18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister

25:08And so he would start to sort of move slowly towards the door. And then, you know, David or I would go, Boris is leaving. And he would go, no, no, no, leader. I'm just going out to get a cup of coffee. You've got Tony nailed to the floor. Don't worry. You don't need me anymore. And then he would leave the scene of the crime. George, give us a sense. Am I right in saying you're somebody who actually really enjoyed politics? And if you got a sense amongst colleagues and people you worked with, what kind of personality takes to politics, if you were giving advice to a woman or a man going into politics, and what kind of people don't really take to politics?

25:48What is the political personality? Oh, gosh. I think politicians come in all shapes and sizes and temperaments. I also think I was very lucky. And I'm not sure I necessarily appreciated this at the time, but I do with hindsight. First of all, I was working with people I really liked who were friends of mine, and they're still friends of mine. And that has not been the case for many other people I know in politics who found, for example, the recent years in the Tory party very difficult. difficult. Although interestingly, a message I get from a lot of them right now, in fact, someone who's in the cabinet texted me yesterday saying, for the first time since 2016, I'm actually enjoying it and I'm working with people I like.

26:30So I was lucky to work with people I liked. And I was lucky essentially not to have to sort of live a lie. There was never a time, particularly in government and when I was shadow chancellor, that I was saying things I really didn't agree with. There were some policies I didn't particularly support. I wasn't a big fan of, for example, recognizing marriage in the tax system, but David Cameron wanted to do it. He was the leader. That's fine. He was the boss. So our individual policies, I wasn't hugely keen on, but I fundamentally believed in him and I believed in what we were doing. And so I didn't have that sort of awful period of having to sort of pretend, I guess with Keir Starmer had to do with Jeremy Corbyn or some people have had to do, you know, with Brexit, which is sort of pretend this is all going really well, or this is what they want to, you know.

27:16So those two things I think were very lucky. I think generally also, you know, I just, I think you have to have, you have to be able in politics to sort of step back a little and sort of observe yourself and recognize that there's an element of kind of ridiculousness to it and an element of theater and an element of nonsense, even if the issues you're dealing with are incredibly important. Is there a danger with that, that you end up with people like Boris Johnson running the show? Because that's all he thinks about. Well, I think he, you know, in fact, his skill, I mean, he has many things that aren't, you know, that he's not very good at.

27:50But I think he always was quite good at noticing how people saw him. I thought he was good at sort of stepping out of himself to a degree and having a wry smile on his face when people he knew didn't like him would come up and say, Boris, I think you're the best things that sliced bread and he would just, you know, like a kind of king in a court. He would know, he would spot the courtiers coming. Right then, we'll be back in a second. So let's just take a quick break.

28:20Just one thing you did disagree with David Cameron about, which is probably the most significant thing, was that you were always very strongly against the idea of having a referendum on Brexit in the first place. Is that, and when you look back at that, do you, how do you feel about that? Because you've already said you think Brexit's been a bit of a disaster for the country and it's probably going to get worse. Why did David Cameron feel he had to have that referendum? So I did disagree with David on that, but it was done very amicably. And his reasons, I think, were reasons that a Conservative Party leader would hold.

28:50And I was not the Conservative Party leader. And actually, unlike Gordon Brown, who I think underestimated the step up from Chancellor to Prime Minister, I never underestimated that the job of leading the party was a lot more difficult than being the Chancellor or the Shadow Chancellor. And, you know, it was clear to David that the Conservative Party, as he had to try and resolve this issue, and the Conservative Party is itself an expression of a lot of views in the country as well, which is why it's been politically successful. But the country wasn't clamoring for a referendum. Well, the country was not clamoring for a referendum, but it is true that European issues were intruding more and more into the sort of domestic political debate.

29:26Now, I didn't think they had to be put to the kind of, we didn't have to bet the farm on an in or out referendum. And I never, and I always thought, you know, people blame the European Union essentially for things that we ourselves couldn't get right as a country, which has proved to be the case now. Years after we've left the EU, we've got more red tape than we had when we were in the EU and higher taxes and more intervention in the economy than we have in the EU. And yet the EU used to be blamed for all those things. so it became a kind of bugbear and david's you know would say it was a way of trying to resolve obviously he hoped and uh to win the referendum and we all hope to win the referendum that this was a way of bringing the issue to head resolving it and therefore cementing britain's relationship as being in the eu but not in the euro uh you know comfortable with economic sovereignty being pulled not comfortable with other aspects of political sovereignty being pulled and and you He felt, and lots of other people I respect in the Conservative Party at the time, felt that it would be good to sort of essentially confront that issue with a referendum, as we had done in the Scottish independence referendum, which I think now with, again, both at the time and with hindsight, turns out to have been a really important moment because it kind of basically called the bluff on Scottish nationalism.

30:44And ever since then, although they've endlessly talked about it, and I'm not talking just about the recent implosion of the SNP, I'm talking about the kind of golden period of the Nicola Sturgeon leadership, you know, she was never able to get the Scottish public back into thinking that independence was a good idea. Yeah, it was a weird thing, that referendum, wasn't it? Because it worked out, but it was an enormous gamble. And in some ways, the Scottish independence referendum gave David Cameron the confidence to think that he could resolve other issues in the same way and use the same kinds of arguments.

31:15Although on the timing point, it is worth noting that we'd already committed to have the European referendum before the Scottish referendum had happened. The problem essentially with the Brexit referendum was what had become an important issue, but only to a relatively small group of the country, although quite a large number of conservatives, which was theoretical issues around parliamentary sovereignty, was very successfully by the Brexit campaign connected to the question of immigration and borders. And the question that we couldn't answer, just like in the Scottish independence referendum, the SNP could not answer the question, what is the currency you're going to use tomorrow if you're independent?

31:58We could not answer this question, which is how can you control your borders if you're in the EU? Because if you're in the EU, you have to let people in. Now, in fact, the answer is controlling your borders is a very complicated issue. being in the EU might actually help you because you can have a good relationship with France, for example, as we've discovered with the small boats issue. But, you know, that was the kind of killer. That connection was made between immigration and the much more sort of obscure issue, to my mind, of parliamentary sovereignty, which I think is a nonsense anyway, because we pull sovereignty by being a member of NATO, for example.

32:33I think we all violently agree on the arguments against leaving the European Union. But I'd love a pithy attempt by you to give us your view on what the consequences have been. How bad is it leaving the European Union for Britain? Well, I would start, let's start with the positives, which is Britain is an incredible country, one of the few really, you know, open economies with stable institutions and a decent rule of law. So, you know, Britain still - Which has been undermined in recent years. which has elements that have been undermined and need to be challenged. So outside the EU, Britain still can have a bright future.

33:10But I think it would have been brighter inside the EU. I think there is little doubt now that it has knocked our economic performance permanently. It's erected trade barriers with our nearest and biggest export markets. All this talk of free trade is a nonsense. We've undertaken the biggest act of protectionism in British history. and it has impacted Britain's standing in the world or rather the ability of the British administration of the time to leverage membership of the EU as one way of influencing global events. And increasingly in the world, it's going to be around who sets global standards on things like artificial intelligence that you were talking to Hillary Clinton about and who's going to do that.

33:50And it's not going to be the House of Commons. It's going to be the European Union. It's going to be the United States. It's going to be China. And we had a big front seat role in the EU. I saw it in terms of regulating financial markets, where a lot of the EU legislation was essentially drafted in the UK. And we don't have that anymore. So we're much more, I'm not saying we can't make our own way in the world and we can't make friends with allies like the Australians and so on. But we've lost one of our big forums where we could influence global events. But that's why it worries me that both you and Rory talk quite positively about Rishi Sunak.

34:28Rishi Sunak actually believed in this and believed this was going to be good for the UK. So I'd like to get your brief take on how you see Sunak's premiership. But also, let's just, can we also return to Boris Johnson? What does it say about the Conservative Party that he became your leader? How damaging was his leadership, both the Conservative Party and, more importantly, in my view, to the country? Well, Boris had his big impact before he ever became prime minister because his support for Brexit, which is a cause I don't think he actually really believed in. Which alone should disbar him from my office.

35:01But he was decisive. I think Boris Johnson's support for Brexit turned it from a kind of slightly dodgy, kind of right wing, Nigel Farage-ish issue to mainstream. And he was the most popular at the time mainstream politician in Britain, Boris Johnson. So he kind of legitimized the Brexit campaign and was decisive. And so therefore, long before he arrived in Downing Street, he'd already had his big impact on British politics. I think his premiership will largely be forgotten by history because he achieved very little in that premiership. I think, you know, the lesson, there's the extracts at the moment of the Anthony Seldon book on.

35:42Which I read on your recommendation. Yeah, which is, you know, it's pretty kind of shocking. Terrific, yeah. Because what it shows is, it's something that I was sort of, I guess, aware of when I was Chancellor. But right at the top of the British state, all power flows to the Prime Minister. You know, the Prime Minister can fire the Cabinet Secretary, the Prime Minister can fire the head of MI6, the head of the Foreign Office, the Prime Minister. You know, there was a Prime Minister once who told the King they had to quit. So, you know, there is no actual check on a Prime Minister who doesn't obey the rules.

36:13And there's nothing you can really do about a prime minister who doesn't read anything, doesn't do the work. All the prime ministers in my lifetime, Labour and Conservative, have sort of worked all hours. Some not really managing the workload particularly effectively, but nevertheless sort of tried. And Boris, you know, just sort of breezed through the job. And I couldn't help but smile when I saw that the way to get him kind of animated, his advisors would say, like, you know, come on, Boris, David Cameron and George Orson will be laughing at you if you don't do this. Well, unfortunately, it wasn't a very funny period, but we're certainly laughing now.

36:51So obviously, I feel massive personal loss and bitterness about this, still trying to deal with why I wasn't able to beat Boris Johnson. I've basically become Rory's therapist, George. We talk these issues through. And I guess the question is, why was it not possible to beat him in 2019, given that all this was patently obvious. There was enough evidence mounting over 20 years that he was an incompetent buffoon, that he was a terrible human being, that he'd be a terrible prime minister, that he was telling lies about Brexit, that his plan didn't make sense. He didn't even understand his own Brexit deal.

37:23And yet it didn't matter how many times you tried to explain this to people, people were still going to vote for Boris. What do you do in that situation? I always thought, you know, if it came to a leadership contest where I was contesting to be the leader of the party, I would be up against Boris Johnson. And I didn't, I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to beat him. And that's because there are aspects, and I've known Boris for a long time, there are aspects of Boris that are really positive. He is very good company. His optimism is infectious. I think the sort of pre-Brexit Boris had a kind of generosity of spirit about people.

37:59Sometimes politicians can be quite mean spirited. Boris, there's a generosity about him, which I think people like. And in a kind of, you know, he sort of blows his nose at the kind of, you know, the sort of pomposity of public life that you sometimes get. So there's lots of things, you know, and as London Mayor, I liked all that. But that was partly because he didn't have much responsibility for real things. And, you know, unfortunately, as Prime Minister, he demonstrated that you needed other things to be a Prime Minister. You need to take the job seriously, you know. Do you think he's basically the same person as he always was, or has he changed?

38:39Well, I think like one of those sort of Greek tragedies that he would know more about than me, the sort of pursuit of the prize ultimately kind of corrupted him and led him to support causes that I don't think intrinsically... I remember the Boris Johnson TV programme where he was extolling the virtues of the European Union and saying that Turkey should be a member of it, which I happen to agree with. But why could the public not see it, George? Why could the public not see his flaws more clearly? I mean, you've described an amiable personality, but it should have been apparent to everyone that he couldn't run the country.

39:15Well, first of all, there was a kind of collusion of all the sort of, you know, because he really was quite, he's a loner and he was quite a loner inside the Tory parliamentary party. And most MPs did not, you know, would not have wanted him as leader 10 years earlier. But by the time you get to 2019, you've had the paralysis of the Theresa May period with her unable to do anything. He offers a kind of solution to that. He's also ruthless. Remember, he fires a load of Tory MPs, including Ken Clark and Philip Hammond and, you know, Rory Stewart. Right. I mean, he's absolutely ruthless when it comes to the pursuit of the prize.

39:51And let's, you know, let's not let Alistair off the hook here. Two general elections, the Labour Party offered up Jeremy Corbyn, a complete disgrace of a candidate to be the prime minister. So you would have to be completely mad to want Jeremy Corbyn instead of Boris Johnson for all of Boris Johnson's faults. So, you know, frankly, in 2019, I think a lot of people didn't know how to vote because they, you know, if you look at my parents, I remember them asking me saying, like, we don't like Boris Johnson, but we can't have Jeremy Corbyn. Who the hell are we going to vote for? What did they vote?

40:26I don't know. I think they must have voted conservative. And they're not actually natural conservative voters. Hold on a minute. Your parents weren't what I would define as rank Tories. No, my parents were, they weren't particularly party political. I never met an MP when I was growing up, except when they would come and speak at my school. They, you know, they're back, my father's interior designer, set up his own business. And my mother worked for Amnesty International, and then she ran her own shop. And my mother voted Labour, my father voted Liberal. I think they both would have backed Tony Blair had I not by then sort of screwed the system by becoming a, working for the Tory party.

41:04So they were - So why did you become a Tory? Do you know, I always thought that the Labour party was more tribal, that it was sort of hard - Can't imagine what gives you that impression. I think the thing about the Tory party is it can be anything, you know, as you've seen over the last 13 years. It's a sort of, and I'm, you know, broadly in favour of the sort of principles. And that, you know, and I think you get to, and so for me, although it's true that Rishi Sunak supported Brexit it and it's never really explained why he did but well he's a sort of he's an arch free market i think he bought into this argument that you know you heard amongst certain sort of hedge fund types and whatever that you know is great the moment we're going to be like singapore the moment we leave um you know the singapore can fit inside the m25 and it would be you know it's much it's a very different country but the rishi sunak premiership is to me a massive breath of fresh We have a sensible, serious person with integrity.

41:59He runs things properly. He does the work. And he's making a series of meaningful strides forward for the government. And for the first time in years, you feel, I feel just as a British citizen, like the grown-ups are back in charge. I think that's the Tory line to take. I actually think it's only by comparison with what's gone before. And we haven't really covered this trust. Let me mention one other, Prime Minister, where I think you two will hopefully disagree agreeably, possibly even disagreeably. Because I think it's fair to say Rory rather loves Theresa May. And I think your views... Well, she put him in the cabinet.

42:31Yeah, well, he's not only driven by his personal ambitions, partly, possibly. But your view of Theresa May, I think it's fair to say, is rather different. You know, I actually had a lot of respect for Theresa May when she was Home Secretary and I was Chancellor. We worked well together. You know, I thought she was unnecessarily callous, not particularly towards me, although... What was it she said to you? Go away and learn about the Conservative Party? It's not the best way to fire someone. You just, you know, you can be nice to people when you fire them. But then she fired a whole load of other people.

42:57I mean, this is a bit inside baseball, as it's in America, but it takes a particular kind of political genius to make Oliver Letwin your nemesis. Oliver Letwin is one of the nicest people who wants to generally help in life. Another bloody atonement. He wants to help in life and was an enormous help to the Cameron government and the coalition. You know, eventually, Theresa May fires Oliver Letwin for no good reason at all, other than come some kind of spite. And ultimately, it's the Oliver Letwin kind of amendments in Parliament that completely screw her government. And, you know, it's just how she couldn't see that her allies were people like me, who I voted for in the leadership campaign, Oliver, that, you know, she was the inheritor of the Cameroon legacy, if you like.

43:43That's why she became the prime minister, not, remember, it looked like the opponent at the time would be Boris Johnson and then was Andrew Leadsom. And she couldn't see that the coming at her was always going to be the hard Brexiteers, that that was where the challenge was coming from. And so she basically torched her own allies. And as a result, when the Boris Johnson challenge came, she had no one there. She actually had Oliver Letwin against her rather than for her. It's interesting, isn't it? But I think somewhere in her time with you guys in government, perhaps even before, she seems to have become very, very wary about the Cameron Project.

44:25Not the policies. I think she broadly shared many of your policies, but she didn't like the manner of it. I think she felt that it was too chummy. There was a lack of seriousness. It was too slick. Was good at winning, maybe. That element to it. I guess, I mean, I don't want to sort of ventriloquize on behalf of her because we should get her on. But I think she, and this was certainly something that was very appealing on doorsteps in Cumbria. I remember people feeling a deep, deep sense of affection towards that by-election beginning of 2017. People suddenly feeling happy to campaign for Theresa May, that she spoke to people as being a dignified, serious individual.

45:09People were more comfortable doing that than I'd seen them be campaigning for David Cameron in 2010 or 2015. Well, I don't disagree that she started with a great hand and she just misplayed it. She lost the Cameron majority. And as I observed at the time, it was clear the moment the 2017 result was that she could not survive. She was done. And yet, the Tory party continued with this myth. I was criticized at the time for saying she was a dead woman walking, but that was absolutely obvious. You also talked about putting her body in a fridge. That was a bit over the top. No, that was. I actually apologized to her for that.

45:48And that was said in a, well, I thought was a private editorial meeting at the Evening Standard. Life is on the record, George. Even if you're editing a newspaper, life is on the record. Much as I actually, editing the Evening Standard was one of the most enjoyable things I did. What about one other prime minister that will also be written out of history? Liz Truss in a word. Well, do you know, I quite admired Liz as a junior MP, a new MP and as junior minister. You put her in the cabinet, didn't you? Yeah, I think she, well, David Cameron did, but I certainly supported it. And, you know, I like the fact that she, you know, was full of ideas.

46:27She didn't just kind of go with the brief that was handed to her. She was, you know, that's a lot about her. And so it's not to me sort of surprising she ended up as Prime Minister. But she then makes like two basic errors. She, first of all, doesn't include any of the people she's defeated in her team, which is like politics 101, you know. And then second, she, you know, obviously there's that catastrophic budget where, I mean, without reopening the austerity debate, she suddenly thinks the country can borrow a load of money it doesn't have. So what I really worry about actually during that period, it was a very short period of British politics, but there was a determined attempt to undermine the independence of the Bank of England and essentially close down the OBR, which I created.

47:09And, you know, I think one lesson from that, and indeed from the sort of Johnson period, where some of the rules at the very top of the game is, these institutions need to be strengthened. And it would be a great Rishi Sunak agenda to put the ministerial code on a statutory footing. and the OBR should be made like the Bank of England. I hope the Labour opposition picked this up as an idea. You know, let's make it properly independent, give it its own independent budget, give it the power to request information from the Treasury. And then, you know, you've sort of protected the institution against someone else who wants to come along and vandalize it.

47:44It was a very poor period of British politics that autumn of last year. I think the most depressing moment was when Boris Johnson got on the plane from the Caribbean. I thought my country really is sunk. And then amazingly, we like throughout our history, we somehow managed to find the exit door from the mess. We may disagree about Rishi Sunak, but, you know, I'm sure you would agree that like Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer, essentially at the end of the British electorate at the next election is going to be presented with a decent choice of two decent people who can do the job. We don't have enough time to get into this.

48:18I think the Liz Truss and her mistakes as prime minister and her particular ideological blind spots were very, very visible in her as a junior minister and as a secretary of state. And I think there's something interesting about how you made that decision, put her in there. But let me get, as we come to the end, my last question and then back to Alistair. What does Labour need to do to win the election? Why is it that you think they're not a shoo-in? And what is it they would need to do to actually have a chance of winning this? So I think they've missed a big opportunity in the last six months to seal the deal.

48:49Again, to use a sporting analogy to make it absolutely clear they're going to win the game. Tony Blair, by this point, had done that. There was nothing the John Major government could do 18 months out. Because Tony Blair had not only defined himself against the past in the way that Keir Starmer has effectively done, he had not only presented himself, and to be fair, Gordon Brown had also, as people who could be prime minister and chancellor. And I think Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves had done that. But, and this is the missing ingredient, they had also made an argument, a positive argument about the change they were going to bring to the country.

49:23You knew what they were going to do to education and health. And they dressed it up in a theory about how Britain had gone from being a producer society to consumer society to a sort of post-Thatcher era that they were going to stick with Tory economic competence, but they were going to deliver social justice. Spending limits, not competent. We didn't define it as competence. Well, I think it was accepting the Thatcher economic settlement. Except for some of the parameters. I would say it was accepting the Thatcher economic settlement. Now, Keir Starmer has not, to my mind, said anything really interesting about how you change the country.

49:56And whilst you had Boris Johnson or indeed Liz Truss, being the kind of grown up who could do the job was a pretty compelling offer from Keir. But it's not enough. And I don't hear, if you ask me and I ask you two, what's Labour's economic policy? in a sentence? What's Labour's health policy? What's Labour's education policy? In fact, with the exception, possibly, of law and order, where they have made some inroads under Yvette Cooper, nowhere else do I hear anything that's exciting, that ties in with the big kind of changes in our society that are happening around things like technology. It's just not creating that kind of sense of a zeitgeist.

50:34And my favourite kind of quote in politics is a Jim Callaghan quote, which Tony Blair would often refer to, which was in 1979, he felt that there was a sea change in ideas and that Labour was therefore going to lose to Margaret Thatcher. And I don't feel a kind of sea change in ideas that Labour's riding the crest of a sort of intellectual wave and a new wave. The answer to his question is they've got to fill that gap. They've got to fill that gap. Have they got time? Yes, they've got time, but it's rapidly running out. I mean, we are now 18 months from a general election. And this is the work you should have been doing now and over the previous year.

51:12And the last, you know, the Tory party gifted Labour a period of, you know, political incompetence over the last 12 months, a window in which they could seal the deal with the electorate. And that window is closed because Rishi Sunak is a competent prime minister and doing effective things. And I think, you know, the kind of, it's, look, some things are moving in Labour's favour, like the implosion of the SNP, you know, is not to be neglected as a big plus for Labour. But generally, if you'd said to me six months ago, can the Tories win? I'd say I can't see a route to victory. And now I can see a route to victory for the Tories.

51:51And if Rishi Sunak can get to the autumn with the polls closing a bit, big if, but if he can, all hell will be unleashed for Labour because people will say, you've not done enough, Keir Starmer. The critics in the Labour Party will start to emerge and he'll be on a sort of downward spiral. And Rishi Sunak will be on an upward spiral, which you're already seeing, for example, the Tory party uniting behind him now, of like, hmm, this guy might actually win. And the British public, British media love the underdog story. The guy's coming from behind, 20 points behind the polls, written off the Sunak premiership.

52:25Sunak pulls it off. It's actually a better story than Starmer gets his coronation. Flip it around. How do you think, if you were still at the top level of the Conservative Party, how does the Conservative Party fight in the next election other than as a negative campaign against Labour? Well, I think they have to move, and I think this is instinctively what they want to do, towards the centre, because they've also got a threat from the Liberal Democrats. And they've got to hold on to essentially middle class Britain. And yes, I know there's a lot of focus on those Red Bull seats, which, you know, to be fair, Boris Johnson won and David Cameron didn't.

53:01But there are a lot of middle class, you know, prosperous seats in the south, city suburbs in the north that, you know, need to be held by the Tories. and they need to have a more compelling mainstream offer, which is what I think Sunak is developing. You know, things like his business event this week, you know, he's back, instead of telling businesses to F off, as his predecessor did, he's trying to woo them. Big offers on, beginning to have an offer on education, I think, you know, trying to solve the problems in the health service. He's moving into the sort of mainstream space. Feels very, let's try and fix the mess that we've created over the last 13 years.

53:39Yeah, but, you know, one of the, I wouldn't say over the last 13 years, I'd say over the last, not falling for that, the last six or seven years. I think these are problems that many advanced democracies face. They're not unique to Britain. But if you had to put your life on it now, who's the prime minister in two years' time? Well, I think the most likely outcome is Keir Starmer's prime minister, but it's all too playful. One thing we haven't talked about, I do want to just maybe finally ask you whether you think you got things right on China. I see James Cleverley, the Foreign Secretary, is making a speech about China today, where I think he's sort of trying to say similar to you, we've got to call it out when they're bad, but we've got to be very, very careful because they're so powerful.

54:21Do you feel you got too kind of China-centric? No, I mean, I think I was in the tradition of kind of Henry Kissinger and a whole series of US and British administrations since then that said, we've got to work with China. China is the longest continuous existing civilization on Earth. It's a fifth of the world's population. It's the second largest economy on the planet. It can't be kind of contained and isolated in the way you could attempt to do with the Soviet Union during the Cold War or indeed Russia now. And so you have to find a way to work with it. By the way, there are issues like climate change, which are simply insoluble unless we work with China.

54:59Now, that does not mean you have to accept that their regime is one you like or that their suppression in Xinjiang or Hong Kong or their threats towards Taiwan are acceptable. But you have to find a means of working with them because they're a very important big player in the world and they represent a large number of people. And finding that kind of modus or brander, I actually think it's a bit unfashionable because everyone thinks the kind of tensions with China are arising. I actually think tensions with China are somewhat diminishing. And the US has found a way to start engaging again with China.

55:38Xi and Biden meet. Macron does his visit. Even things which are provocative, like the Chinese balloon over the United States, did not lead to a big international crisis. It was handled by the big powers. And all that speaks to me is that they're finding a way to try and make what is the biggest geopolitical challenge of our lifetime, which is how do you manage the re-rise of China? I think they are finding a route through. Yeah. It's very interesting. This is another whole podcast, and maybe we can get you back at some point. But I think the challenge to come back on that is to say that the one thing that the two parties have in common in the US is increasing conviction that they need to be more confrontational with China.

56:25I think it's very plausible that Xi Jinping will feel that his legacy is bound up with incorporating Taiwan within China and that he will try that before he finishes and that he may want to try it sooner rather than later before the US has fully disentangled itself in the Chinese economy. but I feel we may not have time for a full China day we should get you back and do a whole one on China and I'd also like at some point to do a whole episode on the Bullingdon Club and what that was like for both of us you would have loved it Alistair you would have loved it you would have been the drunkest person there you would have smashed up more plates than anyone else George thank you for coming on and on that unfortunate note to the Bullingdon Club we'll bring it to a close thanks for having me on thank you

57:13so alice what do you think of that well i enjoyed it i know that a lot of my friends are going to say you should have given him a much harder time on austerity but he's so sort of set in his tram lines about how he explains that and i actually thought it was more interesting when we got on to some of the other stuff i was fascinated by the fact that i've always assumed he came from a kind of rank tory family and he tells us his mom was labor and his dad was a lib dem what went wrong it's interesting isn't it i i wonder whether we shouldn't also have maybe asked him a little bit more about his childhood and development.

57:41I know we tend to do it because we tend to assume that that's a more interesting question with people from more diverse backgrounds. But I do think the general question of how people become politicians, what it is that makes them politicians is interesting. I also think that whatever you think of him, he is very, very articulate and effective. I mean, he's quite pugnacious. I mean, you get a sense that he's going to defend his line. Partly as well, I think, because you and I have argued about austerity so much. The book I mentioned recently by this guy, Russell Jones, it really does take the austerity thing.

58:12I'm going to send you a copy because he absolutely takes it to bits from the economic perspective. It was all about the politics. And I do think that, look, Osborne is political to his fingertips. I think way more than Cameron was. I think he was the politics in the whole thing. And also the thing about being pugnacious, I mean, look, Gordon Brown is a formidable intellect, political force. And I think for Osborne in his early to mid-30s to have stood there week after week up against Gordon Brown and landing a few blows from time to time. But I do think that ultimately part of the mess that we're in as a country does stem from austerity, their failure to secure the recovery, and Brexit.

58:56And to be fair on Brexit, I've always known that because I knew it at the time. He tried very, very, very hard, I think, to persuade Cameron not to go for the referendum, and he failed. Yeah, he was very clear-sighted about that, much more so than almost anybody who was in the Conservative Party at the time, except maybe people like Ken Clarke. Very clear that he thought it was the wrong thing to do and a big mistake and pushed very hard on that. I also think that he's a reminder of the talent that was there in that David Cameron administration. Again, many, many different views on what it all added up to.

59:29But there was some very, very bright, effective communicators in that generation that came in in 2010. then. And in a way, you know, particularly during the Boris Johnson period, it was easy to feel a little bit nostalgic. And he's gone on to, which is unusual again in politicians, to be quite successful in a number of different areas. I mean, he edited a newspaper, it's unusual. He's now chair of the British Museum. He's having quite a successful career, not as a banker, not as an advisor, but actually putting the deals together, which again is unusual. So he's clearly somebody with a lot of capacity.

1:00:04We should have pushed him more on whether he regrets leaving politics. I think he loves politics. And I think he, probably all these things he's done since, although he puts a good face on them. And I sometimes think this with David Miliband too, that these are people who really would have really liked to stay in politics. I also think there's something interesting and obviously I'm having all the scars of the Tony Blair, Gordon Brown relationship. And the other interesting thing in the Russell Jones book is the story of course of the Thatcher Lawson relationship and Major Lamont, these relationships between prime ministers and chancellors, even when they start very well, often break down, is with Cameron, seems to me never did.

1:00:41That's as much about Osborne, because what that basically says is a deeper level. David Miliband said the thing about me that I was utterly committed, but I also knew my place, as it were. And I think with Osborne, I think there is a part of Osborne that knows that actually deep down, he probably would never have been a prime minister. um but he and he was so he was a very very effective foil to cameron i think as a relationship it seems to me that they they were kind of equals in in many many ways but he accepted and knew that that cameron just had the better kind of i don't know what human skills empathetic skills call them what you want when did you first meet him by the way rory well i i met him just before just before I came into parliament, I was doing an event on Afghanistan debating the British ambassador at the Hay Festival 2008.

1:01:30But Oswald played a very important part of my political career because I rebelled against the government, against the three-line whip, because David Cameron was proposing to abolish the House of Lords to please the Lib Dems in order to get a gerrymandering of the electoral boundaries to guarantee a conservative majority in the next election. I was completely horrified because I thought these kind of constitutional changes should be done in a proper, thoughtful, serious way. I couldn't believe it was being taken through in the way you'd vote on the PASTI tax. And I told – I was a backbencher. And I told David Cameron in advance and told the chief whip, and I was discreet about it.

1:02:06I didn't go to newspapers, but I wasn't going to vote for this thing. Anyway, 10 minutes before the vote was due to happen, George Osborne comes up to me outside the voting lobby. and he says, I am going to promote you to be a minister in 11 days time. And if you walk through that door, I'm not going to promote you for the rest of the parliament. And I had to look at this guy who I liked in many ways, and I admired in many ways, and deal with the question of whether I was going to walk through that door or whether I was going to be bullied into staying in order to be a minister. Let's guess what you did.

1:02:40No, I walked through the door because I didn't have much choice because and i think actually it was a misjudgment on his part because i think almost anybody who you try to bully in that way 10 minutes before a vote is going to walk through the door but he was true to his word he would then remind me about it through my first five years that he left me as a backbencher he kept saying remember rory you could have been a minister you could have been a minister i warned you and boris johnson used to enjoy this i remember when staying with george osborne in chievening it's his sort of country house that he got as chancellor boris saying to george osborne why did you not make rory a minister and george smirked and went And Rory knows exactly why I didn't make him a minister.

1:03:14So it was amazing. I kind of wasted five years of my life. And someone at the heart of it is George Osborne. I saw the story about Ian Duncan Smith preparing for PMQs with Tony Blair, being briefed by Cameron Osborne Johnson and Paul Goodman, and Johnson trying to sort of sneak away the whole time. I mean, what a lineup that is. Oh, my God. i mean i suspect at least three of those four were sitting there thinking i think i could do better job than you ian but i think good also that for balance that we have done someone from the right i know many of our listeners tend to be more on the center left but i think it's good to get variety of voices even if it's challenging for listeners can you kind of get king charles i mean for heaven's sake you know i put in all my mates george osborne is obviously a closer mate of mine than he is of yours that is one of the few things like george osborne george at one point in his life was utterly obsessed with me as indeed he said um but no i think you i think if i can pull in the likes of hillary clinton and tony blair and bernie sanders and all these other people surely for heaven's sake you can get the king it's a good challenge isn't it it's a good challenge good challenge we'll beat it all right so long bye-bye see you soon bye

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