132. Question Time: How to reform prisons, Macron vs. Clinton, and what is the Privy Council?

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1:21So welcome to The Rest Is Politics Question Time with me.

1:27We're sitting here, sitting on the Harrogate Theatre, looking at Edward Fox and family in Saints & Sinners. A Lane Page, one of the world's best -loved entertainers. And Chris Bollington, who's obviously quite big on Mountain, Dara O 'Brien, sold out. We're doing a mountaineering thing right today. You're talking about walking up mountains. I just want to get confused in these places. I always sort of think maybe if I'm here, I am, you know, whoever else has performed here. Max Miller. Exactly, Max Miller. Yeah, okay. Right. As we focus on your fantasies, Dean Beaton, what is the Privy Council?

2:07On the back of Roy's Privy Council outfit for the coronation, which I see Graham Norton was channeling in the Eurovision Song Contest, can you explain what exactly the Privy Council is? Is it a lifetime membership? Who joins? Does it have a purpose? Do you get paid extra? Very good. Okay. So Privy Council is lifetime membership. Generally, you become a Privy Council when you enter the cabinet, but you can get it in the shadow cabinet and actually Prime Minister's increasingly give it out. Judges, as rewards, people and judges get it. It was originally a sort of super cabinet for the king. So it was the private council of the king.

2:42And still there is a convention in Parliament that if you want to read classified documents, you're supposed to be a Privy Councilor. So I'm not sure that necessarily holds up much. You stick right on the rule in front of your name for the rest of your life. And occasionally you are invited to do various ceremonial things. So there's the acclamation of the monarch, which was televised for the first time. Just televised for the first time. But the number of people in the Privy Council is getting very, very large, like the number of people in the House of Lords. And so I think it's becoming a pretty unwieldy type of body.

3:18And you don't get paid extra. You don't get paid extra thing. Okay. But you do get a beautiful uniform. Macron versus Clinton, Graham Perkins, thanks for the Hillary Clinton interview. It was an enjoyable and interesting podcast. But I thought she was arrogant when she criticized Macron. Shouldn't those of us in Europe be able to think for ourselves instead of jumping into line when America snaps its fingers? I really enjoy the interview with Hillary Clinton, but I do think she was very dismissive of Macron in a way that slightly surprised me. She was basically making the point that he'd been talking about European security, possibility of greater European capacity.

3:53She was basically saying, I've heard this from presidents all my life after his China trip after his trip to China. And I think the Americans were, as we've discussed before, they were a little bit troubled by that visit and the extent to which he allowed himself to be portrayed by the Chinese as being somewhere between America and China. I don't think that was the purpose of the visit. And you know, I think you just got a bit carried away with himself in one of the chats on the plane coming back. There isn't a more contradiction of doing this, which is really interesting. So you remember Biden is always getting himself in trouble because he called Saudi a price state.

4:22He was very rude about Erdogan, he called Walter Cratt, Hillary Clinton's doing this about Macron. The other people who do this, of course, are people I Erdogan themselves who are perpetually throwing insults around to everybody else. And it's striking that British politics isn't really like that. You don't seem to get huge popular points in British politics. Of Macron -friend or foe, let's trust. Oh, yeah, but that's not, I mean, I agree. I mean, that that was awful. Absolutely awful. She said the jury's out. But compared to what Americans and Turkish politicians take as normal, which is throwing really offensive epithets against almost everybody.

4:58I mean, so Erdogan will say about the Egyptian president that the man's a tyrant and this kind of stuff goes on and then he will compare the Israelis to goodness knows what and then the Israelis will check stuff. The Americans are more into that kind of politics. And Biden loves that stuff. A lot of his campaign was, you know, attaching these extraordinary epithets to people. But we don't really do that. But we tend to be polite for about foreign rule instead. I don't feel that. But maybe that's because we're through the Brexit period where we've just heard that Johnson and talking about friends and our friends and colleagues in Europe to their face while abusing them through the media.

5:31What about, did you see Macron's piece in the FT at the weekend? Well, you know, we talk about a lot about how we want political leaders who kind of give big picture messages. It really was a big picture message. I think he was trying to sort of catch up with the American IRA, the inflation reduction act and signal the Europeans have got to be on that level of thinking. But it's definitely what we've got to do. Watching Macron because the key challenge to him is is he going to be able to bring together very, very soon a candidate who he can endorse. No, he's got to think about succession. Because if not, either the far left or the far left are going to take him.

6:07Well, he won't be the far left. He won't be the far left. It'll be Le Pen. Merin Le Pen. Yeah. Now, bio -savage, why isn't the T -sport business dealings getting more news? I listen to the pry by podcast and it looks like public funds are going to stone a monumental scale. Sarah Ashwin, T -sai free -port corruption and the cover -up. It's a level of corruption worthy of Russia is going to take in a very damaged direction if not exposed and challenged. We've said before that private eyes seem to be the only media organisation that's really getting stuck into this, but the financial times are now onto it.

6:38But I can't pretend to understand the ins and outs of it, but I do get the sense of a very, very, very slow -burning, massive whiff around this. Huge shout out to private eye who consistently over, I don't know, how many decades have broken all these stories? Well, this one they've been going on about it for weeks and we've said several times why the rest of the media are not picking this up. The other people to give a shout out to the Yorkshire Post have been doing quite a lot about this as well. And I'm not just saying that because we're in Yorkshire, it's because I actually need, obviously, this stuff online.

7:07So I think maybe that's something we should come back to. And while we're up in the, you know, this part of the world, we are going to be doing, we're going to have our first double -headed leading interview in a few weeks time. Yes, very good, very exciting. Two andies. Very good. Two andies. Andies Street and Andy Burnham. And the only reason I'm pleased that is that, generally speaking, I'm always told off that I never managed to remember when I meet people to raise it. I did remember at the coronation to raise the question of the interview with Andy Burnham. Which is not quite the same as King's.

7:36King of Thailand was there and he would have been a real winner. And we could have, sorry, the King of Thailand from Munich was out the way out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the coronation. And I missed my chance. It's unbelievable. We could have done it in German. Exactly. You could have done the whole thing, exactly. Oh, really, please, honestly, you've got to get better at this. You really are. Question from Victoria Gray. You're brought back by a forward -thinking new government to take charge of prisons. What are the first three things you would do and then what? Oh, wow. Are my allow to enter them?

8:09Yeah. I would release an awful lot of people who are there. I would have a mental health assessment of every single person who is in the prison of state. Very good. And find out which of them could be better treated in hospital. I think at some stage we are going to have to rebuild our prisons. So I probably have a rebuilding program as well. That's bloody expensive, though. Very expensive. But, really, really expensive prison. My first three would be set minimum standards. So I'd make it illegal to overcrowd prisons. So I'd give people a human right that they cannot be crammed to to a cell that the Victorans built for one.

8:45And therefore force any government to decide whether they were either going to build more prisons or put fewer people in prison, but not be able to get away with overcrowding. Wow. Second, we have to have a few of the migration barges brought in for the prison of state. Secondly, I would abolish short sentences. So any sentences under two years, except for violent crimes, I would abolish, because I think there is very good evidence that sending someone to prison for a short time increases their chance of rearfending. And thirdly, I would get rid not just of the current IPP legislation. I make sure that any IPP person in the current system is released.

9:21On IPP, which we talked about last week, Alice Carmichael lived in. I didn't see the debate, but he sent us both a message saying that there'd been a very positive response from the minister to something that he had raised about IPP in Parliament. Oh, good. Well, as you know, I'm a big fan of Alex Chalk, who's the new Lord Chatsar. Well, we didn't like his joint article with Suwela Bravenman, did we? No, we didn't write joint articles for so long. And John Major made a very strong speech on prison reform, which I think we both read in both light. I thought it was brilliant. And I can't quite understand the extent to which I've become such a proselytizer for the politics of John Major.

9:58Despite being the person who brought us the fact that he tacked his shirt into his underpants. Don't do that. Fiona hates that being raised. Okay. He is one Mickey Moran. Jerry Adams. I'd like them both to answer why they didn't push Adams harder on certain events. I think he got off lightly. Huh. I don't know about that. I thought we... I've had amazing feedback on that one. Was there a moment in it where we could have gone in harder? There's no point going harder on harder on, are you a member of the IRA? Why do you never admit that you're a member? Because he's tantred it 50 million times. I think some of the specific...

10:30There's the book, because it was called Say Nothing. I think there's a lot in there that we maybe could have picked on. But the trouble is that he's just so... It's a bit like Osborne austerity. I felt with Osborne when we joined austerity, there just came a point where I thought we're now going round in circles. I'm going to say what I think he's going to say where he thinks and we're going to get nowhere to move on. And I just feel that with Adams, I find it was much more interesting when we talked about I was fascinated by some of the things he said about the various Prime Ministers. And the exchange with you about you being a soldier.

11:01And you know, there was... There was tense. I don't agree with Mickey Moran though. I think we gave him a pretty hard time. Our George Osborne interview is out on leading this week. So people listening to this just go to the podcast and look for leading George Osborne. But I noticed somebody on Twitter saying that they thought that you'd been tougher on George Osborne than you were on Tony Blair. Would you accept that? Well, I agree almost with everything that Tony Blair does. So it's Tony. I'm going to give you a really tough time about how you delivered the piece process. I really am. No, yes, I probably was.

11:34But the thing about austerity, we've talked about it so much, but it sort of goes to the heart. And I don't really think that Osborne... Do you think he really believes austerity has delivered the goods that he secured, that he can't believe because it didn't secure the... You know, we were talking in the last episode about all the different economic factors. And we talked about the fact that serious since 1980, lurched up. So by 2007 gone from $1800, $10 ,000 and then dropped down today to $1 ,200. The Thailand went from $700 to $4 ,000 in 2007 and is now $8 ,000. But the British economy, and this is what I'm trying to get to, the British economy in the same period went from, in 1980, $10 ,000 per capita to $47 ,000 per capita.

12:19And today, since 2007, it stayed exactly the same. So basically we've had no GDP per capita growth since 2007. Now, whether like you, you blame austerity or whether like George Osborne, you blame the financial crisis, there is absolute, you know, doubt. He also blame Brexit. Absolutely. On Brexit. So what you've just confirmed to me is I said to George Osborne, the labor economic record was strong and the conservative... He had a really good life there, didn't he? He said the... He said the social cliché, that wasn't given him that one. Now, here's one for you. We'll tell you, who are the best civil servants you've worked with and why?

12:55Would be good to hear about more junior ranks in particular. What was it made them excellent? I really, really liked some of the civil servants I worked with in Mr. Justice, for example. Guy called Andy, who is my private secretary who'd been a prison officer. It's a kind of scrawny guy like me. He'd come from spending five years in the landings. He was brilliant about just bringing realism. If a prison escape happened, he would say to me, Rory, I have no idea why the officers didn't just grab him by the ankles and that would then give me the confidence to go in and say, why didn't someone grab him by the ankles?

13:27In Diffid, I loved the people in the field officers. So there's a woman called Bex Buckingham in Sarsudan, who'd been in the British Army. She was fantastically funny, realistic. She's now actually acting on Western Velaswala. And was a fantastic antidote to what happens when you become a director or a director general or a permanent secretary when it's easier for some of the officers to feel their largely kind of run ringed, Sharjee? Actually, you've dozens. This is what, funnily, a couple of civil servants came to the event. I did with Bethryg be last night, who, remember, I think I told you that somebody in Mr.

14:00Justice had told me that however bad you think it was, we were rather bit worse. Somebody last night from the home office said the same to me, that it's just all for the moment, and that the spads treat the civil service with absolute contempt. Was that happening when you there? My spads. I don't mean yours, but in round government, did you hear that? Yeah, well, that was Kim Clark's complaint. I mean, Kim Clark had a couple of complaints. One of them was that Cabinet government had collapsed, and he did put the blame of that partly on you guys. He said that under that true and major Cabinet meetings were much longer, that conversation was much more serious.

14:35And post -blair, Cabinet meetings had become quite curse through quite short, and people were very interested in the views of Cabinet ministers. We've got a leading interview on this coming up, where Jonathan Powden said, yeah, well, what do you expect, ministers don't really have much contribute, so why would we want to read this? He did not say that. He did not say that, you can't pre -spinner into this. That was going to have a lovely opportunity last night. They'll also hear you lose your temper. They will. They will. So that was one complaint by Kim Clark, but his other complaint was that David Cameron Hood himself being a special adviser, loved special advisers more than he liked politicians at Cabinet ministers.

15:09That's interesting, don't they? And that's partly because special advisers can suggest that a young people who can be hired and fired and removed at will, whereas someone like Kim Clark can't be, and a permanent bits of furniture, their maps of apartments, their cars. Well, until we're as Johnston kicks him out. That's exactly. So I think we've got lots of questions to come, so should we take a quick break here?

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17:57Welcome back to the Roses Bond Disquest. Time for me, Anastica Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. Maria V. I am year 12 at the moment, thinking applying to study medicine. Regarding doctors, why is there so little conversation about why there was so few places at medical school? How it's so difficult to get in. Meaning that many capable students with excellent grades are turned away each year. The Labour Party did pledge to increase medical schoolplaces to 15 ,000. Do you think this will happen? I don't know. I didn't even know that was the case. There was a shortage of medical. I thought we were trying to get more doctors.

18:34I thought it was just trying to get more doctors. And it must presume they do have to set some kind of standards. I would hope so. I would hope you can just go and buy medical degrees. So listen, we have to come back. I don't know. We've got questions about sparrons in bankrof. Oh, good. I like question that's down to the sea. On last week's question time, when describing his Scottish Sarteroil garb, Anastica mentioned that although he had several sparrons, only one of them was functional, please can you put me out of my misery and explain one exasporon dysfunctional? Yeah. Well, my view on that, I assume what you meant.

19:05As people listening will understand us, a sparron is essentially a man purse. And if you're running, you probably want to move it on to your side hip otherwise it bangs around a lot. And it can then get decorated. So I've got one with goat hair on the front, horse hair on the front. I found a badger in the road that had been run over. You made it into a sparron. That's a sparron. Did you? Did you make it? Yeah, I worked with the friend to make it. You made your own sparron. How many sparrons have you got? I've got five. If you tell me, yeah, I've got three, but only. So the functional point for me is one is the belt broke.

19:36The other one, the baubles fell off. So there's only one bauble left and it looks a bit ridiculous. I've got one with two baubles missing a third or the other one. Yeah, it looks like it's long as it's the two there. No, no, it's the central one and the one with the last sparron. No, go to, yeah, yeah, go to. Meanwhile, I'm having a skin dude made in Jordan. OK. Would you like to tell our listeners what a skin dude is? Very good. Yes, obviously in Gallic, it's a black knife and it's what goes in your sock. But there is an amazing man called Zaid who is a knife maker in Amman. This is the second time you've mentioned the making of bespoke offensive weapons, Rory.

20:11What was the other one? You play lacquer, remember? You talk about making other knife at other time. I mean, Zaid literally, he takes some huge sheets of steel that are used in industrial processes, swords that are used for cutting massive bits, would cut them into knife shapes. And then he calves your name on the knife and then he does silver tops and bottoms. So anyone going to Amman, go beyond the Roman theatre and look for Zaid and get a knife made. Did you watch the Eurovision Song Contest? I did not. Justin was the Eurovision vote read to get Sweden as host to the 50th anniversary of Aber winning.

20:46I honestly think it would be unbelievable. Sweden next year, you know what happens is that whoever wins it, they host the next one. So it was only in Liverpool because it was meant to be in Ukraine. Yeah. So Sweden won it, 50 years on from Aber. And I just think the Abortars should represent Sweden. Help me understand about the Abortars. Is it that Aber themselves are a bit old and cropped and they can't perform anymore? Presently if it was 50 years ago that they won. Rory, you're talking about musical cultural legends. You can't say old and cropped. They're older than they were. Very good. So what the Abortars do, it's technology.

21:20So when you go and watch it, it is like you're watching a live Aber concert back in the day. Right. And it is truly mind -blowing when you see it. Is Avatar a word you made up like Padaltry? No, I made up Padaltry. I've also made up Perseverance in the book. Would you haven't mentioned much this today? I'm very disappointed with you. But what can I do? Pudaltry I made up. But no, Avatar is a word made up by the Aber Abortar phenomenon, which is phenomenal. And then now it's going to go to different parts of the world. Could you imagine Elvis, Tyre and any number of things? You know, it started it.

21:53Yes, it's already started. Listen, this artificial intelligence stuff, somebody sent me the other day, as you know, I like Elvis. Elvis singing Freddie Mercury songs down the years, most of which were written after Elvis died. And it is incredible. Elvis doing crazy little thing called love is unbelievable. That's pretty weird. And it's Elvis. I mean, even though it's not Elvis, it's Elvis. So yeah, I think this musical cultural stuff is going to be, I'm sorry you didn't watch your videos. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I thought the wrong country won. I was reading for France came 16th and they were brilliant.