Boris Johnson is kind of a monster Rory Stewart on British Politics Part 1

Hello everyone, thank you very much for joining. It is wonderful to see the numbers whizzing up and so many of you choosing to do so and choosing, may I say, a very wise thing to do with your Tuesday evening or of course morning, afternoon, middle of the night, depending on where in the world you might be signing in from and I'm sure there are people signing in from all over the globe for this very coveted event. I'm delighted of course as always to welcome you on behalf of HowToAcademy. This is a much needed opportunity to try and make some sense of much madness or at least to try and come close to making some sort of sense of the world around us, both at home and I think for the purposes of this event I'm going to assume that the majority of people are joining from Great Britain but also abroad and wherever we are, a world that sort of becomes harder to every day. A few months ago when the Partygate scandal first caused quite the storm, we decided that our guest this evening would be the perfect person to invite on to interrogate about this amongst other things and I was a little bit worried because the event was moved to, the event was going to be in three months time and I thought perhaps we might find that everything had settled down and I wondered what we would talk about but I wonder what on earth I was thinking when today of course another storm, more photos, more headlines and it's just rumbled on hasn't it since it first came to be but add to that tensions around Northern Ireland, we have a devastating war of course in Ukraine, the cost of living crisis, rebuilding post-pandemic, the list goes on and I think faced with it we all feel a certain sense of helplessness and lack of clarity. So I can't pretend we'll provide full clarity but it is a chance to take a step back and discuss this all with someone who's been really in the midst of all of it in both domestic and foreign affairs. I'm sure many of you know he served as a diplomat all over the world, Indonesia, the Balkans, Iraq, was a foundation director in Afghanistan, secretary of state for international development as well of course as being, having been MP for Penrith and the border from 2010 to 2019, I think I've got that right but he can tell me if I've got that wrong, and he is now a senior fellow at the Jackson Institute, Yale University and as I'm sure many of you know has recently burst onto the podcasting scene with The Rest is Politics which he co-hosts alongside Alistair Campbell and this is our second How To Academy conversation with Rory. We last spoke in October 2019, so much has changed I think that we wish hadn't and a lot hasn't changed that we possibly wish had. So Rory thank you very much indeed for joining us. Thank you for having me. And suddenly I was thinking this is not the moment not to be able to hear what you've got to say. I just want to start off by getting a sense of, for giving us, me and our listeners and viewers, a sense of what you're up to at the moment. You're a professor, a visiting professor as I mentioned, I know you're traveling a lot all over the world as you've talked about on the podcast Airwaves, very much talking about Great Britain. So I just wonder, are you on some sort of mission that's undisclosed? What are you doing? So I'm talking to you from Amman in Jordan and you may hear the sounds of Amman around us at various times during the interview. I'm here supporting a charity which I set up in Afghanistan in 2006 called the Topaz Mountain Foundation, which works to support traditional crafts people, particularly in the case of Jordan, Syrian refugees, Palestinians, Jordanians, and we sell their products around the world. We're also working to do a bit of restoration and bring some visitors into an amazing Roman site in northern Jordan, looking down on the Sea of Galilee, right on the top of the mountain, working with, surrounded by 30,000 olive trees. And when I'm not doing that, I'm supporting various other charities. I've been recently traveling in Africa with an amazing American NGO called GiveDirectly that supports communities with grunts and it's completely transformed lives in Rwanda. So alongside all of this, the rest is politics podcast with Alistair Campbell. Tell us why you embarked on that and decided to sort of wanted to get involved in that because all of those projects are very much sort of outside of Westminster politics, but there's a lot of chat with Alistair about what's going on and both of you seem to disprove quite highly of most things. It's an extraordinary experience. So Alistair obviously is more than 15 years older than me and in many ways a much more senior figure, but he's also very, very, very new labour. One of the interesting things about the podcast is he's always encouraging me to be critical of the Conservative Party, which I'm very happy to do because I think Boris Johnson is a kind of monster. But whenever I try to then push back and get him to be remotely critical about anybody, and not even Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, anyone to work with, he is the most intensely sort of loyal and defensive figure imaginable. Yeah, I hear you just permanently trying to sort of get him to stir some, I can't think of the appropriate word, but yes, and it doesn't happen. But tell me about, so you say there's a sponsor line at the beginning of, I think, every podcast. I missed the first two, that's my honest confession. But you are sponsored by The Week and there's a line that you say at the beginning of every single podcast, which is one of my biggest gripes about modern politics is it's so much about ideology and certainty and there's not enough practical options, which is why you like The Week. But this is what I'm trying to figure out, which is that the podcast, as brilliant as it is, is about discussing ideology and, you know, what we wish would happen, what we hope would happen. So how, you know, how does that translate to getting stuff done and the practical side that you are so keen to support? I think it's a really good, really good challenge. I think that there is a sense in which the weirdness of modern politics is that it takes place, as you said, a very vague level of abstraction. A lot of politics is about slogans, and that's true in the United States as much as it is in Britain. And I remember feeling very, very strongly as a constituency MP in Cumbria, that what I really wanted to do was grapple with things that really made a difference to daily lives, which might be in a rural village getting super fast broadband installed, it might be getting a lift installed for disabled access at Penrith station. But often on doorsteps, what people wanted to do was shout at me about the Saudi bombing of Yemen. And my connection as a backbench MP with the Saudi bombing of Yemen was a pretty, pretty, you know, indirect and abstruse one. And I think it taught me one of the strangenesses of politics, which is that at the sort of big Saudi bombing of Yemen, or at the big standoffs about austerity with a capital A or socialism with a capital S, it feels like there are these kind of incredibly dramatic fights in British politics. But actually, in terms of what really makes a difference to people's lives, which could be, for example, adult social care, the parties agree but don't do anything. Nobody's actually fixing stuff that makes a difference. Nobody's fixing stuff that, you know, an older person on a low income in Britain will be seen by a carer if they're which isn't even enough to change them. It's a completely shameful, uncivilised system, and it's something we're not fixing. And I think part of the thing that I keep struggling with is this gap between the sort of language, all this talk from all these political parties and the reality of getting things done on the ground. And what I really respect in people is administration, governing, running things, doing things, not talking about things. But of course, politics is primarily about talking, not doing. So how do we get to a place of doing? I mean, are you saying that you wouldn't consider sort of coming back into politics because you don't think that's the way to get things done? Because it's a very bleak view for people watching who aren't involved in politics who have hope for the future. If politics isn't the way to get things done, what do we do? I mean, I think it's very complicated. I mean, I think it's partly our system. I mean, I think it would be really freshened up if we had a different electoral system, some sort of alternative voting system, which might give a bit of a chance for independents and new parties to emerge and shake up the kind of dead grip of these old parties and the way they do things. I think that would be a real problem. I think it is true that you can do things in politics. If you're lucky enough to become a cabinet minister, for example, you do have power. And particularly if you have a prime minister who's sensible and is prepared to give space to sensible things, you can get stuff done. But there is a real element of lottery and uncertainty. Part of it is us voters and the kind of people we vote for. We are voting for people who often talk well. We don't have much of a sense of how they actually perform. We don't really see them working. We all experience this in our own daily lives when we're interviewing people for jobs. You only really know how good someone is when you're actually working alongside them. You can't really tell how they perform in an interview. But with politicians, we never really know what they're doing. I mean, Whitehall, Westminster is a bit mysterious. You don't really see inside number 10. You don't really know what the Prime Minister is doing with his day. And of course, this reaches its absolute most sort of grotesque, monstrous form in Boris Johnson himself, who is somebody who's completely incapable of running anything. There's no interest in detail, who has never done any administration in his life, who has the attention span of a flea, but who is an extraordinary talker. And because nobody's ever forced to actually work in an office with him or see how little attention he's paying to the details of things, how much he's misunderstanding, he can just keep getting away with it. I mean, you definitely don't mince your words about Boris. Did you feel this way about him always? Or is there a sense of looking back, as you did on a recent podcast, to when you missed out to him and a sort of certain sense of frustration at that? Or have you always despised him? I definitely felt it long before I ran for leadership. The main reason I was running for leadership was out of complete horror at the idea that Boris Johnson was going to take over the country. And I got in a lot of trouble from colleagues when I was running for leadership, because they kept accusing me of making it too personal, and making these great blue on blue attacks. So it wasn't driven by bitterness of being defeated by him, it was driven by sort of horror at the idea of him taking over. But you're also right, I didn't always think about him like that. When I first met him, I first met him in Iraq, in 2005, when I was working for the British government, and he came out as an MP. And I thought, I was struck by the fact he wasn't very interested in detail. He didn't really want to know about the difficult things in Iraq. But I was also struck that he was very courteous, very polite. He listened, he, unlike most politicians, he didn't give great pompous lectures on foreign policy. He was a good guest to have. He was a good guest to have. And then, even in 2017, when he was running against Theresa May, sorry, 2016-17, he was running against Theresa May to be the Prime Minister. I still thought this is a relatively amiable person, maybe he's somebody who could have good people around him. I get he's not very good at the stuff himself, but maybe if he had a strong team, he'd be fine. It was only when I started actually working directly for him in the Foreign Office, as the Minister of State, so he was the Foreign Secretary, I was the Minister of State, that I really began to realise what a catastrophe this was. So, just to sort of pick up on, you know, his team, you said, it's sort of okay if he has a team around him. But what I'm trying, what I don't understand is when I listen to you and Alistair, with so many thoughts, this comes back to Boris, so many thoughts of ways you could change the system, things you could put into place. You know, I wonder, is that something that you guys, you both, particularly you, want to do? I mean, there's a moment in the podcast when you're actually talking about developing countries, and you talk and you make an interesting sort of comment on politics, which is basically the challenges to hope, and you say this is what politics is about. You compromise and you try to be pragmatic, you set limits, there are people you dope with, and then there are people you do, but there is a lot of messiness. And I'm just wondering if, you know, we ever change anything, if at the moment there isn't much messiness, everyone with Boris agrees with Boris, and everyone who doesn't has gone. Do we not, how do we get anything, you know, done if you don't all come back? It's very, it's very, I mean, you're right, it's very interesting and difficult. But the truth is that these parties are incredibly tribal and vicious. I remember when I announced that I was going to be running as an independent for the Mayor of London, turning to my colleague who'd become the Policing Minister, and saying to him, I'd just seen the head of Metropolitan Police, and I said to the Policing Minister, we'd love to sit down and just talk about policing in London. And he turned on me, and his face was in a sort of snarl, and he shouted, absolutely not! Because his sense of betrayal, that I'd become an independent, and I wasn't a conservative anymore, completely sort of shut it off. And the fact that we'd been working together happily, I thought for years, and knew each other well. Suddenly, you go into the dining room, everyone turns their back on you. It's a very, very odd situation. And many of my colleagues seeing my tweets, hearing me on the rest of politics, will be absolutely disgusted. They will think I'm a traitor, they will say I'm a narcissist, I'm egotist, that I'm undermining the Prime Minister when Britain's at war, that I'm providing support for the Labour Party, that I'm betraying them. It's tribal. It's not a business, really, of ideas. It's a sort of tribal warfare. And if you step across the line between one tribe and another, you're in a very odd place. You don't give a very, well, it doesn't take me to say, I think everyone who's signing in and who's listening to the podcast will be able to hear that this idea of politics is bleak, as I said. But there are a lot of people, interestingly, the lovely Esme, who you met, who produces this, was saying none of her friends want to go into politics. Alison sort of tries to be a bit more optimistic on the podcast. But what are we to do if it's portrayed as such a bleak place? It puts off anyone from wanting to go into politics. And one gets the sense from you, I think you told me this last time, you never particularly wanted to go in in the first place. But we need some passion, don't we, amongst politicians who do want to go in and be there and change things? Yes, except it's very difficult to, I mean, I agree with you, of course, you're right. And of course, we need good people going into politics. And that's really, really important. And if good people don't go into politics, the bad people run it. I think that's absolutely true. But the problem is staying in because somewhat sort of implicit in your question is that I should be in the House of Commons. Now, the problem is, I literally can't be in the House of Commons because if I had decided to stay as a Conservative MP, I would have to be out there campaigning for Boris Johnson, I would have to be putting leaflets through doors with Boris's face on it. I would have had to have gone into an election in 2019, claiming that I was ready to go for a, in 2019, saying I'd be ready to go for a no deal Brexit, which I wasn't ready to do. And at the moment, if I was in the cabinet, doing what I love to do, running a department, sorting out prisons, sorting out international development, the price of it is I would have to be appearing on the Today programme saying that Boris Johnson had not lied to Parliament, he had not been to a party in Downing Street. It's very, very binary. I mean, there's not an option of remaining sort of somehow honourably at the moment in the Conservative Party. It's just, he is contaminating everything around him. So is that just, it's really interesting. And it's, again, a really interesting thing you discuss about sort of the three line whip and whipping and how this feeds into that, you know, no one really does anything but tie the party line unless, and if not, they're gone. Is that, but you just said that's with him. Is that just at the moment? Or is that something? Yeah, it's much more extreme with him. I mean, I was one of 21 rebels that he threw out of the Conservative Party because we voted to try to stop a no deal Brexit. And that had never been done before. Mr. Thatcher would never have done that. But it's not recorded in British history that MPs were literally thrown out of Parliament for voting against a single bill. He himself had voted against Theresa May's withdrawal agreement multiple times without being thrown out of Parliament. So it was the beginning of a very, very new, raw edge type of politics. What's interesting about Boris Johnson is that, along with the sort of colourful buffoonish exterior, is some of the mechanics of really tough populism, deselecting and sacking his opponents, proroguing Parliament, all this sort of very, very brutal stuff, being happy to lie at the dispatch box, changing electoral rules in London so that he can make sure that independent candidates don't really have a chance anymore of coming through. This is the sort of people he puts in the House of Lords, the way in which he's tried to rig the appointments to Ofcom, the way in which he's thought about, the way in which he's taken money for wallpaper on his walls. I mean, all of this stuff is stuff that no previous Prime Minister would have done. And he's exploiting the fact that it is a country based on unwritten rules. It's all based on gentlemen's agreements. And if he's not prepared to behave in that way, there's not much anyone can do. I mean, the guy wrote the preface to the Ministerial Code, which says, you know, it's of paramount importance that, you know, ministers do not mislead Parliament. And he is the Prime Minister, he's misled Parliament, and he doesn't intend to do anything about it at all. Indeed, if Keir Starmer resigns, it would be the honourable thing for him to do if he's found by the police to have broken COVID rules. One imagines Boris Johnson would just laugh.