89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party

25:14But all these explanations make me sound as though you're less comfortable with that position than you were. No. Okay, so what have you changed your mind on that? Well, let me give you an example of where you're wrong. Yeah, go on then. Brexit. Oh, yeah, of course. I knew that. I mean, you two. I mean, this is the pro-Brexit station. Of course you say that. You said that we would have, within two years, a free trade area massively bigger than the EU. Yeah, well, I was wrong about that. I admitted you was wrong. But you did have a very... I knew you... I've known you since you were an MP in 1987.

25:49Pretty much, yeah. So you've gone through your own evolution on Europe. Because you'd been Minister for Europe under John Major, and because you were quite good at the politics of that, I think people had a sense of you being quite pro-European, certainly not a sceptic in the way that we saw Bill Cash or something like that. And then you became quite a prominent figure within the Brexit campaign. But unlike some of the others, you haven't allowed yourself to be kind of defined by that. No. Well, firstly, I don't think it's the most important thing that's happened in the last five years. Oh, seriously?

26:26Yeah. Well, there's a pandemic. There's Ukraine. There's all sorts of things. You don't think Brexit is the most lasting change? Let me finish the thing. But the other thing is, of course, what you're talking about is, again, an illusion. In the early major days, the big issue was the Maastricht Treaty, right? And the House of Commons, before the 92 election, had sort of signed off the Maastricht Treaty pretty much unanimously, including the Bill of Cashers of the World, right? Okay. And then when we came back, they did the same again. And I was a whip, right? And then we started to have a real problem.

26:58The parties approached it unpicked in a big way, sometimes for quite reasonable reasons, but sometimes I think just because people fell out with the government. And I was a whip and I took the view, well, look, the government's decidedness has been elected on this in 92 and it needs to be delivered. And people deduced from the fact that I was effectively the person who delivered the Maastricht Treaty in Parliament that somehow I was a great enthusiast for it. And I never was. I thought there were lots of flaws in it. But, you know, that was the decision and it was done. And indeed, when Major made me a Europe minister, I mean, I'm afraid I can't say on a public channel quite what the expletive was, but I said, you must be blank, blank joking, you know.

27:48And he said, no, no, no, I want you to do it. And literally, I was one of those horrible people who stalled the entire reshuffle for two hours while he tried to find somebody else that Douglas Heard would accept. And Douglas Heard refused a number of other ministers of state before insisting I gave in and did the job. And what were your doubts and what was Douglas Heard's insistence about? Well, because my view was that I was not at all sure about the political dimension of the single market. I mean, the economic dimensions are fine as far as they went, but the political dimension of the single market I was not sure about.

28:25And it was just hunch. There were no facts behind it at this point, but it was a hunch that was sort of proven right later. And that is that the single market became less and less important in the world at large. I mean, cast your mind about 95, we had a spectacular improvement in world trade arrangements, lower tariffs and so on. It's probably the biggest, the most important thing that's happened in the modern history of the world. One and a half billion people came out of poverty, mostly in Asia, came out of absolute poverty, starvation type poverty, off the back of the world trade development.

29:03And as a result, a side effect of this is a trivial, by comparison, a trivial side effect. From 72 until 95, our market share, the UK market share in Europe, had basically doubled from about 4 % to about 8%. from 95 until 2016, you're halved again. Now, that's actually quite a healthy thing because the world was opening up and the common external tariff barrier was one of the things that came down. But one of the problems was, was what Europe did, was replace the common external tariff barrier with regulatory barriers. And I don't approve of that. I think that's a bad thing. And I think it's going to kill Europe in the longer run.

29:45And those regulatory barriers are trying to ensure that standards. That's what they say. But I actually served for five years as a Europe minister, and I watched them being made. I remember having an exchange. I mean, I got on very well with quite a lot of my, well, all my colleagues, one exception, my fellow Europe ministers. And I remember having a really quite sharp exchange with the German. He's a liberal, German liberal, i.e. free trader, right? And great pals. He was a tornado pilot in his reserve activities. And then the Germans blocked the import of cut flowers, I think, from Morocco. I think it was something like that.

30:30And I just sent a little note around the table because we all sit at this great table. Again, I can't say, WTF, what are you doing? And he sent back an apology note. And that's classic. Every single blasted regulatory structure was not about protecting you from dying from sugar poisoning, so he's holding up his cup, but to protect a piece of Europe. And that's the driving force. And the way Europe is organized with big corporate structures. I mean, the corporates all had big presences in Brussels, as you know. I mean, the drive from the airport to the center is nothing but big corporate signs.

31:08And it's the corporates that drive it. It's not even a remotely democratic organization. We've never set up to be. All right, let's take a quick break. Then we'll be back in a minute. This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold-out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org. Jack Daniels and Old No. 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee Whiskey. 40 % alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery.

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32:39On Brexit, I don't know if you remember this, on the night of the referendum, as the results came in, you and I were both at ITV. And I was in the studio with Liam Fox when I think it was Julie Etchingham announced that it's now past the point at which Remain cannot win. And I walked out of the studio with Liam Fox and you were waiting to go on. and Liam Fox said to you something along the lines of, we did it. And you said, what do we do now? I don't know that, but go on. And I said, problem is, neither of you have an effing clue what you do now. So what's your take on it now? I mean, you can't pretend it's gone well, can you?

33:23A bit, but go on. It's not as good as it should have been, but go on. And you had a kind of central role at one point because you were Secretary of State for exiting the European Union for two years. You had that famous photograph with Michel Barnier. We talked to him about it, by the way. He gave you more credit than you got. Oh, yeah. Well, it was a fix. But go on. Yeah, there you go. As he knows. Michel knows that as well. Anyway, so first of all, your general take on how it's gone. Secondly, the deal that's finally been struck, would you accept it's a very bad deal for the UK? And thirdly, how do we fix it?

33:58All right. Point one. I mean, I can't remember the phrase, but I can guess what I was thinking on the night. Because the previous three months, I've been to see George three times, George Osborne, right? And the first time I went to see him, I said, George, you're not winning this. Because it's quite a fierce battle going on. And I said, you're not winning this. I've been out in the country. I mean, I wasn't part of the formal Gove-run operation. I just did my own debates and so on around the place. So there was Boris Johnson campaigning eventually. there was Gov campaigners, Dominic Cummings campaigners.

34:31And there were bits of it. I mean, if you want me to tell you something that was wrong, I thought the side of the bus stuff was ridiculous. And a number of us refused to use the 350 million number because we just thought it was misleading. It was not a straight lie, but it was bloody misleading. Anyway, I went to see him and I said, you're going to lose. He said, no, we're not. I said, yes, you are. And as you do, I just plucked a number out of the air, right? I said, you're going to lose. It's not a big number. It's going to be something like 52, 48, you know. And I literally done that, you know, just plucked a number out of the air.

35:03But I wanted to sort of make it crystallize his mind. And then at the end of the meeting, I went back about one month ago, thereabouts or six weeks ago, same conversation. I said, George, and this is what I think I might have been thinking about on that night. George, you're going to have to decide what you do if you lose. How are you going to do it? You can't negotiate it. Cameron can't negotiate it. You're going to have to give somebody pretty much absolute power to do a negotiation. And why can't they negotiate it? Because they've been saying all the arguments that they have been making would be played back to them in the negotiation.

35:46Cameron had already failed. Let me finish. Listen, I've done more European negotiations than probably anybody in the world. Not over Brexit, but prior to that. and Cameron had done a terrible job of the attempted renegotiation of the immigration. Indeed, that's probably what was the mother and father of Brexit, was actually that poor prior negotiation. If he got that right, there probably wouldn't have even been a referendum and if he had, he would have won it. But I said, you know, you're not going to be able to do it. Somebody else, you're going to have to give somebody else a pay. You know, Gove or whoever it is.

36:19I wasn't thinking me. I was thinking because I was completely outside that gilded circle. And he said, well, maybe we'll have to go. And I said, no, that's the wrong response. You'll need stability at home while you're doing this because it won't be a straightforward negotiation because the French were already shaping up to be antagonistic, as I put it gently. And I had the same conversation again about two weeks before the outcome. And I reran my number plucked out of the air, which now would look magical to him. but it was just a guess and again he reiterated well maybe maybe we'll have to go and that's probably what was in my mind at the time so what was the second because I think one of the things you're about to say because I've heard you say it before is it could have all been done much better there's nothing wrong with Brexit the problem was the way it was implemented that's why I resigned that's precisely why I resigned it isn't just saying I acted that point many of the many of the arguments that you and other Brexit supporters make, seemed to me, in retrospect, politically naive.

37:27It was obvious, I think, that many of the things that went wrong were likely to go wrong. Betting the country on a path where everything's going to go right, where you're going to land exactly the right kind of Brexit, given the realities, the Tory party, Cameron, Theresa May, all this stuff, is being overly optimistic. The chances are, when you trigger something like that, it's going to be messy and nasty. No, it might be. I mean, look, whichever way you go, you're betting. Staying in is a bet as much as leaving is a bet. Sure. All right. And staying in, I mean, one of the issues here is we're doing better in aggregate economic terms on technology investment than everybody in Europe put together.

38:11We're doing better in growth terms than Germany, France, Italy. We're doing better in export terms than we've ever done before in total terms. Where's the million unemployed that was supposed to be coming? That was a CBI bet. The Treasury forecast was 800 ,000. But where's all that? It's rubbish, right? Now, so both sides made mistakes in this argument. No two ways about that. I hope both sides would see that. But the catastrophic collapse hasn't happened. That's not what I'm saying, David. I'm not saying that. No, no, no, but I'm making a point to you. I still think it was a catastrophic decision.

38:46No, well, you do. I don't. I mean, we can talk numbers till the cows come home and bore your listeners and viewers to tears if you want. But, you know, because unfortunately, despite myself, I'm an expert in these bloody things. The simple truth is, whichever way you went was a bet. Let me interrupt you. I think your biggest mistake was you bet on a world of free trade at a moment when the world was becoming protectionist. You launched this in 2016 and it was all about big markets in China, US, India, Europe's not growing quickly, these other places are growing quickly. And you entered a world in which Trump was throwing up tariff barriers.

39:24The US has now got 110 % tariffs on Chinese vehicles. Trump is going to come in if he comes in in November with 60 % tariffs on China, 10 % tariffs on the rest of the world. We're in a world where Modi, Xi Jinping, all these major economies are not the dream of the 80s and early 90s of free trade. It's a protectionist world. And we're in a very exposed position. The hard truth, Rory, is none of it is as bad as it was before 95, firstly. I mean, you go back. But it's reversing dramatically. Wait a minute. Go back and look. Right. There is a different issue, which I think you've got a point on. But it's over and above Brexit.

40:00Right. But in terms of free trade, still the Pacific is going to be a faster growing entity than Europe will ever be ever again in our lifetime. I'm not saying it's not growing fast. What I'm saying is that unfortunately - That's what matters to us. No, what matters to us is yes, growth. All right. So why are manufacturing, of course, as high as they've ever been? How much of this can we access? And it's not just protectionism. It's also that international security is changing. There are other reasons why opening up to China doesn't look as smart as it did in 2016. Listen, on international security, I'm afraid Europe trying to interpose itself as a sort of second NATO is a bad idea, an absolutely bad idea.

40:45And it's not a bad idea if Trump comes back and J.D. Vance comes back. NATO itself is a better entity for that, I'm afraid. It really is. The point I'm making is that we're decoupling, de-risking from places like China because of international security. No, no. Well, no, we are. Or we should be. No, no, no. So you're replacing wish with actuality with wish. Well, the whole world is decoupling, de-risking from China. Really? How are they decoupling? How are they decoupling? I've just told you the United States is about to put 60 % tariffs in place against China. How are they decoupling? Do you have a computer?

41:2260 % tariffs against China. Do you have a computer? Yes, I have a computer. Yeah, right. The graphics chips in it will come from Taiwan. There is nowhere else in the world they come from. Sure. So you're not decoupling that. You're not decoupling your electronics at all. Nobody's putting tariff errors against Taiwan. They're putting tariff errors against China. No, but that's where it comes from. Most of our trade is with Taiwan. That's the first thing to know about this. Secondly, of course, there is an issue there in terms of dealing with free trade in a security challenge world. That is an absolute truth and no one would go around that.

41:56And it's not one that you talked about in 2016. If you think being inside the European Union with our hands fettered is a better way of dealing with that, I'd like to take you back to the 90s when I tried to do it. I want to come back to your kind of journey through the Tory party. Because I wrote down this morning a list. So you've gone through, not you personally, but the Tory party has gone through Thatcher Major Hague Ian Duncan Smith Howard Cameron May Johnson Truss Sunak who was the best who was the worst that she was best by a long margin and the worst well Truss but yeah Truss I guess who was making you pause well I was pausing whether you counted Truss in the in the in the league at all really you know she was prime minister she was prime minister for five minutes but the Yeah.

42:49But, I mean… Who's your runner-up on both? Gosh, I mean, there's such a gap between Thatcher and the rest, it's really hard to give a runner-up. Really? Yeah. This is interesting, I think, in the context of what Rory and I were just talking about. Because, you see, 1975 is the last time I can remember the world being so chancy as it is now. Because Rory's right about the security trade interface. That's really important. but we've got that we've got domestic problems health service in particular I mean West Treaty I think is a good man but I think he'll still struggle we've got just so many challenges right and the last time we were in this position like this was when we dropped Ted Heath and replaced as a leader of the party with Margaret Thatcher And at the time, it looked like a very long shot.

43:48I was a student leader. I'd known her when she was Education Secretary, and I'd been the leader of Conservative students in the country. And I was one of these people who always argued with her. She always picked up a fight with me. I never really knew why. But nevertheless, that was the sign of affection, I think, on her part. And we wondered whether we'd made a terrible mistake more than once. But she set about these spectacular strategic aims with incredible tactical caution, something I think Blair copied in a way, you know. And she sort of salami sliced every problem to divide it down, deal with it very analytically.

44:27She would very often dismiss the conventional wisdom altogether, the sort of what I talk about views of the establishment wisdom, but she dismissed that and just start from fundamental principles. so she was an order of magnitude different in her approach in her analytical capacity in her methods uh yeah if you if you had to go and see her about something which was in any way controversial even if she agreed with you ian gow said to me once explaining when i was about to go and see her and go through this process my boy you have to know your arguments you have to know the footnotes to your arguments and you have to know the footnotes to the footnotes to your arguments and if you don't there'll be a pair of tyre tracks across you and she'll be gone and he was exactly right and that's how she assessed policies it's also how she assessed personalities why her cabinet was full of what others thought of as left-wing people like Waldergrave and Patton that both Patton's and so on it was because they stood up to her and of course if we go back to the point where you almost became leader when David Cameron followed 2005 yeah Michael Howard Why do you think you lost that?

45:34Why do you think you won? A mixture of things. I made a bad speech. At the conference? Yeah. That was the sort of nub of it, but it wasn't the only part. I mean, the system didn't want me. It's very simple, you know, and there were lots of handicaps along the way. But there we are. Why did the system not want you? I don't really know. But, I mean, I've had a number of people come to me after and say, oh, well, so-and-so, this funder, whatever, told me not to support you and so on. I mean, I wasn't aware at the time. I might have blithely ploughed on. You'd been in the lead. You were the favourite.

46:06Yeah. You had a lot of votes amongst members of parliament. Then suddenly the whole thing kind of collapsed in a few days. And Cameron had started with something like five or six supporters. I mean, a tiny number. And then some had come roaring through. What would it have been like if you'd been prime minister? What would a David Davis premiership have been? What would you like to have done with the country? I'd probably still be in Europe for a second. But tell us, or imagine you became prime minister in three years' time. what would you be doing in the country? I'd shoot myself. I'm not interested in doing it at this point in time.

46:38What would be different? Probably less than you think. More worry about meritocracy. I mean, I think one of the great tragedies of modern times is I grew up in an era when meritocracy was at its maximum in this country. I mean, the middle class was growing like mad. Opportunities were growing. The schooling system with grammar schools meant a large number. So many kids go to grammar school. a large number of working class. And that now, today, irrespective of government, by the time they get to 11, 35 % of children, their English and their maths are not good enough to make progress. So in essence, the state has failed them by the time they're 11 years old.

47:20If you take that number for free school meal kids, i.e. the poorest decile of the population, that's 50%. That is a scandal on the grounds, to me anyway. And why did Labour not fix it under Blair? I think we did. Hmm? I think we made massive progress on those issues under Labour. But not in that number. Not in the number I was giving you. It stayed much. It got slowly worse over the years, you know. I don't really know. So you're saying you'd put education at the heart of a Labour's government? I'm just saying, look, social mobility, meritocracy, if you like, has, in my view, faded over the years.

47:54It's not got better in Britain since. That's not the story that Britain tells itself. That's not the story that Britain tells itself. I mean, what happens is governments pick out little pieces that suit them, right? And they're often legitimate. So, for example, the last government will reasonably point to reading standards, right? Why do they do that? Because they introduce phonics, Gid, junior minister, probably made a bigger difference as any minister in government the last decade by just introducing phonics. But that's one piece of the puzzle. It hasn't solved the overall problem. And I think now we're actually at a time where we could do something about that.

48:34I mean, the new government's talking about using AI much more, right? Schools, you know, you can easily introduce a system whereby kids get taught absolutely to their own capability. What tends to happen today is the bottom 20%, 30%, 40 % fall off the bottom because, you know, the teacher's got to teach to a centre somewhere. It'll teach to the ones that are in the IQ 100 group, if you like, use an old fashioned measure. And you could actually change, completely transform the classroom. And that would deal with my problem that I just talked about. But it also deal with the young David Davis sitting in physics, reading a novel because he because physics is too easy and he should have done it two years earlier, whatever.

49:19So, you know, it's it's it's that would be one area I'll be I'll be very keen on. Let's come back. Bigger than just education. Let's come back. So give us your pitch to be prime minister. What would have been the vision? Let's be clear. I don't want to be prime minister. You did want to be prime minister. You ran to be leader in 2005. You could have been prime minister in 2010. You wanted me to admit a mistake. There we are. That was a mistake. You ran to be leader in 2005. You could have been prime minister in 2010. What would you have done with the country? What's your vision of what you would have done?

49:47Well, I would have taken a meritocratic issue head on. Internationally, I don't like foreign wars. generally. I don't like wars. Foreign wars are automatic and tautological. But I didn't approve of the Iraq war, as you know. I didn't approve of what we did in Libya. I actually campaigned to stop us bombing Syria. Not because I think I like the Syrian regime. It's a horrible regime, but we're just going to kill 300 conscripts for no purpose, you know. So it'd be a very different approach on that front. I'd be a bit more assertive with America. I mean, we have tended historically to behave like a colony, frankly.

50:25The most recent example, Assange, the extradition treaty, things like that. At home, I would tend to be a low-tax Tory, but a balanced books low-tax Tory, not a speculative low-tax Tory. That's the sort of picture, but I haven't thought about this for decades. And this picture, so anti-establishment. You talk a lot about the establishment, don't like the establishment. Anti-establishment. Well, I think with respect, Rory. Don't you think I'm part of the establishment? We've done this. No, no, no, no. But we've had a couple of prime ministers. We've been Newtonians, Oxbridge, you know, and truth be told, I mean, Cameron was OK domestically.

51:04I think it was a disaster internationally. But David, we don't disagree on this. You have a weird picture that somehow I'm like Cameron. No, no, no. You're all part of the same class. You're all part of the same class. And the other old Etonian? It was Boris. And him? Well, don't you remember the phrase in the name of God go? I mean, you know, I wanted rid of him because I just thought he was morally not up to the job. Let's put it that way. So let's loop out. I don't want to get pulled on this. You've got this. You enjoy this idea. I'm just teasing you. Go on, go on. I'm teasing you. It's daft.

51:33Listen, I work with other members of the station all the time. It's daft. I mean, it's completely daft. I, unlike you, left the Conservative Party because of Boris. Yeah. This idea that somehow I'm part of that is ridiculous, right? and I disagree with David Cameron profoundly. I'm winding you up. Successfully, because I think it's daft, this particular view. But anyway, you're anti-establishment. You're very suspicious of foreign wars and foreign engagements. You're in favor of low taxes. You're in favor of Brexit leaving the European Union. Some of this seems to echo with a whole trend in politics, which is a form of gentle populism.

52:15no well what we've got at the moment is a mixture of unpopular populism so partially popular popular i mean no i i this is the last thing i mean who was it i'm trying to think who it was oh yes it was jonathan dimbleby i was talking to about uh assisted dying it's one of his big campaigns and i basically persuaded me he had a point really and i said to him somebody had written to me saying 80 of your constituents think this and he roared with laughter he said you're the last person in the world to pay attention to that line of argument. And it's broadly true. I don't pay attention to that line of argument.

52:52Populists who are populist because they think it's going to be popular are a disaster, generally. They go down the Pujadis route. I don't need to explain to you that. We've got a maximum of about 30 % of the population ever support some horrific sort of simplification. So no, it's not populist. Occasionally, it touches on things that people agree with, but it's not popular. And why do you think Donald Trump is in such a strong position? Why do you think he's in a poll position to potentially win in the United States? Well, because he does make simple calls. But I think it's a bit like the last election.

53:27I think it's a rejection of what's already there, that it hasn't worked for people for whatever reason. And at the end of the day, democracy is more often than not about what's right for you and your family, right? And if you and your family are suffering, got a bad job, paying too much taxes, can't afford to pay the bills, can't get a place in hospital, your kids can't buy a house, I'm talking British things rather than American things, but all those things tend to make you reject what's there and then go to whatever else is there which seems to meet it. And it's very easy to talk about the answer.

54:06As you know, you both know, it's a thousand times easier to talk about the answers than to deliver the answers. And that's where populists have a short-term advantage until the moment they get power. My final question, thanks for coming in and thanks for all your time. Where do you think the Tory party should go now and where do you think it will go now? Well, I think it should take some time to do a lot of rethinking. I mean, you will remember better than anybody the first couple of years in opposition, in a way, a waste of time of an opposition trying to talk to the public because they're not listening.

54:36I think Peter Lilly said it. When we lost in 97, the public would like not to hear a few minutes for the next year or so. And we should use that time to think very hard about a whole range of policies, housing policy we haven't touched on. I think our housing policy has been weak or cowardly. I think the new Labour housing policy will crash into other issues because it ironically it's unplanned you know I would go down a route of the post-war housing commissions and whatever you know new town commissions as well. You take time on that as well. Yeah yeah so those sorts of things schooling as I talked about I think one of the real failures of the Blair Times other than the international ones and the one the real phase of Blair time was was the um higher education issue I think we've got that wrong I don't like student loans I don't like tuition fees I don't like the way we've handled that so the whole there's a whole series of things of that sort of nature as well which needs so that's quite a big call you're basically saying you think Richard Sooner should hang around for a couple of years while the party saw itself I've told him that I've told him that I said well not a couple of years I've said to him look you must hang around for long enough for us to make an intelligent assessment of who should be the new leader for us to see what the candidates to succeed you are like in opposition because if they're no good opposition we'll stay in opposition until we find somebody who is who would you back if you had to vote no at the moment none of them i've got no i've got no dog in this fight because i literally want to see how i mean i would go for the one who can actually make a you know make a strong argument from the dispatch box in these circumstances.

56:21There are no more difficult circumstances than now. So that's the test. And I don't like the right-wing grouping. I mean, you know, I think Braverman's done real harm. And on the left, I'm not terribly impressed either, I'm afraid. So I'm going to measure by performance. And Farage? Oh, well, I think those are my colleagues who want to strike some sort of deal are whistling in the wind. I mean, my comment, which sort of obviously caught people's imagination, was if somebody burns down the golf club, you don't give them membership. You know, well, that's a symbolic way of characterising what I want.

57:00My final one. What have you learned? I mean, you've now been in the House of Commons. You're just one term behind being father of the House. I mean, the oldest people in the House, you've had a huge experience of the House of Commons. What have you learned practically as a politician? If you were, you know, just the bruising experience of those decades in politics, what have you learned makes a good politician what makes a bad politician? That's my final one. God, we started out talking about PhD theses. The simple thing is when most people come in, they're altruistic. Most people come in, they're altruistic.

57:34And that dies with time for not everybody, but about 80%. and it's eroded by careerism and the vagaries of life. And the first lesson is you've got to hang on to the reasons you came in. That's what matters. And you must always revisit that. That's my argument earlier about trying to be logical rather than necessarily part of the pack. Second thing is treat Parliament seriously. Almost nobody does. Almost nobody does. and it's getting weaker. It's actually much weaker now than it was under Thatcher. The third thing is remember who put you there. This is why I started talking about social, about social mobility, meritocracy and so on, because it's very, very easy again over time to disappear into the inwardness of the House of Commons and lose track of the outside.

58:30And the fourth thing is think three times before you accept an easy solution to anything, because they almost always fail. Thank you very much. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, David.

58:43So, Rory, what is it? I mean, I take the piss out of you being a member of the establishment all the time and it doesn't bother you. What is it about David Davies? He just lobs in a few establishment hand grenades and whoosh, off you go. Well, it's a good question. I think one of the things is it's a bit like you interviewing Jeremy Corbyn. These things feel much more raw and personal when you've been part of the same party. Obviously, I spent nearly 10 years in parliament with David Davis. We were on different sides of almost everything. We were on different sides of Brexit. We were on different sides of the type of leaders we were supporting.

59:23We had different visions for the Conservative Party. Part of David Davis's push, and there's a sense of these very innocent words like, I believe in meritocracy and I'm anti-establishment, were in fact used by people like David Davis to attack the kind of Cameron center-left direction of the party and to try to drag it back more towards the Brexit right. This meritocracy thing was the great line of Dominic Raab, who was David Davis's chief of staff and very much took up David Davis's mantle. So what you're seeing there is my, on the one hand, getting slightly itchy about the fights within the Tory party, and on the other hand, thinking, listen, okay, yes, I went to the same school as David Cameron and Boris Johnson, but profoundly, I'm not the same person as Boris Johnson.

1:00:15And unlike you, dear Mr. David Davis, I actually resigned from the Conservative Party and protested against him while you stuck around. You can't call him Mr. David Davis because he is Sir David Davis. I thought, you see, if I'd have been involved in a sort of battle of establishmentism, and I said, hold on a minute, Mr. David Davis, I didn't take a bloody nighthood from Boris Johnson. Anyway, I quite enjoyed it. I stayed out of that bit. He is an interesting character, though. He is a real survivor. And just tell us about your relationship with him, because I think he's one of this group of people, along with Alan Clarke and Nicholas Soames, that you hung out with in the 1980s.

1:00:56It's a really fascinating vision. So here's this left-wing journalist from the mirror, ultimately very close to Neil Kinnock, John Smith, Tony Blair, who for some reason has a real penchant for going out with these rather kind of colourful, indiscreet right-wing Tories. What's going on there? Well, that is exactly right. And when Alan Clarke died, I remember the two people I spoke to about it were Nicholas Soames and David Davis. I remember David Davis, it was David Davis who said to me, it sounds like he's just turned his face to the wall and decided to die and he couldn't face anybody seeing him.

1:01:34I was very friendly with them. I mean, David Davis is one of the few Tory MPs who's been in my kitchen. I don't think you've even been in my kitchen, Rory. So, yeah, it was. And I'd completely forgotten the thing about how at one point he had access to all these people in the city and he was going to put together 300 million quid for him to buy the mirror and I would edit. Can I come in on that? Because this is another fascinating thing. One of the themes is that these people, Alan Clarke and David Davis, seem to have really taken a shine to you. As far as I remember, Alan Clarke was trying to give you a Rolls Royce and David Davis was trying to give you a newspaper.

1:02:11It was a badly. Nicholas Soames never gave me anything. Nicholas, my most memorable exchange with Nicholas Soames was when he stopped me by a cash machine in the House of Commons. This was when we were in government and I was working for Tony Blair. And he said, how would you feel if I tried to pass a law banning Burnley fucking football club? I said, well, I wouldn't be very happy. Well, that's how I feel about your fucking fox hunting. And stormed off. No, I was very friendly with all three of them. But listen, I was a journalist, Rory. So I had to, and a journalist on the Daily Mirror, a paper that was not very well disposed towards the Conservative Party.

1:02:52But I think they saw me as useful in the little sort of inter-Nesim battles that they were all fighting in. Alan Clarke was just a wonderful gossip. He liked going out with people who liked a good natter. David Davis has got that about him as well. And the other thing I quite admire about him is he just sort of keeps going. He's 75. I mean, if Labour do pass this bill that stops anybody sitting in the House of Lords after the age of 80, he's going to miss his seat in the House of Lords. And that's another thing you should have said to him, Rory. Come on then, David. As this great hater of the establishment, would you go to the House of Lords?

1:03:24The things that I think wowed me up probably most were his arguments on the death penalty, which I thought were disingenuous. I think he's somebody who came out strongly in support of the death penalty and got a lot of applause from the right wing of the Conservative Party for being pro-death penalty at a time when it was actually quite brave of some of my colleagues back in the 80s to be anti-death penalty. He now produces this very strange justification. Oh, well, I'm in favor of the death penalty, but I'm worried about whether the legal system would be able to carry it through. The other one was on gay marriage.

1:03:59For the record, priests in the Church of England are not obliged to conduct gay marriages. In fact, they're not actually allowed to conduct gay marriages in the Church of England. So the argument that he's trying to make that this was somehow putting unfair pressure on priests, forcing them to conduct gay marriages when they wouldn't want to, is just not true. Is that right? That priests don't do gay marriages? Priests don't do gay marriages in church. The gay marriage bill was a civil bill. It was a civil bill. It's about being able to get married in the eyes of the state, not in the eyes of the church.

1:04:35And it's up to the individual churches to decide whether or not they want to follow through on the marriages. And David Davis is one of the people who's leading the opposition to this bill and leading it on completely disingenuous grounds and continuing years after it to try to insist that I'm wrong. Okay. What else fired you up? Well, I think that the, I thought it was interesting because I'm sympathetic towards his civil liberties stuff. I admired the stance that he took. I was interested that he became close to Chakrabarti. I think we share similar views about defense and security. I kept hoping as a conservative that I could find common ground with that side of the conservative party.

1:05:17It's a real body blow to be perpetually reminded that they really dislike people like me. They see us as wet establishment lefties. They're always right about everything. You will never actually get them to say, I was wrong about gay marriage. I was wrong about the death penalty. He admitted Brexit was not going very well. I don't think he said he was against Brexit. I'm pretty sure that was, it's not been implemented right, but I'm still in favour of it. Anyway, I thought it was very entertaining to sit watching you get more and more aggravated by his. The more aggravated you got, the more he led back in his chair.

1:05:52I thought he was going to fall over the back of his chair at one point anyway good fun rory good fun and um let's hope the list has enjoyed as much as i did very good thank you very much see you soon bye bye