39. Theresa May: Donald Trump, David Cameron, and ‘Brexit means Brexit’ (Part 2)

24:50I didn't see much long-term strategy in Tony Blair. Just take Northern Ireland. Take that alone. That was a long-term strategy. Take education reform. Which I might say, the work on Northern Ireland was started by John Major. I agree and I acknowledge that. And you're being tribal too. I'm not. I'm just saying, I think your party has paid a large price. I'm not moving on because I've got one. I've got one. Can I just get an example of a politician maybe outside the UK? Well, I think, no, but I don't think it's an either or, Rory. I think you can be a serious politician and still make sure that you're getting the media headlines.

25:28Partly that's if you're the serious politician, it's about who you have around you, who can help you to generate that sort of sense of the media headline. And who did you see either in British or international politics who you thought almost got that balance right? Oh, goodness me. Angela Merkel, for example? Angela Merkel didn't really care about the media. Or Macron, do you think they were? Yes, Macron, who was serious but had a good Jacinda Ardern. Right. Okay. I wasn't going to raise this, Teresa. I wasn't going to raise it until you two launched this full frontal assault on the most successful government of modern times.

26:06There is no money left. Remember that. The most successful government you say, but there is no money left. Twice you mentioned it was a terrible mistake that when a guy is trying to be friendly to an incoming chief secretary and he's paid a very heavy price, When you said that when you talk about the Human Rights Act and you said that somebody had been given leave to stay because they had a cat, that was not true. No, initially it was true in the first case. It was true. It was. There was a court case written. No, it was not. It was not. The court, a case went to court and somebody was allowed to stay because of the cat.

26:41No. Somebody was allowed to stay who had a cat. Okay. I'm going to. I'm going to intervene here. So let's take us back to you're sitting there as a senior shadow minister, you're a cabinet minister, and we're looking at what you're learning about politics during that very, very long period. I guess 20 year period where you're watching senior politicians. We've talked a little bit about the negatives. The big negative you brought up is this sense of press release masquerading as policy. What are the sort of positive skills that you began to learn about politics. You were teaching politics to a young person.

27:16What would you say that period taught you about what made a good or a bad politician before you became Prime Minister? Well, I think what makes a good politician, first of all, is you've got to have a set of values that you yourself are operating to. I think you mustn't allow yourself just to be blown by the wind according to what appears to be the issue that people are most concerned about. Sometimes it's right. Sometimes something comes up that you do have to address, but you've got to be able to know what your aims are. And did it take you some time to get there? I mean, was there a sense that you got more confident with that as time went on?

27:47I think more confident, probably, yes, yes, as time went on. And more confident at saying, no, I won't stand for this. This is what I want to do. I think so, yes. And I think the other thing I would say to somebody who wants to be in politics is, if you're going to become a member of parliament, the importance of being that member of parliament, when you become a minister, you're a team with your civil servants. You are all working to deliver government policy. And what you must do is make sure that you pay the attention to the detail. You know, you're going to be responsible for this. You need to make sure that you can really put hand on heart and say, I think this is going to work.

28:23Now, sometimes you do something that you think is going to work, and then unintended consequences you find it doesn't. But you've got to be able to feel that you've interrogated an issue and a policy until you are satisfied that it's the right thing to do. Can we turn a little bit to some of the international element of the job of prime minister, which is a massive part of it? I mentioned misogyny earlier. Do you think Trump's view of Ewan Merkel was driven in part by a belief that women shouldn't really be in these very, very top jobs? I honestly don't know. If I'm honest, I never understood his approach to Germany and Angela Merkel, who seemed to any opportunity in an international environment.

29:02I mean, I remember sitting at an event at NATO, suddenly he'd sort of go off on having a go at Angela Merkel. And I could never really understand what it was that lay behind that. Was it more personal than it was with you, do you think? With you as well, he didn't show much reason. I remember watching a press conference he did, I think it was at Chequers, and there was a total lack of respect there. Did you feel that? Well, I think it's the sense, it was probably just as much the sense of him and his, I think he was somebody who was more about him than he was about anybody else. For sure. For sure.

29:41And therefore, you know, the fact that you were another world leader standing next to him was sort of almost irrelevant. He wanted to, you know, almost rule the roost. How much do you worry? Because you're quite negative about him, but you're also quite negative about Biden in relation to Afghanistan in particular, which I do understand. We've talked about that a lot. And I agree with that strongly. Yeah. But how much do you worry that if Trump were to come back as president, and he's currently the bookie's favorite, by the way, that actually that we talked earlier about the threat to democracy, that really does become a profound threat to democracy?

30:18I mean, the thing, the characteristic I would cite about his presidency was the uncertainty. This sense that you never quite knew what decisions were going to be taken. Even when you were in the room with him? Even when you were in the room with him. And, you know, when I was, I think, the first leader to go and see him after he'd been inaugurated. And the aim of that was to get him to make a positive statement about NATO, because he'd been lukewarm at best about NATO and America's role in NATO. And we had the meeting and you know, normally what happens is obviously there's been some pre-work among your officials.

30:54You have the meeting, you agree, you go into the press conference, you know what's going to be said. When I walked into that press conference, I didn't know whether or not he was going to say what I thought he was going to say, i.e. that he supported NATO. In fact, he did. But there was always that degree of uncertainty, which I think is problematic. I remember this was very striking because British foreign policy had been very aligned to US foreign policy since the Second World War. I remember as a young diplomat asking an older ambassador what our policy on an issue should be. And he said, find out what the Americans are doing and do a little bit less, was the kind of cliche of the 90s.

31:32But when Donald Trump came in, that became very, very problematic. I mean, I remember I was invited to attend something on Crimea and suddenly finding that the British government was uncertain which way the Americans were going to move for the first time in sort of 70 years. And therefore, having for the first time to think, well, what do we do if he changes 180 degrees? Have we got to change 180 degrees to follow, or are we going to try to continue on this line? And I guess maybe with Angela Merkel, he sensed that she was somebody who probably would continue on her line and wouldn't follow the direction that he wanted to move the US.

32:08There was something deeply personal going on there. That first meeting at the White House was extraordinary. He was so rude. And even by his standards. He was utterly obnoxious. And as I say, I genuinely don't know what lay behind that. But she did come under more attack from him than any of the rest of us. So I don't think it was just misogyny, which was your question, Alistair. I think there was probably something else, but I don't know what. But just on this foreign policy point, this question of how the UK relates to the US and foreign policy, what happens if you get a US present who suddenly changes course and the extent to which UK foreign policy then has to react to that move.

32:49Yes. I mean, I think slightly worried by your description of what the older ambassador said to you, because we should have our own foreign policy. It might happen that it is very closely aligned to the American foreign policy, but we have to be able to understand what we believe and what we think and therefore the direction we want to go. If all you're doing is saying, well, let's just follow them, then you do have difficulty. You absolutely need to know where the UK stands on any particular aspect. Do you regret giving him what he clearly saw as a massive honour of the state visit on that very, very first meeting shortly after he became president?

33:28Don't you think you should have sort of held on to that for a while? Well, look, this is the UK and the United States. Regardless of the personality, He's the leader of the free world. And I think that it was important to, in a sense, reach out in that way. And partly about ensuring the relationship between the UK and the US. So you felt you had to do it? I think, yes. And let's talk about another major foreign policy moment in your premiership was Salisbury. And again, to remind us that Salisbury was where the Russian military intelligence service attempted to assassinate a Russian intelligence officer who defected to Britain in an attack in Salisbury that killed innocent civilians.

34:14Just give us a bit of a sense of, I'm not going to ask you how you felt, okay? But just talk us through what happened when you first heard, what your first reaction was, what you then had to do, and how you saw that whole thing pan out. And of course, I do write about this in the book, but it is, I mean, I remember I was sort of sat down by my private secretary who dealt with home affairs and told about this couple who'd been found on this park bench in Salisbury. And there was a bit of concern about their state of health, obviously, but it was sort of, it might be perfectly innocent was the sort of first message.

34:50It might be perfectly innocent. Then of course, it becomes clear that he was a former Russian Russian intelligence officer. And therefore, you start to think, well, hang on a minute, this has probably got more to it than the recognition that it was the use of a chemical weapon, Novichok, on the streets of a UK city. Thereafter, of course, it's all about how much you're able to say, making statements to parliament, how much you're able to say to parliament. Everybody is clamouring to know as much as possible. And that's when it's quite difficult in government because sometimes you just have to be restrained on what you're saying for a variety of reasons.

35:27And different reasons because presumably you start getting information quite quickly that suggests strongly that Russian military intelligence are involved and you begin seeing this very impressive police work that tracks the perpetrators. But there's presumably a moment where you're 90 % sure but not 100 % sure. And you're worried that if you come out and make a very clear statement and then it turns out that something's gone wrong. But even when you're 90, you're aware of the consequences that you're then going to have to address. Yes, yes. I think it's one of the challenges is resisting the temptation to try to respond to this clamour for information right up front.

36:07And knowing the point at which you can give people information. I was very clear, and indeed the UK system was very clear, that we needed to have the evidence. because we were going to be wanting to persuade other countries to follow us in taking action on the Russians as we did. It was the biggest ever expulsion of Russian intelligence officers across the world. We won the votes in the OPCW. That was because we were able to sit countries down and take them through the evidence that we had on this. So it was important that we didn't say too much until we could back that up. You sat there with a lot of these world leaders, and sometimes you're capable of being quite patient and quiet and letting other people talk.

36:54What did you notice by sitting and listening and watching some of the other world leaders, the Putins, the Trumps? I don't know whether you met Berlusconi, but these different people operate. What do you think you might have noticed about them that you wouldn't have noticed if you yourself had been a noisy man. Goodness me. First thing I would say is I did not meet Berlusconi and probably I'm grateful that I did not meet Berlusconi. I did a lot of times. Give me a watch. Yes. We won't go there, Alistair. No, I didn't keep it. Don't worry. I think one of the lessons is that it is about this sense of speaking when you have something to say.

37:38And okay, there are international fora where it's X speaks and then you speak and then somebody else speaks and so forth. But it's that sense of not just piling in there for the sake of it. And I think that is a female-male thing. Men will often want to be sort of showing that they've got something, they want to say this, whereas women are more willing perhaps to sit back and listen and judge the point at which we we intervene in these debates. And I think learning that actually, if you pile in from the beginning, that doesn't necessarily make people respect you. We've talked a little bit about my old boss.

38:12Let me ask this question. Who do you think was the better prime minister for the United Kingdom? Tony Blair, Boris Johnson, or Liz Truss?

38:22I would like to think, and I would hope, that in the number of prime ministers that we've had over recent years that I actually did my best to make a good fist of it. That's Tony Blair then. You think I'm like Tony Blair? No, I'm saying that you're not defending Boris Johnson. Come on, Alistair. You're not defending Boris Johnson or Liz Truss. Okay, Boris Johnson, forced for good or not? Boris had significant qualities, has significant qualities. He's charismatic. He's able to communicate well with people. but I try not to look at individuals. No, but he's had a massive impact on this country.

39:02You cannot argue it's been for good. I look at the issues and there are a number of issues on which I disagreed with Boris and I've made that clear in the House of Commons from time to time. I'm going to come in my final question. One of the things that strikes me is you are surprisingly lacking in bitterness. I mean, your experience was absolutely brutal. all. You tried to get a moderate compromise Brexit deal through. And I think you've been vindicated because we ended up with a harder, nasty Brexit. But you were unable to persuade members of your own party, members of the Labour Party, so you would have been deeply disappointed in that.

39:38You were betrayed by intimate colleagues. I found it difficult enough trying to adjust to people who were deserting you and going over to Boris Johnson. person, and I wasn't Prime Minister, I still traumatized by some of these people that were some of your great champions and going over and giving hostage videos endorsing the other side. You then found yourself having to watch other Prime Ministers take over who you were opposed to in policy terms and in values terms. And yet somehow you've emerged from it all, not in the state in which I emerged, thinking this is absolutely appalling. Why didn't they like me?

40:15These are terrible people in the House of Commons. They're treacherous, they're betrayal. What on earth's happened to my party? You've actually come out saying, I really believe in this. I want to encourage young people to go into this. I'm going to stay as a member of parliament. I'm going to keep going. And you're resisting the temptation to be drawn by Alistair into saying what I imagine you may sometimes feel about Boris Johnson, but you're not saying on the podcast. What is it that allows you to avoid feeling that sense of rage and bitterness and keep going? because that isn't true with many politicians we interview.

40:45It's interesting. I think maybe you're contrasting my approach to how you're feeling about some things, Rory. I suspect part of that is because of the length of time I've been in politics. I've been involved in the Conservative Party for, I won't say how many years now, but many, many years. As a local councillor, I was involved in local associations, helping others to get elected, and then standing myself. So I've seen politics for a long time, And therefore, perhaps coming into parliament and then into government, not a better experience, but more experience of how politics can be and how politicians can be.

41:19And then, well, I just think I'm a sort of, hopefully I'm just kind of calm sort of person. And, you know, it doesn't mean I don't sort of think, why did they say that or why have they done that? But actually, at the end of the day, I always want to really want to focus more on what we're doing next and getting to the end goal. And just to respond to Alistair, of course, in his previous question, conservative government is always better than the Labour government. That's my view. I fundamentally disagree with that, as you well know. And I think recent history has proved me right. My final question, you say in the book that you know this isn't going to happen because Brexit, as Rory said, is so fundamental to your premiership.

42:00But you said you'd like your legacy to be viewed through the prism of modern slavery and net zero. and of course on the main podcast this week rory and i talked about rishi sunak's recent speech where he does seem to me to be going down a very populist polarizing route on the issue of the climate and i just wonder whether you shared our concerns that that is a a worrying move yes if i may just say a word on modern slavery because obviously i write about that in the book as well and i'm setting up a global commission on modern slavery and human trafficking because i think it really is an issue that we've got to give more political momentum to across the world.

42:37The number of people in slavery has increased in the last few years. On the net zero issue, look, I think the key thing for me is that Rishi has kept... Rory, you were nearly Prime Minister. Your dream was almost made. Rishi has kept the net zero in 2050, which is what I put into legislation. I think that's important. He and I also agree that you've got to take people with you. I mean, the way I put it is you can't wag your finger at people and say, you can never fly again. You can never drive a car again. You can never eat meat again. You know, you've got to do all of these things. We won't get to net zero if people feel their lives have got to be completely upended.

43:13So you have to take people with you. And he's absolutely right about the national grid. I mean, we wait to see the detail that Jeremy Hunt... I'm waiting for a but. You can't divorce that speech and not have a little bit of a worry. I happen to believe that as Chris Skidmore's review earlier this year, which was excellent, net zero review, that actually moving to net zero, developing the green economy is the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century. I would like to see the government embracing that rather more wholeheartedly than I think they have done at the moment. Rory, maybe the very, very final question for you.

43:50Where do you stand on Edrich against boycott? The Edrich against boycott question, and one that keeps me up at night. You have some things you don't have in common. One thing you do have in common is you have a much more profound knowledge and interest in cricket than I've ever achieved. Well, that was because I was brought up with Test Match Special. I think Rory's an Edrich man. Yes, I think, you see, I'm a boycott. I'm a boycott. Because steady and disagree. Well, this is where we profoundly disagree. Absolutely. Disagreeably about Edrich and boycott. Well, thank you so much, Prime Minister Theresa May.

44:22That was very generous. You give an enormous amount of time. We've enjoyed it immensely. And I hope we can get you back again someday. Thank you. To talk about Brexit again. You never mention it, Alistair. I thought I was pretty restrained, to be honest. And we should also tell our readers that the book is called The Abuse of Power. Honestly, it's been great. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. I've enjoyed it. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

44:49so alistair i was about to say you know we'd got two tories and only one labor and then i suddenly thought maybe that's a rubbish thing to say because actually there have been so many tory prime ministers recently it's absurd um what did what did you think of her there is a nervousness and a caution about her i think i i often i've said to you before about my mother saying of of gordon brown that she thinks he'd been a wonderful politician in the radio age and she's not by that talking about not being good on television. I think in his own way, Gordon is very good on television. But just that sense of being, I think the two of them, a little bit of a different age.

45:23I mean, interesting, her very first answer effectively was to sort of signal, which we already knew, that she really doesn't like talking about her feelings. She doesn't like talking about personal stuff. And she also immediately drew the analogy with Gordon Brown. She clearly likes him, admires him. And as you pointed out, they're both children of priests. They've been presumably brought up in this quite puritanical or stale background. It's a funny thing. I was talking to Anna Ford, who's a BBC person, who's a friend of yours, and she was saying that she's also the daughter of a vicar. And she said it's an odd thing in a couple of ways.

45:57Firstly, you're sort of middle class in status, but you're kind of working class in income. And the second thing is that as a daughter of a vicar, you're expected to be very well behaved so you either become very dutiful and well behaved or in an awful sketch you rebel yeah yeah no i think that's the sense you got of her childhood was a sort of going around the place thinking that people were judging her because of the relationship with her dad but at the same time would exaggerate it if she kind of strayed from that path i wonder whether that does particularly as an only child whether that means you don't necessarily have a what you know we would define as a kind of fairly conventional childhood.

46:37I thought she was very reflective and thoughtful in some parts. I was actually quite pleased that she effectively apologized for the whole Vans thing. I thought that was awful. There were other things in the book. I mean, you were very kind about the book, and I was quite kind as well because I actually found it an interesting book, but I found it really infuriating. I remember I got some WhatsApp messages from you when you were in an absolute rage. I mean, I thought... I can almost share them with people, but essentially you said this is an absolute outrage talking about abuse of power. And then you listed all the Tory abuse of power one after another.

47:12Well, I think, for example, you said in the farewell, you said, you know, it's amazing you produce this book without bitterness. And, you know, largely I agree. But I think to alight upon the whole Brexit story and the only person really that she goes for is John Bercow. She is, I would say, as I said to her, much angrier about people like me trying to get the second referendum. than she is about Boris Johnson and the lies that he told and the lies that he told to her. I wonder whether that's true though. I imagine she is furious with him. And I think she found it very, very difficult when Boris Johnson was.

47:47And you'll remember she was standing up for the back benches and mounted some pretty extreme attacks on him and obviously thought he'd behaved disgracefully. But it's a reminder of something that's so difficult to, that you and I know, but it's quite difficult to explain to the public, which is how tribal party politics is, how whatever her personal views are, if she said anything disobliging about the Conservative Party or Boris Johnson, Labour would quite understandably put it over every single electoral leaflet. Former Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May says they wouldn't have. I completely understand why she didn't say, vote Labour, we'd be terrible for 13 years.

48:26but I think of the former prime ministers and I think also to have gone into such detail and there are bits of the book that are really interesting about Hillsborough about Grenfell Windrush all these things and she rightly picks on police councils etc but I think if you were to think of the most egregious abuses of power how do you not address what Johnson did how do you not address what I think she's signaling towards that I mean she has a go at Jacob Rees doesn't she? And she points out that, and it's one of the real problems with the Conservative Party, which is people like Jacob Rees-Mogg present themselves as these Victorian traditionalists standing up for the old constitution.

49:04They're wrecking it. Yeah. And he and Boris Johnson were all campaigning on Brexit to give power back to parliament. But she explains in the book that Boris Johnson was trying to use arcane pseudo medieval laws and trying to tell her to go to the queen to overrule parliament and do stuff which, as she points out, would have been not just distracted with the Constitution but catastrophic for the Queen to drag her into that kind of stuff. I do hope at some point she writes a more conventional memoir. By conventional, I don't mean self-serving like a lot of political memoirs are, but actually something that just chronologically goes through her life and her career.

49:39We had a lot of time with her, but actually we didn't really get into a lot of the kind of foreign policy stuff that I would maybe have liked to spend a bit more time with her on. and also some of the characters that she had to deal with. And I didn't push back hard enough on the councillor point. She's obviously, she was a local councillor. She's very, very fond of local councillors. I think there is a problem actually, if parliament is too dominated by local councillors. I think they're a very important part of parliament, but almost by definition, they're people who haven't had much of an opportunity for international experience.

50:08And that's very, very different. Obviously, the parliament after the war where 70, 80 % of MPs had served in the military had been abroad. did. And I think one of the reasons that Britain becomes more isolationist, I noticed this when I was a young member of parliament, nobody wanted to be on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee anymore. 30 years earlier, it was very prestigious. Absolutely. I thought the one point where I think she really did become, I thought particularly as it was towards the end of the time we had with her, where she became very tribal in relation to my old boss. I was quite taken about by that.

50:39But presumably you must have sensed it that to keep themselves going from 97 onwards in tribal politics, they need a bogeyman. Blair must have been. Well, I was it for most of them. Yeah, but they have to talk themselves up to that. That's what I mean about being reflective after the time. You talk to Cameron and Osborne privately, and they talk about Tony Blair. Well, they call him the master. But I felt with her, I was pressing a button there that was, I don't know, I thought I was really quite taken aback by that. But I think she also sees Tony Blair, David Cameron, George Osborne as slightly the same thing.

51:18I mean, I think she has a problem with what she sees as kind of over slick, over these sort of communicating, kind of quite dashing young men. And I think she's quite sincere and feeling more sympathy for Gordon Brown. I remember feeling that when Gordon Brown took over. I thought, actually David Cameron's going to be in real trouble because the country's looking for something more serious. Cameron didn't come across as serious. I was very surprised actually that Brown didn't win that 2010 election. Interesting. Yeah. But overall, I mentioned at the Lido this morning, they said where were you yesterday, they said I was interviewing Theresa mate for the podcast and there was one guy who said oh god i mean and he's not a tory at all but said god i'd have a back like a shot compared with what we've had since so i think there is she she does well by comparison with what's followed we did quite explain i mean the i think one final sort of geeky thing is how strange that 2017 election was and it's it's relevant for what we often yeah we didn't really get into that it was pity yeah so she was 20 points ahead in polls, which is where Keir Starmer is in relation to the Conservatives, and Labour is in relation to Conservatives.

52:31And lost it during the campaign. And lost it during the campaign, but also lost it because of our weird electoral system. She had the biggest increase in any party's share of the vote since 1832 or something mad. She had the biggest percentage share of the vote since 1983. So it was kind of mind-blowingly record numbers. But because of the way our electoral system works, the Lib Dems collapsed, quite a lot votes weren't to Jeremy Corbyn as well. She ended up essentially losing her majority despite getting far more people voting for her than had voted for David Cameron. Maybe she should start backing PR.

53:07Interesting. When we interviewed Hillary Clinton, she was very much like, I didn't lose that election. I won that election. I was just defeated by the technicalities. And that's part of what I mean by her not having any bitterness. I've never heard her say, I didn't lose that election. Technically, I won it because I got a million more votes and all this of stuff. I do think the bitterness thing is interesting. You're right, maybe the book's got a bit of it, but what she went through, I didn't really rub her nose in it, but Grant Shapps, Gavin Williamson, I mean, these people just went for her.

53:39Gavin Williamson had been her chief whip and then flipped and went in behind Boris Johnson and a really grisly group of people coming after her. And I must have felt very, very strange, including people like Damien Green, who'd been, I don't know, quite been one of her very good friends at Oxford, endorsing Boris Johnson after leadership. So compared to, I think, the way that possibly Hillary Clinton feels, certainly compared to the way I feel, it's pretty remarkable. She's still standing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll give her that. Now, Gordon, if you're listening, if Theresa May can come on, so can you.

54:15Welcome anytime. time. See you next week. Okay, Roy. See you next week.