193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right?

28:18You've got to make the relationships work that need to work and that sometimes means you have to pull your punches or bite your lip but ultimately for example the the the white house position towards supporting ukraine in their defense against uh russia's brutal full-scale invasion is more important than our diplomatic and we're not calling that out well they're letting hang on a second what are you trying to so the question not us what are you trying to achieve are you trying to feel good are you trying to get stuff done because rowing with the white house either maybe embarrassing the white house is is would be deeply counterproductive because we know what the president is like we need to bring him to where we think the u.s should be rather than stand on the touch lines and shout and that's and that's difficult i agree it's difficult but with ukraine ukraine's a very good example to me ukraine is surviving against russia despite the united states which i think rory and i both feel now is on putin's side and the thing about calling it out i suspect that trump right now gives more respect to mark carney than most of the other leaders in the world because mark carney has called it out and he called out in davos and trump didn't like it is it changing is it changing the u.s position it may or it may not but the point is it's changing the canadian position is it changing the u.s position yes or no well because if it isn't that then what's the point The point is to have values.

29:49So, Alistair, when I was Foreign Secretary, there were a couple of things I really, really pushed hard on. One thing I absolutely hated was the habitual use of the phrase deeply concerned because it relegates us to observer status, which is passing comment on world affairs. And I said, we are not in the commentary box. We are on the pitch. We don't tell the world what we feel. We tell the world what we are doing. Now, you talk about we should call it out. We should call it out. Lovely. But the point I'm asking is, what is the best way of changing the US president's position in terms of support to Ukraine?

30:27That should be the starting point. That should be the first question ahead of every action. If it doesn't help us get the US administration into the place that we think is the right place, then we should probably not be doing that, even if it's a little bit uncomfortable. Where I completely agree with you, you have to try to do your best to make the relationship work at every level. And I think Keir Starmer has tried really hard to do that, the king's visit and all that stuff. But the minute he didn't jump when Trump said Iran, then we start to pay a price. But what if we just finish? Starmer does not understand how diplomacy works.

31:02Starmer thinks if you give stuff away, and he's done it with the Chinese with regard to the Chinese embassy, he's done it to the EU with regards to Erasmus, he's done it with the US with regard to the state visits. He gives things away in the hope that he's buying good work. It doesn't work like that. It's a negotiation. He's awful on the international stage. He's useless. And the US, so, and the fact, the fact that he didn't have any bargaining chips with the US because he gave them all the way up front is the reason why we weren't as influential with regard to Iran. Ditto with the EU. Let me, let me, let me, we're actually, I was getting to a point about Mark Carney.

31:35I think Mark Carney, well, I know Donald Trump has phoned Mark Carney more than Mark Carney's phone Donald Trump since Davos last year. I think that last night, we're meeting just after Zelensky came to London. Last night he met Keir, he met Mertz, he met Macron. I think that is leaders doing what you're suggesting. Don't just whack the other side, do something different, show that Europe can matter. My point though, you're in opposition now. My point is that values really, really matter. And unless people like you are prepared to say, that what they're doing is more than unprecedented. To any British person, I think what they're doing is unacceptable on so many levels.

32:19And I think you will actually find you get more respect both here and there, if you're prepared to call it animal. Well, I have always been clear about my values. I think Kemi's setting out the values of the Conservative Party. And we are defining our values through what we do and what we say rather than defining our values in opposition to to something else and that's and i think and and the reason i the reason i make that distinction is because i do i do think there is a real danger that you can be led around by the nose uh like a like a show bull in a in agricultural show by circumstances beyond your control and you're just constantly responding to other people's positions on stuff and and you're not ever really defining yourself and i think there's a there's a danger to that and i think this is this is one of the things that we got we see now with the labor party in government the labor party in the lead up to last general election defined itself exclusively about as not being the conservatives and that's fine until they became the government.

33:32They had no anchor. They've been blown around all over the place. So that's why you have the perverse circumstance of Labour backbenchers having the whip withdrawn for voting to increase benefits. And fast forward 12 months, and the Prime Minister and the Chancellor lauding the fact they've increased the benefits bill, which which they removed the whip from labour and peace so a complete u-turn on a point i made at the time absolutely but the point is because i can call them all out because the question i ask myself is how does nonsense like that happen and it happens because the labour party at the moment is completely unanchored because it defined itself as being not the tories rather than being the labour party and i think it's a a massive error to to repeat that mistake and that's why I think it's so important that we as a party, the Conservative Party, and Kemi personally as a leader, create a self-definition anchored in our values, not just as a response to someone else.

34:40Rory Stewart:James, we're talking at a time when, however you spin it, Labour and Tories are in a catastrophic situation historically. There's literally not been a time in the last 200 years where the two major parties have been so low on the pulse. I was talking to an MP from East Sussex who pointed out that they've gone from, I think, 23 councillors on the council, Tory councillors, to zero. That Hastings, which used to be, you know, when Amber Rudd was then was a Tory Labour marginal, it's now a reformed Green marginal. I mean, it's unbelievable. It's completely unbelievable. So I guess the question is, if you sort of step back from, you know, your role, which may be unfair, you're on the front bench, right?

35:22Rory Stewart:You're trying to boost your team. But I guess if you stood back and look at this, you're like, whoa, this is a big problem. I mean, you can stick to your values. You can talk about these things. But for whatever reason, I don't know. Is it Boris Johnson? Is it Liz Truss? Is it that the Tories were up for 13 years? Or is it the tone that people are taking? The polling is not that impressive. There's a huge gamble going on that if you just stick to your guns and remain anchored, somehow this is all going to turn around by the election. what's going on i mean what what happened in sussex why have we ended up situation we've got zero councillors and so i and we're not in play for what used to be tory labor marginals for for two passionate pro-europeans i worry about how little we look at european politics because we have now we are now experiencing a phenomenon which we've seen in continental european politics over the last decade it's been building over the last decade which is this real bifurcation of politics.

36:18You look at the last German elections and because De Linca and AFD kind of counterbalanced each other, you end up with a sensible centrist dad kind of coalition. But the vote split very hard to the hard left and to the hard right. And that's being replicated across Europe. You see the French presidential elections, the last set and the set that coming up same phenomenon so it's not unique to to british politics to saying oh was it liz was it boris well that wouldn't explain why it's happening in other european countries and again you see this in the states now they've because of the way their party branding works rather than their party system you know people think of or you know people describe president trump as you know a republican president but he he's from out with the tradition of the US Republican Party.

37:14So we're seeing this across mature democracies. So I don't think it's uniquely about us. That doesn't mean to say we can go, oh, it's not our fault, we could just move on. We do need to do something about this. But for me...

37:27Rory Stewart:And how does, can I just sort of, I mean, the analysis is very interesting, but how does it feel if you're like a councillor in East Sussex who's been used to running the council for decades and suddenly you have zero seats? I mean, what are your activists saying? What do the council say? It's brutal. Well, it's happened to us in Essex. Essex County Council, which was a conservative run for decades, we've completely lost control. It's a reform-run council. And for a lot of people, a lot of activists, a lot of councillors, it is a complete shock. It's an unprecedented shock. It's like nothing they've experienced before.

38:02Rory Stewart:And again, to explain to listeners, because not everyone's in the thing, these are often the people who you rely on to leaflet. These are the main activists. These the people that run the party machine so when they get unhappy this to be true for labor as well yeah absolutely this is so it's something it's something new so the question is how you respond to that it's interesting in again in your question for me the fundamental question is is is do you get elected to be elected or do you get elected to do things that you believe in there is a real temptation to just try and be where the electorate seems to be in the moment so you get chasing after the votes and perhaps i'm not saying it's inevitable but perhaps in order to do that you need to say and potentially do things that you you don't believe in that you're uncomfortable with that you think well for me i think the public do spot it if you're not being honest with yourselves but even if they don't even if they don't even if you con them for a little bit and you then get elected on what is a false prospectus and you kind of go well i've got myself elected thumbs up job done that's where things that's where things fall over we're seeing this now with reform where they have taken control of councils it's been an absolute car crash because nigel farage i think his big motivation is to be able to say to people you wrote me off and you were wrong that's all he wants and i have no doubt that if and i don't think it's going to happen but if he ever walked through the door of number 10 he would regard the job has as job done as he crossed the threshold rather than saying this is the start of the job and i think that'll be catastrophic this episode is brought to you by voxel electric cars have become part of life on the road and voxel is supporting the uk's transition to electrification well how are they doing that Well, to start, their Electric Streets of Britain initiative aims to support local authorities in accelerating the UK's on-street charging infrastructure.

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40:59Rory Stewart:This may be getting into internal Tory psychology. I was very fond of you, and you will remember I tried to persuade you to run with me in 2019. I read about that in your book. Absolutely. I think we could have gone into more detail. I think I could have had more pages. You could have had more pages. Well, if you joined me, we would have been prime minister together. We would have saved them from Liz Truss and Boris Johnson. But at the same time, the characters around that I remember were people like Robert Jenrick and Danny Kruger, giving me great lessons about loyalty. You know, Danny Kruger actually basically got me fired from the Tory party, giving me a lecture on how I mustn't in any way vote against the Tory party, challenge it, that he was Tory through and through.

41:45Rory Stewart:Jenrick sending me a little WhatsApp saying I'd gone too soft left and centrist dad and he was going to be a Tory regardless. now what is happening and what would what would how can i reconcile in my brain people like danny kruger and robert generick giving me quite kind of moralistic christian ideological messages about how they're totally loyal tori through and through and now there was reform what's going on so i was thinking about this actually and danny you mentioned danny kruger danny wrote something i can't remember exactly where it was and he wrote something which i thought was a throwaway line for a little bit of rhetorical flourish, which was about conservatives that done things wrong when they're in government can get absolution from Nigel Farage as long as they were willing to basically, you know, prostrate themselves.

42:34And I thought it was a funny line. And Danny can be, he can be very good with words. And I thought it was a bit of a funny line. I now watch Nadeem Sahawi lie knowingly on television. I watched Robert Jenrick lie on television. I watched people that I liked and respected just mutate live on air in order to try and win the approval. And I realize it's penance. I think it's a combination of burning bridges, consciously burning, or burning boats, better metaphor, burning boats. You can never go back. You need to denounce your former party and your former colleagues. So this is a one-way valve. I think part of it's that.

43:14But the other part of it is ritual humiliation as some kind of purity test of themselves and um well it's famous in

43:23Rory Stewart:every gangster movie isn't it you you have to actually to really show your loyalty like go shoot your old boss yeah yeah exactly exactly and this is what they're this is what they're doing and everyone can see that's what they're doing and ultimately and i don't know when i mean you you ask you know the question i was meant to answer and i kind of slightly avoided like how how do we deal with this don't do what you believe to be wrong starting point for a good life don't do something you fundamentally believe to be wrong even if that thing is superficially popular because people do see through it and if ultimately even if they don't even if ultimately and was it all political careers end in failure at some point in the future when i get rid of this beard i'm gonna have to look at myself in the shaving mirror and ask did i fundamentally do what i believed in or did I just do what I needed to do to get me elected?

44:12And if you can't say I did what I believe to be right, then frankly, what's the point? What's the point in getting involved in politics? The money ain't that great. You get slagged off on social media. And if you're really, really lucky, you get some very lucrative book deals like you and your bet noir Boris Johnson, but most of us don't. So you've got to do what you believe to be right. And I don't believe nadim believes what he says about kemi this is kemi like if you're going to pick a conservative what are the lies that you object to oh him claiming that she was all pro blm back in the day and she's contorted her position well i mean like talk about pick the wrong target kemi has been relentless in her opposition to identity politics about this division staff about critical race theory about black lives matter as a political movement and to try and suggest that she was playing footsie with black lives matter five six years ago when it was flavor of the day when they were you know nadim zahawi was at a blm conference and he was talking about

45:16Rory Stewart:diversity quotas and this kind of stuff but how did they make the judges just finish on robert jenrich right so when i first met him he was this sort of rather sort of seemed to be kind of nice young Cameroon yeah innocent Cameroon kind of left winger Ken Clark pro-EU because he voted he was pretty much left of me right he was more liberal than me right and well he was from the Ken Clark stable so he was from that traditional I mean and there's a long standing tradition now he's moved well right of me what's happened you need to ask him but I mean for me I think I think there's a lot of frustration there I think he he's been a good boy for his political career he's something in very long says he is a chippy person he came in in 2010 but but look if you if you think from his if you think from his point of view yeah he grew up in the ken clark stable and there's a long i love ken clark lots of things i disagree with him about but a titan of british politics so he kind of grew up in there very much in line with the david cameron modernization project very much in the slipstream of that agenda did it get him top tier status no it didn't as high as it ought to have got him well hang on oh well that i'm not sure he he would agree but it did and then very much then very much yeah very much in the theresa may stable and every much in the boris stable then he wrote that joint letter with olive dowd and rishi sunak saying boris is the future and so he's he's been the good soldier to every general place ahead of him and he just hasn't got where he thought he wanted to be he saw rishi becoming prime minister olive becoming deputy prime minister and him was like number two at the home office and that's the way he kind of peaked and and i think he's very angry that he has done what he believes is being kind of a good and loyal uh member of parliament is that the way to interpret going i don't know i don't know you have to ask it but so one of the point but no but one of the points is one of the points is i i i refuse to believe i'm sorry i refuse to believe that anyone honestly can go on that much of a political journey from right over there to right you can if you believe nothing well you might think that i couldn't i mean i was a um i was a speaking at a book festival in bretford in the midlands which is it's next to his constituency.

47:43So a lot of his constituents were there and somebody said to me, what did I make of Robert Jenrick's journey? And I said, well, I think it's fairly obvious he's an opportunistic slug. And the guy said, you're being deeply unfair to slugs. So, but, you know, let me just take a more significant one than that, though, because you're saying that the Conservative Party has to be anchored, Labour Party's not anchored, etc. I think one of the things that's unanchored both of the main parties is the failure to admit to the consequences of Brexit. Oh, I knew you were going to go there. Well, I've got to go there.

48:18I'll tell you why. So how does that explain all the European... No, we can come on to that. Similar themes. But no, my point is three people, essentially. The history books will put three people down as the big creators of Brexit. Cameron for doing the referendum, Johnson led the campaign, and Farage. And you could maybe add our press as well for 20 years of Euroscepticism. two of them have been prime minister most people in the country now would say that brexit has not worked out as they planned including people who voted for it and yet it is not impossible that we put the third of those into office into downing street i agree with you probably won't happen but he is leading the polls and it might happen and that says to me that neither of the main parties have wanted to confront the reality of the consequences of brexit would you not buy some of that at least because so by your own by your own so by by polling numbers the third of that troika it's not a troika because they weren't working together but but the third of those names is currently uh leading the polls and doing well in the election and your hypothesis is if we passionately denounced the delivery of a democratic mandate hard enough then somehow nigel frage i'm not saying that i'm not saying that so i'm not genuinely not sure what you are saying what i'm saying what i'm saying is that anything else that happened in our politics that took did so much damage to our economy and our standing in the world the author of us it would pay a big price cameron paid a price johnson paid a price for other things cameron the fact that farage never gets challenged on his role means he's just been able to move away because you guys and labor vacated i don't want to make this all about i don't want to make this all about brexit um well i know that's part of the problem no no but i just i just lay these down and we're not going to agree so we can dance around this maypole over and over again we're not going to agree but if your hypothesis was right how do we explain the fact that this bifurcation of politics this polarization of politics is happening across mature democracies including down in australia and european countries how do you um factor or how do you explain the fact that our economic performance has largely tracked identically to the other major european economies took a big dip during covid and a slow recovery out of code so the we're not going to we're definitely not the facts on that well no well hang on because it's not true the our economy is performing far worse because of brexit are you saying that as a statement but the fact even the figures Look at the GDP graphs of the UK, of France, of Germany, the big three European economies.

51:05None of them are doing well. None of them are doing well, but they all follow the same trajectory. And so if it was all about Brexit, and you're saying... Not all about Brexit. Or majority, or mainly about Brexit. No, I'm making a different point. I'm saying that the guy who was a big author of Brexit has paid no political price because you and Labour have made a judgment not to make him do so. And it's not about re-litigation, this. That's exactly what it's about. It's not. It's about character. It really is. And this goes back to the point about Trump. If you allow right-wing populist leaders who lie a lot, who change their story a lot.

51:43So left-wing lies are okay, but right-wing. No, because I don't think we do lie. I don't think. Of course you don't think you do. No, give me a mic. I tell you, mate, I don't know how long we've got before we have to pull stumps. We're here until you admit I'm right. Pull stumps. That's the rule of the podcast. I tell you something, because I've got to vote. I'm going to vote at 10 o 'clock, so I'm not sure we've got enough time to agree on this. Do you not accept, even partly that for Nigel Farage... The joke for the listeners

52:05Rory Stewart:is that it's about 11 o 'clock in the morning, he's talking about 10 o 'clock at night. Anyway, look, we're not going to agree on Brexit. I'm not going to re-illitigate Brexit. I'm simply, I'm not. I'm making a bigger, what i think is a bigger point that relates to this if you have a populist polarizing post-truth politician like farage unless that is called out all the time by the people trying to stop him you are playing his game because that worked so well for you guys previously i mean that that really worked during we didn't do it it really worked during the it really worked during the the referendum campaign look i'm going to disagree i'm going to disagree with you on the on the strategic on the on the strategic intent there because i don't i just don't i don't you are relitigating it you are uh you are refusing you are yeah but the the statistics this you can roll your eyes and sigh all you like but as i say we're seeing a similar polarization of politics in countries that did not do a brexit partly because the mainstream parties have made the same mistake they don't fight these guys hard enough we but that's not a break play their game no you're proving my point anyway can i come to back to you as foreign secretary right which was an amazing amazing role and and one that i think you enjoyed right i did i thought i was good at it and i enjoyed it and i was heartbroken when you when you got moved david cameron big footed you no why did you get moved out of foreign secretary that was weird wasn't it was rishi sunat wanted to bring in david cameron yeah there was a bit of that yeah but also i think rishi needed to move Suella and he needed someone that he felt could hit the ground running.

53:37Rory Stewart:And sorry, this is a sort of tiny thing, but I was also a bit kind of confused by David Lammy suddenly being replaced by Yvette Cooper when he seemed to develop a good relationship with J.D. Vance. He's not the prime minister. He didn't do the reshuffle, Rory. I didn't do the reshuffle, but I don't think David was doing a good job as foreign secretary. I think he was over-indexing for the US. I think he was overplaying his relationship with Vance, which has turned out not to be that useful they had a relationship but he's not really he's not really exercised much diplomatic leverage from that and i also have on pretty good authority because you never really you never really step out of foreign affairs that he wasn't he he wasn't spreading the love widely enough so so let me sort of develop imagine you're still foreign secretary Oh, lovely.

54:23Rory Stewart:Those bodyguards. As we enter particularly a world of AI, we become very, very conscious on the fact that we have critical dependencies on China, but we also have extraordinary critical dependencies on the US. Cloud computing, AI, defense equipment, the dollar, global payment systems. How would a country like Britain over 10 or 15 years think about not achieving total sovereignty, you can never achieve that, but a little bit more choice, a little bit more hedging, a little bit more independence so we're not in the position we felt we were in with Greenland, which is we are completely over a barrel.

55:00Well, look, so this all goes back to the fundamental, it's the economy stupid. Everything is dependent on a foundation stone of a healthy and vibrant economy. And our economy has grown too slowly. We are not the only ones, but our economy has grown too slowly. That has meant that there's less money to go around than some governments would like. And I think we have not applied the money we have had to the right priorities. I think our industrial base, I don't just mean heavy industry, but a lot of businesses, everything from the pottery to data centers requires a large amount of cheap and reliable energy.

55:47and we've drifted away from understanding that and that's put us in a difficult place. We became reliant back from the EU accession countries back when Tony Blair was Prime Minister, we became overly reliant on relatively high skilled but relatively low paid labour. So we didn't invest enough in the kind of technologies that would increase productivity. And we over relied on the post-Cold War peace dividend. And so there are lots of things there that we need to do to re-establish ourselves as a top-tier player. I think it can be done, but it's going to take some fundamental resets in things like our tax and regulatory system.

56:34We tax and regulate our businesses to such an extent. They can't grow. We punish growth when it happens. We're not investing in the right kind of defense we're not taking a lot of things as seriously as we should and i think these are recoverable because we've still we're the right time zone we've got a fantastic education system we've got some very very good technologists london is the world's third largest ai uh center but but we are going to have to do some big things differently if we are going to maintain that power and and really easy to about soft power people think diplomacy is soft power it's not it's hard power it's hard power with a smiley face and velvet gloves but it is predicated on your ability to do difficult and tough stuff if need be and if we are not willing or able to do that then we are we are not going to be able to have any kind of any kind of sovereignty but it really comes it comes down to strong economic decisions cheaper energy because that fuels everything.

57:38We became wealthy and powerful and influential in the age of steam because we had first mover advantage on an energy source. And if we want to stay top table, we've got to understand, particularly in the modern day and age, all comes down to energy policy. We're labour in completely the wrong place. Jon Sorrentino Johnson, Truss, Sunak, in a word. One word for each? Yeah, or have a phrase, or just give us a sense of your assessment of those three that you served under. So Rish, I think, could have been a great prime minister if the circumstances were different when he stepped in. I think we'd lost the 24 election.

58:17I think a lot of people around him got very, very panicky. We made bad decisions through the campaign, lead up to the campaign, which really, really didn't help. I think Liz became so driven by wanting to prove a point that she lost track of some of the fundamentals of politics. And what was the point? Well, the point she wanted to make is you've laughed at me my whole career, but look at now, I'm prime minister now, and I'm going to do the things that you told me were impossible. And she set about, and the thing with her, she did two things simultaneously, which were contradictory. one she advocated a big reduction of taxation in order to to get the economy rolling and then at the same time a massive incredibly expensive fiscal support package and you can't do both you can either you can either tax less and spend less or tax more and spend more what you can't do is tax less and spend and just before we get into johnson it's really interesting what you say though because part of my job in downing strips to try and keep ministers quotes on message so you're saying there what i imagined at the time was probably what you thought how hard is it when you're like one of the key communicators and you were actually having to go out and say this is all fine and she's got the plot and it's all making sense so the big advantage i had was it all moved so quickly i was never really asked to do that so day three in my job as foreign secretary her late majesty the queen died and we went straight into operation london bridge went straight from operation london bridge into the un general assembly went straight from the un general assembly to abe shinzo's funeral and i was flying back from the far east as the wheels were falling off the british economy so literally i was like wow i so how did it feel it it felt i mean i was stepping into one of the biggest jobs in british politics and it was like nothing I'd ever experienced before.

1:00:11All the certainties, all the handrails, all the foundation stones that I thought were solid were wobbling and it became clear. By the time I got back and for the first time just going into party conference, it was really the first time I caught my breath. So that beginning part of October going into Conservative Party Conference, been foreign secretary for a month, that whole month had just been turbulence total absolute head spinning turbulence and then we're at party conference and luckily i was able to stand up and just give a speech on foreign affairs i was foreign secretary and like shit keep my head below the parapet on that but just it was it was impossible to understand what was what was going on and johnson so boris boris could have been again you're not going to agree with this boris could have been an amazing uh prime minister two things let him down i think i think he had people around him who did not have his best interests at heart and thought they could use him as an avatar for their ambitions so people have been doing it cummings and others but mainly cummings people have been doing this throughout boris's uh career uh he got hit with the challenge of covid which was the which is exactly the wrong kind of emergency for boris in the way that ukraine was exactly the right kind of thing.

1:01:28COVID was actually the wrong kind of thing. There were no inherently right answers. It was all very difficult. It was very technical. It required him to do things which he instinctively didn't want to do, like all the lockdowns, really, really un-libertarian. He was quite a libertarian type person. All these things were at odds with his belief. And it just smashed him about and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, he's always had a degree, and we can discuss how much of a degree degree of personal ill discipline um we knew that when we as a party chose to make him uh prime minister in many ways they that was personal rather than professional but those things blurred and the wheels came all of which you can read in my wife's book that she's writing about her so susie's and the reason i'm reliving this so it's because susie's writing a at the moment about her time being treated for and recovering from cancer.

1:02:26And it basically starts 2022. So it goes from 2022 to the end of 2025. And so we're reliving this. And she's writing about what she was going through. She was saying, what were you doing at the time? I'm flicking back through my diary going, oh my god, I was doing this. And oh my god, I was doing that. So it's all painfully familiar.

1:02:46Rory Stewart:Well, I'm so sorry to hear about your wife and watching the world street. No, she's in a good place now. And we look forward to the book. Final one from me, AI. I mean, given that I think we both agree that this could probably transform everything very, very quickly, our economies, public services, defence, maybe three, five years, the world will be almost unrecognisable. Why are so few politicians campaigning on this issue and making it central? I mean, if I'm right, that in five years' time, the whole world's going to look completely different. We're going to look back at these political debates and go, what the hell were they talking about?

1:03:21Rory Stewart:They're still stuck in the 1980s. Yeah, I think it's because it's hard to understand. It's easy to understand a very, very, very superficial level. And if you want to just echo the same talking points as absolutely everybody else, then you can probably get away with it. You probably get away with it. But But because it is so transformational and it is moving so very, very quickly, it would be very, very easy to start putting policies in place which are obsolete long before they ever get through the parliamentary system. i did when i was foreign secretary i i have i chaired the first u.n security council debate on on the safety of ai from a geopolitical kind of you know weapons management financial sector management and we we had an expert a british expert and a chinese expert and they were absolutely fascinating and the stuff they were saying at the time i was like right scribbling this down i thought i'm going to become our in-house expert on ai and then something happened I can't remember what happened, you know, some conflict, and I looked away and spent some months thinking about something else.

1:04:32And by the time I looked back, I was completely gone. And everything that I thought I knew and thought I understood had largely become obsolete. And I think that's one of the challenges. I think that politics, global politics, is particularly ill-prepared to deal with both the opportunities and threats. because the advocates of AI, I think have probably got a bit of a blind spot to some of the risks. And the people who are fearful of AI have got a blind spot to the opportunities. And like everything boring, the truth will sit somewhere between the two. So you look at science fiction, you look at science fiction from the time we grew up, we're about the same kind of vintage.

1:05:18You look at science fiction from the time when we grew up and it was like household robots and flying cars and that kind of stuff no one had thought of the mobile phone and no one had thought that every single person in a you know developed country could have on-demand access to the entirety of human knowledge but mainly spends time looking at cat videos and pornography you know and we'll have the same we'll have the same with ai i think in some areas will be much much more transformational than we can get our heads around and in other ways you know you look at you know if we if we look back or if we had a time machine travel for 10 years there'll be lots of things which are very very very familiar that we thought would be transformed and no and and trying to guess which one it's going to be it's kind of almost impossible there are there are some things that we know we need to be very very careful of ai hallucination is a massive problem ai's ability to do the brute force attacks on on digital security systems or you know right viruses right penetration code is really really worrying ai's inability to recognize its own errors and to lie i mean ai lie there was a there was something um where uh some people were testing i can't remember which which one it was but they were testing it and not only did it lie or not only did it hallucinate when it got pulled up on it it lied about it and i got pulled up on that it lied again and the thing is of course ai is trying to replicate humans because we've told it to replicate humans and what it's doing is it's replicating our faults and frailties and then amplifying them so we need to you know just like a very very high speed vehicle there is a steering wheel but you get it wrong you know you're driving at five miles an hour and you take a wrong turn you bump into a tree like it's not nice but it's not fatal if you're in a formula one car fundamentally the same technology but just so much more power it's a massive problem this is what ai does all the things that we do well it could do very very well and very very quickly but we got to find a way of How do we harvest the positives and mitigate the negatives?

1:07:30Because what we're not going to do is we're not going to turn it off. That's not a credible option. We didn't really get to the bottom of the very first thing I asked you, which is why you're a Tory. So I want that nice. Because I'm not daft. Okay, okay. That's making a lot of assumptions in there. No, look, as I say. Let me give you three and then you can wrap them all in one. Okay, go on. Why you're a Tory? Yeah. Would you like to be mayor of London? and would you ever serve in a conservative party that did an electoral or coalition deal with Nigel Farage? So why I'm a conservative, I'm a pragmatist, as I say, I have family backgrounds in both public service and in commerce and I think I understand, and I'm not unique about this, I understand the interrelationship between the two.

1:08:14I don't put one on a pedestal above the other. Public service, whether in the health service or the military, is not some higher calling to the people that wake up early, risk their own capital, invest their own time, work hard in order to turn a profit and employ people. One's not better than the other. Very new Labour. It's a very... Well, you did your best when you copied us. So the bottom line is, the bottom line is that interrelationship. That interrelationship is really, really key. I think the Conservatives understand that more than other political parties. Point one. Point two. Do I want to be Mayor of London?

1:08:50It's a fascinating job. Obviously, I worked with Boris for eight years whilst he was mayor of London. You can get stuff done. I was born and brought up in London. My constituency is an hour's commute from Liverpool Street Station. When London does well, the country does well, and we can feel it in Braintree. And when London does badly, we can feel it in Braintree. And London is underperforming. And I know there's lots of misinformation and disinformation, but that is something that needs to be addressed. We are losing talent. We are losing overseas investment. Our reputation on the world stage is not as strong as it should be.

1:09:26And you can be as frustrated by this as you like. And I saw this as Foreign Secretary. The words UK, England, and London are often used as interchangeable terms on the world stage. So if we want the UK as a nation to be on fire, in a positive way i mean like firing on all cylinders london needs to work okay so you're running okay no it's not no look and i do this i do i do the terribly unfashionable thing as a as a politician which is say that of course i'm of course i have thought about it and of course i am thinking about it but i have not decided one way or the other because it's a it's a big step i love being the mp for braintree and and i'll be loath to step away from that and then the final point with Farage, I cannot see that circumstance coming to pass because he has made it absolutely clear he wants to destroy the Conservative Party.

1:10:17I said, I was speaking up in Stockton and Ponte's on Friday night, Saturday night, Friday night, and I made the point that if there was a dating app, if there was a political equivalent of a dating app, and the profile said, I want to destroy you, I'm not sure that I would want to match up on that particular dating app. And he keeps saying over and over again. He hates us. He wants to destroy us. He's got this real vendetta because he thinks the Conservative Party undervalued him and mocked him and etc. Some of which may be true. So I don't think that's credible. But the direct answer is no, I wouldn't, because either he would be the senior partner in a coalition and would be taking the country in a disastrous direction, or he would be the junior partner in a coalition, and I just don't think he would accept that.

1:11:09His ego wouldn't let him. And if he was the senior partner in the coalition, I think he would do the country an enormous amount of damage, because that's what we're seeing happen at local government level. Because it's all performative. It's all feels. It goes to that point I'm saying earlier about deeply concerned and why I hate it so viscerally as a phrase, because it's all about the vibe. It's all about the feels. It's all about, are you angry about something? I'm angry about something. Let's be angry together. Sort it out. Not interested in that, mate. I just want to stir the pot and shake things up.

1:11:39That is not what public service is about. That's not what politics is about. You go to a doctor because you want to be made better. You don't go to a doctor so the doctor can just empathize with your particular pain. And the same is true of politics. Empathy is really important. It's one of the preconditions for successful elections. But if that's all you've got. If that's all you've got, if all you are is an echo chamber of the angst of your nation, then you are not a big part, a big part of the nation. Maybe not the majority, but a big part. And listening to minority voices is really important, particularly minority voices you disagree with.

1:12:21And I do think, again, I think that's an error that has been made by a number of political parties. I would say this when I think Labour's worst offenders listening to minority voices that they agree with, but not minority voices they disagree with. So we have to understand why a lot of people feel really, really uncomfortable. But if all you do is echo that discomfort, you're not serving the country. And as I say, those of us go into politics. We don't do it for the kudos. We don't do it for the money. We do it because we want to make the country a better place. Give me your direct reaction to how he handled, how Faraj handled Henry Nova.

1:12:58Very, very badly. Very, very, very badly. The problem we now have got is there are some things that he was talking about which are important to discuss. Are public servants too scared of being accused of racism to do the right thing in some of those difficult judgment call situations? And I think there have been too many examples of where people, whether it's from the Manchester Arena bombings, whether it's from the Victoria Columbia,

1:13:32there have been too many where people have been scared off doing the right thing because they're worried about accusations of racism for us to just ignore that. But the tone he's taken has made it harder to have those conversations because a lot of people who value our actually pretty good track record of race relations and integration, they have been dissuaded from entering into that conversation because he has amplified the polarization of the debate. and to add anger into the mix we started off talking about um you know our time in in the military and yeah there are there are people who've been to far more dangerous places uh than i have whilst uh being in uniform or whatever but you're always taught to think calmly as an officer and that's not to be unemotional but it's it's about not letting your emotions get the better review and for someone a serious someone in a serious position a senior political figure to say the appropriate response is rage i don't think adds value and i know that people will say well vance said that as well lammy said that in the past and i am critical of everyone who says in a difficult situation the best thing you can do is to be emotional rather than thoughtful it's always, always, always the wrong response.

1:15:02Well, thank you. Thank you very much, James.

1:15:07So Rory, James Cleverley, did you have a vote in that leadership election when they'd not win or were you out of the party by then?

1:15:13Rory Stewart:I was out by then. But as you know, my cunning plan when I was running for leadership was I thought me and Cleverley together might've had a chance of beating Boris. It didn't work out. Listen, what did you make of Cleverley? I enjoyed the conversation. I'm glad he didn't seem to remember that. I once said he's the most misnamed politician since Andrew Adonis, which was one of my cruelest jibes against Mr. Cleverley. But I thought he was thoughtful. I sensed a little bit of tension within him. I think he still wants the Conservative Party to go in the direction that he set out when he was running for the leadership, which I guess is what I would define as maybe more on the centre than the centre-right, and certainly not down the kind of radical populist right.

1:15:56I like the fact that he had a good go at you when you were talking about Jenrick. He had a good go at me over Brexit. He sort of fights his corner. I thought he was refreshingly frank and honest about some of his colleagues. And I know I accept why you can't be when you were sort of bound by collective responsibility on the front bench. But I thought his assessments of his colleagues was pretty good. Yeah, so I hope our listeners, because we should explain to our listeners, we're always trying to get these politicians more on the right. but they seem either terrified or I don't know what it is, reformer, I think, of just taking the decision they're not going to entertain us at all.

1:16:31Kemi Baden-Ock has said she'll come on, which is good. But yeah, I enjoyed it.

1:16:35Rory Stewart:I enjoyed the conversation. So he is, I mean, as you probably, I'm sure you know, was a Brexit voting guy. Yeah. And he had been one of Boris Johnson's staff. So from my point of view, he was always well to my right. Yeah. But I think if you're going to have a version of the Conservative Party that is more right-wing. I'd much rather it was that, because he finds a way to do it. And I felt that was true when he was discussing the Henry Novak tragedy and discussing Trump. He's found a way to do it that is, he's not stirring things up. He's not kind of trying to outrage. He's a voice which is quite strong.

1:17:15Rory Stewart:I mean, as you say, he pushes back. He's quite confident about what he believes. He wouldn't agree with everything. But And I don't think he's like a post-truth polarizing guy. He's a reassuring conservative voice. And we could do with many more of those. I also think he's actually an unusually good communicator. I mean, you know, it's invidious for me to say, but I'm afraid many of the Labour front bench are not as easy communicating as he is. Yeah. I'd forgotten. You reminded me that when we were doing our tour, it was around the time the Troy Leadership Election was going on. And I think you're right.

1:17:48every single audience we did we asked the audience if you were choosing between Jenrick, Badenock, Cleverley and whoever else was in the frame I think it was those three by the time we're doing it and he was kind of landslide every time wasn't he which was interesting absolutely okay well there we are don't let anybody ever say we don't interview Tories on this podcast Roy that's why I said see you soon all right see you soon I said bye

1:18:18Thank you.