168. Crumbling Britain, a ruthless reshuffle, and Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘beautiful ears’

26:17He'd got the international trade brief. And I actually was talking to him last week, I was really struck by how thoughtful he was being. He'd met a lot of ambassadors, he'd begun to travel. He was having some very detailed conversations with me about what the new trade deal could be with the Gulf. He was developing all these relationships. And suddenly now he's, he's out of a job. No, he's not. He's, he's, he's, he's got, I can boat it down to a cabinet office without, so he's lost the trade job. But it's very, it's very sad because you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's a mini example of the same thing.

26:51These people put all of a sudden, Lisa Nandy, you know, was shadow for on secretary. Then she was leveling up secretary. Now she's been put to another three jobs since 2020. I mean, shadow, shadow ministers, how are they supposed to develop expertise if they keep being moved around like this? I did the only thing I say is that he's kept in the top jobs treasury, owe office, foreign office, education, health. He's kept pretty much the same people. And I think that I think what's happening with this. It's just on that. Lisa and Nick were the foreign and home set sheets weren't they originally when he began.

27:26Originally, but I'm talking about the team that he changed yesterday. I'll come on to Lisa Nandy in a moment, but I think with Nick Thomas Simmons, I think you might be misreading that. I think what's happening there is that he's taking Pat McFadden, who's now the national campaign coordinator, Jonathan Ashworth and Nick Thomas Simmons are basically becoming figures at the center. I think that's what's happening. And also one of the reasons isn't isn't it the fact that the department that Nick Thomas Simmons was shadowing wasn't was not merged with. Yeah. And then I think the, I do agree. I think Lisa Nandy will be feeling pretty hurt because, as you say, she was satisfied in secretary then leveling up.

28:05She's been moved aside because Angelina clearly wanted the departmental job as well as being deputy leader. But I actually think though that that's an quite an interesting place for her to be because we talked to Keir Starmer. He committed to reinstating the department of DFID and 0 .7 % I said. And I may have moved away from that. But I think if she gets really stuck into that brief, she can hopefully be the leader of that fight. That makes me keen to see if he can have it on the show and really get get it to talk about that. So very finely then on this, I mean, I wondered whether we couldn't think if we were doing some sort of manifesto to get governments to commit to say that we will do our best to ensure that ministers stay in their role for a minimum of two years and less as exceptional circumstances and that each one of them will do again, a less as exceptional circumstances a three week training program before they take over with some kind of handover from their predecessor.

29:05I do honestly think that the whole sort of training thing is just completely overlooked. And again, in any other organization, if you suddenly moved from big charge of presence to big charge of half of a continent, the idea that you don't need some formal grounding as opposed to you go in day one, you're expected to make a speech day two to say what your vision is going to be for the job. One thing we did do and I don't know whether I don't know whether the current government of this because another mistake David Cameron made, I think, was getting rid of the delivery unit. We had contracts between the centre and the senior cabinet ministers.

29:40These were pieces of paper written down. These are your main objectives. These are the key issues that you've got to focus on and we'll review them very, very regularly. Now I don't get the feeling that happens. Yeah, that's certainly was not the case when I was thinking about that at all. That at all. That at all. So I think that's sort of a more systemic approach to management. I agree with you. But I do think that was, I just felt it was a serious reshuffle of the case. I thought he's, you know, it's been judged as a more Blair -Eyes Liz Kendall, Pat McFadden at the centre, blah, blah, blah.

30:10I don't read it like that at all. I mean, it's definitely a big divorce from the days of Corbyn. No doubt about that at all. And it's a big change from, as you say, from his first shadow cabinet. But I just think you're looking at that and you're thinking, you know, whether people like them as individuals or not, do people look at Keir Starmer and think the guy could be promised that, yeah, do they look at racial reasons, think she could be chance to, yeah, she's now got that Darren Jones as Chief Secretary. He is a very impressive guy. He's brilliant on that. He's been brilliant on the Business Select Committee.

30:40And then you go through, I heard West Streeting on the radio this morning. And he just sounded much, so much more convincing about the health service than Steve Barclay. I saw Bridget Phillips and she was on the programme was on on Sunday. I think she's really starting to, to motor in terms of how she projects herself. Yeah. I think this is thus far being a very, very, very good week for Labour. Yeah, shout out to, shout out to Hillary Ben, who I think is somebody who likes Hillary's amazing. And I like to see him in an even, even more senior position. Right, maybe time for a break though.

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33:27Welcome back to the rest of politics with me, Rory Stewart. And with me, Alice Campbell. And we just did an interview which I think listeners will enjoy with Ed Davie. I think they are enjoying. We're looking at the feedback yesterday. I think they are enjoying it. Yeah, head of the Lib Dems. And, um, famous see, both you and I have have voted Lib Dem in the past. So, you know, that was that was us looking at our potential leader. I know. Um, but no, you're suggesting you might be a Lib Dem again. I'm not going to be a Lib Dem again. And I thought I actually thought one of the most interesting things was his claim as to what being a liberal meant as opposed to what I believe in.

34:02I actually think I believe a lot of the things he does. And he was saying it's we believe in sort of state control, which I don't believe in a tool. But I do think he's got a real thing about in the nanny state. Um, and even though he defended that very minor change on the smoking legislation, I think it's about, you know, it's why they would presumably still be massively against identity cards, even though we're giving our identity away that old bloody time with phones and the internet or the rest of it. No, I thought the other thing I'd say is you picked up in our discussion afterwards that when it came to the sort of, you know, tell us your vision, tell us your policy program in a minute, he kind of struggled.

34:35But I think the feedback I've had has mainly been about him talking about his childhood and his son. There was a naturalness to the way he spoke about that. They didn't sound like a politician to kind of trying to make something of his life. No, no, no, no, no, you just sounded like you were being talking like him. He was being, well, he's been completely through the ringer and I think he was telling you about that. Now, are you a book? Yes. It's called, we're not going to turn this into a sort of, you know, two hours session on Iraq where you sort of put me through the ringer. But I think we should let me lead the questioning and the discussion on this one if that's okay.

35:11Pretty good. Now, I read it as you sent it to me months ago, sort of, you know, taken my thoughts very few of which appeared to have made the final edition, but then might, I'll come to what you say about me. But it read second time around to me, even more desperate than I read it first time around in terms of your assessment of the state of politics. And which even though I agree with a lot of it, it sort of worries me that you who as Nick Robinson said on the today program yesterday have become a very popular, political figure that your basic message is kind of politics is all terrible. Well, I do believe that in order to change, you have to begin by really delving into the problems.

35:57You've got to really expose where the rottenness is you've got to get into that cladding before you replace it. So I think that we have had a sort of mafia code of silence around parliament for a long time. And the reason for that is that the lobby has a vested interest in sort of talking up politics. That's the lobby journalists. And I think the politicians have a vested interest in making themselves seem serious and dignified. And most memoirs are written by people who want to vindicate their careers or plan a comeback. So we haven't really had an opportunity for someone to actually say, this is what it's really like.

36:35And I was talking to Gloria Delpieri, a states of ex -labor MP who joined with me in 2010. And I was pleased that she said, Rory, you're absolutely on the nail. This is completely my experience of parliament. This was completely my experience to Labour Party. And I'm pleased that someone's actually said it. Yeah. No, listen, there's so much in it that I can relate to. And you said when we were talking to Mr. F. Solomon about artificial intelligence or leading, you said his book, he says how terrible is that he feels he has to come up with a 10 point plan. It's making it better. You don't do that, which I think is fine, makes it sort of more raw.

37:13But it just means it's at times, it's very funny at times, but it's also at times quite depressing. I guess your main point, if I can go towards the end of the book, you say that what shocked you most was the lack of seriousness. I'd begun by noticing how grotesquely unqualified, so many of us were, the officers who were given, that's what we've just been talking about. I found working for Liz Truss, that was when she was your secretary of state, a culture that prize campaigning over governing opinion polls over policy, announcements over implementation. And you made that point the whole way through.

37:46Your character, Petrail of Truss, is really quite alarming, I think, that she became Prime Minister. Yeah, so I write a lot about Liz Truss, and she is, as I think people will have picked up on this, or as Prime Minister, a very, very eccentric person. I mean, one of the things I'll see that you see a lot in profiles is they're always saying that whichever MP they're interviewing is odd, and I guess we're all odd. But her particular mind is to throw out ideas, really, as provocations, and then change them very quickly. So one of the episodes I write about, and politics on the edge says he's learning from Alistair, and putting the title of his book into the plot, is I'm not quite able to do it as smoothly as you can.

38:30So one of the stories is that I was the National Parks Minister, and she was, I was very lucky with my bosses. I had a Liz Truss pretty Patel and Boris Johnson in sequences, my bosses. So let's trust my first. And going to see her, and she says, Rory, I think you're going, I'm going to ask you to cut the budgets of the National Parks by 20%. And I say, Secretary of State, I think that's going to be really damaging. Their budgets are very small. It's going to cause chaos. So she says, all right, for you, Rory, 5%. And I give a, well, Secretary of State, if you're just cutting them by 5%, that's not to cut them at all.

39:07It's a huge public uproar. So she says, okay, Rory, for you, we're not going to cut them at all. And then kind of pirouettes out of the room. I sort of wondered at that moment when she was Prime Minister and she and Kasi Korseng were kind of introducing these tax cuts and doing these radical things, whether it wasn't sort of like that, whether she wasn't just kind of throwing out provocations, which she could reverse in an instant. You're not very flattering about David Cameron at all. You essentially, I think, put a lot of the rock that we're now living with on him in terms of the lack of seriousness.

39:38It's all a game. It's all about the media, all that stuff. But in regards to the two of them, you say, David Cameron, I was beginning to realize, had put in charge of environment, food and rural affairs, a secretary of state who openly rejected the idea of rural affairs and who had little interest in landscape, farmers, or the environment. I was beginning to wonder whether you could have given her any role she was suited to a part perhaps from making her foreign secretary, which is what she went on to be. Yeah, exactly. You said that her genius was in exaggerating simplicity. Yes, exactly. So something had obviously attracted number 10 about her.

40:14And it would be interesting to know what it was. Obviously, partly it's jealous that she joined at the same time as me. And I was still lingering on the back bench, it's when she was a cabinet minister. So I remember saying to someone, number 10, why have you put her in the cabinet? And they said because she's an incredibly effective media communicator. And it's difficult to quite believe because when you see her perform, it's difficult to put it on. I said, have you any idea why number 10 would convince themselves that this trust was a very effective media communicator? I really don't get it.

40:44They say the same about grant chaps. And I can see that from a technical point of view, grant chaps always has this ability to sound reasonable, look like he's under control, puts, puts verbs in the right place, doesn't sound utterly ridiculous, even when sometimes you're saying ridiculous things. I never found her impressive as a media performer. I found her very, very grating. I found her a whole style, a whole approach creating. But she clearly had something that made them feel that she was special. Of course, you've said before that both she and Chibata were very, very good at cultivating the price to get them sort of, you know, to say nice things about her.

41:23There's two labor figures in the book, Roy, that I want to quote you on. Jeremy Corbyn had beautiful large ears. Now what the hell, what is that? Jeremy Corbyn had beautiful large ears. Next time you, next time you're chatting to Jeremy, how look at his ears? What is it about Jeremy's ears that you've heard so beautiful? Perfectly shaped, they're very dignified. Very extraordinary. And then you also mentioned a chat by the name of, of Alice Campbell. For my chief of staff, you write, who one of your jobs, I took Lizzy Loudon. She'd been to Reza Mais, press spokesperson. Lizzy was tiny, war trainers and jeans to most formal meetings, spoke quietly and not in Latin.

42:07She worked in the Downey Street culture formed by the legend of Alice Campbell, which put, and I quote, an over -weening communications director of the heart of every policy meeting, frequently suggesting the policy itself and then using threats of senators and witchcraft to win the narrative. I don't know whether you'll be hearing from my lawyers, but it doesn't sound to me like, wait the next sentence. No, I'm taking it out. In the next sentence, I point out that this was not actually how Alice to behave, but how they believed. Yeah, you might be right about that. But it's sort of every time you go through one of these different ministerial appointments, it feels every time you're scrambling, you're scrambling to kind of find out what you meant to be doing, how you meant to do it.

42:53And you don't feel terribly well supported either by the centre or by the machine. Is that right? Yeah, so just a couple of things. I mean, yes, there are villains in the book, but there are also real heroes.

43:08One of my specials, actually, is Dave. I also feel that hopefully once you've laid out the problems in the book and sometimes in a funny way and brought people into the depths of parliament, we can begin to see what some of the solutions might be and as a starter for ten, proportional representation to shake up these old parties, because I think that's called a rosy beast who are completely unsuited to the modern world and it'd be good to bring some fresh blood. I think sorting out these ministerial reshuffles and having definitely rules of thumb, public rules of thumb in place that people should be trained and stay in office for longer.

43:45And I'd also like to look at citizens' assemblies. I'd like to look at very different ways of thinking about economic policy, but we can go on to talk about that in the weeks to come, but I'm hoping the book at least explains to people what the problems are and we can then work together on some of the solutions. Yeah, you've got one football reference, do you know what do you remember what it is? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but does it work because you actually understand football? It does work, yeah, I do want to tell you, tell the listeners what it is. Yeah, so I'm in the final, my final leadership debate against Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Sergeant Javid and Jeremy Hunt.

44:18And they're talking about how they're going to deliver Brexit by the 31st of October and they're completely refusing to get into the details, the fact that the thing they're talking about is going to throw up borders, undermine security in Northern Ireland, damage the British economy. And I get the impression that they are like a team just passing the ball back and forth trying to run the clock down so that they don't provide the space or the opportunity for me to try to land a goal on the details. I was actually thinking about when you said that you felt like you were a book club going into battle against Milwell.

44:54I'd forgotten that one. You see, I'd forgotten. Well, I'd forgotten the other one. So there you have two football references. Unless you met Milwell the place, rather than Milwell the football team with whose fans haven't fears and reputations. Anyway, Roy, I enjoyed it. I do think it's an important book. The yours and mine do kind of go well together because we're coming at the same problem from completely different angles. I'm sort of coming it from honestly, it's not as bad as everybody says, you can still make a difference and you're sort of saying it really is as bad as everybody says. And it should be very, but both are saying we have to change.

45:30That's the most important thing. And I think we've talked about it enough now because I just checked the Amazon ranking. You're a number three. And the two above you are both they're not in the same category of nonfiction. So I think we can confidently predict that you will have number one best seller on the paperback. That'd be wonderful. I'm still behind the air fryer though. I think healthy meals with air friars is always beating you out. I think cookery books go into the same charts as non -fiction. Last time I looked behind the air friars. You're behind the air friars Amazon, but this led me, Roy.

46:03By Sunday this week or next week you'll be number one. I'm sure you will. No, shall we talk about Gabon? Yes, so Gabon. I mean, so one of the people I was going to recommend for leading because he's one of the world leaders that I knew was President Ali Bongo who was the president of Gabon, but no longer because he's got a lost, he's under house arrest. So as always he's got Wi -Fi we could do it. Should we actually find? Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure they're allowing him to do interviews with the outside world at the moment because this week there was a coup d 'état and it's very shocking. We of course have been talking a lot about the coup d 'état.

46:38This epidemic of coup d 'état that spread across the Sahel so that you can now literally get all the way from the west coast to the east coast of Africa in a chain of countries that have had military coups. But those countries had many many things in common. They tended to be countries which were facing extreme climate change on the edge of the Sahar desert. They were countries with a big threat from Bukharrama ISIS, these Islamist groups and conflict between nomadic herders and settled peoples. What has now happened is the coup has now jumped a long way down. It's jumped down from the Sahel down to central west Africa into a much smaller country, a much wealthier country, Gabon's one of the richer countries in Africa, and a country that doesn't have any of those other kind of problems.

47:28And once you start seeing coups breaking out there, you're in a very very dangerous situation because it feels as though many other countries in Africa could now be vulnerable to coups. Do you not think though that the I think we're going to be careful not to see all these coups as you say in the same light, but I think with this one. So if you go if you go back Ali Bangos father had been in power for over four decades. And when he died it was a given amongst the political establishment that his son Ali Bangos would take over. And this is the third attempted coup and yes it's true that the military are now in power, but you could make the case that the Bangos family have essentially been operating a different form of coup by doing what we condemn Donald Trump for trying to do.

48:23So for example the first I think it was in 2016 when Ali Bangos won by a very very very narrow majority. It was fewer than 6 ,000 votes over somebody called, so he called Jean Ping. And the he pinged one in a majority of the provinces and he won the overseas votes. And they swung it. Ali Bangos swung it by winning in one region, his native region, where they claim that the turnout was 99 % there's no compulsory voting and he got 95 % of those votes. And the other guy essentially has said listen the games up mate you've lost let me go. And there's a you know and Ali Bangos just refused to go. Yeah so on that one you're right these are many of these democracies are what in our interview which people should look forward to that's just coming which we did with with Kathy Ashton.

49:27She said were shallow democracies to have deep recent democracies. The problem though is that that is true for many many democracies around the world. And that of course is what the military always says and it indeed it's the script. What they will say is yeah this person was democratically elected but the reason we need a military government is that it was corrupt and dodgy and that is perfectly valid of course. And this is what militaries have said not just an African in the settings in Bavue but they will say it in Egypt and Pakistan in Turkey in Myanmar in Thailand. But it is a very very disturbing trend because what it means is that instead of working to try to deepen and strengthen the democracy you resort back to people in camouflage for teeks with medals and peaked hats trying to run a country.

50:18I agree with that there was a piece we should put in the newsletter that I read in the Financial Times at the weekend by somebody called Jume Noem, Chidi Anselm Odin Karlooh who is he chairs the Truth Justice and Peace Commission on Southeast Nigeria. And let me just read you the last sentence of his piece. If the world can learn to treat civilian coups in Africa with the same sense of alarm that it reserves for military takeovers it's likely to have greater success in seeing an end to both. And I think one of the point that has come through very very strongly particularly in the the French media which has been covering this in far greater depth than our media has is that part of the backdrop to this has been that the former colonial powers have kept pretty tight links to some extent pretty tight control.

51:11All sorts of corrupt arrangements involving the funding of political campaigns in France by the business people in these countries and the governments in these countries. And Ali Bongo you know as well as mixing it with you Rory he was one of those guys he liked to hang around with Prince Charles with Lionel Messi the footballer with Michael Jackson the singer. And as you say it's a very comparably a very wealthy country because they've got oil but for such a small country with so much money there is still a massive proportion who are living in our object poverty and they were the ones on the parade who were out celebrating when the military took over.

51:45Well yeah so France is central to this you as you say colonial powers but all these coups or almost all of them are happening in francophone Africa and a lot of this is not just a revolution against the civilian government it's a revolution against the French a lot of the rhetoric always is anti -French and of course the problem as we've pointed out is that when they lurch away from France people tend to lurch towards Russia and China because that's where they're going to get support from pretty quickly and the reason also is nepotemic is that all these military officers know each other they've all been to French military academy together they've often studied in American military academies together they they serve together because African armies go on UN operations together they go on African union operations together so once all the other young colonels are knocking off coups in other countries you very quickly flip across and as the number increases it becomes more and more difficult to do anything about it in the past 10 -15 years ago France would have intervened they would have put troops in on the ground and we very very quickly to try to reestablish the civilian government that's not happening and Nigeria which was talking about getting involved and dealing with a coup in the Sahel it's now completely thrown off balance because as the number increases it becomes now manageable well there we are another coup let's hope there aren't too many more in the near future although change of government here would be quite good change of government they're not a military coup I'm not calling for a military coup or a very good I have calling for a democratic transition very good change of government yeah okay thank you all right we'll see you soon see you soon bye bye