140. Johnson and Sunak at war, Sturgeon's arrest, and the death of Silvio Berlusconi

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0:51Hello, welcome to the Restus Politics with me, Alistair Campbell and me, Rory Stewart. Before we get on with the podcast today, a little bit of news for our listeners about and don't get to a sighted people, it's not going to be any day soon. Our next two live shows, Penns Ready. Wednesday September 13, we will be in Edinburgh. Restus Politics Live at the Usher Hall. The following day, Thursday September 14, we will be in Bath or I spent Bath as Rory would call it at the forum. Rory, by an amazing coincidence, these are going to coincide with the launch of a book, Politics on the Edge. Politics on the Edge.

1:35Thank you very much for remembering that. I'm really excited to see people in Bath and Edinburgh and tiny plug for me again, which is anybody in the Manchester area wants to come along. I'm doing a solo thing on 2nd September in the Lowry and I will be doing sterling work signing, but I believe Alistair will also be prepared to be signing a little bit, so there will be a double opportunity that two of us sitting next to each other at the desk. So, pre -sale tickets to these shows for members of the Restus Politics Plus are on sale right now. If you want to take advantage of that opportunity to buy early tickets in this pre -sale, just sign up at therestuspolitics .com.

2:12If you're someone who is really keen to secure tickets, this is worth doing as the general sales often sell out literally under five minutes. So head to therestuspolitics .com to avoid disappointment. And the general sale will still then open to the public Friday 16th June 9am. We'll tweet the ticket link from the Restus Politics Twitter account at Restus Politics at exactly 9am on Friday. Now, Alistair, tell us where you are and what you've been up to. I'm at home in a very summary shirt. I'm feeling quite virtuous and fit having done the great North Swimming them when the mirror in your old part of the world.

2:49Since when, Fiona and I have been going absolute, we've been going absolute culture vultures in recent days. We've been to the theatre three times. We've seen patriots at the Noel Cow Theatre, which is about Putin and Berazovsky's relationship, absolutely brilliant. We've seen the motive in the queue, which is about John Gilgur directing Richard Burton in New York in Hamlet in 1964. Sounds very niche, but it is absolutely brilliant. And last night, James Graham, who's a declaring interest to good friend, probably the best playwright in the country I'd say at the moment. And his new play, Dear England at the National Theatre, which is about Gara, Southgate and penalties.

3:25And honestly, Rory, even though you know less about football than anybody on the planet, you will really enjoy it. And I think anybody will enjoy it. It's just absolutely brilliant. Oh, thank you. Well, my news, I'm in Amman. I'm about to fly to Doha this evening when I get off the phone with you. And Shashana has been in Syria and in Afghanistan. And it's been fascinating. I mean, I think for the census area, just how tragic things are on the ground in Syria at the moment and how depressing. And then in Afghanistan, oddly encouraging. She was visiting the primary school that we set up together 15 years ago and meeting female graduates who came back to speak at the school, who've done degrees and chemistry.

4:07And it's been really kind of moving. So anyway, that's we promised at some point, maybe to see if we could get Fiona and Shashana on the show and we should try to do that. Well, and also we promised that we'd give some good news every now and then. And that sounds even in a pretty horrific set of circumstances. She's there on the ground saying things are showing some signs of improvement. That's rather encouraging. So, Rory, as for today, we're going to talk about Johnson fall out. I mean, I was really hoping we wouldn't have to talk about him again. But I think that the sense of absolute open warfare now between him and the Sue Nacken, this utter nonsense about Nadine Dohery's and Peerages and interns going to the House of Laws of the Old Things, or if it will talk about that.

4:50I think we should talk about Nicholas Sturgeon as well. That was sort of quite big news as we were driving back from Windermere when she was arrested by the investigation into S &P finances. Little retrospective look at the life and times of Silvio Berlusconi, dead at 86. And also, you've been saying for a while that we don't talk enough and you're right about this. We don't talk enough about Latin America. So, we're going to do a little section, well, probably quite a big section at the end on Latin America in a particular relations with Beijing and Washington. So, do you want to kick us off with the whole sort of Johnson mess?

5:25Given that you've got a lovely, you enjoy nothing more than the question of Eaton. There was a good letter in the newspaper from someone called John Cauton, who was a master at Eaton, writing in the Times saying, whatever wider strategy Eaton adopts, the school will continue to educate the global elite. Perhaps its most important mission will be to ensure that its pupils are saved from the sense of privilege, entitlement and omniscience that can produce alumni, such as Boris Johnson, Jacob Riesmog, quasi -quoting, and therefore damage a country's very fabric. Sadly, I failed in that purpose, John Cauton, master at Eaton College, 1984 to 2001.

6:07Wow, very good, nice letter like that. I mean, I have to say, Roy, I think it is the inbuilt privilege, et cetera, that leads to such people thinking that they're entitled as they are. But John Cauton's levels of entitlement are now reaching, barely imaginable, that he can seriously think that having been kicked out of office by his colleagues who decided that if you remember going back to Downey Street, there were sufficient ministers willing to stay with him. And then a parliamentary committee of his peers deciding that after all, you know, what, yes, he is a total liar. He did lie during COVID that he somehow thinks that despite all that one, he's done nothing wrong, two, he's the victim rather than the cause and the villain of his in his own problems.

6:53And three, that he should be entitled, despite having been by you and I agree on this, the worst prime minister in our history, he should be entitled to send even more people to the House of Laws than these 25 -year -old interns and others who have gone off to the House of Laws. And Nadine Dores, meanwhile, is touring the studio, saying that there's been this terrible establishment plot against her. She who has basically given up being an MP anyway, hasn't been to the Commons, we've got knows how long barely speaks there, spends most of a time in her own TV studio. And meanwhile, Sunak is sort of pretending that he's standing on a point to principle because he didn't, because some of them weren't allowed by the committee, but I go back to her.

7:37Basically, points I've been making for some time. Every single one of these honors had to be signed off by Sunak. He could have said no to the lot of them. And in my view, he should have done. Yeah, I mean, you've said that from beginning. I mean, he did more than you thought. I mean, he stopped some of them, which is why we have people like Nadine Dores enraged, but definitely some of them. I mean, it's very odd what Boris Johnson and his attitude towards these honors. I mean, I've never seen a prime minister like it. There was a little bit of that going on with previous prime ministers. Tony Blair had to feel, felt he had to bring in 400 lords in order to deal with the fact that the Conservatives had a majority in the House of Lords.

8:16David Cameron brought brought in about 400 to the knee. Hold on, Rory. Hold on. Hold on. Point of information. Point of information. Just for the record, Tony Blair, who was no fan of the honor system, didn't even have a resignation on his list. He just thought, I can't be bothered, don't blame him. Good on him. Anyway, there have been a lot of pretty peculiar people put in the House of Lords. There are also some very impressive people. I mean, I'm full of admiration for people like I don't know, distinguished judges, scientists, the astronomer royal. And it's just a real, real pity that an institution which is the only bit of Parliament that actually does serious scrutiny work.

8:52I was talking to a civil servant again yesterday who was saying that in their experience of bringing through legislation, in this case, it was on pensions. The House of Commons was a complete waste of time. They never bothered to look at any of the detail, never scrutinized anything. The only thing that really concerned them was the House of Lords, where there really were people who went through things forensically. And you know, you will have friends in the House of Lords who you admire and who do a really hard job. But boy, boy, as Johnson, I'm in taking the piss, I mean, it's extraordinary.

9:22It's, I mean, it began. But you remember, his first thing when he came in as Prime Minister was to put his brother in the House of Lords. But it's as though he's behaving like a, like a burliscoli. Yeah, well, sort of weird medieval monarch, isn't it? Well, the thing about apparently, I mean, who knows what's true and what's not true, because the number 10 version of events does seem to change a little bit from time to time. Rishi Suinak said yesterday that he was asked by Boris Johnson to do something which he did not think was the right thing to do. And that, I think, was to overturn or to resist and go back to the House of Lords appointments, commissioners say, can you look at these again?

9:59But also it seems that Boris Johnson was absolutely furious because he'd obviously told his father that he was going to give him a knighthood. And it turns out that somebody in the system, whether it was number 10, whether it was a commission, I don't know, or it was Suinak said, no, that would be utterly absurd. But I, do you know the one that I think is, if anything, the most absurd of all, what in earth is this young woman, Charlotte Owen, done to deserve to become a life peer. That means she takes a seat in the House of Lords. She becomes part of our legislative for the rest of her life alongside others who've sort of, you know, helped Johnson through his useless premiership.

10:38She's 29. She's got a two one in politics and international relations from the University of York. And her main CV, the main points of her CV has been that she's been an intern and the parliamentary assistant to a succession of conservative MPs. Now, honestly, can you explain to me how that justifies a peerage? It's totally astonishing. No, no, I think he's, I sometimes think that he's deliberately trying to bring the whole house down around his head. I mean, he's doing things so provocative. Like, I mean, partly, you know, putting his brother in the House of Lords, giving his father a knighthood is very out of central casting for some of these kind of ed with the second medieval monarch types with their favourites and their families and that.

11:21But it's really, really weird. And I think some of these appointments are sort of him just thumbing his notes at the establishment and trying to discredit the whole thing as he does it. And if people want to look on Twitter, there's a writer called Nicholas Shakespeare who's just written a very good book on in Fleming, but who absolutely specializes in brutal takedowns of Boris Johnson and has collected the greatest articles written on Boris Johnson over the last few days. And he picks out Anthony Seldon in the Times who says his inner emptiness made it imperative to be the central attention, not a single person whom he encountered in his life has not been cheap and bored damaged by their association with him.

12:05And then Matthew Said, I can't help thinking that the UK has in certain respects taken the qualities of the former PM, his deceptiveness entered the body politic like a poison and finally Max Hastings. He's perhaps the most selfish human being I've ever met. In different to the welfare of anyone safe himself, it's striking that he has few if any personal friends. He demands loyalty but is incapable of giving it to others. But you know what, you mentioned Anthony Seldon there, of course, has written this book about Johnson and Robert Saunders who is on social media as at Red Historian. He, I'm grateful to David Miliband for this because David sent this to me, spotted it.

12:46Robert Saunders has written a very, very, very, very long thread on social media, which we'll put in the notes, pointing to very, very long list of statements made in the past in his writings, buying Anthony Seldon, essentially saying what a marvelous chap, Boris Johnson was, as he rose through the ranks. So I do think that it's all very well. At least some of us have been consistent from the work going on this guy should never have been listened. There's another one in the House of Laws Roy. This is, I've just, I've just looked up Ross Kempsel, who is heading to the House of Lords. So this is his entire Wikipedia entry.

13:24He won't take me long to read it. Ross John Kempsel, born 1991 or 1992. My assessment is if the Wikipedia carburetory bothered to say where exactly you were born, then you're really not up too much. It's a British political advisor who is particular director of the Conservative Party and director of the Conservative Research Department. He was given a life period in the Prime Minister's resignation on us. Kempsel was educated at the Blar where he wrote for the weekly student newspaper Varsity. He is a former journalist at the Guido Forks political website. In 2019, Kempsel interviewed Boris Johnson during his campaign for the Legion of the Conservative Party in which Johnson declared that he liked to make models of buses to relax.

14:07He also worked as a journalist for Times Radio and was political editor for Torque Radio. That is it. That is his life on Wikipedia and he has been sent to the House of Lords. Because you're really for services to interviews about how to make model buses to relax. Can I ask one question? So one of the things that you've been picking up and are podcast a lot is that Varsity Johnson was very keen to put Paul Daker, the editor of the Daily Mail in. In fact, so much so that he put him in one honest list, it was rejected by the Appointments Commission. In March, he put him back on the honest list. Am I right in saying that this is something that Rishi Sunat did ultimately manage to prevent that Paul Daker has not become a lord?

14:48Well, Paul Daker has not become a lord and that is great news for the world because it's the one thing above all else that he wanted and a man who's done as much damage to our public debate as Daker shouldn't be given anything that he wants. But Rishi Sunat's line is that the panic that have been eight people have been rejected by the House of Lords Appointments Commission. Now, it is an absolute failure of modern journalism that we don't yet know with the names of these eight, but I suspect over time we will hopefully find out who they are. I really do hope that that Daker is one of them, people saying it is.

15:24I'm assuming the Dean Doris is another. I'm assuming Alec Sharmer is another. I don't know whether that guy Adams who's provoked this third by election. But honestly, Rory, what does this say about our country? This is, I was flicking through my German news websites as I do every evening or last night when I got about from the theatre. And this story there about this is the row between Sunak and Johnson about whether he's dead should be called Sir Stanley. I mean, we're just a joke at the moment. I mean, it's beyond imagining. It's absolutely beyond imagining. In fact, so disturbing. Unfortunately, north of the border, we now have something else going on, which is really peculiar, which is Nicholas Sturgeon was put in custody.

16:11I mean, the police actually took her into custody and then released her again. And that's an incredible thing. So just to quickly remind people of this story, this relates to a police investigation into 660 ,000 pounds of donations that went to the SMP that seem in some way to, well, something's gone wrong with them. And we have to be a bit careful here on not getting ourselves sued or put in prison ourselves. But anyway, that's what the police are investigating. And amongst the people they've started investigating were Peter Marl, who is Nicholas Sturgeon's husband, who we talked about this too in an incredible conflict of interest.

16:51He was this chief executive of the SMP at the same time as she was the first minister in Scotland. So he's been interviewed by the police. She's been interviewed by the police. There's been this stuff about some kind of mobile home that was bought, which was seized from her, his parents' house. Also, the party treasurer has also been interviewed by these. All three have been interviewed and released without charge. Now, the risk of my Scottish labour friends shouting at me as they have in the past for being far too in touch to Nicholas Sturgeon, I think we should make clear she was released without charge.

17:28No charges have been brought forward. And police Scotland have been very, very clear that all of us in that includes us, Rory, should be very, very careful about how we discuss what is clearly a live investigation. Very good. I was talking to you get some amazing people in the SMP that I go to, but one of them was a judge. And I was sort of asking about this thing. I said, why couldn't this have been done? Why do these things have to be done with this process of arrest and taken to the station and so forth. And he was saying it's partly to do with taping. They have the equipment there to tape everything.

18:08But it's also that they want to give people, the police in this sort of investigation want to give people a real sense of the seriousness of it. But I think it is. It's a pretty astonishing turn of events. One of the big things happening in the SMP is there are huge calls, including from one of the last leadership candidates to have her suspended. Partly because Nicholas Sturgeon was actually famous for frequently suspending or removing the whip from any other SMP politician who faced police investigations. And there's a great list of them on the BBC. So Alex Salmond quit the party in 2018. You remember he was tried and cleared a trial of sex, the assaulting nine women.

18:49Patrick Graydy was suspended from the party for making another MP for making a sexual advance to a teenage member of staff. Former might finance minister Derek Mackie was suspended for messaging a 16 year old boy on social media. Margaret Ferrier lost the SMP, we're after speaking in the Westminster Parliament while awaiting the results for COVID tests in September 2020 before traveling back by train to Glasgow without self isolating. And another former SMP, Nathalie McGarry, was sentenced to two years in jail for embezzling 25 ,000 pounds from the SMP. It's quite a long list, isn't it? It's quite a long list.

19:23And I think one of the things that obviously Nicholas Sturgeon was doing by suspending these things quickly was to try to say this is not a tiny cozy set of people. But it's striking that Hamza use of hasn't done what I guess you would advise him to do, which was suspend her straight away until the results became clear. Or is that not your advice? What do you think he should do? I was aware of some of those cases you mentioned. I wasn't aware of them all. It does suggest that that was the approach. He is obviously, Hamza use of is obviously taking a very different precedent because he said in an interview on the back of this when he was under, as you say, under pressure from a lot of people to suspend Nicholas Sturgeon.

20:04He said, I'm not suspending Nicholas membership. I'm treating her in the same way that I've treated. For example, Colin Beatty. Now Colin Beatty is the aforementioned former SNP treasurer who has already been arrested and released without charge. So he's decided that is the precedent he wants. He says, those that have been released without charge, I see no reason to suspend their membership. So that says that he's decided he will suspend them from the party if and when this escalates further. But look, I do feel a bit sorry for him to be honest. I mean, he is what a total mess he has now inherited.

20:45And every time he tries to get onto the front foot and speak about something else, there's something else is popping up to kind of knock him down. So my friend, Angus McNeil, who's from the Highland and Islands, who I used to go canoeing with on the Thames. He's a gallic speaker, isn't he? He's a gallic speaker and he was a soap opera has gone far enough. Nicholas Sturgeon suspended others from the SNP for an awful lot less. So I guess Angus McNeil would be appealing to you as a former expert on communications saying that he thinks the longer she remains, the more the soap opera continues and he thinks it's necessary to move fast to court rise this by suspending.

21:26The only thing I say to that is that I think that when you're talking about a former first minister and you're talking about somebody as well known as Nicholas Sturgeon, I think it moves to a completely different level when it involves police Scotland making these inquiries. So I think, look, what happens now is what's important in terms of that police investigation rather than some sort of short term tactical thing that Holmes Euse have tries to do. So I'm guessing that what Angus is saying there about this is part of what I think has become clear since Nicholas Sturgeon left is that the divisions within the SNP, both personality and policy and political are much deeper than maybe you and I looking in from the outside were aware because the sense we got the whole time was that Nicholas Sturgeon had had a really tight grip of the whole party pretty much.

22:19Yeah, it's amazing. I've been reading David Torrance's biography of Nicholas Sturgeon. He also read a biography of Alex Salmond and it's very striking. He wrote it just after the Brexit referendum when she was absolutely at her peak because after the referendum she came up very, very clearly she was celebrated internationally for being the one leader with a very clear view in Britain about how to respond to the referendum. And it's an extraordinary story. It's the story of somebody who was a very, very hardworking girl from a tough working class background in Ayesha who got Glasgow University was fanatically interested in politics and S &P politics from the age of 16 onwards.

23:05She'd spend her holidays at S &P youth camps and her first connection with Peter Morrell, now her husband former chief executive of the S &P was that he was running S &P communications and put her on television at the age of 18. That was her first appearance because he already spotted the talent. And somebody who was initially far to the left of you, she was disgusted by Neil Kenuck for example. She thought he was far too right wing. She very much on the kind of benite side of things. And very much C &D was incredibly important to her. That strand exists still in the S &P and I think that's the thing that she's managed to straddle pretty well.

23:48There's no doubt she's been a very, very significant political figure and has been viewed widely as a very, very effective politician. But the big thing that she's all fought for all life looks to me like it's less likely to happen than it did. And obviously her statement was very, very strong. I'm confident I haven't done anything wrong, etc, etc, etc. So that's why I say ultimately where this case now goes will decide her legacy as much as anything. Well, as we move to the break, we're about to move on to another major political figure who had a lot to do with the police and courts. Silvio Berlusconi, who claimed to have appeared in over 30 court cases and appeared in the witness stands, he claimed 2 ,000 times.

24:33But his relationship with the truth was always a bit peculiar and we'll return to that after the break.

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