191. Braverman sacked and Cameron returns

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0:49Welcome to the Restus Politics with me, Alistak Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. And it's being quite a day. The very, very good news that solar braverman, who should never have been appointed in the first place, has finally been sacked as home secretary. And the sort of jaw -dropping news that David Cameron, former prime minister, is now back as the new foreign secretary. Lots of other changes still going on around us. We'll come on to those in a minute. Anyway, as a result of that, we listened. We listened to you all. Those of you who said there must be an emergency podcast. So we hit the button.

1:26That's wonderful. And we can see an amazing stream of comments already coming in. I don't know whether you've ever done these things, Alistair. But we've got about 75 comments and already saying things like Alistair and Rory for King and Queen or petition to make Gary never on the foreign secretary. I'm very glad it was in that order. So anyway, for those of you who are listening on the podcast, we're doing things a bit differently. We're recording a live and interactive podcast on YouTube. If you're listening to this on Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever else you might get your podcast, this might sound a bit different than usual.

1:59We'll be reacting to news as well as taking live questions from listeners on the live stream. And if any of your friends are sort of doing terrible things like having a day job and unable to join us now, this will go out as it were a normal podcast as soon as we get all the sort of graphics and that stuff put on there. So let's get going, Rory. Pretty, pretty big potatoes, I'd say, whether it will change the dial of our politics, I'm not sure. But my God, wouldn't I have liked to be in the... I've been trying to get Tady Blair to talk to me about what it was like backstage at the Senator's yesterday.

2:34But if you think that there's Sudak walking in front of former prime ministers, including David Cameron, who probably has already lined up, past James Clevally, who's about to shift from a job that he wants to keep to one that he doesn't necessarily want to do, then past Bravaman, who is about to sack Bravaman and Clevally then lay a wreath together, and then they will troop it backstage to have teared and cakes. Would it be great? Well, we need to get your friend turning on to talk about it. So I think for the first thing, just to, I guess, set the context for reshuffles, this is going to be a very big deal obviously for Rishi Tuneck.

3:13He won't have waited until this morning to line up David Cameron for the job. Obviously, you don't ask the person into Downing Street, if they're going to say no. So he probably would have lined him up a few days ago, and they will have been waiting for the timing. What's the right time to get rid of Suela Bravaman? And I guess one of the calculations was, why not do it on Thursday? Why not do it on Friday? Why not do it on Saturday? And I'm guessing the answer is that they were waiting to see how the demonstrations panned out. What's your view on the timing bit? Well, I think if he was talking to David Cameron about coming in as far as the secretary, I think that sounds to me like a done deal.

3:52Once they'd sorted out a few questions, I suspect they've had to sort out questions about how David Cameron becomes accountable from the House of Lords. They'll have had to sort out questions, which they'll be asked about, about money. David Cameron is on a former Prime Minister allowance, which is a very, very large whack of cash. Does he also take a full salary alongside that? All the sort of difficult questions, they'd have probably asked about the politics of whether he now has to go out as a defender of the government's Brexit position, which he, we know he doesn't support. Does this make austerity more difficult for the government, given that he's, as it were, with Osborne its chief architect?

4:32I think that have gone through that. Cameron will then have said, okay, I'm up for it. I think he would have, a braverman, of course, has lobbed in this hand grenade of the article in the Times undermining the police. I don't think they could have done anything of this nature over the weekend, either on the Saturday because of the protests going on or on the Sunday because of the armistice, because of the remembrance day events in whitehall themselves. So I think he probably did have it. for the Monday. And of course, it does mean there are consequential changes. So Cameron goes in his foreign secretary, braverman out, James Cleveley, and he said, you know what, I said to Fiona yesterday when we were watching the Senate's House, I said, that is going to be a picture.

5:15You know when the two of them walk together. And Fiona has been saying for a while now, and I think she may have a point that Cleveley is probably more of a contender for the leadership than braverman. Braverman, I don't think does have the support that she thinks she has. I think she has a lot of vanity and a lot of ambition. I'm not sure she has support. But to see the two of them together, that must have been a moment and a half a sullac. He watches them, and he's the only person that knows what he's about to do probably. Nathan, well, let's take it back to the question of what it means to firstly get rid of braverman, and then we'll move on to what it means to get rid of to bring in Cameron.

5:56So getting rid of braverman first, I think the first thing is obviously you've been pushing for it for a long time. You've been saying it's very important. And I think it's a litmus test of whether a Prime Minister is able to keep authority in his own cabinet. I mean, she broke the rules. She was supposed to clear an article that she didn't clear. And it's also a question, I guess, of his moral values. He's been clearly allowing sullac braverman to remain in the cabinet, saying things that we presume that he's uncomfortable with for a long time. And I've explained it in terms of fights within the Conservative Party.

6:35He's now got rid of her. And what do you think are the risks that she will be a sort of martyr and the Conservative Party will now tell themselves to pieces? Well, I think she's a symptom of them tearing themselves to pieces anyway. You've said several times that the Conservative Party has almost become like a sort of series of factions. I think she said she was channeling Arnold Schwarzenegger. She basically was saying, you know, I'll be back. You haven't heard the last of me kind of thing. I think she will cause trouble. I think, look, if you're going to cause trouble for a Prime Minister while you're literally sitting at his right hand inside the cabinet, then the idea you're going to stop causing trouble for him once you're out the cabinet is an onslaught.

7:20She'll cause trouble. The question is whether it has traction. And I think my sense is what sullac is trying to do by bringing back Cameron some of the other changes. There's a mixed picture of the other changes. We'll come onto those. But I think what he's trying to do, frankly, is do what he should have done when he came over when he first moved into Downey Street from number 11, which is to get the Conservative Party to more sensible, grown up position. My worry if I were him was whether frankly it's all too late and whether the questions that are going to surround David Cameron related to Brexit, related to austerity, related to his financial dealings.

7:58I think the green silt thing will hear a lot about that again. But I think with Bravaman, it's intolerable. You cannot have a Prime Minister who is willfully and deliberately undermined in the way that she undermined him. You just cannot tolerate so let's start with the fact that in a sense he's got no option other than to get rid of her. I was talking to an MP this morning as the news came through. And he said, well, quite a lot of my constituents have got quite a lot of sympathy with sullac Bravaman and agree with quite a lot of the things she says. So I guess that's one type of risk.

8:40I don't know a lot of what Bravaman says sympathise with her on immigration, on boats, probably agree with her on. They may not agree with her about her comments about her, but her people, but they probably don't like seeing tents in cities. They probably don't like, and this is a very sensitive point, but I'm assuming that there are a lot of voters out there and some of my constituents would have been like this, who do not like the sight of people walking through London with Balaklava's on an islamist band -alas because it reminds them of ISIS and terrorism and islamist demonstrations. And so there's a possibility that she may try to use this issue to position herself in the sort of anti -work vote.

9:30She will do that without a doubt, and there is a constituency for that. But the other thing we shouldn't forget is that her record of home secretary has been pretty hopeless. Now that can now disappear into the ether because she no longer does the job. And what you'll see happen, the way the media will treat her now will be very different, because they will see her as somebody who's going to be interesting because she can undermine the people who are now in power. But I think she underestimates how much she's undermined herself by the manner of her conduct. Most people, maybe not all these Tory party members who gave us trust and gave us Johnson, but I think most decent people actually, whatever they think of the Prime Minister, don't like somebody who's out there just sort of deliberately undermining them for their own ambition.

10:19And also the stuff that you were quoting there that people support her on, it is to my mind, it's the populist stuff. I don't believe she thinks for a second that sending people to Rwanda is the way to resolve the votes problem. I don't believe for a second that she actually thinks it's a genuine, you know, it's a crisis facing the country that makes the Prime Minister make it one of his five priorities, his classic populism. Now I think, Soonak, if he's got any sense at all, in my view, we'll use this as the moment to signal real change. But I just think he may be, it just may be too late. Can I just bring in the comments coming down the right hand side of the screen?

10:55So we don't, we normally have this going on and they've been pouring in so fast. It's very difficult to keep up with. I'm trying to concentrate on you and my eyes going to these comments. But it's going everywhere from people saying 25 % of people, nothing like that. And people saying 0 .01 % of the 300 ,000 demonstrations to other people coming in saying it's 75 % you left wing not, you know, so it's extraordinary kind of running commentary on this. That's that's Rory, can I just tell you it's why I level look at the comments. I occasionally dip in but I'm sure the, but I'm trying to sort of, here's one.

11:31Here's a good one. Well, let's just explain this. Why is David Cameron returning by entering the House of Lords even legal? To my, by my reckoning, he's at least the, since the, since what we might call modern times going back, you know, last century, I think is the sixth foreign secretary who's done the job from the House of Lords. So it's certainly not illegal. It's a bit of Victorian for sure. Yeah. And can I just come in on that? It really has a Victorian feel. So people will remember that traditionally cabinet ministers could come from the House of Lords or House of Commons. We had prime ministers who came from the House of Lords back in the Victorian era.

12:06So, you know, famously, lots of these people, Lord Salisbury would be an example. And foreign section, these people like Lord Palmerston, Duke Wellington, but it's been a pretty long time in British politics since this has happened, the, the famous recent or relatively recent example that people remember is Alec Douglas Hume who'd been the prime minister, then being brought back to be foreign secretary. But of course, that's more than 50 years ago now. Yeah. You've had Lord, you had, I think the last, you had Carrington under that, and he resigned over the four because he wasn't the previous prime minister.

12:41You had Douglas Hume, as you say, Lord Halifax and before them, Lord Reading and Lord Curzon. Yeah. And we can now, I think, I think someone's going to correct me, but I think Lord Reading had been an MP before he entered the House of Lords. Right. Right. And I think that so David Cameron adds himself, dare we use your distinguished world, Rory? Is this a distinguished list or not? Well, it's a very interesting rest. I mean, Lord Reading, Mark's the Reading was a very interesting figure at the early 20th century. He was he was Jewish and he was incredibly able. He'd been, I think, section state for India.

13:18But it was a big reach for him to become foreign secretary. And one of the questions that's been asked on Twitter, which I want to stop you on for a second before we get on Twitter or is it? Sorry. It's not on the side of the YouTube. It's the live feed, live feed, YouTube. Either way, where you probably listened to him, but an Austrian listener has just asked either of one of us to become challenger of Austria. So, well, I was trying to, I was trying to obviously, in our last leading interview, you tried to convince Arnold Schwarzenegger to do that, but he wasn't having any of it. He wouldn't have it.

13:47He wouldn't have it. So, one of the things that came in on the feed is somebody saying, why didn't he bring in William Hague? And I think there's a very, very strong likelihood that he tried to get in William Hague and William Hague said, no. Hmm. Hmm. The other thing you never know about these re -shuffles until they kind of over and and even then you might never find out the full picture. But my understanding is that James Clevverly really did not want to do this, that he felt that he was doing a genuinely important job at an incredibly difficult time with the Middle East thing going on. To be fair to him, I think I said to you on a previous podcast, he has been holding the line for a more serious approach on this, where he brings David Lamy in, that he briefs Kierstarmher fully and that sort of thing, and that they tried to build a kind of consensus position.

14:40Whereas you've had the Bravaman's and the Goves who've been really wanting to stir this up for labor as it were. And I think he sort of felt that he was a bit of a round pegging around whole and now he's been shipped out just because she was doing the job in a way that was annoying soon. I can we should also put in the in the newsletter, there was a wonderful article which somebody sent me today from the independent just after a few days after soon, I became Prime Minister and the headline that was soon, no regrets over appointing Bravaman and saying that he felt that she'd learnt her lessons and nothing like this would ever happen again.

15:16Now, Rory, his question just gone through, would Rory accept a lordship and go into the cabinet for a really soon? If someone had offered me the chance to be foreign secretary, I definitely would have accepted you would have lost your your podcast co -host. All right. Okay. No, I think I think I know. Are you sure you're crawling messages to Rishi? Is that what they were about? There's just didn't work. Did they? Obviously didn't work. I obviously I've not been complimentary enough on the podcast about the whole conservative machine. Like, can I give you can I give you a question? How many foreign secretaries have there been since Brexit?

15:53Foreign secretaries since Brexit. Well, I can try to count it, can't I? So it was William Hague, Philip Hammond, Jeremy Hunt, I'm sorry, Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt. So I'm going to go for seven. It's seven. You're absolutely right. Seven. Seven since we've had eight environment secretaries since 2016, I'll give you a million pounds if you can list them within 30 seconds. I once almost got a million pounds off your track. You did. You did. You did. I'll tell you, list trust, Andrea Letzam, Michael Gove, Theresa Villiers, George Eusters, I've forgotten this guy. He's listed. Randall Giowadire, Rardina, Theresa Coffey, and now Steve Barkley, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, 16 housing ministers, as I said, we have six health secretaries.

16:42There's a great question from Jason Peel. Rory, you could have been the first podcasting foreign secretary. Actually, we've been amazing for Britain's soft power, isn't it? We could sort of rethink the foreign office, we just do our great podcast explainers. Okay, let's let me slow this down for a bit so that we're not completely distracted by the live feed and get into the question of the advantages and disadvantages of bringing in David Cameron. I'll have a first stab and then I'm going to have you. So, advantage, of course, it seems quite strong to have a former prime minister coming in to work for you.

17:17So, it seems like quite a confident thing that a former prime minister would agree to be underneath you. I think David Cameron has an advantage that he knows a lot of these world leaders very well. So, he wouldn't only be able to have the normal access for foreign secretary, but if he flies around the world, I suspect the heads of state will come in and say hello as well. I think he represents for many people, somebody who despite the catastrophic referendum was at least on the remains side, and in 2010, represented compassionate conservatism and a slightly more left wing vision of the conservative party.

17:58So, could be a move towards reconciliation and you can make that case for some of the other people that he's brought in, Victoria Atkins was also more on the remains side. And then the case against, I think there's going to be an enormous amount over the next few days of people going through what David Cameron has been doing with his finances over the last six, seven years, lobbying, representing. So, there'll be a real attempt to do that. I don't know whether journalists will find something, but that's going to be a big risk because that would change the story around from we've brought in a dignified big hitter to suddenly the newspapers being dominated by scandals around David Cameron.

18:40And I think the other thing is, at some point, getting into what his real record is on foreign affairs. I mean, I felt working for him, I got often very frustrated. I began to, obviously, once we saw the RG going on Boris Johnson coming, and I began to miss him more. But at the time, 2010 to 2016, I was often very much loggerheads with him on foreign policy. Anyway, every, I've got, you know how I love my little, my little letter of things. I've got an ABC, which I think is a bit of a problem. Osterity breaks it, China. He was the architect of Osterity. That's going to be a big part of a Labour's campaign.

19:21He is the guy who gave us the referendum, which has given us a lot of the mess that we often talk about. And I think for the Conservative party, he's views on China. Now, I'm sure he's a very slick, professional politician. He'll, whatever soon, he'll find a way of adapting. But I think that could become a problem. And the Greensill stuff, that's the kind of, you know, came and went. But the Lex Green still, as I understand it, is still under a criminal investigation. Overdealings in which David Cameron earned $10 million for lobbying. So all it would need would be something that we don't know to sort of trigger that one to come out again.

20:03And then it looks like soon, acts resetters has gone off kilter again. And people will be, we'll be looking for that. I think it's only fair, Rory, as you've got a book out at the moment, called politics on the edge, that we should take a little bit of a look of, I've just had a quick look through the index, the David Cameron in days. I've got to say, I think he comes worse out of your book than he does out of mine. First of all, and it might be related to the fact that I think the first mentioned it's basically him telling somebody that you're the last sort of person that they want in the last kind of person they wanted, Parliament.

20:38You basically say he's obsessed with the news and the news agenda. You weren't impressed by the fact that he considered himself to be an expert on Afghanistan because he's flown there for a few day trips. You thought back benches are sideline by him. He was too, he was too sort of in in -hok to financial services people. And let me just remind you, this may not help your future career. But I have to tell you, this is what you, this is your judgment on his approach to foreign policy. This is after he left. I did not regret his departure. Partly, I had not liked the way he approached foreign policy.

21:17He hadn't challenged the global financial system or questioned Obama's approach to Afghanistan. I felt he'd failed to prepare for a military threat from Russia, good point, and Miss Handel Libya and Syria and Miss Judge his charm offensive on China. Pretty dammit, Rory. Yeah, I don't think he's about to appoint me as an ambassador any time soon. I decide or outside the House of Lords. No, no. What's all that about the beat? But you do, you do. Well, let's say you told me he's not too special. Yeah, I think if I step back for a second, I think he is somebody who is very much a product of the 90s.

21:54He kind of came of age at the time the Berlin Wall fell. That's when he began his sort of political career. He went to the politics very early, straight from university. And his worldview was very much dominated by that. It was, and we talk about that era from about 1989 to 2005, a lot. And 2005, it's when he became conservative party leader. And that's when David Cameron's character was formed. So it was the era of John Major. It was, of course, the era of you and Tony Blair. It was an era when the US was unchallenged in the world, where the number of democracies in the world was doubling, whether the world was becoming more peaceful and prosperous all the time, whether it was this idea of liberal intervention, responsibility to protect the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo that seemed to go well.

22:41All of that was what created him. And he never saw really how the world changed in 2005. He didn't see how the financial crisis was going to change things. He didn't see how Iraq and Afghanistan were going to humiliate foreign policy. He didn't really take on board the whitening inequalities that were emerging. He remained somebody who from 2010 onwards. And I think this is probably true of Ed Meliband and Ed Bulls, too. They're all the same generation. They're all part of the same products. Continue to act as late as 2015 as though they were still in that 89 to 2005 period. And my question, really, is as foreign secretary, can he adapt to a very, very different world order where Britain, in 2005, when he became conservative party leader, the British economy was still larger than the Chinese economy.

23:34It's now seven times smaller than the Chinese economy. So can he adjust to a very, very different world? Hey, what are you? That, well, I mean, I guess we'll see in the next day, few days, a sort of reaction. I think within the conservative party, it's made those who are not on the right, the hard right, like Bravaman, feel slightly happier with life, I suspect. I think it's saying to them, soon after he's decided that this whole sort of, you know, bang the drum, stop the votes, popularize, stop the votes, popularize everything, isn't doing them any good. The bi -elections were a disaster for them.

24:17They seem to be going backwards in most parts of the country. I wonder if also because of who and what Cameron represents, the kind of conservatives, and me represents, whether it's partly soon, like saying, look, I think for much of the Red Wall, we're going to have to let it go, but the way they're watching their backs is in the so -called blue wall. And I think what this is partly about is trying to turn a lot of those don't -nose in the polls, who are probably for matories back into the Tory camp. I think that's what this is about. But I think it's a bit late. And I think also it shows that one of my great heroes on strategy, Gary Kasparov, says, never change the strategy unless the fundamentals change.

25:00I don't believe the fundamentals have actually changed. They haven't changed in the soon after became Prime Minister. What's changing is his approach to it, but I don't believe it's because he actually needs to do this now, which is that he didn't do it when he should have done it. Do you think they're going to - it's absolutely - I'm mesmerizing what's going on in the live stream. I get all these people saying, why is Rory drinking a whole flag and of tea? Has he texted congratulations to David Cameron yet? Since I've got that 11 times, I'm going to respond. I don't think David Cameron likes me very much, and I think my texting him congratulations might go down like a bit of cool stuff.

25:36I have. I have. You have - I've said to - I've said to you, don't you think this is the perfect time for a three hour special on the rest of politics? Oh, how wonderful. How would it be great place to get all these views out on foreign policy and put me in my place? Would it - do you think they're going to use David Cameron now much more in the media that they'll put him out to do the Sunday shows that he'll become much more of a spokesman as they go into an ex -selection? Well, he's a - he's a good - technically, he's a quite good communicator. I mean, he, you know, I think he's a better communicator than Soonak by a long way.