- 2 days ago
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00So Cleo, you and I have spent our fair amount of time around imperiled leaders.
00:04Is the power slipping through Keir Starmer's fingers?
00:06Do we think this is the end of days for the Prime Minister?
00:10Or if we were in the room, Helen, what would we advise?
00:13This week, if we were in the room, is to dance like no one's watching and get yourself a psycho.
00:18You might have noticed that over the past fortnight, despite the reset for the new year,
00:22things are going a bit wrong for number 10.
00:24There was the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, resigning.
00:27The Scottish Labour leader calling for him to go.
00:30And the leadership in their leadership has changed.
00:33And of course, the ongoing fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein and Peter Manderson scandal.
00:37And then this week, yet another U-turn, this time on local elections.
00:41Now these are all symptoms of power fading away from the building.
00:45This week, we want to talk to you about what it really feels like to be in number 10,
00:49working with a Prime Minister who can feel their power seeping away.
00:52I'm Helen McNamara, the former Deputy Cabinet Secretary.
00:55I'm Cleo Watson, a former political advisor to Theresa May and Boris Johnson.
01:00And this is In The Room.
01:06Hello.
01:07Welcome to the first ever episode of In The Room.
01:10Cleo, what are we doing here?
01:12It's a good question.
01:14First off, I think we both get invited on other shows and podcasts and things like that.
01:19And we suddenly thought, perhaps we'd quite like to tell a few stories ourselves, do it our way.
01:24I think, just as a brief explainer to listeners about how we have found ourselves here,
01:29maybe it's worth just drawing out how we've come to be in the same room from really very different parts
01:36of the system.
01:37So we were in The Room together, but we arrived there via very different routes.
01:41So I was a career civil servant.
01:43I spent the first half of my career in DCMS, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
01:48Yay!
01:49Yay, indeed.
01:49I was working for the amazing Tessa Jowell.
01:51And then the second part of my career, I spent most of it in the Cabinet Office, apart from my
01:55time in housing.
01:56And I ran the bit of the Cabinet Office, which is reporting into the Prime Minister.
02:01So the bits of, I don't know, which foes would call the deep state, I think.
02:07But effectively, the Cabinet Secretariat, the Honours System, all the bits of government that are to do with the Palace
02:13and the state.
02:15And, yeah, the kind of, the dark heart, as it were.
02:20Yeah, the leaks, the investigations.
02:21The leaks, the investigations.
02:22Yes.
02:23The good stuff too, the Honours System and the independent offices and all of those things.
02:27And you, Cleo, were a special advisor.
02:30So I got to jobs by being a civil servant, a bureaucrat.
02:34Credibly.
02:35Well, I don't know about that.
02:36And then the other path is to be a political appointment.
02:39So if I was hardwired to the state, you and special advisors are hardwired to their political masters.
02:46So there's a different kind of, you slightly operate in a different time zone.
02:49And political appointees are absolutely there to make sure that their master, whoever they are, or mistress, gets to get
02:57their work done, effectively.
02:59And it's entirely in the service of that one person.
03:01And that's particularly true of the Prime Minister, but it's also true everywhere, whereas a civil servant's job is actually
03:06a slightly more complicated, yes, yes, absolutely, loyalty to the person who's been elected and is in office.
03:11But also you have a slightly separate loyalty to the state and the establishment and the ongoing purpose of government.
03:17I think the difference, I think, for me between a political appointment and an official appointment is officials can both
03:25afford to look long-term and actually think long-term.
03:29So they almost think in five, ten-year cycles because they expect to be there and they've got to keep
03:35the show on the road, essentially.
03:37And one of the things we're going to get onto this week with some of the kind of latest political
03:42problems for the Prime Minister is that political advisors can often think quite short-term because obviously they work in
03:49election cycles and they're always thinking of the next campaign, whether it's a by-election or a local election or
03:54a general election, but also just getting out of the immediate bit of hot water, even if they are, frankly,
04:01creating problems for themselves politically down the road.
04:04That's entirely, it's entirely true. I think it's a slightly idealised world to imagine that civil servants are just pottering
04:09around imagining about the long term and can always operate like that.
04:13But essentially the two of us, like from these two apparently entirely different pathways, found ourselves in the same rooms
04:21together, particularly working for Boris Johnson and I think quite quickly discovered that even though we might be there for
04:27different reasons and have got there by different causes,
04:29is actually we had a very common alliance in trying to make things work and became friends.
04:36I'm going to give you a tiny bit about me as well and my background is I worked straight out
04:41of university very briefly for Barack Obama on his 2012 campaign, worked on the vote leave campaign for the EU
04:47referendum and then I worked as a political advisor.
04:50Can I just say, I love the way you always say that, you always go, I worked on the vote
04:53leave campaign for the EU referendum.
04:54I feel like it's quite a statement. It's easy to just say, I worked on the EU referendum. Neutral.
05:01You don't have the problem with Barack Obama, by the way. You're very kind of fine saying you worked for
05:05Barack Obama.
05:05That's true. So then I worked for Theresa May as a very junior political advisor and then in the way
05:11that can happen with politics,
05:12I suddenly became quite senior working for Boris Johnson after that and I wanted to give a kind of brief
05:18outline of my experience of Helen before I really got to know her.
05:22And I think it's kind of quite telling and I suspect typical for particularly Tory MPs of the period.
05:29So I was quite a junior person in number 10. I worked in her political office, which is a very
05:35specific part of the building,
05:36which purely works for the prime minister as the leader of the party.
05:42So it was her as the leader of the Conservative Party.
05:45Not me, Theresa May.
05:47Yeah, yeah, sorry, Theresa May.
05:49As you can imagine, 2017 to 2019, it was not an easy period to be looking after the interests of
05:55the leader of the Conservative Party.
05:56We had meaningful votes, various efforts to get rid of her.
06:01Obviously, not a very good set of general election results in 2017 and local elections afterwards.
06:08So the things I knew about Helen is that ministers referred to her as black eyes because if she was
06:15coming to your building…
06:16I never ever gave anyone a black eye.
06:17I know.
06:19I want to be clear.
06:20Once you get to know her, you see they're actually a very lovely, rich, chocolatey brown.
06:24They're not black at all.
06:25Because if she was coming to the building for a chat with the Secretary of State, it never meant…
06:31You know, it wasn't a friendly, how are you doing?
06:34It was, can I see your phone, please?
06:36Because you were in big trouble.
06:38Additionally, there was a myth that I've been longing to ask you, which is that you had a sign in
06:43your office saying,
06:44how many days since someone cried in Helen's office?
06:48Which I thought, oh, is there like a waiting list?
06:51Who am I getting in there?
06:52That is actually…
06:53That's actually true.
06:54So, although it was my office teasing me and it wasn't…
06:57It was very, very, very, very rarely that I had made someone cry.
07:01It was more that by the dastardly tactic of saying to somebody, are you okay?
07:07Or, you know, giving them a cup of tea or seeing if they were…
07:11And, you know, it was a challenging time.
07:13Life is difficult.
07:14But, yeah, by the massively unfair thing of asking somebody if they're okay.
07:17Yeah, nice.
07:18Occasionally elicited tears.
07:19Well, then I moved slightly closer to the centre of power, I suppose, when I worked for Boris Johnson.
07:24And the third thing I got to know about you is you were one of about three people that could
07:29turn up and say,
07:30I need to speak to the prime minister without an appointment, without anybody else there.
07:33The door was closed.
07:34I need to go in and see him.
07:35And I remember thinking, this woman scares me shitless.
07:39Well, I like her.
07:42I would say, so one of the many reasons why Cleo and I are friends is that you learn very
07:47quickly as a civil servant that what you really need from political advisers is you kind of need a cheat
07:51sheet.
07:52So there is a thing you're working on different time horizons.
07:55And what a really good special advisor can help you to do is to really understand the boss.
07:59And that's what you want to do.
08:00You want to understand the principle.
08:01You want to really get to deliver for them really well, because that's in your interest too.
08:06How do civil servants do a really good job?
08:07By politicians thinking they've done a really good job of translating what they've said they want to happen into stuff
08:13that actually happens.
08:14So you're always on the lookout for the people who actually are an amazing read.
08:18And Cleo was absolutely criminally underestimated in our time in Downing Street, partly because a bit like the dastardly technique
08:25of being kind to people.
08:26It's very charming, very kind of unassuming.
08:29People will just, you know, tell her things.
08:31And I very quickly worked out, in fact, me and the then cabinet secretary, Mark Sedwell, worked out that the
08:37one person whose political read you could always trust was Cleo's.
08:41So why are we doing this?
08:43It's a good question.
08:44I think we can give context to what it really feels like to be in the room, the dynamics, the
08:50atmosphere, how it is to be a junior person there or a very senior decision maker sitting at the table.
08:56So I think you're absolutely right.
08:58There's loads of commentary out there and it's really helpful and useful and interesting.
09:01I think the thing that I always find frustrating is that although there's lots of people who talk about kind
09:06of what's going on in number 10 and what's going on in Downing Street, what's really happening,
09:10you very rarely get something which actually helps you from the outside understand what's really happening and why it's happening
09:17and why this decision has been made and what it feels like when you are actually in the building trying
09:22to get stuff done.
09:24And I feel like since I left, I've definitely, you know, you're right, loads of people write stuff about it.
09:29Loads of people have lots to say.
09:31There's lots of usually men who are in the room who tell really great stories about.
09:36Recollections may vary.
09:37Recollections may indeed vary.
09:39But I think there is just a space for a bit more of an insight about what it feels like,
09:44what actually happens.
09:45And again, the perspective that the two of us bring, right?
09:48So like you just read the permanent state, you know, and what you are as a political advisor.
09:55And having that both sides of that conversation from people who were actually there together at the time is pretty
10:01unusual.
10:02So, Cleo, you and I have spent our fair amount of time around imperiled leaders.
10:07Is the power slipping through Keir Starmer's fingers?
10:09Well, unfortunately for him, he's going to continue to get a version of this question from Jeremy Vine, which he
10:16was asked on Monday.
10:17It's not a pretty one.
10:18And in my experience, Prime Minister's asked this again and again and again once there's trouble.
10:23If it's going that well, why did you almost lose your job last week?
10:26People will recall there have already been a few unfortunate scandals, freebies, Angela Rayner going over her tax affairs, Andy
10:33Burnham making a pitch for the leadership ahead of Labour Party conference.
10:36We've had U-turns on things like winter fuel allowance and an inheritance tax for farmers.
10:41There was the idea of a reset at the beginning of this year.
10:44But if anything, in the last fortnight, the sense of kind of chaos or political unease has actually escalated quite
10:52a bit.
10:53And we've had, you know, the resignation of Morgan McSweeney.
10:57He's a key advisor to the Prime Minister.
10:59This ongoing Peter Mandelson row linked the Epsom files and his appointment as ambassador to the US.
11:07We've had a clutch of other advisors going.
11:09We've had Anna Sawa, the Scottish Labour leader, calling for the Prime Minister to go,
11:15although no one joined him in that brave crusade.
11:21It's not an unusual thing that is that one guy goes over the hill first and looks behind him and
11:25there's all those people who promised to also come over the hill.
11:28And we've had a couple of U-turns since, or not quite U-turns, almost like we've had a U
11:32-turn over the local election.
11:34So 30 more councils will actually go ahead and have their elections in May.
11:37And then a kind of half U-turn, more like a kind of sway into the reservation on things like
11:43raising the minimum income for young people and so on.
11:48So it's just a bit frenetic, not a calm upturned vibe.
11:51But also I think it's a brilliant illustration of just how difficult governing is.
11:55I know that like people have serious sympathy for politicians or people in positions of power, but actually it is
12:01really challenging.
12:02And I think from the, you know, if you've been in those situations, what you can see happening is that
12:06this is when power starts to fade.
12:08It goes slowly and then it goes quickly, like everything.
12:12Things fail like that.
12:13And that what you have normally is if you've got a powerful prime minister in number 10, kind of a
12:18lid is kept on the rest of government.
12:20There's some kind of structure where actually everybody sort of, broadly speaking, stays in their lane.
12:25And then as soon as that starts to kind of go and everyone starts to think, well, actually, I've got
12:29to start thinking about my own self-interest.
12:31And whether that is actually on the civil service as well as the political side, like as soon as that
12:35kind of lid comes off, then all hell breaks loose effectively.
12:39And these things just keep on popping up.
12:41And we've both been there when actually it's, you know, it gets, it's hard and then it gets harder because
12:47you've lost all kind of control and discipline and things just start to become even more chaotic.
12:53Yeah, the absolute worst expression that we would get in particularly op-eds and things like party grandees is saying
13:00there's no sense of grip.
13:02Grip.
13:03Oh.
13:05Grip and the appearance of grip.
13:06We could do a whole episode just about that.
13:08Right, exactly.
13:08And it's this, it is, I understand that.
13:10It is this sense of, you know, the prime minister recently was saying, oh, I feel like I pull these
13:14levers and nothing happens.
13:15You think, well, in that case, wrench the lever off and whack someone over the head with it.
13:19Like, we've got to, we've got to get cooking here, Keir.
13:21People often say that.
13:22It's like, you know, I mean, you know, I tried to pull a lever and nothing happened.
13:26It's a misunderstanding.
13:27Like, government doesn't, number 10 isn't like an episode of play school from the 1980s.
13:32You go through the round window and there's the control room.
13:34You just pull this lever and then you get a little bit more education, a little bit less environment.
13:38That's not how government works.
13:40It's about power and relationships and networks and whether people feel that it's a really good idea to have been
13:46in the favor of number 10 because good things are going to happen to them.
13:49Or it's a terribly bad idea because actually, if I don't do what they want, then bad things are going
13:54to happen to me.
13:54Some of this is really, really base dynamics of how politics and government always works.
13:58And it's a tale as old as time rather than, you know, I can't believe people aren't following the organogram.
14:03There are no organograms.
14:05Well, you say that.
14:06That was my advice to anybody working in the center of government was always the thing you need to do
14:10is read Wolf Hall because you're joining a court.
14:12And all of those dynamics are entirely there all of the time.
14:16You can get yourself a fur coat to go with it.
14:18Also, sometimes it's really chilly.
14:19So actually, a big coat.
14:21The heating does not work very well.
14:23It's well advised.
14:25So, yeah, it has been a couple of very, very difficult weeks.
14:29And it's so, there has been this real pile on.
14:31And I know that it's very popular to say, you know, the media's worked this into a frenzy.
14:36They smell blood in the water and they're trying to get this guy, they're trying to get this guy out
14:40and be careful what you wish for.
14:43But, you know, having been on the inside, it is just a horrible feeling that you're just kind of losing
14:48every day and you go into work and you feel like your head's getting kicked in and just nothing seems
14:54to be going right.
14:55And nothing works because everybody starts to act up.
14:58So, you know, when the prime minister is a bit weaker, what will happen is suddenly cabinet meetings take, you
15:04know, a bit longer because suddenly everyone's piping up and it's got views.
15:09So normally, with a very disciplined, I mean, you can have different conversations about whether this is how cabinet meetings
15:14should work.
15:15Everyone stays in their lane and says their stuff.
15:17On their thing.
15:18On their thing.
15:19And no more than that.
15:20And nobody would have the audacity to put their hand up and start chipping in on something that's, you know,
15:24absolutely not in their lane.
15:25And then when the power dynamics are shifting around, suddenly the culture secretary has got a view about what should
15:31happen on welfare.
15:31And then the environment ministers are thinking that maybe the treasury's got this thing wrong and it's all happening in
15:36the room and it takes 45 minutes longer.
15:39And they're all plotting around the corners.
15:41And like that's hours and hours of your day has gone in just managing that.
15:45So something where when you're powerful, your time, you have more time on the ball.
15:49You have more time to do things because actually you've got that discipline and that grip.
15:53You have much less time if you're sitting in the centre when everybody is acting out and it takes three
15:59days to get the right appointment done because everyone's suddenly got an opinion on it.
16:03And actually, it's impossible to get agreement to this particular policy because people are working out which of the movers
16:10and the runners and riders in the potential leadership election, which hasn't even been called yet.
16:15What are they going to think about this particular tiny bit of policy that no one's cared about?
16:19You know, step forward, sustainable drainage systems.
16:21Why is that now a thing that five cabinet ministers are having a big row about?
16:25I really remember in particular the kind of end days of the Theresa May government.
16:31Cabinet just used to leak immediately.
16:33I mean, you'd turn on Twitter.
16:36Sometimes it was during Cabinet itself.
16:37It was entirely bewildering.
16:39Like, how has this actually happened?
16:40We're looking at all these people.
16:41They haven't got their phones under the table.
16:43The sense of discipline was just – there was none.
16:47And it does eke out further.
16:50So, you know, you have things like the Prime Minister's own MPs.
16:54He has a massive majority and his MPs voted against what he wanted for a full release of the Mandelson
16:59files, for example.
17:00And, like, that is tricky when people are now – you know, there would have been a period when he
17:07first came in where those people have done exactly what he wanted.
17:10And now, because there's this sense of, like, uncertainty in the waters, they all think, what's in it for me?
17:16I might lose my seat anyway.
17:18And it's the worst feeling when those guys go feral because you can't really calm them down.
17:25But also, it's that thing where you're sort of in a non-state at the moment where it's madly frustrating.
17:30Remember this as a civil servant.
17:32You think you just can't get anything done.
17:34And you also know the answer is to get more done.
17:37And actually, it's really hard to get stuff done because everybody is – everyone's acting out.
17:41And it's really interesting if you're, you know, on the non-political side, you're watching the dynamics very closely in
17:47terms of number 10.
17:48And you can see amongst the special advisers – I don't even remember this clear from various points where, like,
17:54some of them are suddenly, like, bouncing around.
17:56You know, the people who've been less powerful are now suddenly more powerful.
17:59People are wearing suits to work.
18:01Like, why do you look so smart?
18:03What are you doing with the rest of your day?
18:07Are you being the first – you know, are you all just now getting out the door and it's kind
18:12of who can get into the public affairs agency faster?
18:14And there's a bit of that going on.
18:15But there's also a – oh, actually, now, hang on a second.
18:18Having been quite lazy, you're taking a lot of notes in this meeting.
18:22Yeah, it is true.
18:23I think to try and explain it, walking into Downing Street is – and this is such a trite thing
18:30to say, but it is a privilege.
18:31It's so cool walking up that street and it feels like a film set and you think, here I am.
18:37So you – and you've, you know, you've got your coffee.
18:40You're all ready for the day.
18:41You're finally going to turn things around today.
18:43And then you walk through that black door and it closes behind you.
18:45And it's like going into a kind of pressurized container where it's just the sense of dread ekes out of
18:53the walls, basically.
18:55People talk about it being a bunker or a goldfish bowl and it is like that.
18:58You're sort of contained inside and you can just tell this is not a happy place where people feel like
19:07they're winning.
19:08And you can tell that regardless of how kind of close you are to the centre.
19:12Having been much more junior where you –
19:13You can always smell it, to be honest, in the building.
19:15It's really –
19:15What is the smell?
19:17Probably sort of – well, with Larry around, like cappy and cheap disinfectant or something.
19:23There is – yeah, there's just a – it's quiet.
19:26It's like – it's like going into a library or a kind of –
19:29But it's also – you can see that –
19:30To see the hospital ward.
19:32I think you could – you know, there should be a way of being able to show a team in
19:36Number 10,
19:37particularly from the kind of civil service and political side, that, you know, the sort of civil servant that I
19:42was,
19:43you're very literate about power.
19:44And you can see when suddenly you have different people turning up to the meeting.
19:50So when you've got a prime minister high on the hog, managing meetings is a nightmare because everybody –
19:55People are fighting to get in.
19:56Everybody wants to be in.
19:57Every meeting has got 30 people.
19:59There's all sorts of people just opening the door and turning up.
20:01The permanent secretaries are coming into the building.
20:04Like, you cannot keep the people away.
20:05It's almost impossible.
20:06Every reception is, like, absolutely rammed.
20:09It's, you know, impossible to keep people out.
20:11And then one day you're trying to get – you know, you can't get the permanent secretary or the director
20:17general.
20:18So I'm going through a very boring civil service hierarchy here.
20:20But for a meeting with the prime minister, you can't get any of the top of the shop to come
20:25to Number 10 for a meeting
20:26because somehow they're all doing really busy and important things.
20:29Or you have things like, you know, the prime minister will host receptions at Number 10.
20:34So they have these beautiful staterooms and they do things like St. David's Day or St. Patrick's Day
20:39or Burns Night or, I don't know, International Women's Day or something.
20:44And, like, no one wants to come.
20:47So I remember particularly during the Boris Johnson era doing a London Fashion Week party.
20:53And it was like, it wasn't that cool.
20:56We did not have Stella McCartney.
20:58Boris Johnson and London Fashion Week go together.
21:00Yeah, yeah, exactly.
21:01It's like perfect brand synergy.
21:03So it is really difficult.
21:04And then you get these other things.
21:06It's not just attendees.
21:08It's things like briefings, anonymous briefings in different newspapers.
21:19I mean, there's lots of my old life I've let go.
21:21My absolute, like, rising rage when you see people briefing against their own government.
21:27You just think, what on earth is going on in your head?
21:28Thinking they're being really funny.
21:29And it's, like, the stuff Theresa May used to get, you know, anonymous quotes to say about her.
21:37I remember before she was going to do a 1922 committee, which is the kind of conservative parliamentary party meeting,
21:45an anonymous quote said that she should bring a noose.
21:48Oh, I remember that.
21:49It was horrible.
21:50Because she was going to be the end of her political career.
21:52The violence of some of the language, actually, is just totally unacceptable.
21:55Totally gross.
21:56And they wouldn't actually, obviously, they would never say that to her face.
21:59That being said, one of the worst things that can happen to you, in a way, is that you have
22:04one of these, you know,
22:06you have one of these briefings.
22:08You're heading into something like the parliamentary party meeting.
22:12And then everyone applauds and bangs on the table.
22:16And if you're on the political team, you stand outside, you can hear all this noise and you think, oh,
22:20good, she or he is safe for a bit longer.
22:24Those are kind of the cheers for, like, this is the beginning of the end.
22:27And that's what the Prime Minister said last week.
22:28Not all table banging has integrity.
22:30Right.
22:30And you do this other thing where you have to suddenly, you know, this happened with Starmer last week.
22:36To show the Prime Minister is not in danger, you force every, you kind of bayonet every Cabinet minister to
22:42do a tweet of support.
22:44And you just think, obviously, that's such an SW1 thing, no one else cares.
22:48It's so depressing to have got to the organised tweet stage.
22:51Yeah, already.
22:52This place to a general election with this kind of majority, the fact that you have to have organised tweets
22:57is terrible.
22:58Yeah, and there's a special advisor with a spreadsheet ticking off who's tweeted.
23:02I think the other thing that, for whatever reason, this number 10 has done is not use, you know, this
23:09fear and favour.
23:10Favour they might well be using well.
23:12They're not using fear very well.
23:13So I think that this whole, you know, to see what's happened to people in recent weeks, the sort of
23:19everything's fine, everything's fine, wake up dead version of firing people just makes everybody really paranoid and scared.
23:27Political assassinations are much better carried out in the daylight, because then that does actually show what's happened.
23:32You can see it.
23:33Everybody can be encouraged.
23:34But this whole, you know, just everything looks OK and then it's not is not a way to govern.
23:39Well, I think that potentially just on quite neatly to do we think this is the end of days for
23:45the prime minister or if we were in the room, Helen, what could he be doing?
23:50What would we advise?
23:52And frankly, I suspect I know the answer to this.
23:57What else is coming?
23:58And therefore, is it even feasible to turn this around?
24:02So I think entirely, I mean, I'm by nature a massive optimist anyway, and also, you know, he has a
24:07huge majority.
24:08He has a self-professed mission, like actually get on with it.
24:13So I think there's a thing, and you and I were both there right at the end of Theresa May's
24:17premiership, where it was sort of magnificent at the point at which she decided she knew the game was up
24:22and she was going to just, you know, she was going to be going.
24:26She just lent in and started doing all sorts of things really boldly.
24:29So there is a, this might sound like absolutely terrible advice, so bear with, but I sort of think Keir
24:36Starmer should dance like no one's watching.
24:38Oh God, but not on TikTok.
24:39No, no, I mean, I don't mean literally dance like no one.
24:42I mean, maybe he can.
24:43I don't know, maybe what a man needs to do in his flat by himself in the end of the
24:46day, nothing to do the rest of us.
24:48But there is an element of when it is really tough, the only thing that works is to go deeper,
24:54do more, don't get, be really, really as disciplined as you can.
24:57And I've seen number 10, so you can do this, when the absolute, you hunker down and you just make
25:02sure you govern the hell out of it.
25:05You really have to, my brother's here from Australia, so govern the hell out of it.
25:09But you do need to actually do more, go bigger.
25:14So a good example of this, they were kind of moaning a couple of weeks ago that they had these
25:18great announcements on breakfast clubs that no one had paid attention to because of the Jeffrey Epstein and Peter Mandelson
25:23stuff.
25:24It's like, that's kind of pretty, that's governing in the shallows.
25:27Why don't you have a conversation about the fact that, yeah, okay, it's marginally better that the state is paying
25:33for breakfast for children who don't have any breakfast rather than teachers.
25:37Yes, that is better.
25:38Is it okay that parents can't afford to feed their children?
25:42Absolutely categorically not.
25:44Make the arguments bigger.
25:45Make the conversation bigger.
25:46Like, you only, only, only get one chance at doing this stuff.
25:50My favourite people I used to love working for were ministers who had had a bit of time away and
25:55then come back.
25:56And they're like, hunger to actually get something done, to not be distracted, to not waste your time in 4
26:02,000 meetings doing on the one hand or the other hand.
26:05Take some risks and do some stuff.
26:06Go big, basically.
26:07I think the step change in Theresa May's attitude from when she was, you know, she resigned, she knew she
26:14was going and before that was, yeah, I don't think it's that you don't care.
26:20It's that you are just much less self-conscious about it all.
26:23And she got a lot of stuff done in those six weeks.
26:25So she did the 25-year environment plan, which was net zero by 2050.
26:30She got above inflation pay rises for over a million public sector workers.
26:34She pushed all these health innovations through, like early diagnostics, tons of other stuff on, like, the race disparity audit,
26:39the gender pay gap, modern slavery.
26:44And you would normally think those are like dog days and everyone would down tools.
26:47But instead, everyone thought, like, yes, okay, let's help her get some stuff through.
26:51Like, a lot of her legacy was done at the very end.
26:52It was done on a Tuesday afternoon.
26:54Yeah.
26:54Like, with the clock running.
26:55And I think, obviously, that's coming at the very end.
26:58And my experience, and certainly when we got to know each other best, was at the very beginning of the
27:02Johnson administration.
27:03And that period from sort of July 2019 to the general election 2019 was a lot going on with Brexit
27:11coming up and things like that.
27:14Everyone understood the mission.
27:15He had real purpose.
27:17He had a minority government because he de-whipped 21 of his own peas, including…
27:23It was minority anyway, if you remember.
27:24And that guy did not have the numbers in any way, shape or form.
27:28Yeah.
27:28So it's a polar opposite situation to the prime minister now.
27:31But he just didn't care.
27:32It was happening.
27:33And he bulldozed through.
27:35And I think perhaps it's easy to have this kind of single mission.
27:39But to your point about the breakfast clubs, cost of viewing is the single mission then.
27:43It all contributes to the same thing.
27:45The NHS, schools, how to pay for our defence and so on.
27:49It's all going towards how do people actually feel money-wise.
27:52If there's good news on the economy, learn the lessons in the Biden administration.
27:57People don't feel if our GDP has grown.
27:59They feel if their income has grown and their spending capacity.
28:04And these are urgent times, right?
28:05So the other thing is if you are in this sort of pre, not really in the leadership challenge, but
28:11kind of in a leadership question mark situation, it's very easy for that to be.
28:15You know, like you say, you come into work on a Monday and actually by Friday, all you've done is
28:19make it slightly less worse than it would have been otherwise.
28:21But you haven't actually done the big things or made the changes.
28:25It might not feel very urgent, but to anybody outside of SW1, we have literally, you know, one chance to
28:32get this whole democratic settlement working well.
28:35And to prove to people that if they vote for people who say they're going to change things, they can
28:38change things.
28:39All of those things are possible.
28:40There are no laws of gravity that stop the government from doing things, but for whatever reason, it's kind of
28:45hobbling itself and it needs to stop doing that.
28:47And it's the same accusation of things like it's a communications problem.
28:51So he gets attacked for his TikToks and, you know, and they get aggravated that people don't pick up on
28:56their policy announcements.
28:57There is a real show don't tell element of government and maybe not minding so much about how you communicate
29:04out and just getting on with it.
29:06But instead of announcing endless priorities and goals and milestones and things like that, just have one, two, three things
29:15that are the mission of this government or this sense of direction in number 10.
29:19I'm sure that's right.
29:20But I also think there's a thing about not minding so much about your own party.
29:23And I saw that.
29:24For sure.
29:24You know, I saw that, you know, you can see that.
29:27I've seen that in both main parties, you know, plague on all your parties.
29:30But there is a real thing where actually part of the problem is that the absolute myopic focus on what
29:36is going on in terms of the dynamics and the kind of tepid bath they all live in, which is
29:40the dynamics of the eternal party.
29:42Actually, you're governing a whole country just for a while.
29:45Put a pin in it.
29:46Whatever you're doing isn't working anyway.
29:47So just don't care about it.
29:49Do the next right thing.
29:51Great line from Frozen, which I still stand by as being one of the most important and useful things you
29:56can tell anybody.
29:57Read Wolf Hall and watch Frozen.
29:59It's actually Frozen too.
30:00It's my great cult.
30:02I mean, honestly, wash my mouth out.
30:04I do know that.
30:05That's disinformation.
30:06I could sing it to you, but I think probably we don't need that, especially not in episode one.
30:10But there is a thing about just kind of get on with it and do it big and don't worry
30:15so much about what's going on in your internal party dynamics because leaders who worry about their internal party dynamics,
30:20it doesn't work very well for them in this sort of situation.
30:23You have to just like back yourself.
30:25You're right.
30:25And I actually, I think the shock, again, thinking about that period in about September 2019, the shock that Johnson
30:32was prepared to de-whip people like Ken Clarke, Nicholas Soames, who's Churchill's grandson.
30:38That one's smarted.
30:39Like all these people, that is a real mission of intent and it very much focused minds.
30:45And what he was able to do later, although, you know, COVID came along and I'm sure we'll spend some
30:50time talking about that, is that those, you know, the people then stood as MPs in 2019, stood by a
30:57manifesto and they understood what that manifesto committed to.
31:00And that included things like Brexit.
31:02And there was just a lot of those Tory wars were just dealt with straight away.
31:06Instead of one faction trying to take over sort of number 10 or the prime minister, they were told you're
31:13a new faction now and this is what's happening.
31:15They don't necessarily like it, but as long as you can keep a lid on it, as you said right
31:19at the beginning, it doesn't really matter.
31:21I'm like, who cares?
31:23Because no one thinks, oh, I must get a little violin out for these MPs who don't feel like they're
31:26getting the promotion they want or that they don't get asked to check us enough or, you know, the whipping
31:32operation isn't what they thought it could be.
31:35There is a place for a bit of a psycho running the show.
31:39Well, so that's part of the, sorry, that was what was playing in my mind is like, yes, and.
31:44So there is a thing about who is it that is putting the fear of God into people?
31:49And I don't say this, you know, having started off by saying, you know, by being kind.
31:54And there is an element, of course, but, but like power is power and politics is politics.
31:58Come on, black eyes.
31:59Still got it.
32:01But there is a thing about like, who, who is it that is putting the fear of God and that's
32:04keeping control that where is the, where's the menace coming from?
32:08And like menace matters in politics.
32:10Totally agree.
32:11And my, my kind of pinup for this, even though I also find it quite frightening is Gavin Williamson, Sir
32:18Gavin.
32:19Yeah, steady on.
32:20Who became chief whip for Theresa May immediately after the 2017 general election.
32:27So he negotiated the confidence and supply agreement with the DUP, which people might have forgotten all about.
32:33But Gavin is really interesting because I think Gavin, one of my many kind of slightly snide and possibly unfair
32:39criticisms of the political classes that I worked with was that there's quite a lot of people who learned how
32:45to be a special advisor or how to be a minister off the telly.
32:47So you get quite a lot of nonsense kind of caricatures.
32:51Gavin Williamson, I think, did learn how to be chief whip off the telly, but he'd watched the right programs.
32:54Yeah.
32:55So it was really genuinely, genuinely, he'd got the memo on how to be quite sinister.
33:01He could be very charming and gossipy.
33:02He could be extremely frightening.
33:05But he was working with a quite crippling minority.
33:09And while he was chief whip for a year, he didn't lose a single vote, which is by any measure,
33:15pretty good going.
33:16He's extraordinary.
33:16Yeah.
33:16And you don't really want to know what he wants to achieve that.
33:19But we're not advocating for, you know, bring back Gavin Williamson, just to be really clear.
33:23But there has to be an element, just to be really clear.
33:25So, but there has to be an element of who is it that is enforcing the prime minister's writ.
33:31And that's part of that's part of power, too.
33:33Yes.
33:34One thing I also want to pick up on just in this.
33:37Do we think he can turn it around?
33:40There is this sort of events, dear boy, events element.
33:44And obviously, you have to react to events as they come along.
33:47And there are some immediate events that are going to have to.
33:50There are ones that you can predict that you know are coming quite often that you've created yourselves, which can
33:55be problems.
33:56And there are some that you don't see coming.
33:59So, certainly international events.
34:01Two things really stick in my mind from previous beleaguered prime ministers.
34:05The first is the Salisbury poisonings in 2018.
34:09Theresa May was really on the back foot yet again, particularly with her own MPs.
34:14And she responded so strongly to that poisoning.
34:18And she led the kind of international response against Russia.
34:21And that really brought her some time and respect.
34:25If you think about that, like there's a high point of Britain leading the charge internationally.
34:29Yeah.
34:29I mean, absolutely.
34:30It feels like a long time ago now.
34:33And then the other thing I'd mention is for Boris Johnson, he was well into Partygate and Chris Pinscher and
34:40Erwin Patterson and February 2022, Russia invades Ukraine.
34:46Again, I don't think we should hope for...
34:48We actually really care.
34:49We're not wishing.
34:50We're not wishing ill international events on anyone.
34:53But you're right.
34:53Your point is right.
34:54You're still done.
34:55It can extend your period.
34:56Yeah.
34:56But your point is right that you never know what's around the corner.
34:59That's the business of number 10.
35:00And the one thing you definitely know is that whatever's happened, it'll come back to you.
35:04So lots of other parts of government you can happily lean out of.
35:08The crisis, the place that you were always, they all come to roost back in number 10.
35:12So he might be helped out by what happens in the world and space.
35:15We don't know that.
35:16The other thing that I would say, though, is that I think there are delayed, well, we used to call
35:21them delayed time bomb.
35:22There are mines still to come, basically.
35:24There are things we know are coming, for sure.
35:25Yeah.
35:25And I mean, the thing that, you know, looking, they by no means the Peter Anderson, Jeffrey Epstein fallout has
35:32not finished.
35:33I mean, in fact, we've just heard as we're recording that Andrew Mark Battenwitzer has been arrested for questioning about
35:40it.
35:40And that has, by itself, I mean, I think anybody sensible is already worried that that kind of glimmer of
35:47light that Keir Starmer has had in the last few weeks, that these things might be more controlled or orderly.
35:53There's an oncoming train, which is effectively, there's some quite serious constitutional issues that have been created by Parliament demanding
36:00those papers, having a police investigation at the same time.
36:03Can you explain that a little bit?
36:04Well, now you've got the palace and the royal family involved as well.
36:07So the, which never makes things easier, I would say.
36:11It's the Venn diagram.
36:12Yeah, I quite often wake up grateful I'm not doing my old job.
36:15And this is definitely one of those times.
36:16What happened was that the Conservative opposition very cleverly put down an address in Parliament, which has forced the government
36:24to release an extraordinary amount of information.
36:27Some of that information, my honest view is they can't actually release it.
36:30So it will be every single diplomatic communication between His Majesty's government and the ambassador to the United States.
36:38If you did that, that's your diplomacy in the open.
36:41That will be a terribly disastrous thing to do to our country.
36:44So there are kind of little complexities in the way that that works.
36:47But you've also got the police now trying to say, well, hang on a second, we can second guess Parliament,
36:52which is, this is something I could draw a diagram of.
36:54But that is not how it works.
36:55The government is accountable to Parliament.
36:58And Parliament is the thing that we elect.
37:00And there is a real kind of mess of constitutional issues coming here, which are not going to be easy
37:05to get through.
37:07So what are we, what are we advising, Claire?
37:09Well, one thing I also quickly wanted to flag, this is very much with my political hat on, is that,
37:14again, thinking quite short.
37:15Yeah, that's a great hat.
37:16It's very pointy.
37:18Thinking in very kind of short-term political thoughts, but there's a by-election next week in Gorton and Denton.
37:26And it's just become as one of those symbolic things.
37:30When it's going wrong with your parliamentary party, it's going wrong for the government.
37:34People, particularly in Westminster, and presumably in Gorton and Denton, set great store by the results of a by-election
37:41like that for the sitting Prime Minister.
37:45And then there's May elections coming after that.
37:48And so aside from what is going to be in these Mandelson files, which will be very personal and embarrassing
37:55for sitting members of the Cabinet,
37:57and all that feels kind of gossipy and Whitehall-centred as well, it's sort of two worlds colliding at once.
38:04These constant little markers to try and just get the Prime Minister passed without him losing his job,
38:12all set alongside these actually big, very unwieldy and frightening constitutional problems.
38:18I think our kind of takeaway for our advice this week, if we were in the room,
38:23is to dance like no one's watching and get yourself a psycho, which feels like an...
38:28Yeah, exacting, exacting, probably not in the same room.
38:33Yeah, that's true.
38:34And I think also, you know, he has got a new team who are having to start from scratch
38:39in such a difficult period and he has got to, you know, he seems quite comfortable with delegating and so
38:46on,
38:46but they have to understand exactly what the job is and what he needs from them
38:51and then they need to ruthlessly get on with it and basically ignore all the news.
38:56You know, a classic one for me would be the morning meeting with the Prime Minister.
39:01For some reason, the first 15 minutes of it is almost always a sort of media digest.
39:05Just get rid of that. Do the crossword.
39:08Have a moment of mindfulness.
39:10Yeah, exactly.
39:11We'll go in the garden, just enjoy nature for a bit.
39:13Make a cheerful TikTok.
39:15I think I would say fewer cheerful TikToks, but, you know, who am I to judge?
39:18I think it's a terrific use of his time, obviously.
39:20I find them moving and really interesting.
39:24So anyway, thanks for listening to our first ever episode of In The Room.
39:29Remember, please follow the show on your podcast player of choice
39:32and we would love it if you left us a five-star review if you enjoyed it.
39:36Otherwise, no comments.
39:37No comments, let's do it.
39:38You can keep up to date with the best bits from the podcast on Instagram.
39:42Followers at intheroom.pod.
39:44And of course, if you're very brave,
39:45you can actually watch the whole thing in Technicolor on YouTube.
39:49This podcast is part of the Independent Podcast Network
39:51and is produced in association with Next Chapter Studios.
39:54The executive producers are the wonderful Carrie Rose and Olivia Foster
39:58and the producer is the fantastic Sam Durham.
40:01Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week.
Comments