79. Nadhim Zahawi: Iraq, Conservatism, and why he backed Boris Johnson

0:28Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics. Sign up to The Rest is Politics. taste. Unleash the flavor. Unleash White Claw Surge. Please drink responsibly. Hard seltzer with flavors. 8 % alcohol by volume. White Claw Seltzer Works, Chicago, Illinois. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. From improving emergency response times to protecting against cyber attacks, local, state, and federal governments are innovating with Google AI. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation.

1:03Only murders in the building season five. The hit Hulu original is back. The night Luster died. He was talking with this mobster. Was he killed in the hit? We need to go face to face with the mob. Get ready for a season. Buongiorno, signore. This is how I die. You can't refuse. You're going to save the day like you always do by being smart, sharp, and almost always by mistake. The Hulu original series. Only murders in the building. Premieres September 9th. Streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. New episodes Tuesdays.

1:39Welcome to The Rest is Politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. And today we have with us Nadim Zahawi. Nadim is a friend of mine who joined politics with me in 2010. We rebelled together on vote in the House of Lords and found ourselves left on the back benches together. We travelled together to Iraq after ISIS had taken over, created this caliphate stretching across the Iraqi Syria border as mini envoys for David Cameron. and we went and met the Iraqi government and the Kurdish government at the time. And we've remained in touch a great deal since. He is somebody with extraordinary backstory.

2:20He's actually been a theme for a lot of the politicians we've interviewed. I feel actually increasingly sorry for politicians, some of whom, you know, like me, have pretty boring middle-class backgrounds because the world now is just dominated by people with extraordinary stories. But his life takes us from a childhood in Iraq, arriving in the UK aged 11 unable to speak English, settling down, developing a deep romantic affection for Britain, becoming interested in conservative politics, a slight kind of penchant for people who I think are slightly roguish figures in British politics. We can get to Geoffrey Archer and Boris Johnson.

2:56We can get to that a bit later and what he thinks they were and what attracts him to them. Set up a very successful company, YouGov, a polling company, which again, we should touch on a little bit because this is the rest is politics. And, you know, nothing's more central to modern politics than the question of polling. Joined politics, as I said, with me in 2010. Rebelle was left on the back benches. And then his career took off belatedly, initially as a junior minister, then as a cabinet minister, then briefly as chancellor of the Exchequer for a tiny, tiny period before the whole thing kind of blew up again.

3:27So he's seen every bit in, I guess, 14 years of politics. He's seen backbench exclusion. He's seen massive promotion. He's seen getting the keys to number 11. He's had huge challenges in terms of media scandals. He's had great moments of affection and success in some of his ministerial jobs. So there's many, many things to get into. And we're very grateful that you've come and joined us. Thank you for having me. That was the longest intro we've ever done. Told the whole story there, Rory. Can we start with Iraq? Yes. I was thinking last night, reading up on you, that Iraq clearly plays a very, very significant part in your life, as it does in mine, but in very, very different ways.

4:04Although, to interrupt, he's sympathetic towards you. No, I know. You're on the same side in this, I think. Well, we're on the same side in that I think we both had very similar views about the reality of Saddam Hussein. Indeed. But just tell us about that childhood, what Iraq was like, why you left, and what your first impressions of Britain were. So I was 10 years old when I sort of began to understand what was happening politically. Saddam was then deputy to Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who was then sort of the new Ba 'athist president. And I'm being very mean because you're just beginning, but just to bring in listeners a little bit more, you're born in 1967.

4:36Yeah. And you stay in Iraq, I guess, till 1978? Yeah, 78, 79. 78, 79. So this is a country that had been a British protectorate. And then in the 1950s, the king of Iraq was killed in a sort of revolution. Brutally. Brutally killed. Revolutionary government takes over. And by the time you are a child, the Ba 'ath Party has taken over. And this very young man, Saddam Hussein, is the vice president, but is very much the power behind the throne. You're living in Baghdad. And you're from a family which maybe in some ways would not be wealthy among British standards, but also is quite distinguished.

5:18You had a grandfather who'd been the governor of the central bank. So you're part of the sort of establishment of Iraq and presumably have seen this very odd transition through your grandfather from Britain to monarchy to Bath. And now this guy who's emerging as a dictator. The bit that was missing in my knowledge is my grandfather passed away at the age of 52. We have a history of hypertension in the family and high blood pressure. So before I was born, but obviously I lived the stories of that time in Iraq when actually things were moving in the right direction rather than the wrong direction.

5:55And right direction, this was a society famous for its education, for its books. The cradle of civilization for, as you say, for culture, books, not just in Baghdad, but in the Kurdish areas in Soleimaniya and Bill and elsewhere. And then you have a series of brutal revolutions that end up with the Ba 'ath Party taking control. Saddam was a thuggish character. And by the time he came to power, they had pretty much effectively destroyed any other political movement, whether it's the sort of the socialists or the monarchists, pretty much gone. And I was sort of probably too young to understand the full implications of what was about to happen.

6:36But luckily had a father who absolutely got it. One of the few Iraqis in those days that absolutely got it. He happened to be Kurdish, married to my mother, who's actually from originally from Basra. And he was simply trying to keep his head down, be a businessman, rather than a political activist in the way his father was, my grandfather, but didn't want to join the party. and in Iraq and this is the bit that actually then we can talk about sort of what happened you know post the removal of Saddam and the mistakes we made Alistair and I are probably on the same page that you know Saddam needed removing I think where where I would differ is the consequence of what happened afterwards the lack of planning and the lack of pushback certainly from us as in the British government on the Americas to say well hold on a second you know what are we going to do the next day and can you show us the plan type of thing just wonder why did your father choose Britain.

7:31And I guess my other question is, why did you become a conservative? So my father had deep links to the United Kingdom. In fact, when my grandfather was busy being governor of the central bank and then becoming trade and industry minister, and actually, I think he was interim oil minister when OPEC was set up, he sent my father to boarding school in England for a short period of time. And that was the link. So your dad spoke English. So my dad spoke reasonably good English, but obviously had gone back to the Middle East again. And that sort of link with the United Kingdom and he had agencies from British businesses in Iraq, which was a treacherous path to tread anyway, because Saddam had passed legislation that if you were found to be taking commissions in the private sector as a businessman, that is punishable by hanging in Iraq.

8:12So it was the natural place for him to come because he had a re-entry visa to the UK because of his history and because he did business with British companies. But also it was a pretty easy target to come after because the easiest accusation to make of anyone is that they are a British agent. You know, if they happen to represent any British brand or any British company. And what happened is that one of his employees in his business, who was a member of the Bath Party, had written a report because he was disgruntled. He hadn't received a promotion or a salary increase that my father was a British agent.

8:50And fortuitously for him, on my mother's side, her sister was married to someone who was actually quite high ranking in the party long past now, who clearly got or was in receipt of the message that they're going to come for my father. And so we had about 24 hours warning over lunch at my aunt's home where they took my dad aside and said, look, they're going to come for you tomorrow. So you try and get out. So you left and then you followed. Correct. Exactly right. And he deliberately set up a decoy. So he called his office and said, I'm driving up north to the Kurdish areas because he had a project there.

9:27And instead he went to Baghdad International Airport and got on the Swiss air flight out of Baghdad. And why did you become a Tory? So completely accidental. And I'll tell you for why. So I had zero interest in politics growing up in school in England. I was much more interested in wanting to become a show jumper. You were riding horses. I was. Yeah, very much so. And when I got to university, I got to University College London and I read chemical engineering, Torrington Place, across the road into the University of London Union, Yulu, as it's referred to. And fresh as weak, I'm walking into Yulu and there's a big bloke outside.

10:06And I was about a third of the size. I was quite slim when I was at uni with goofy teeth and a sort of full head of hair. And this bloke was handing out the Socialist Workers Party magazine. And all I did, and I promise you this, all I did was politely say, no, thank you. not because I knew anything about it. I just had no interest in politics. At which point, this guy decided he was going to literally physically attack me. I thought I was going to get beaten up because he was so angry with me for not taking his magazine, especially someone of my colour, which really offended me. And I thought my way of getting back at him was to go and find out what the other party thinks.

10:39Well, that should have been the Labour Party. They're real, and it was the Labour Party. I walked around Freshers' Fair. There was a little trestle table with the Conservative Collegiate Forum. You said, hello, Dominic. Hello, Tobias. I went and had a chat and the student behind the desk happened to be captain of the show jumping team. And that was a good start. Then I began to understand about freedom and opportunity. And those two words have defined my life in many ways. Just come back to this little boy. So you speak Arabic and you speak Kurdish? I speak Arabic better than I speak Kurdish in many ways, because I was born in Baghdad and having a mother from Basra.

11:17but my Arabic was much more polished. I understand Kurdish. I'm reluctant to speak. I sound like a six-year-old, but I speak fluent Arabic. I'm interested in when somebody who speaks three languages and two languages very well might see the world in a slightly different way from the way in which other politicians do. So let's take the great cliche. And so what's this phrase that Rishi keeps producing? Clear plan, bold action. Okay, so how would you say a clear plan, bold action in Arabic? So, khotajaria amelwade. Okay, now imagine now for a second and Saddam Hussein or an Arab politician saying that, does it sound different to the way that it sounds to an English audience?

11:53Is there a sense in which moving into a different language, a different culture gives a completely different resonance and an echo? Yeah, I mean, it does. Obviously, Khotajariya means a brave plan. So it's a sense of machismo. Correct. Yeah. Almost inescapable in Arabic culture. And Jarrah is bravery in a much more sort of animated way. And Amalwada is that you have a clear work rather than plan, if you know what I mean. pretty good now nadine talk of bravery yeah thank you for being here because i have it on very good authority as does rory that tory high command has basically said they don't want any of their current big hitters coming on this podcast and heaven knows why because we're very nice to our guests as you can see i'm surprised well well that we're nice or that no i'm surprised well i think it's not more of my colleagues are coming i think it's a terrible mistake yeah but i wonder whether it's because your party has always been a little bit obsessed with me and i just want to play you a very short clip.

12:48I know what you're going to play. And I want to find out what was going on inside Dowdy Street while this was happening. The people, by the way, who are egging us on to divide and to turn on one another are people like Alistair Campbell. And wherever Alistair Campbell is, you want to be on the opposite side of the argument in my view. The people who are egging us on to get rid of our leader and have this blood blessing in battle are people like Alistair Campbell. I like to say to you, wherever Alistair Campbell is, any good conservative should be on the other side of the argument. Okay. The people who are egging us on to turn on each other, to form a circular firing squad, are people like Alistair Campbell.

13:26I can tell you, wherever Alistair Campbell is, no Conservatives should be in the same place. The people egging us on to turn on one another are people like Alistair Campbell. And in my view, wherever Alistair Campbell is, any Conservative should be on the other side of the argument. Mr. Sir Harwin, we're talking about the resignation of senior conservatives. It is frankly insulting for you to suggest that this is a crisis created by your political opponents. Look at who's egging us on to keep attacking one another and to do all this bloodletting. People like Alistair Campbell. And I think where Alistair Campbell is at, any conservative should be on the other side of that argument, in my view.

14:02What was going on? I tell you what was going on. I'm a former thing. No, you're not. First of all, you are a communication genius, right? You have many flaws, but that is not one of them. And you and I both know that. You are a communication genius. And you have clearly, as I'm sitting here in probably the most successful podcast in the country, have adapted to new media in an incredible way. My colleagues, certainly the 2010 intake, didn't have the privilege that Rory and I had, which is years of being in Parliament with the wiser heads, learning, listening, engaging. They'd been locked down because of the pandemic.

14:42This is the 2019 intake. 2019 intake. And therefore, in many ways, easier spooked if there is a social media storm than where the real world is. Let me give you an example. When I was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, second day in the job, we got the news that Her Late Majesty had passed. In the Cabinet Office, we've got this whole communication floor, giant screens, which you probably are both familiar with. And if you believed Twitter that day, you'd think half the nation was Republican. His Majesty gives his first address to the nation the next day, 98 % approval rating. So Twitter was not the country, clearly.

15:18The reason I was making that point is you were so smart at using social media to drive the whole storm around number 10 better than anyone else so i was giving you as an example of the ability to spook my colleagues into a place where the herd just then stampeded which was my that's what i said to the to boris when i i went to see him say i'm afraid you gotta go now because the herd is stampeding because i think this is a the one moment where despite my immense affection and admiration for you I think we've always a bit differed I think there's a bit of you if I was being cheeky that has a sort of actually Alistair has a bit of this too which is a sort of slight sort of affection for slightly roguish figures in his case he's sort of fond of Alan Clarke and people like this in your case you have a sort of soft spot for Geoffrey Archer and ultimately Boris Johnson I never got it I mean I remember you ran for leadership I ran for leadership and I remember trying to reach out to you when you dropped out and said, you know, come in behind me.

16:20There's a different vision. Whatever you do, don't get behind Boris Johnson. And we'd had private conversations before where you'd explained why, having backed Boris the last time, you weren't backing him again. You had serious reservations about this guy and where he was going. And then in the end, you sort of got on board. And I couldn't understand it because I'd worked very close with him. I'd been the minister of state in the Foreign Office when he was the Foreign Secretary. I'd seen day in, day out, just how bad he was at the job. I mean, he just couldn't concentrate. He couldn't take in any information.

16:50He'd ask, he'd say, you know, Rory, go and sort out Libya. Libya is a bite-sized British problem. And I'd try to come back with any plan and he'd lose some attention immediately. He'd wander off and, you know, we'd do a deal with the Kenyan government and then he'd come back and he'd turn it on and say, et cetera, I don't need to tell you all the problems. So what is it that led you and so many colleagues to get him behind this guy? Because I actually think the reason we're about to lose this election is partly him and Liz Truss, that this decision to bring these people in has come back to bite us.

17:17So what is it that made you feel you wanted to get behind him? Well, let me try and answer the question in my experience of him as a boss. So when he called me to say, I'd like you to take on the vaccine deployment role. Of course, I said yes, but I said on one condition. And he said, what's that? What's that? I said, I need to speak with your authority. And what I mean by that is I need to be able to get access to you in minutes and hours, not days or weeks. And he said, you've got it. And I have to tell you, and I worked as a junior minister under Theresa May. And then, of course, I did a little bit of work for Cameron on apprenticeships early on in my career.

18:00the apprenticeship czar as he called it but his ability to make decisions when you have his attention and he's focused i thought was incredibly impressive he was brave but also contrary to what actually most people think he was on top of the detail we would brief him every week on the numbers on the vaccine program and he would literally say can we just go back to last week something to tell me this this is this is so at odds with everything that everybody one speaks to about him says and that everything that one knows people like me have known him for 40 odd years knows to be true or indeed what came out in the covid inquiry where simon case is sitting there sharing whatsapp's messages with his head of comms with dominic cummings saying this guy is a shopping trolley lurching around he said one thing today he's changed his mind tomorrow and look as i say I'm probably going to say something that people find extraordinary, but he could have been.

18:58I wasn't there. I wasn't around the table in the early days of the pandemic. But when we got to vaccine deployment, he was incredibly good to work for because he actually empowered me to cut through some of the bureaucracy where I needed to. I can give you many examples where we did that. And he was literally on top of the numbers in a way that I found surprising. But Ben, that's just, that's like saying the bus driver knows how to drive a bus. No, that's not fair. That's just the job. That's the job. That's not, no, that's not true because there are... If you're the prime minister in the middle of a pandemic, to say that he knew the numbers, and when often we saw that he didn't...

19:36But also to be able to back his minister to say, let me give you an example. So I took on the job and every morning we had this fantastic piece of software from Palantir where I can see exactly who's been vaccinated the day before. And I went to the team at the NHS, Simon Stevens, and said, look, we've got to publish daily data because you're expecting me to be on television every day. I can't just ask the nation to trust me on this and we're going to only give them fortnightly data or weekly data. We have to do daily data. And initially, the pushback from the NHS was like, we can't do that. We're the NHS.

20:14The data has to be perfect. This data will need cleansing. It takes days to do that. It might take resource away from something else. But I see it every morning. Why can't we share it? And actually, one of the lessons of the pandemic, and I hope it will come out through the inquiry, is transparency helps you reform complex systems. And I think it's one of the lessons I hope we learn going forward, that by treating the nation as adults, saying, look, here are the numbers. Within those numbers, you will see some stuff that the red tops will be shock horror. For example, very low uptake of vaccines in post goes around Tottenham in North London, but at least it allows us to focus on those challenges and then fix them.

20:51Boris backed me on that, because initially the pushback was, no, no, we can't do that. And he said, hold on a second, but Nadim's right on this. Let's get this stuff out there. People need to see it, because they're hurting, they're locked in. I get all that, but I mean, there is a real problem with this, because I, as I say, I've known him for a very, very long time. And I think we have a real problem in our politics. if people who are liars, people who really have difficulty knowing what is true and what is not true and not really caring about the difference, I think unless they're expelled for good from public office, I think we're in real danger as a democracy.

21:30And you cannot tell me hand on heart that Johnson is somebody who's not a deeply untruthful person. He was exposed as such during the pandemic, ultimately over parties and then over the whole pincher thing. But he's not somebody who tells the truth. That's unforgivable as a prime minister. I can only speak from my own experience. You don't think he's untruthful? And every time we talked about things that we need to tell the country, he would never stand in the way and say, no, no, no, for political advantage. Look, you and I are probably in the same place on the removal of Saddam. But I think you've been attacked about the sexed up dossier.

22:08I think that's why I take this seriously. Whether that's deliberate or otherwise, those are the perceptions, right? And perception can become reality. I just think my experience of the man in the way he backed me. And then when he made me say, say, for education, when I took serious challenges to him about how the department was run, what I wanted to do with the department, he was good to his word. I think this is why I take it so seriously, because he was, at the time of the Iraq situation, Boris Johnson, Andrew Gilligan, they were part of this right-wing sort of cabal constantly trying to portray us as liars over Iraq.

22:45when I knew that we weren't. You can argue whether the policy was right or wrong, whether we presented it wrongly or rightly, well or badly, but I know we weren't lying. So we get labeled with this liar stuff and yet I don't think anybody who's seen Boris Johnson through his life as a journalist or as a politician can truly hand on heart say, the guy's not a liar. And that's why when you said recently, for example, you think that you made a mistake in getting rid of him, I think it would be terrible for your party if he came back. Truly terrible. I think my party needs to, at the moment, focus on this general election.

23:18And flirting with ideas of leadership is a terrible error, in my view. The point I was making in that interview for the Sunday Times, I think it was, was when asked, was it an error at the time to remove Boris? I still contend it was an error because I actually think in many ways he'd learned from the early mistakes of the pandemic. He'd come through that. The vaccine deployment actually allowed him, in my view, to mature into the role of prime minister. Even on that, though, he couldn't resist lying. It's all about Brexit benefits and all this. He didn't need to do that. And now you have a situation where he's saying that Trump's trial is rigged.

23:59There's something here which I think is very interesting. you're a profoundly loyal person right you have these heroes you throw yourself behind jeffrey arch you've now chosen to throw yourself behind boris johnson what is i mean it's odd i mean i understand i admire you for your loyalty but tell us a little bit about this loyalty why is it that you choose these impossible very unpopular very peculiar characters and then decide you're going to attach yourself to them and defend them to the hilt there are no superhumans in politics government in business, right? Everybody's deeply flawed, in my view.

24:33And I just look at how people have treated me. You mentioned Geoffrey Archer. He knows that he has some deep flaws, but also some really great attributes of identifying talent. When he wanted to run for mayor of London, he literally picked up a load of young conservatives and around the table were Tobias Selwood, Robert Halfon, Sajid Javid. We were all literally kids, right, in politics. I was a local councillor in Wandsworth, I think, at the time. An incredible ability to identify talent and back it, being completely colourblind, when actually my party at that time was much less welcoming, let's put it that way, for people of my background.

25:16We've just been through it. With Boris, it was my experience of how he backed me. You spoke about it at the outset. You and I, our face just didn't fit with the Cameroon team for different reasons, very different reasons. But they kept us on the back benches for the best part of six, seven, eight years. And so I admire that. I admire people who will actually, you know what, there's a job to do here. I'm going to bring the best people in to do this job. They may not be my clique, but they're good people. But it's interesting, it was Geoffrey Archer, whom younger listeners may not know, but most of our listeners will know is best known as an amazing multi-million pound best-selling author but also Tory in the House of Lords so there's Johnson hounded out of office for lying Jeffrey Archie who goes to jail for for perjury I mean I'm so detecting that you don't have a problem with people who are not too familiar with the truth no no no that's that's not I just think I don't know whether maybe it's the breaks I've been given and maybe a bit of it is my own sort of flaw the imposter syndrome that i have that i sort of you know when i first joined the cabinet i said i'm thinking you know how did i get here what do i know and then you realize actually you're quite good at fixing some of these things within your department or government and you get rewarded for it so i again i go back and say to you i think there are no superhumans and i'd much rather work for someone who may have flaws but will get the job done you know worry about outcomes rather than just inputs than someone who has the sort of the halo of you look at Paula Vennell's and the post office stuff which I was obviously on the back benches and in the select committee on starting the drama indeed but there's a bit of me that gets slightly wound up by people who sort of live a life that looks perfect but actually never get anything really seriously done and I just instinctively are much more attracted to the people who actually want to get stuff done, but may be flawed.

27:15Okay, Nadim, Rory, let's have a quick break. Imagine fast hydration. Combined with balanced energy. Perfectly flavored with zero artificial sweeteners. Introducing Liquid IV's new energy multiplier, sugar-free. Unlike other energy drinks, you know, the ones that make you feel like you're glitching, It's made with natural caffeine and electrolytes, so you get the boost without the burnout. Liquid IV's new energy multiplier sugar-free hydrating energy. Tap the banner to learn more. Lemo, emu! And Doug. Here we have the Lemo, emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.