming back and saying, well, actually, the real problem was Kemi and her people and her cadre within the party because they didn't make the reforms that were necessary. And that's why we're in the trouble we are in. When Liz Truss served with those people too and was trade secretary, equality's environment, She had non-stop cabinet roles since 2014. She was never out of this terrible cabinet from hell.

35:01Gordon Rayner: So where are we? How do we get to this point where everyone's using everyone else's legacy against them? Well, where we really are is reform win yet again and later get off the hook. There seems to be this ghost or spectra of Liz Truss and the mini budget where Kemi Badenock is trying to dress up Rachel Reeves as Liz Truss and Keir Starmer's trying to dress up Nigel Farage as Liz Truss. And I'm sure Liz isn't flattered with either of those characterisations. And as everyone has been able to see through her recent book and her MAGA speaking tour in America, she's trying to defend her record and jump on some of the Millay government successes in Argentina and Trump successes in America to show that actually her economic plans were right at the time.

35:53Gordon Rayner: You can't keep a good woman down. And this is a remarkable thing about her. Very short administration, lost her seat in parliament, but will not go away and is trying to develop an argument, which is that I wasn't given enough time. The party didn't support me. The blob worked against me. And actually, what I was trying to do is what Trump is now doing, what Labour must do, what reform might do. So I was actually ahead of my time and I was brought down by people who didn't understand me. But there are three crucial errors with her argument here. And actually, this is where I think Kemi's accusations against Liz are wrong as well.

36:35They've misdiagnosed the problem because regardless of what you think of Liz Truss's economic policies or Keir Starmer's economic policies, it's about how you execute them. and she executed them very, very poorly. Bad communications, bad people handling. You know, there are ways to butter up the OBR and people in the Treasury and the Bank of England so that they don't immediately act against you, if that's even the case. It's all slightly conspiracy chat, which incidentally works against her as well. Secondly, it's handling people in the parliamentary party. So you say, this is what's going to happen, chaps.

37:13I've pitch rolled this. sit tight, crash hats on because when I say something's going to happen I really, really mean it and I value you and she was not able to take the parliamentary party with her which Keir Starmer hasn't been able to do either and thirdly, once you make a decision you can't U-turn, you can't deviate essentially her bottom did fall out and she brought in Jeremy Hunt instead of quasi-quarting in the end and my strongest memory in government of this mantra being true that you just have to ignore the white noise is in autumn 2019, where we prorogued parliament and we ended up de-whipping 21 MPs.

37:52Gordon Rayner: This is when you were trying to get Brexit through under Boris. Correct. And that was Boris's commitment. We said it was going to happen. Apparently, lots of people didn't believe us, including 21 of our own MPs. And we de-whipped Rory Stewart and Nicholas Soames. Because if you say you're going to do something, you have to mean it and be undeviating. and ultimately those three things in terms of proper execution, taking people with you and handling them properly, not rubbing them up the wrong way, which incidentally I think is one of Kemi and Liz's joint super flaws is their interpersonal skills and temperaments and being undeviating once you've made your decision.

38:33Gordon Rayner: There are certain similarities between Liz and Kemi, aren't there? There are. It's personality and career. Yeah, absolutely. Kemi's career sort of just trails behind Liz's, but it's of a similar pattern in terms of the jobs that they had, in terms of people supporting them and pushing them forward in the party, telling them they're great, they are the future, and them believing it. But there are, as you say, there are similarities in their personal style. They are politicians of principle. They have very strong beliefs. They will argue with you about them. They won't necessarily hear or tolerate disagreement.

39:06Gordon Rayner: I hope Kemi isn't listening to this because we'll get an angry letter. That's another part of it. Get on with the day job. Don't worry about writing letters to us. But I think one difference between them, though, is Liz's problem, she would say, listen to everything you've said, is the problem of she only had a small amount of time to get things done. I don't want to relitigate the truss affair, but there was this problem of the Queen dying. And so she had a very small window in which to cook up her economic policies and sell them. In fact, she ended up giving just one interview pre the budget, which you might remember was in America.

39:42Gordon Rayner: That was the only space she had to explain to the world what it was she was about to do. So she would say it was a problem of time and she was always a lady in a hurry. What I find interesting about Kemi is Kemi has, she thinks, five years to rebuild the party. And she's moving very slowly and very deliberately. And that's why she's putting policies out to these various groups and things like that. So I'd actually argue against that, Tim. I think, firstly, Liz Truss had lots of time. Because the Queen died, she had two weeks in a normally frantic September to get all her ducks in a row and not have to give interviews, not worry about the communications, just get the policy right, have the private meetings with the OBR and the Bank of England, which she obviously didn't do.

40:23Conversely, Kemi doesn't have a lot of time. I think her window of opportunity is shrinking all the time, and that goes for the wider Tory party. I don't think she has five years. I think that the toy party's in real trouble and they have to sort of salt themselves and regenerate in super fast time. And that's a matter of months.

40:43Gordon Rayner: I think there's also a key philosophical difference between them. The trust budget was essentially supply-side Reaganite economics. It was a dash for growth, never mind if you slightly break the rules. By contrast, Kemi is trying to define herself in opposition both to Reeves and reform. both she suggests as big spenders who are not proper fiscal conservatives, that what the Tories will emphasize at the next election won't necessarily be tax cuts, certainly not spending, but spending reduction to get things in balance. She wants the Tories to be reborn in people's imaginations as the true conservative party that balances the books because that's the right thing to do.

41:24Gordon Rayner: So there is a philosophical tension there between those two people. And this is partly a debate about what the Tory offer is going to be at the next election. Is it going to be a chicken-in-every-pot populist offer? Or is it going to be, no, we will be the tough, hard party that will say things reform doesn't have the balls to say? Well, I think the real crux of the argument between them is, is Keir Starmer still able to defend his current record and land punches by saying, 14 years of Tory government preceded me and Liz Truss's mini-budget? and currently he is able to do that, although there is some sense of fatigue with the public that he's now had a year and you can't keep leaning on old Tories, although it's very convenient for him.

42:09They're now fighting amongst themselves. But that's the sort of ghost the Conservatives need to exercise, I suppose. Do they oust Liz Truss from the party like Keir Starmer did with Jeremy Corbyn Or is there an argument for embracing some Liz Truss arguments and deciding that this is the way to win back reform defectors? But while they continue to scramble like this and fight amongst themselves in just quite an undignified manner, Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage get off the hook.

42:43Gordon Rayner: Should Kemi actually expel Liz Truss from the Conservative Party or at least publicly discipline her? Say something like she could never run for parliament again. It's completely up to Kemi for her vision of what she thinks the Conservative Party should be now. So there's some debate that, although I happen to think this was probably a bit more cock up than conspiracy and essentially this is friendly fire and can we not just chucked Liz Truss's name into this op -ed for the Telegraph. There's some view that Trussite people have now defected from the Tories to reform. In which case to shore up the more, let's say, Cameroon side of the party, is it better to now go on the attack against Liz Truss, perhaps else altogether and say that was all a great big mistake?

43:38Gordon Rayner: Yes. You would think that the strategists are doing some kind of work within CCHQ to work out, should they be sort of shoring up those people or accepting that they're gone, in which case perhaps you do go on the attack. But the economy is in a mess now. We have a 50 billion black hole. So there were other cleavages to work on, I think. There are some good attack lines from the conservatives onto Labour. Mel Stryge should be making them because he was the most vociferously against Liz Truss's mini budget at the time. Kemi Badenock tweeted at the time, I'm 100 % supportive of this and stayed in Liz Truss's cabinet.

44:15So, you know, she has to slightly decide where she stands on this stuff. There are some amazing economic attacks you can make, but the serious issue, I think, beyond public services and the NHS and cost of living is immigration. They should get back onto immigration as soon as they can.

44:33Gordon Rayner: Yeah, and Liz is saying that is the real issue, and that's the thing that should have been tackled in government by leaving the ECHR, et cetera, et cetera. If I were Kemi, I wouldn't want to kick Liz out. I'd want to give her a peerage, of course. But I would be sorely tempted because it is a very good, simple way of demonstrating that you have changed if you have a row with Liz Truss. On the other hand, Liz is not Jeremy Corbyn. And those who make the comparison, I think it's unfair. Corbyn wasn't just a problem for Labour because like Michael Foote, he had been a bad leader. He was regarded as a fundamentally immoral one because many people thought he was anti-Semitic, rightly or wrongly.

45:11Gordon Rayner: So the distance that Starmer felt he had to make was a lot more definitional than kicking Truss out. And a lot of what Truss stands for, many conservatives, many regular members of the party agree with too. Is it not the party of cutting taxes? Is it not the party of going for growth? It surely is. So I don't know. I feel ambivalent about the whole thing. I can see why they'd be tempted to have the fight. I'd see why they shouldn't. We should add that trust is also a problem for reform. Because if Kemi did kick her out, if she did walk away and she came to reform, they face a very difficult choice.

45:50Gordon Rayner: Do they say yes or no to her? And in the past, when she was prime minister, Nigel Farage has some very nice things to say about her. But now to bring her into reform means reform could get tarred with a name which is very unpopular. Yeah, it's true. I think the bit I'd like to end on is the core of the argument here, which is the core of politics too, which is essentially two people rubbing up against each other and temperamentally, despite having lots in common, being quite explosive and rubbing up each other with extreme friction when they are sort of clashed together like this. So for Kemi Badenok, Rishi Sunak and Theresa May, and even Boris Johnson to an extent, who's obviously doing his columns but uses those to attack Kirstama, and of course David Cameron, they are less confrontational people and they are less eager actually to defend their records.

46:49Whereas Liz Truss is determined to show that she felt she was right at the time.

46:56Gordon Rayner: I think Liz will never accept that she did anything wrong. She will accept that things went wrong, but it's not her fault. And in many ways, there's something about the tenure being so short that there's so much to fight over. There's so much more to fight over and to defend. If you had 11 years like Maggie, you might make some concessions and say, well, maybe the poll tax was a mistake. But when you've got a matter of weeks to defend, every hour and day has to be justified. But it's still temperament and personality. and I think the interpretation of people like Liz about Margaret Thatcher is that she was sort of hard-edged and, you know, a difficult woman and she wasn't.

47:39She was able to be very feminine and charming and actually bust people up the right way and she was aggressive and she didn't U-turn, even in short spaces of time when decision-making is important. But Liz was the Prime Minister. The buck stops with you. The team you hire are your responsibility. They didn't do a good job. regardless of what your ideas were, how they were executed, which is ultimately in your gift, was botched.

48:06Gordon Rayner: Well, we've touched upon the continuing battle for growth in the UK. Well, tomorrow we're going to talk to someone who's got some ideas of how to do it, Dr Lawrence Newport. So do join us again tomorrow.

48:58Gordon Rayner: We'll see you next time. advertising. It sounds like a recommendation from a friend. Acast gives you that trust at scale, digital precision, post-read authenticity, and performance data that proves it worked. Don't fight for attention. Buy it with Acast. Learn more by visiting acast.com slash advertise.