Anthony Seldon found hope in Auschwitz

0:00Tom McTague: 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. Vanta 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.

0:29Tom McTague: Hi, it's Ollie. I'm going away on paternity leave for a couple of weeks. So whilst I'm off, we're going to be bringing you some conversations that we pre-recorded and some conversations from my esteemed colleagues at The New Statesman. I hope you enjoy this episode.

0:46Anthony Seldon: The New Statesman.

0:51Tom McTague: Anthony Seldon, historian, educator and one of Britain's leading political biographers, has been for a long walk.

0:58Anthony Seldon: Long walks are incredibly healing. I mean, go back to five, six generations. We walked a lot and we need to walk a lot.

1:09Tom McTague: His new book, The Path of Light, recounts an extraordinary 1300-kilometer passage to Auschwitz, tracing stories of courage, resistance and moral clarity across a continent once consumed by darkness.

1:23Anthony Seldon: I try and answer the question, what is it that drives us to war? But why were some people so heroic in the face of this terrible evil?

1:33Tom McTague: It's a journey that speaks not only to the past, but powerfully to the world we're living in today.

1:38Anthony Seldon: What do we share in common as human beings? And look, in the world of AI, the biggest question we can possibly ask, and the most important, is what does it mean to be human in the age of AI? What can we do that only humans can do?

1:52Tom McTague: So the first line of your book, Anthony, reads as follows. I must walk to Auschwitz. I will have failed the biggest challenge of my life if I don't. Why is that a challenge that you set yourself? I mean, it is an extraordinary walk. It's an extraordinary challenge, 1 ,300 kilometers. Well, good question.

2:15Anthony Seldon: So, like for a lot of people, I'm drawn to the sadnesses of life. I feel automatic compassion for those people who are having difficulty and for periods in history that were sad and tragic. So the First World War is a particular obsession. That was the first time that the whole world had been engaged, some 90 nations in that conflict. and the Holocaust of which Auschwitz is the most symbolic part of it, emblematic part of it, is also part of that. But I'm also, Tom, walking across Europe, believing by the way that long walks are incredibly healing. I mean, we are so bound by rubber and tires and petrol or electricity for getting us from A to B.

3:24Anthony Seldon: Go back to five, six generations. We walked a lot and we need to walk a lot. And life is very different. One's not a different person. One becomes more the person we are when we are walking. And look, whether it's a now as walking on Sunday afternoon or whether it is a whole day or a week or longer walk, it puts you in touch with something that is authentically you and parts of you start floating back up to the surface. And you start thinking about what really matters to you rather than the constant tyranny of the immediate. and so all that came together and look, 10 years ago I was writing a book about the First World War and came across a letter which had been inspired by Arnold Toynbee grand father to Polly Toynbee and father of Philip and it was a vision before the First World War and a number of students who would go off to Greece on holidays and talk about world peace and talk about how we can stop the men of power taking their countries to war.

4:46Anthony Seldon: And there was a young man who was a very idealistic young man who was captivated by those discussions in the vacations from Oxford, which is where they all were. And he found himself then out in the First World War. His brother had just been killed in the front line, younger brother. He felt a great sense of care for his younger brother and felt perhaps guilt that he hadn't done more to protect him. And he wrote to his parents as well as to his head teacher from his school to say, look, if I survive, unlike my brother, if I survive this war, I want to see a path of peace created along the line of the Western Front.

5:28Anthony Seldon: And I want every man, woman and child to walk it. So I discovered that letter 100 years after he'd written it with that fantastic mission. And he said he wanted people from both sides of the conflict, which means all sides from the conflict, to walk together, to walk together and to learn where war leads, which is death, destruction, misery, trauma, rippling down generation after generation. And that's what he wanted to do. and he wanted to learn, as he said, from the silent witnesses, the dead from both sides. And do we have to have war? Do we have to have tragedy from which we can learn? Can we not learn enough from our ordinary lives?

6:15Anthony Seldon: So that was the compulsion to do that walk along. And we're now creating the Western Front Way. And it's about finding what we share in common, people of different nationalities, different beliefs, different parties, different faiths or no faith at all, et cetera, et cetera. What do we share in common as human beings? And look, in the world of AI, the biggest question we can possibly ask, and the most important, is what does it mean to be human in the age of AI? What can we do that only humans can do that the AI will never be able to do? So that was another pressing factor for me. So having done that walk and finishes in Switzerland, where the Western Front finished, where there was a Swiss pillbox with a solitary Swiss soldier in it, stopping the people coming around from either side in the trenches and stabbing each other in the back, literally.

7:05Anthony Seldon: So I stopped there. And I thought, you know, okay, I did that walk and I wrote the book up called The Path to Peace. And two or three years later, Europe seemed to be getting in a very dark place. And I thought I'd start the walk from there, that very point, it's called Kilometre Zip. where the trenches finished on the Swiss border. I walked from there to Auschwitz. And this book would be written among and about the Second World War as opposed to the first. And so Auschwitz, Krakow seemed to be a good place to finish. I thought it would be a thousand kilometers. It proved to be longer. And I walk along rivers, the Rhine, the Danube, and the Elbe, and the Oda, and the Vultivar.

7:59Anthony Seldon: And it was, and others, because rivers are great to walk along, they're flat. Don't tend to get too many bumps on the hills on rivers. And so, and I try and find out, I try and answer the question, what is it that drives us to war? But why were some people so heroic, so few people often in the face of this terrible evil of Nazism and to hunt them out? Women and men who did extraordinary things, who I met encountered along the path that I walked. So that was it.

8:40Tom McTague: It almost sounds the way you describe it like a pilgrimage or a kind of long meditation in a sense. But rather than a pilgrimage to somewhere of beauty or of light or of joy or inspiration, you're going somewhere dark and perhaps the darkest place in human history. And yet you come away with it and your focus is always on the bravery or on the humanity, the goodness of humanity that only humans can do that AI can't do. And yet you're walking in the direction of the greatest evil in history.

9:24Anthony Seldon: I mean, Tom, human history is littered with so many depraved actions.

9:35Anthony Seldon: Auschwitz, no one could deny that it's one of the most evil places. More people were killed there, 1.1, 1.2 million more than other camps like Treblinka. And it was such systematic industrial murder, such intentional murder and such depraved experimentation on human beings by the Dr. Mengele, but many others as well. and um and and so i think two things that i think that to to live with the awareness of evil and and how bad things can be is necessary uh to to to live a uh a life rather than putting it um you know in the back of our minds or just flirting with it uh by watching you know horror movies occasionally to actually try and understand how depraved we can be.

10:40Anthony Seldon: But also, it's something about long walking. Now, of course, you could say, well, I don't have the time, I don't have money, I have too many commitments to be able to get away to do it. And yet, most people can actually take a week off a year as part of their holiday allowance and do part of the Camino walk, most famously in France and in northern Spain, or something else, because cutting yourself off from everything that you know, and being back in nature, and feeling the foot, the feet, constantly touching the ground, and smelling the very different smells, and listening to the very different sounds and looking and tasting, it puts you, as we were saying, in touch with that different part of yourself.

11:42Anthony Seldon: So that's what I found. I mean, you find things that are not always nice, but they're you. And do we really want to go through our lives just insulated with our own security blankets and our friends and the world that we construct? Or are we going to come outside that and confront the person who we may be the truest version of ourself and try and find ways of living life more deeply? And hey, for some people, that means that they rekindle a sense of the divine, well, that might be true or it might be true for them. Certainly, profound things will happen that sitting on a beach in wherever or whatever one does for holiday, go to a cultural place, will not to the same extent.

12:34Tom McTague: And why did you decide to do the walk when you did? Was there something going on in your life or was there a feeling that you had to do it at that moment?

12:43Anthony Seldon: Well, it's partly, I suppose, I had more time. My wife had died of cancer. She was Jewish. I did convert to Judaism when I married her. Part of the Jewish ceremony of marriage is you break a class. And I think that is so fascinating because it's saying that even in the midst of the greatest joy, most joyful day you might have on life, there is sadness and to be aware of that. Is that the symbolism of the breaking? I believe, Tom, it's the symbolism of the breaking of the class. And it's certainly the symbolism that we took away from it. And to live with an awareness of, to live a broad and deep awareness.

13:33Anthony Seldon: And I do think strongly because so much of my life is thinking about AI and how the risk that it can infantilize us. I wrote a book 10 years ago about the risk that AI will infantilize teachers and students and all of us by taking away the hard things and the challenge and replacing them with things that are easy to do. So, you know, it is trying to live life fully and as deeply as we can, not just for ourselves, but for people around us. So that was a really big motive for me. And it fits in with all the stuff I've done with the happiness agenda, with Richard Layard, Lord Layard, married to Molly Meacher, and Jeff Mulgan, who used to be head of strategy under Blair and Brown.

14:29Anthony Seldon: and we set up something called Action for Happiness. And it's how can we lead a life, an intentional life, where we are doing the things that will make our lives happier to allow us to flourish. And recognizing that that, you know, categorically is not selfish. Pleasure is selfish. Pleasure is, you know, buying a new car or letting people know about what a fantastic holiday you had. I mean, you know, or going out for an amazing meal. nothing wrong with them but they are their transitory personal sensual experiences happiness as opposed to pleasure is something that is cannot but be shared we all know what it's like being with somebody in in office or friendship circles or family who's unhappy and that and that can take us all down but people who are genuinely happy lifters uh i mean what kid wouldn't want to be a class with a teacher who's actually radiantly, joyfully happy.

15:30Anthony Seldon: And it raises everything. And it means we can give of our best more. And the thing is that we can learn how to do it.

15:38Tom McTague: It's fascinating to listen to you because you're talking about sort of infantilizing or about the difference between happiness and pleasure and the requirement to be with people to have a sense of happiness. And yet, in a sense, you take yourself off away from other people into this solitary, meditative state where you're on this pilgrimage, not towards a place of happiness or pleasure, but deep, deep darkness.

16:08Anthony Seldon: I can see why it seems weird.

16:10Tom McTague: But in a way, you're saying, and to go to the Jewish ceremony, you're saying, in order to be happy to in order to live a fulfilled life a grown-up life a mature life not not one of kind of immaturity you have to be constantly aware of the darkness of the of the evil of bad things it's not just a case of it's of you know a modern sense of mindfulness or whatever is uh for some people just a case of we'll just seek good things don't don't Don't expose yourself to life's horrors.

16:45Anthony Seldon: If you pursue pleasure, you will make yourself miserable. I mean, on the way here, there was a guy. Now, look, perhaps they were not really unhappy. Perhaps I was just making out they were unhappy. They were driving a badged Aston Martin. And I was thinking, you love your car and you are deeply unhappy. You look really miserable in that car. Exactly. Cheered me up. They were so miserable. And, you know, it leads nowhere. A life in pursuit of pleasure will lead you with absolute, absolute certainty to unhappiness and isolation and be cut off from other people. pleasure is an isolating experience and happiness is it is at its heart a joyful interpersonal intrapersonal experience that will connect and wake other people up wake you up and wake other people up and we can learn how to do it but I do think to live it we need to be aware of the constant tragedy.

17:55Anthony Seldon: The things that are going on in this country, in one's own family, with one's friends, in the world, that are tragic. Not that that's going to make you miserable, but it's going to give you that holistic sense that tragedy is essential in life and to try to live with it, to help where one can, do what one can, and not put it out of one's mind. I think that's essential. I think it was part of the walk, part of why I walked from the First World War, going through all the cemeteries, which, by the way, are profoundly peaceful and not depressing. Those amazing Commonwealth War Grave cemeteries, and walking to Auschwitz also.

18:51Anthony Seldon: and meeting people who hardly any are alive, most of them died at the time, who gave up their lives for something bigger than themselves, bigger than their own pleasure and their own clinging onto life.

19:07Tom McTague: I don't want to drag it down, but I feel I have to because the book is about you walking to Auschwitz and those people who died in Auschwitz, you could say what did they give up their lives for they didn't give them up they were snatched from they were taken from them and not for a bigger purpose or certainly not a purpose of any value but a purpose of uh of evil of somebody somebody else's purpose and you walked there and you and the man i encounter you know in front of me is one of sort of full of hope and sort of um joy to some extent and it it strikes me as uh you know it perhaps is just a different character trait but i would find it incredibly depressing that kind of pilgrimage on the way to this sort of uh heart of darkness in in europe um how what why is it that you can come away from that with a sense of hope?

20:05Anthony Seldon: I think that letting oneself get dragged down by the tragedy, it's becoming aware of it, visiting it, visiting sites of any of the terrible massacres in Bosnia, in Carrefour, in Darfur rather, in Kosovo, in Rwanda. They are, I think it helps us to live life more deeply. I don't think it's depressing. I think it's important. I think it's important for young people, everyone to recognize that there are deeply dark things in the world, and it need not and must not make us depressed about human nature. This book is saying there were many remarkable people who were trying to stop it happening, trying to protect the people both inside the camps and outside, try to extend their lives.

21:13Anthony Seldon: And so that's what I think. And the book is dedicated to somebody who is an enormously joyful person called Etty Hillison, and somebody who should be much better known than she was. And her life was also dedicated to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was another remarkable person who went joyfully to his death. And Etty Hillisam, though, was in Amsterdam. And she went to Westerbork, which is the transit camp where Anne Frank's family went after they were discovered. in the attic on the 4th of August 1944 and taken to Westerborken before being transported to the East. And she had this luminous quality of making people feel good.

22:14Anthony Seldon: And as her wagon went off to the East, and she voluntarily chose to be there, she could have escaped, she made everyone sing. And I can imagine her. So they were singing in the truck. Singing is remarkable, by the way. We should all do much more singing for lifting our spirits. It's hard, whether in a football match or in a choir, it's hard to be singing and not to feel the connection with oneself and with other people. We lose, how can we tell the dancer from the dance, as Yates said. We lose ourselves, and losing ourselves is a good thing, and she got people singing. And I imagine, no one can ever know, that as she was walking towards the gas chamber, she would have been arm in arm and encouraged other people to be arm in arm and singing, not descending into that solitary despair.

23:17Anthony Seldon: and she had that magnetic quality. Her last known communication with the outside world was she wrote a card and she flung it in a gap in the cattle truck on the train in the door out and it was discovered and it's all completely genuine and not put together but she talks about that final journey and how she was full of love. So, Tom, are we going to, how can we find how the real heroes in life are finding a living with a full awareness of the tragedy as well as the joy of life and are radiating energy and compassion towards other people? I think this is something that's worth striving for.

24:09Tom McTague: Well, it's a remarkable story. And I think we should bring the first half of this episode to close on that point, that uplifting point. I've never heard that story. It's absolutely remarkable. If you stay with us, we'll be back after a short break where we'll turn to domestic affairs. And we will get Anthony's views on what is going on and whether we can find purpose and joy in the chaos today.

24:33Anthony Seldon: I hope you're going to tell us.

24:35Tom McTague: See you after the break.

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25:27Tom McTague: Welcome back, Anthony.

25:29Anthony Seldon: Thank you.

25:30Tom McTague: So the The fascinating thing, apart from the subject of your book, is how you wrote it and when you wrote it and how you were sort of dragged back to Britain during the walk to work on a biography I imagine you expected to work on a lot later in life. Tell us about that.

25:55Anthony Seldon: So, yeah, Liz Truss, when she took over, I mean, writing the Boris Johnson book was cathartic. And, you know, he was a very bad prime minister. And to be a good prime minister, you need to be a good human being. And there were parts of his character that were good. And but you also need to be good at the job. And he was very, very bad at the job. And the combination meant the country lost three years. And so I was looking forward, you know, to Liz Truss. you know obviously a very calm measured person who'd learned a lot from history and was going to take the country take the conservative party and the country through a long period and then suddenly out of a blue sky I'd also had to go in and take over a school where the head had been murdered and her young daughter had been murdered and that but right in the middle of the school and I thought running school said, you know, I'd given up that part of my life and moved on, but it was an honor to come back for 18 months and take that school onwards, using a lot of the techniques, Tom, that we talked about in that first half, about not catastrophizing and not dwelling, recalling, being aware of what happened, but not being defined by what happened, but not shutting it out either, not pretending it didn't happen and um and looking for the good looking for the positive looking for the healthy looking for the energetic looking for the things that we can share together so you know there was that and and then uh Liz Truss who would have thought uh that she would blow up after 49 days and you know that was so annoying and so ill considerate of her to do that I had to write a book.

27:52Anthony Seldon: And I was so cross with her and the damage she'd done, particularly to the vulnerable people in the country who lost an awful lot of money. And that I subtitled it, How Not to Be Prime Minister. I mean, a narrative for 49 days, and there have been a couple of really good books that were talking about her. It had to be more than a narrative of what had happened. And so there are 10 things. You can cut and slice it in different ways. But 10 things that a prime minister needs to know if they are to do a good job as prime minister. and um so that was the structure for the for for the book and all the books i write tend to have 10 chapters and uh it's an at 10 series and there were 10 things that she broke and she she got uh she broke nine and a half of them what did she stick to hey well she had a she had a plan okay uh i mean no one could say that liz trust didn't have a plan and you know uh eat your heart out keir starmer liz trust had a plan and uh she knew and it was crystal clear what she was doing but it has to be uh a good plan and and actually it was in many ways a good plan to go for growth i mean why not uh who isn't going to benefit what part of the country wouldn't benefit from a nationally spread growth.

29:32Anthony Seldon: And she had real thoughts about getting growth and making something real of leveling up, which Boris Johnson, the thinking stops once you get a label. Get a label, wow, job done, tick, onto the next thing. Brexit, you know, job done, it's happened. Leveling up, got the plan, got the credit, had the press conference, had the applause, move on. Whereas she was actually trying to make it happen. So, but you've got to, you know, it's about, you know, the policy, but then it's about the politics and the presentation too. And she didn't think that through. And it crashed really badly. So, and the other nine things she got wrong.

30:13Anthony Seldon: So, I was writing that book while I was walking in the holidays when I wasn't being a head teacher.

30:21Tom McTague: You'd like to pack things in. And then, of course, we had the premiership of Rishi Sunak and then into Kiyosama today. And so Sunak at number 10, which is your next book, will be out not until this summer. And then, of course, you've already hinted at some of your thoughts about the difficulties, the reasons for the difficulties that the Starmer premiership is going through at the moment. are they linked? Are they the sort of Stam Premiership and the Sunak Premiership? Is there a sense that neither had a real clear plan or a clarity of kind of purpose going back to this very point that we've discussed from the beginning here, the sort of the need for purposefulness in life?

31:06Anthony Seldon: So Sunak, who I think is an extraordinarily interesting person and politician, and I think it It is wonderful to have an Asian prime minister. I mean, there was something of the same lift and sense of excitement that there was in 2008 when Obama became president of the US. It was really showing something about the country. And he came in, but he didn't have a very clear plan other than trying to triangulate the difference between the One Nation wing of the party and the ERG, the Brexiteers and the right. And it wasn't just a case of left and right. There were also the Trussites. There were the fellows of Penny Morden.

32:04Anthony Seldon: There were the followers of Boris Johnson. There were still some Mayites. I mean, it had become a very, very fractured party. And he took a decision, rightly or wrongly, that he was going to include them all. And he was not going to go for a grand strategy. We'd had that with Liz Truss. He was going to go for an incrementalist strategy with the five pledges. And these were going to be very, very mechanical and precise objectives and to regain trust to the country that government could actually make incremental improvements that would help their lives. So that was him. And I think he did pretty well as prime minister, actually.

32:48Anthony Seldon: How do you judge a premiership? Is the economy stronger? The prime minister is first lord of the Treasury, the most important thing the Prime Minister does is to keep the country afloat. If you're running a company, if you're running a magazine, Tom, you have to make certain that the new statesman is solvent. That's what a Prime Minister does. They are first Lord. Chancellor is only second Lord. He did that. The country was unquestionably economically, financially stronger. At the end, the position of Britain standing in the world was stronger. the union was stronger he finished off Brexit with the Windsor framework that sorted out a massive unfinished part of business because Boris Johnson got bored with that part of it or came up with Northern Ireland protocol that didn't satisfy people and you know there were a lot of things he didn't do and but it was not a bad premiership so Keir Starmer comes in And this is such a golden opportunity for Labour.

33:54Anthony Seldon: Labour hadn't been in power for 14 years. You'd had the worst period of one-party conservative government ascendancy since the party was created in the 1830s. I published an edited book in the series Effect. It was called The Conservative Effect. Unquestionably, it was the worst period of conservative rule. Now, that's good to bounce off. We know that you don't want to be Brown taking over after Blair. You don't want to be Major taking over after Thatcher. He was taking over with all the confidence you get of coming to power after a poor period of government overall. And with your own mandate and with people being so pleased it was the Tories there with all the economic incompetence and sleaze and lack of delivery.

34:48Anthony Seldon: and dishonesty and lack of trust. So golden opportunity and, you know, look, four years, four years to prepare for government. I mean, fantastic. And learning from Blair that, as Blair readily says, he didn't do enough between 1994 and 1997, between July 94 and May 97, when And he could have prepared with a far more systematic policy for government. So, you know, with that learning, he could have worked out. Now, what a clever, smart prime minister does is learn from history and learn that you've got an arc. You're going to have five years, four and a half, five years. What do you want people to be saying about you when you finish?

35:37Anthony Seldon: You are thinking as a historian and looking at the architecture, the arc of your premiership. What's the most that you can do? And how are you going to devise that program over the five years and over each year as you go forward? That will allow you to do that in every single way. What is the art of the possible? What's realistic? What's going to be left to a second term? Do not worry overly much about winning the general election. Win the general election because you have governed well rather than because you've be clever and whizzy with electoral specialists prating on about focus groups and whatever.

36:14Anthony Seldon: You want to have really smart, really smart people. And you want to have people who know how government works, right? So to have a fantastic cabinet secretary, fantastic private secretary, fantastic team in there who really know, really, really know how government works. Because otherwise, you know, you can have the best ideas, but they won't be translated into policy. But, But what does the guy do? I mean, he doesn't have a plan. He spent four years not thinking through logically. I mean, this is almost criminally guilty to the Labour Party, but to the country also. Criminally guilty not to have thought it through.

36:52Anthony Seldon: And to come into power without a principal private secretary in number 10. Now, these people are massively, massively important. Blair had incredible people as his principal private secretary. not to have your own cabinet secretary who would not only sort out Whitehall for you, but also sort out the civil service, which is aching, aching for reform so that you can bring back the best brains. I mean, a country that doesn't have a great public realm, public service is never going to flourish, never going to fly. I mean, look at Attlee, had a stunning civil service in his time. Wilson worried about it, which is why he set up the Fulton Commission to improve the civil service it really matters then you're going to want to have a stunning director of communications head of policy national security advisor you're going to want to have people who are simply the best in the land and the last thing you want to be is tribal you do not want to you want to bring like bled in the big people into the tent you're not going to want to alienate business you know you can do all the breakfast that you can possibly eat your way through your bacon butties, but actually, what does business want?

37:59Anthony Seldon: Because unless you're going to get business behind you and the smart entrepreneurs behind you and the creative best people in the country behind you with a big tent, if you're going to be narrowly tribal about it, you will alienate a lot of the best people. And let's get everyone working behind it because everyone knew after 14 years of tourism that everyone's going to be on the boat. Get behind Starmer, make it happen. might not be the best communicator, but he's an honest, decent, smart, methodical, thoughtful, hardworking, serious guy. And he's going to want to be the best in the country. Well, look, you know, none of that happened.

38:37Anthony Seldon: If you don't think it through in the way I've described, and look, I do think there should be a chief historian in Whitehall. I've been saying that for a long time. I'm trying to create the museum of the prime minister. 40 years ago, this month, Peter Hennessy and I set up the Institute for Contemporary British History to try and help people learn from the recent past so that they can have better informed decision making. This is not a party political point. This is for the sake of the country, particularly the least advantaged people in the country. So he didn't do that. And he appointed good people, but to the wrong jobs.

39:15Anthony Seldon: and he broke some people in doing that. And that's why now I think he has to have a major reset. And because otherwise, if there's going to be a change of leadership in the party, it will take six months to work that through and then six months while the new PM and the new team learn the ropes. And what on earth is the new policy going to be that will suddenly magically raise the country? It makes Britain a laughing stock abroad to, you know, who are you going to have in the Oval Office? Who's going to be fighting for Britain's economic security abroad? So I think he needs to stay now, but he needs to learn that he was the most historically illiterate, governmentally illiterate Labour Prime Minister in history.

40:12Anthony Seldon: even Ramsey McDonald did it a lot better

40:15Tom McTague: but if that is your analysis of him why on earth do you think he has to stay I mean that is a I say it's criminally underprepared if that is what you've done

40:26Anthony Seldon: he was criminally underprepared I mean who could have advised him I mean what was why did he not listen to people who would have advised him who knew how to do it it's not like taking over you know a new statesman or a football club or a company or a farm or a charity. This is the whole country. Your duty of service to the country to be the best and to learn from the best and not to be petty and tribal is overwhelming. It is disgraceful because everyone will suffer if you are not prepared to learn, to show some humility and talk to the right people. Why isn't the conclusion then that he has to go?

41:15Anthony Seldon: Tom, because, well, he might go. I mean, he might. But because I still hope that he can get better. And there are a number of things he could do, which would include splitting the treasury, setting up a growth ministry, and bringing the brightest and the best people in the country who's been one of the best people who's brought in Matt Clifford, bring in 100 Matt Cliffords and bring them into, I put Antonio Romeo, currently PermSec at the Home Office, brilliant person. She was appointed to the job of PermSec Treasury by Liz Truss, but then it all went wrong and the offer was rescinded. I would bring in personally David Miliband back to run that absolutely dynamic growth ministry, because without growth, there won't be the money.

42:11Anthony Seldon: There won't be the, you'll never get free from the markets, the tyranny of the markets hanging over you. You'll never have the money to spend on all the things that we need to spend, including getting Britain back on overseas aid, getting Britain's moral authority in the world, say nothing of all the other things that the money needs to go on. So I'd do a lot more than that, including sorting out the civil service by bringing in outsiders. But I would bring back, I mean, how ridiculous to have someone like Gordon Brown, who is the conscience of the Labour Party. I mean, he's an extraordinary figure, sitting there with lots of thoughts without being at the center of the pumping heart of the party.

42:55Anthony Seldon: I'd bring back Milburn to sort out welfare and health, by the way. and I'd use people who are wise, who know how to do things. Controversially, I didn't know when I suggested this. The other day, some people didn't like it at all, but I would bring back Blair as Foreign Secretary. Ridiculous, people would say, how on earth could you do that? Well, actually four times in the last 110 years, the Prime Minister has come back as Foreign Secretary. Why? Because the job of Foreign Secretary is different to any other job. You need to have that authority on the world stage. You know, it's about when leaders are together, it's about chemistry.

43:37Anthony Seldon: It's about stature.

43:38Tom McTague: Isn't this like Harold Wilson bringing back Earl Attlee to be his, you know, Home Secretary or Margaret Thatcher getting Harold Macmillan to come back as Chancellor? The problem with this, presumably, is A, that those figures that you're mentioning are of a greater stature than Keir Starmer. Secondly, though, the problem is not just one of personnel, but of program. It's an idea of why Britain is struggling, an analysis of the problem, and therefore solutions that come with that problem. Now, you say he was underprepared. Clearly, he was. I think those people around him, closest to him, would acknowledge that.

44:26Tom McTague: But to me, there lacks an obvious analysis. Now, a sort of Oakeshottian response to me would be something along the lines of, well, having an analysis is the fallacy of the progressives. You know, the conservative mind understands that you can't have grand plans, that all you can do as prime minister is to kind of keep the ship of state afloat. You just kind of dodge and weave, you keep it going, and that's your job and you hand it over to the next guy. And the problem of Liz Truss is that she, you know, the boat turned upside down. But from a progressive perspective, that's not enough. You have to have an analysis and you have to have a plan.

45:05Tom McTague: And presumably, historians largely agree, for good or bad, that Margaret Thatcher, as a post-war prime minister, was perhaps the most effective because she had a kind of analysis and she drove the ship of state in a particular direction, rightly or wrongly. Isn't that what we lack at the moment? A clear analysis.

45:30Anthony Seldon: Okay, Tom. Incredible points. I've tried my best to do justice to them. By the way, I think Clement Hadley was a more consequential, historically, prime minister than Thatcher and was there for just half the time and took over in a far more difficult situation. But they were both, I think, the standout prime ministers of post-war Britain in terms of their international impact, but also what they did domestically. uh satire didn't need to bring uh wilson didn't need to bring back at the apartment at the died uh in the middle of wilson's time and was clearly a much older uh person age doesn't matter but the vigor in the job uh does uh satire didn't need to bring back the millen because she had jeffrey howe and then nigel wilson also they disagreed and uh they disagreed uh yeah they all got stuff about selling off their family furniture.

46:35Anthony Seldon: But it's to achieve this progressive mission. He doesn't have people who are big enough around him. And if he was a big person, and I hope he is, he would, I think, do this. He would do it. To have somebody like Alan Milburn, to have somebody like David Miliband, to have someone like Gordon Brown, who know how to do things. I mean, Gordon Brown is a massive figure on the international stage. He has had perhaps the best post-premier career of any recent prime minister. Gordon Brown? I think Gordon Brown has an extraordinary post-premier in terms of the moral authority that he has in the world. David Miliband, with his extraordinary work, humanitarian work, they know and understand the world.

47:33Anthony Seldon: Alan Milburn, with all his experience inside government and experience since, could make the progressive dream happen. if Starmer does not do this and if he does survive and that's I agree Tom it's a significant if not least for the latest news Andy Burnham but if he does survive he will either go down as the person who brought vitality back to this country and who saw off the reform challenge and who got the economy going and who got a far better sense of fairness back into the country, or he'll go down as the Labour leader who let in reform, ironically, because he's been far too, or he's let himself be influenced by people who've been talking to him about electoral strategy rather than governmental strategy, which is what he should have done.

48:31Anthony Seldon: Do a fantastic job for the country, you'll be re-elected. Start thinking about electoral strategy from day one as you allowed it to pollute your four years in opposition. Same guy, by the way, responsible for it. And you will lose the election and you will let him reform.

48:51Tom McTague: Well, on that note, I think we should bring this episode to a close. I wish we could speak for hours, but thanks very much for coming in. It's a pleasure to talk to you. Tom, thanks for having me. You've been listening to The Exchange with me, Tom McTague, and Anthony Seldon. This episode was produced by Catherine Hughes. The Exchange will be back next week.

49:31Tom McTague: 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.