126. King Charles III's coronation, the geopolitics of net-zero, and the power of oracy

24:44The article you mentioned that I've been reading in Deshpigl, the headline is degreased to Gaffa'site Tesla, the biggest danger, the biggest risk to the German car industry since Tesla. And the piece really is about how Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes have been really dominant of all the global brands in the Chinese car market, Germany has been right up there. And now we have these firms, which I must admit, I'll read this piece I didn't even know about, BYD, Neo and Gile, and these are Chinese E cars, which the Chinese have got into their own markets, but now they're actually going to try and get into the European market.

25:25So the question that the article is asking is what can the Germans learn from the Chinese? And the answer might be from what you're saying that maybe they're a bit late to learn some of those lessons, because the other energy issue that the Germans are having to deal with is this sort of post -Russian dependence and where they go for their energy of the future. So yeah, it's interesting that you were hearing that in France. I noticed you were getting out before the near riots of yesterday. I was hearing the same thing in Germany. So it's obviously the Chinese improving their hold on markets where we thought, not that long ago, these were going to be huge markets for Europe for the rest of our lives as it were, it's changing very, very quickly.

26:12It's terrifying because of course, energy costs are going to be vital in any kind of industrial production. And the fear is that Germany is in real trouble, that fundamental industries like chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and the motor industry, and the parts for the motor industry are going to be under real strain over the next 10, 15 years. Some of the German business people I was meeting in Paris at this roundtable were saying that they they've gone from sort of slightly looking and disparate Britain to fearing that they're about to become a version of Britain. They're very, very worried about their 5, 10 year industrial future.

26:51Of course, they are burning a lot of coal. There was the banning on nuclear. There's the fact that they're having to import liquefied natural gas, which is 5 to 7 times more expensive than if you've got it in pipes in the ground, which is what you've got in Qatar or the United States. And it's doubled the price of it as doubled since the invasion of Ukraine. Exactly. Overall, overall energy price in Europe, we've got up by a third, 35%. And you have this weird thing, which is very common in the way that we've responded to the climate crisis, which is we feel very good about ourselves, not burning carbon.

27:25And then we import stuff from China that's made using carbon burned in China. But in this case, Europe feels good about itself, not fracking. And then imports a lot of liquefied natural gas, which is simply fracked in the United States. It does, it does seem strange as well that the German government with the Greens, quite powerful within it, have made this decision to turn their back on effectively on nuclear and go for more coal. So the phrase, the geopolitics in net zero, I think is a really good one for us to look at in a future part, because that's the mineral race. That's Indonesia and Chile restricting exports of these key minerals.

28:03That's China dominating the trade. That's the US trying to position itself on things like AI and synthetic biology, China positioning itself on manufacturing, in Europe being a bit lost. I read a very interesting thing, because I knew you want to talk about this by the energy saving trust, and they did a sort of country by country analysis of what different governments are doing to try to get people to reduce their energy. And I don't if you came across this phrase in Paris, but their plan is to cut energy use by 10 % in the next two years. And the strategy is called sobriety, energetic sobriety.

28:39This is all about going sector by sector to try to cut down on fossil fuels and reduce consumption. And I think they've been studying Tesco. Is it Tesco that have their thing every little help? So their slogan is, shack jest Kant, every gesture counts. So they're basically saying it's about turning off things that don't need to be on and keeping your lights off and keeping the heating down. Spain is brought in some quite interesting temperature limits. Croatia is really doing the stuff about, is all about information and making sure people are aware that how they're consuming, what they're consuming.

29:16And we had this exercise in Britain recently where we all got the same message. We all got the same noise on our phone and the government were testing some kind of new alert system. And in California now, they send out texts to everyone in California at certain points. And the last one, red, extreme heat is currently straining the state energy grid. Power interruptions may occur unless you take it action. Please turn off or reduce non -essential power if your health allows from now till 9 p .m. Goodness. It actually stopped them having black outs. It saw a massive diminution in energy use within the next 30 minutes following that message.

29:55It's fantastic. Yeah, it was good. So those who were going for all the sort of conspiracy theories that were doing the rounds when we all had to do that thing, I think if it's used for that kind of thing, I would approve. Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, I wonder, that's an interesting thing from a comes point of view, whether, whether the effect fades over time when you first do it, people respond, but eventually they get, they get lazier. Yeah. One of all of these show is that it's about trying to get people to change their own behavior and not, not think that every little thing that you do doesn't over time have a, have some sort of beneficial effect.

30:27The, the Netherlands, they've lifted, like the Germans, they've lifted lifting restrictions on coal fired power stations, but they've also got an energy saving campaign. I was very touched by your Dutch friend saying that my Dutch accent was quite good when I was talking about backpipes. So, look, I want to judge you on this one. They've got a thing called which means turn the switch and it's a, it's a specific thing aimed at SMEs on how you can save energy and, and boost sustainability to try and build up a macro picture. Beautiful. Well, I think on that amazing bit of Dutch, we should go to the break.

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33:30Welcome Teroek or welcome back to the Rest Politics with me Roy Stewart. And ik else to combo on the Google front slider.

33:43I can't believe you looked up some Dutch or Google Translate in the bribe anyway.

33:50One thing that we should be plugging is I really enjoyed the interview with Tony Blair. And people who want to pick it up, it's on our separate channel, which is our separate podcast channel, which is called leading led, which you can find your podcast. It was very intense because it was forcing Tony Blair to really focus in on the issue of the North -Night and Peace Press. But I thought he had it was actually I thought rather wonderful because he was really getting into what it means to be a politician, how leadership works, how persuasion works in those contexts, how you sometimes have to be constructively ambiguous.

34:25Did you enjoy it? Yeah, well I say constructively ambiguous. He said tactically cute. So don't search the rest of his politics people. Search Tony Blair leading right now and it will pop up. Bring it. So let's talk BBC Chairman. He's finally gone. Mr. Richard Sharp. You're too modest to mention, but it was one of the things that you predicted in the middle of the Gary Linnaker situation that Richard Sharp was going to have to go. But what's brought him down in the end is this extraordinary conflict of interest and at the heart of it, probably the most shocking thing, which is that our Prime Minister then Boris Johnson, while Prime Minister got himself into some extraordinary financial trouble, so much so that he somehow convinced the cabinet secretaries Simon Case to get involved.

35:13And Richard Sharp, who became the chairman of BBC, was involved in introducing him to somebody who lent him 800 ,000 pounds and this was not declared. Did this somebody who was also weirdly a distant relative of Johnson? Did he lend in the money or guarantor? Was he the guarantor? We still don't know where the money came from. His name was Sam Blithe, but he didn't lend the money I don't think. So Simon Case said it was okay to take the money because it was coming from a relative. But the point of the whole story is that Boris Johnson can't have known this relative very well. If he had to be introduced to this person via Richard Sharp, it appears as though this person is a semi -stranger who needed to be introduced to him by Richard Sharp.

35:56I mean, I can remember that I was only as it were a lowly special advisor to the then Prime Minister, but I can remember having the security people warning us of the dangers of blackmail and being, you know, having ending up owing. One of the things they asked you when you're vetted is whether you're in debt to anybody because that alone can produce a conflict of interest. It's absolutely unbelievable. So Boris Johnson made Richard Sharp, the chairman of the BBC, after Richard Sharp had offered to help him out of his financial difficulties. I mean, there couldn't be a clearer conflict of interest.

36:35But someone in the heart of this also is something that we should talk about again, which is Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, who I believe you met recently, Alistair. But it's very, very odd. I was obviously singing the process of people I burped trend and even Richard Wilson, who I think was a thorn in the side of a view in your friend Jonathan Powell. But why would Richard Wilson not, I think, have gone along with this kind of stuff? And I think one of the problems without sounding agist is that Simon Case became permanent secretary when he was barely 40 years old. He'd only been in the civil service for 12 years.

37:11Whereas traditionally, cabinet secretaries were people who had been in the civil service for over 30 years, had run big government departments and would have had the full confidence. And he was brought in at a time when Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings were firing a lot of the other senior permanent secretaries across the system, far enough his ministry adjusters, etc. And I'm afraid that's at the heart of this problem that we haven't had a cabinet secretary standing up to prime ministers in the way that they ought to. No, and also, does this, these stories doing the rounds at the moment that Simon Case is at the heart of trying to stop Sue Gray, do the job that she's been asked to do for Keir Starmer as chief of staff.

37:50And it is interesting how often his name pops up in these situations. But the real villains, I think you've put your name them, is what was happening on the Johnson and Cummings. And this book by Anthony Seldon, which George Hosspawn's recommendation I finally got round to taking a look at it, it is absolutely incredible. I mean, it's worse than you and I thought. If his account is accurate, it's worse than you and I thought, the levels of incompetence and chaos and the extent to which Cummings actually thought he, not Johnson, was the prime minister. Well, also sorry, just on that, I'm very very struck when I see you with Tony Blair or Jonathan Powell how much you like and respect to each other, whereas Dominic Cummings from the beginning despised Boris Johnson.

38:35He was trying to run the country while making no secret of the fact that he had us a contempt for his own boss. Yeah, which you can't function like that. And also that's completely, it's completely sort of discombobulates the entire structure on which government is meant to run. And of course, the cabinet secretary's the most senior civil servant is meant to be the person who's ensuring that there is good order within the government machine that other departments are brought in at the right time, but also does have the role of speaking truth to power. And I think there comes a point with somebody like Simon Case where if you are working on my side, somebody like Johnson and Cummings, I think the does come appointment, we say, look, I cannot on the one hand be expected to operate by standards that are expected of senior civil servants.

39:16And on the other go along with some of the nonsense that I'm seeing. And this was nonsense. The idea that this was not that this loan should not to be disclosed is absolute total nonsense. We've also been talking a little bit about how much our system relies on a strong civil service. And we talked about a little bit with Dominic Rob and bullying in the civil service. But Simon Case's career, which I've been looking at, is also an example of another problem that's happening to our government. So July 2014 to July 2016, he goes through five jobs and four years. He was nine months as executive director of the improvement group in the cabinet office.

39:53Nine months as a director of GCHQ, 15 months as a private section number 10, nine months as the director general for the EU, four months as the director general for Northern Ireland, before he was moved to be private secretary to Prince William. Now, how is government supposed to function if people at a director general level, which remind people, there's race at the very, very top of the civil service? There are only in these roles for nine months or four months. Well, especially if ministers are sort of changing every in the case of the the trust Johnson here every through every three and a half minutes.

40:23I think we shouldn't, given that we are goal hunger podcasts, which you'll been thrilled as I was to see we're at one stage goal hunger, one, two, three in the charts this week. But we shouldn't neglect or forget the central role that the gaffer, Gary Linnicka played in these whole proceedings. Still playing it, I see that daily express front page the day after Richard Sharps resignation. And this is the paper remember that campaigns relentlessly against woke and for free speech. Front page headline BBC must act to silence Linnicka. And this was 30 P. Leanderson saying that Linnicka saying making exactly virtually word for word by the way what David Dimbleby said, namely that no serving government should choose the BBC chairman of the day, which you and I also agree with.

41:13And that somehow was elevated into a front page story. So I think we should actually just for a moment remember Gary's heroic role in bringing order and sense to the top of the BBC for a while. And also to remind people that the reason why the chairman of the BBC and the direct general of the BBC shouldn't be appointed by the government is that no government can really be trusted. So the conservators brought in Richard Sharps, but you when you were in power brought in Greg Dyke as director general who had donated money to Labour, you brought in Gavin Davis as the chairman of the BBC who was a Labour donor and his wife was the private secretary to Gordon Brown.

41:52I don't think we could bring in the direct general, but the government does appoint the chairman. I should point out in my own defence Rory that that story ended with how shall we say somewhat bad blood between all of us, of a single particularly between them and me over the differences of opinion over Mr Andrew Gilligan, special adviser to Boris Johnson. Look, I think it's absurd. I think it's absolutely absurd. The other thing I'd say is we need a strong BBC that is prepared to speak truth to power. We need it more than ever. You've got these GBB's people and the talk TV people and there are essentially just sort of mini Fox news that are being funded by very, very, very wealthy people who don't care whether they lose loads of money.

42:35And the BBC, we should support the BBC and a shout out by the way for local BBC radio and television, which is being shredded at the moment. Shredded. I had a message from somebody who works with the BBC up in Humberside who was saying that they're losing jobs, they're losing, they can't cover the area properly and this does have long term implications for the future of democracy. It's awful for local democracy, isn't it? Because it means that you can't hold, you don't know enough about your local representatives, you can't hold them accountable for what's happening locally. BBC Conry has been shredded to pieces.

43:11The incredibly important and important for local identity too. Just to give a positive shout out to the BBC, you and I both big supporters of the world service, which I often listen to in my car. If you had to say why you listen to the world service, where we're Britain, because I'm in Britain, I'm listening to the world service. Emergency radio service for Sudan is being launched on BBC News Arabic by the world service. So that's proper public service broadcasting my view. That is, but unfortunately, they're about to end their Arabic language production. Exactly. Along with Chinese and Hindi.

43:39Exactly. So BBC, we both support it. It's gone through a very bad pace. Richard Sharp should never have been there, good that he's gone. And now they need to get somebody in. Who would you have as a BBC chairman? Roy, please don't say me because it's not going to happen. Sorry, it's going to say you all might be me. One, I think one really good thing would be for it not to be a politician. I mean, obviously that's slightly against my own interest because I'm an XMP, but I think I don't see why so many of these jobs are going to people who've been members of parliament. One of the names, I can't remember, the name that is said to be a richy soon -to -savour is yet another one from the kind of world of finance and hedge fundery.

44:15I mean, it's got to be somebody who understands business and broadcasting, and it's got to be somebody who can stand up to pressure. He was the best one you thought during your time that you remember who was a good chairman that you really thought was doing their job well. I thought Chris Packen was quite good, but he was a politician. How about Michael Grade? My opinions are people tend to be because I'm very tribal. They tend to be colored by people's position on Brexit. I never use dice and hand -driers, and I will never go anywhere to spoons. I mean, there are many reasons I won't go to where to spoon.

44:47It's partly the fact that I haven't had a pint of beer since 1986, but yeah, so no, I'm not buying the love for Michael Grade. Very good. Okay. Well, now the next thing you want to talk about was something called Oresy, where initially I thought this is some misspelling. Do you mind telling us what on earth Oresy is? It's like, Moracy, right? It's a pop group. Do you not know what Oresy is? No, no, this is terrible. Well, Oresy, there is no one to talk about this is because I spoke at a conference last week, organized by a group, a charity, an education charity called Voice 21. A voice 21 was founded by my former number 10, the Labour -Colby Peter Hyman, who left politics to go and become a head teacher and was a very good head teacher.

45:34But it's now gone back into politics and he's now working for Kierstarma. But Voice 21 is about trying to put Oresy, which is about, if you like, how we teach listening and speaking on the same par as literacy and numeracy. And there's a guy who did the main presentation, a guy called Professor Neil Mercer, who just gave a brilliant explanation as to why in the modern age in particular, we have to be able to teach our children to communicate clearly and properly. And it's interesting, he's actually a Cumbrian, Roryn, he talked about how there's no such thing that we shouldn't get obsessed with sort of standardized English because when he's in Cumbria, he admits he speaks differently to when he's in Cambridge.

46:22He speaks differently when he's doing a presentation to a room full of teachers as we were doing that day, to when he might be doing the same presentation to children or to people in a different part of the country. And what these guys do, the charity, what they do is they teach teachers how to educate children in the art of speaking and listening. And it's also about how you make decisions. So you'll be pleased to know that the room was full of people who listened to our podcast. I love this idea of disagreeing agreeably. Somewhere in the heart of this, I'm a little plug for my three -part BBC radio four series, which was on public speaking and rhetoric and its use.

47:00And I was very struck, particularly within a few with two young men from St. Francis' Savior School in Liverpool, so state school in Liverpool, who felt that their lives had been turned around by entering a debating competition public speaking. And what they felt about it was it wasn't just about the confidence, it was also about empathy, that learning to do these debates forces you to understand the other person's position and forces you to enter their mindset in order to try to persuade them. Well, at the start of this presentation, and I write a whole chapter in mind, you book about the importance of this public speaking and it's not public speaking as in standing up and making speeches, it's public speaking as in when you're dealing with bureaucracy, when you're trying to get something done over the phone, how do you deal with people when you open a bank account?

47:49It's anyway, Neil Mercer, when he started, he said, hands up, this is a room full of several hundred teachers. He said, hands up if you were taught how to speak at school. And about, I don't know, 15 to 20 hands went up, he said, put your hands down if you went to a private school. And I think they were left with two hands in the air. So the private schools do change. When you were eaten, you were taught how to debate, how to speak. I remember Charles Kennedy used to say that one of the things that made him a politician, he went to a state school in in Lecaba in the Highlands, but they had school debating and he was a very good debater and that's what made him want to go to university and he was a great debater there.

48:31And that's how he became a politician. And I think we just need this more than ever. And I hope that with Peter Hyman now inside Keir's Tharmes office, I think Orocy, the idea that we teach in the modern age children how to communicate. And by the way, it doesn't mean they all have to sound like, you know, Queens English, as it used to be called, accents are incredibly important. People being, you know, proud of where they come from is not inconsistent. And even the thing about, you know, off -stead, for example, there was a lot of kind of criticism of off -stead at this conference because people were saying, off -stead going to schools where, you know, children because of where they're brought up and the accents of their parents and the way their parents might be, you know, we done rather than we did and all that sort of stuff, that that kind of stuff gets loaded on the school and the school gets marked down.

49:20And so anyway, I just think it's a really interesting area. Yeah, exactly. Well, one of the things that I love about it is that in the heart of the idea of debate or argument, is the idea of persuasion, the idea that you can actually change somebody else's mind. What I hope when doing is not just agreeing or disagreeing gribly, but also the possibility of persuasion because that's incredibly important in a very polarized world. And I think it's what Trump stood against. Trump fundamentally says, my supporters and I have this fixed world view and nobody is going to change it and I'm not going to change anybody else's mind either.

49:56And if you don't have my view, you're just wrong. Exactly. And there's this lovely book by Yale Preschool Brian Gaston, which is basically in defense of persuasion. He argues that politics goes wrong when you give up on the idea of being able to persuade someone because then you give up on the idea of compromise, you give up on the idea of shared truth, you give up on the kind of humility, which is embedded in politics. By the way, oracy is now part of the curriculum in Scotland and Wales. Very good. So Michael Gove, when he was pressed on this, apparently used to say, we can't just have our kids sitting around chatting.

50:32There's Michael Gove, who spends his entire life sitting around chatting with his Tory friends. And chats very well. And he's a very good chatty, yeah. But so there we go. There's one for Labour, I hope, oracy. Let's make oracy a word that, I mean, I'm amazed that even you didn't know what it was, Roy. That really is. Oh, it's shocking, isn't it shocking? Well, on that, I think we'll bring it to an end with a with a, a Pee of Praise to Oracy. Thank you very much. Thank you.