Prime ministers’ legacies — Sunak, Truss and Brown

This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘Prime ministers’ legacies: Sunak, Truss and Brown’

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Lucy Fisher
Two former prime ministers, two very different proposals for fixing the UK. Welcome to Political Fix, your essential insider guide to Westminster from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. Coming up, we’re going to be talking about this week’s FT profiles of two former UK premiers, Liz Truss and Gordon Brown, and their diagnoses of what’s gone wrong in the UK. But first, Rishi Sunak has been driving forward his own pet policies. He’s pushed ahead with his flagship plans for a smoke-free generation, but not without a backlash from his own MPs. And to discuss all this, I’m joined in the studio by my FT colleagues Miranda Green. Hi, Miranda.

Miranda Green
Hello, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
And Stephen Bush.

Stephen Bush
Hello, Lucy.

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Lucy Fisher
So let’s kick off talking about the smoking ban, which has passed its first hurdle in the Commons this week despite opposition from cabinet and backbenchers. Stephen, you’ve come up with some really fascinating statistics on just how much the country’s changed when it comes to attitudes towards smoking.

Stephen Bush
Yeah, I fell down one of those rabbit holes where you’re spending a lot of time on Hansard and you’re like, why am I doing this? So obviously in 2006, there was a similarly, a free vote on banning smoking in public and enclosed spaces. Then, as now, it was divisive within the governing party and the Conservative party. The two biggest faces of that debate in 2006 were Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, whose baby the policy was, and John Reid, her predecessor as health secretary and then the home secretary. And I think the striking thing is obviously, it was a significant rebellion. Well, not a rebellion; it was a free vote. Slightly weirdly in the UK, we include public health measures as conscience issues. So seat belts, smoking bans, these have all been free votes historically. But in 2006, 125 Conservative MPs voted against the ban on smoking in enclosed spaces. And in . . . 

Lucy Fisher
And at that time was the vast majority of . . . 

Stephen Bush
That was the vast majority of Conservative MPs, right. This time, 57 Conservative MPs did. And although among their number you have people who opposed it last time who are, you know, very consistently anti this type of measure. People like Adam Afriyie, Jonathan Djanogly, ironically actually a non-Conservative MP who’s voted against it both times is George Galloway in his Respect guise and his Workers Party GB guise. But you also had some Conservative MPs who, you know, their allies would be fairly candid in private about saying it was about trying to find a way to hurt the prime minister. So I think the really significant thing in some ways is, you know, the complete extinction of the anti-ban constituency in the Labour party and its significant reduction in the Conservative party shows just how far the political consensus has moved in Westminster. Obviously, the British public as a whole loves banning things and pretty much always has.

Lucy Fisher
Miranda, I mean, I was looking at some of the statistics, the fact that 64,000 people a year in England die from cigarettes still today, even though only 12 per cent of the population smoke, down from — Stephen, I got this from your Inside Politics newsletter — 82 per cent of men smoking at the peak of cigarette mania in 1948. So Miranda, in one sense I’m not surprised Labour backed it. It had a lot of support across the Commons, including from the Conservative benches too. But those who do object to it say it’s not workable. This plan to ban smoking for anyone currently age 14 and to raise the age limit every year, you know, you’ll have the farcical situation in, say, 20 years time where people saying, well, hang on, are you, you know, 34 or 35, you know, have to show ID. Is there something in that?

Miranda Green
That is a really good question. I mean, the workability of the age sort of criteria in practice has got to be thought through a bit more perhaps. And also, you know, there is the kind of question of whether you’re encouraging black market practices around tobacco. There are logical inconsistencies for some as well. I mean, I saw a kind of prominent Lib Dem activist saying, this is crazy. My party’s now in favour of legalising cannabis and criminalising tobacco. Is this actually the way the country should go?

But actually I think I probably agree with the prime minister that this is a kind of another major step in the kind of historic change from a smoking population to a non-smoking population. And that when we look back on this week’s sort of start of the legislative process, it’ll be very much like the way that Stephen’s looked back on the ban on smoking in enclosed spaces, because, as your figures sort of showed, tobacco has a uniquely appalling effect on human health. So it’s not really like any other category of ban, I don’t think. And when you look at the costs to the NHS and it’s not just cancer, it’s circulatory diseases, it’s heart health, you know, it’s everything right across the board, there’s a case that it’s, you know, uneconomic as well as a health disaster. So I think it’s sort of something on which it’s not surprising that the prime minister had a lot of cross-party support and consensus.

I mean, personally I’m not sure I agree with Stephen in saying that. It’s weird that a public health measure like this should be a free vote. I think it’s right to have it as a free vote, and I’m not sure that Labour party unity looks as great as they think maybe on that, you know. I think there is an argument for the remaining idea that some issues of conscience to do with the broader question of kind of our culture, you know, the kind of liberal versus authoritarian slant of Britain should be a conscience matter, actually. 

Stephen Bush
I suppose for me, I think the differences between seat belts and smoking and death penalty, assisted dying is as Lucy alludes to in this question about workability, ultimately, this ban does have implications for what the government spends and does, right? That quarter of cigarette sales through the illicit market, you know, that’s not just a fun stat. That is a quarter of revenue that goes into the underground economy, into criminal activities. And, you know, I don’t want to sound unduly callous, but I’m afraid I sort of take the view that I am much less bothered by what someone who chooses to smoke does to themselves than what that quarter of trade does to someone who gets caught in county lines or is stabbed by someone because they look at, you know, a teenager who makes eye contact with the wrong gang member on, you know, (inaudible) sat at a bus. So that quarter of trade does have a huge number of sort of indirect harms.

So I think because it has public policy implications that aren’t just about, you know, how we live and relate to each other, I think it’s slightly different from the other conscience issues. I think, you know, the interesting question is, in some ways, the reason why this is probably more workable than it seems on the face of it is those hypothetical thirtysomethings will both be vaping anyway. And so the kind of question is, is this actually a useful public policy intervention, or is it the kind of public policy equivalent of shouting after someone, “Yeah, you better run” when they’ve already turned away?

Lucy Fisher
I mean, you both are taking at face value that people are voting on this as a matter of conscience. It has a lot of political flares going up as well, aren’t there? And I was sort of interested in the sequencing of Kemi Badenoch coming out first as one of the, you know, front bench heavyweights to say she was gonna vote against it, followed by Penny Mordaunt. Some rightwingers I was talking to in the pub last night laughing that Penny Mordaunt, known well as a moderate, has finally found her libertarian credentials. What was your take on some of the names of those opposing the bill, Miranda?

Miranda Green
Well, I think our cynical attitude is probably the correct one, don’t you think, on those two names, because we know that those are two people being talked about as potential successors to Rishi Sunak should the Tories be defeated, as we expect at the general election. And, you know, they’re gonna have to face the Conservative membership, which is a different audience from MPs and a different audience from their constituents. We know that the public strongly backs this smoking ban, as it actually backs quite a lot of inverted commas nanny state issues, including on things like sugar tax, which Boris Johnson reversed out of. But, you know, the Conservative membership may not share the consensus view of the House of Commons on this. So yeah, I do think that was an important signal in terms of their future ambitions.

Lucy Fisher
Stephen, what did you think? Rob Jenrick, Liz Truss.

Stephen Bush
What I think . . . So someone like Liz Truss has always been opposed to things like sugar taxes, the smoking ban. But in times past at Conservative conference, one of the sort of hot tickets for the right of the party was the smoking rally, as it were, you know, where you’d have various pro-smoking people wandering around, you know, literally people plotting in a smoke-filled room. And so I think some of these names are people who’ve been in those smoke-filled rooms and do genuinely believe that it is an imposition on freedoms and it is an overweening state act. And some of those people are visibly just showing a bit of leg to the right of the party.

I think in terms of the overall mood of the parliamentary parties, we shouldn’t forget that some of the Conservative MPs who voted for this were also being cynical. I spoke to someone who I asked them how they were gonna vote expecting given other conversations I’ve had with them. And they go, of course I’m voting against it, it’s dreadful. And so I’m a vote for and I fail to compose my face. And they said, well, look, it’s gonna pass anyway. And they said, and I know that there are colleagues who agree with it who are gonna vote against it to cause harm to the prime minister. I think if there’s more harm to the prime minister, then it’ll be even worse for the party. So I think the cynicism kind of cancels itself out. You kind of end up with a representative sample of the parliamentary party even though some of those people are, you know, very much not voting for the principal reasons.

Lucy Fisher
And I also think it’s interesting that we’ve seen people like Rob Halfon, who’s well known to enjoy a cigar and indeed was seen in a sort of smart West End private members’ club later on the night after voting to ban smoking for youngsters enjoying one of the cigars and people suggesting that was somehow hypocritical, which I don’t agree with, but it just shows it’s difficult for people to vote, you know, and say, do as we say, not as we do.

Miranda Green
Well, I suppose so. But there’s the argument of, you know, don’t become a sad addict like I am. But, you know, I think this point about the anti-nanny statism of the Tory grass roots is important to make, though, because I’ve been really amazed at the number of Tories who are keen to latch on to a proposal from the Labour party about trying to tackle children’s dental health in school by getting them to, you know, be taught to clean their teeth properly in school. And they’re obsessed with this. They blog about it, they talk about it. The Daily Telegraph writes about it the whole time. You know, this whole idea of an overweening state interfering in families’ responsibilities for its own health really, really is a kind of hot button for their grassroots.

Lucy Fisher
Well, they’ll have more to get upset about in a, under a Starmer government if Labour wins the election, because I think we’re going to see more nanny statism, not least as a repository of measures that he can look to introduce that don’t cost money at a time of tight public finances. Can we just turn quickly to the Rwanda bill, another legacy issue for Sunak. I mean, Miranda, that’s faced yet more setbacks this week.

Miranda Green
Yeah, it’s been a classic ping-pong between the House of Commons and the House of Lords. And in fact, although the government was hoping to actually get it finished this week, it’s now being pushed into next week. The two key problems seem to be the House of Lords wanting to insist on monitoring of whether Rwanda truly is a safe destination to outsource our asylum seekers, which the government is resisting, and also this idea of exemptions for Afghans who served alongside, did jobs for the British services during the invasion and then occupation and then rehabilitation of Afghanistan. They seem to have decided that they cannot give ground on any of this. I’m not quite sure where they go with this, actually, Lucy. I don’t know if you’ve got more insights in it, because those don’t seem to me like wrecking amendments. They seem like a constructive way forward, which they’re gonna have to find in some form.

Lucy Fisher
What do you think, Stephen? Yet another round of ping-pong. Are the Lords overreaching on this? The Commons has, you know, approved this bill several times now and the Lords increasingly look like they’re blocking it.

Stephen Bush
Well, in terms of the, you know, enumerated powers of the Lords, it’s not in the manifesto, the public doesn’t think the scheme works. So it’s, from a kind of operation of the British constitution perspective, it’s kind of fine. If it’s not in the manifesto and it’s not about supply, ie, money, then the Lords can veto it, you know, unless the Parliament Act comes into play, which allows the Commons to eventually override the unelected house, although obviously there isn’t enough time left in this parliament for that to come into play.

Lucy Fisher
To remind listeners, peers like to appeal to the Salisbury Convention, the unwritten rules by which if something hasn’t appeared in the manifesto and it’s not a money issue, they don’t have to vote through the government’s programme.

Stephen Bush
The interesting underlying political gamble here is that if the Labour leadership was scared about an election in which Rishi Sunak’s campaign was the Labour party is blocking the Rwanda scheme, then the House of Lords would have rolled over already. You know, 100 Labour peers would have just all inexplicably had no way day or whatever. Now, they might be right, they might be wrong. Yeah, it certainly pushes up against the limits of what feels to me appropriate for what is ultimately the appointed house. But I think what it really comes down to is that because the Conservative party are no longer trusted on immigration, the Labour party, which in times past would have been very fearful about having this kind of fight now quite relishes it. That might turn out to be a huge miscalculation, just as the Rwanda policy seems to have turned out to be a huge political miscalculation for the Conservative party. But that is why they feel empowered to have these delays.

Lucy Fisher
Miranda, I mean, Number 10 on Thursday refusing to recommit to their deadline of getting flights off the ground by this spring does feel like the timetable is slipping with each week that goes by. First it was Rwanda selling off some of the housing to, you know, accommodate these asylum seekers. This week, it’s the suggestion that they can’t find an airliner to take these asylum seekers. It might have to be the RAF to have to repurpose a Voyager to do it.

Miranda Green
Yeah, it’s kind of a mess, isn’t it? They’d be no good in newspapers with that kind of understanding of what a deadline really means, you know? But politically, it is extremely important that they get these flights off the ground, even though in a sense it’s kind of nonsensical. A flight off the ground is not stopping the boats in any sense. But this argument that it’s a deterrent can only be proven to be true if the flights actually leave, right? And so far, as Stephen pointed out in his newsletter, only Home Office ministers have been the only Brits to actually end up in Rwanda so far on short PR visits. So, you know, politically it’s only of any use at all if they can make it happen, because so far it is just a catalogue of disaster and delay and parliamentary bogging-down.

Stephen Bush
It was interesting in terms of both these topics we’re talking about the future of the Conservative party. Robert Jenrick has done such a bad job of managing his public reputation that we think everything he says is cynical, but actually his policy objection to this when he resigned is not necessarily wrong. The scheme might not work even if it passes. And then, of course, it’s yet another way that the word Rwanda and the word failure and the word Conservative appears in headlines.

Lucy Fisher
Well, we’ll have to come back as these troubles roll on.

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The smoking ban and the Rwanda immigration policy are both seen as legacy issues for Sunak, something prime ministers always have a beady eye on. And this week, my FT colleagues have been looking at the prescription of two former inhabitants of Number 10 for fixing the UK’s ills. For more on that, joining Miranda, Stephen and me, we have the FT’s political editor, George Parker, who is speaking to us from the pub in Bridport, aren’t you George?

George Parker
I am. We’ve just been doing a bit of local government election reporting down in Dorset and on the way back to London we stopped off at a very nice pub — to give it a plug, the Lord Nelson pub in Bridport. And I have to say the landlord has been very accommodating because it turns out he is a big fan of the FT and of the Political Fix podcast.

Lucy Fisher
Fantastic. Well, George, you’ve interviewed Liz Truss this week and meanwhile the FT’s chief features writer Henry Mance is here with us in the studio. Hi, Henry.

Henry Mance
Hey. Great to be here.

Lucy Fisher
And you’ve been speaking to Gordon Brown.

Henry Mance
I have. I thought with all these slightly venal politicians around, it might be nice to to think of someone who has a slightly different take on life.

Lucy Fisher
Well, let’s start by talking about Brown. I mean, the two prime ministers, ex-prime ministers, couldn’t be more different in some ways. But in another sense, the key affliction that they face is the same, that sort of crying out for relevance after Number 10. And Gordon Brown’s been telling you what he’s been up to recently, trying to find a role for himself.

Henry Mance
Yes. Gordon Brown is now very much based back in his former constituency. And I really got a sense, I spent most of a day with him just north of Edinburgh. I really got a sense of how locally grounded he is, right? So he’s there near the town where his father used to preach, where we drove over in his Range Rover, the land that his grandfather used to farm. He went to University of Edinburgh and he’s helping out a local charity. And he’s come up with a way in which they can effectively become a food bank for lots of types of products, right? So the big Amazon warehouse for all the returns in the UK is very near where Brown lives in Fife. And his idea is to get those returns and a lot of excess stock and to repurpose it, make sure it doesn’t go to waste and is in fact taken up by needy families.

And I think, you know, for me, it’s a sort of a demonstration of his, you know, commitment to public service. You know, his morality was overbearing and difficult, and he is not a man without complications, as I discovered. But he, you know, he genuinely wants to try and help the disadvantaged in society. And that really comes from his father’s example, a minister in the Church of Scotland. And, you know, he talked about meeting flood victims when he was a kid and, you know, very poor kids from travelling shows coming to his school and him seeing that poverty and then saying, that’s why I wanna go into politics. And so that kind of mission comes right through him. And I really think there’s something quite impressive about someone who remains grounded in that community and with that mission, with all complications we can come to.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah. I loved this passage from your interview, Henry, where you said Brown’s “own home exudes frugality. A dozen copies of his autobiographies are piled in the hall. In his study, the TV is blocked by another pile of books. Brown has forsworn private healthcare and declined to sit for an official parliamentary portrait. He doesn’t want a knighthood. It’s not for me. Surely he must have some luxuries, (you ask). ‘It’s not really where I’m at.’ ”

Henry Mance
Oh, by the way, he said although he reads the FT that he’s not a premium subscriber. He can’t afford the premium subscription. And I think in his resignation speech, actually, he talked about how he didn’t enjoy the trappings and the luxuries and the show of office. And he found that very awkward. And even getting him to pose for a photo was, you know, quite tricky, right? I mean, it was clear he was gonna have to do it, because the slot as it appears in the newspaper requires a photo. But it was also clear that he found it all a bit embarrassing. And could it not be about him? Compare that, of course, with Liz Truss, who you know, would love, I’m sure, you know, any kind of photo and could it be retweeted and reposted on Instagram as much as possible? So, yes. Unusual, I think.

Lucy Fisher
And he’s given a lot of thought to the ways in which he thinks the country has gone backwards since the New Labour years. I wonder if we could just hear a clip of you asking him about the Conservative-led administration that took over from him.

Gordon Brown in audio clip
If the Conservatives run an election campaign, I don’t really want to be party political, but if they want to run a campaign saying they’ve taken people out of poverty, it is not the real life. It’s not where people are. This is austerity’s children that we’re talking about. These are people who are the victims of not taking care to provide rising child benefit.

Lucy Fisher
So he spoke to you a lot about the damage he thought austerity had done. But you were a little bit sceptical in your interview of what he might have had to do regarding swingeing cuts if he’d won the 2010 election.

Henry Mance
Yeah, I suppose. I mean, I went back into the history to 2010 and obviously, there were these days after the election where it was possible, at least on paper, that, there could have been a coalition of Labour and the Liberal Democrats rather than the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. And, you know, Brown himself was one obstacle to that deal. And I think he agreed that he might have to go as prime minister.

But the way the political mood and the political debate had developed in the months before the election I think was such that, you know, any incoming government was gonna make cuts. And we didn’t foresee, I think, the opportunity in those years to use low interest rates to really invest. And we didn’t also foresee that austerity would go on in such a way that it would leave, you know, parts of the public services — and you can look at prisons, look at local government — in a complete state. I wasn’t entirely satisfied that he realised the sort of missed opportunity. The debate wasn’t had, and perhaps he wasn’t the person with credibility to have it in 2010. No one made a really great case for let’s do a Keynesian investment program. Let’s build some of the stuff. And, you know, we are where we are with much higher interest rates, much more difficult to invest now and we haven’t built anything.

Lucy Fisher
And just to ask you about the work he’s been doing for Labour in the past couple of years. He conducted this major review into devolution. It recommended abolishing the House of Lords, replacing it with an elected chamber. Not clear Labour’s gonna take him up on much of what he’s offered there. But he also told you he speaks quite regularly to Rachel Reeves. How plugged in is he? How much advice are they seeking from him?

Henry Mance
Well, one of the reasons I was interested in interviewing him was that if you look at what Labour’s doing now with being super cautious on fiscal policy, it’s exactly what Brown and Blair did before the 1997 election, right? And so it’s, you know, frustrating because it’s so cautious. And though so on the one hand, Gordon Brown is there saying, you know, this poverty that he’s seeing up in Fife is reminiscent of the Victorian era. On the other hand, he’s backing this super-cautious strategy that Labour has ‘cause he wants to be a loyal soldier and he doesn’t wanna be a back seat driver. I do think there’s a clash there.

I think he has a much more radical vision of constitutional reform than they do, and I think he’s also much more concerned about Scottish independence than they are. And he really sees nationalism as this thing which isn’t gonna be beaten in the next election but is something that continues to be a threat. And he says, look, the SNP, with all its troubles, is down in the mid 30s in the polls, but independence is still up there, very near 50 per cent. So people are saying the SNP may not be the answer, but I still think that Scotland should be independent. So I think you’re gonna see him talk a lot more about that. I think he would be a voice for more radical action on poverty but I think he wants to fall into line.

Lucy Fisher
Well, great, that’s a perfect moment, George, to turn to you and your fantastic Lunch with the FT, or “Lunch with the Deep State”, as Liz Truss called it, when you met her in a Norfolk pub in recent days. She seems to show no such sensitivity about wading into the current debate about what she thinks Rishi Sunak, her successor, should be doing.

George Parker
Not at all. I mean, there are prime ministers who leave office with dignity and honour the office, and there are those who, frankly, don’t handle it quite so well. And I think a lot of people would say that Liz Truss falls into the second category. She’s been everywhere this week, basically telling Rishi Sunak what to do, how he needs to crack down on immigration, that we should be leaving the ECHR, how the UN should be wound up. I mean, just an extraordinary tirade, really, of ideas, none of which I suspect would be entirely popular if ever tested with the electorate. But the thing that really came across in the lunch I had with Liz Truss in this pub in Norfolk was just the total lack of contrition, her total certainty that everyone else to blame. I mean, the closest she came to acknowledging any kind of blame was saying they hadn’t communicated the “mini” Budget particularly well, and she’s said elsewhere that she’s not perfect. And that’s about as close as it gets, I’m afraid, to any sign of contrition.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah. I was very struck in your Lunch that, you know, you reported she was laughing a lot, you know, didn’t seem to have engaged in much introspection about what went wrong in her short 49 days in office. She’s obviously blamed what she calls the three-headed hydra of the Treasury, Bank of England and Office for Budget Responsibility. I mean, was there any way in which you were left feeling sorry for her and what happened to her in that sort of ouster from Downing Street after reading her book? I mean, I’ll just point to one thing where I thought I was surprised when she said, you know, she’d had no medical care. She’d had to send out her diary secretary at midnight to get her cough medicine. And while it might sound a little bit trivial that, you know, she’d had to organise her own hair and make-up, you know, as the prime minister, she’s obviously going to be photographed, filmed every single day. She needs to have these things and so, frankly, would a male PM. It’s sort of ridiculous she and her husband were trying to organise these things, the Ocado shop. Surely there should have been more support for her institutionally in Downing Street?

George Parker
Yeah, I think that would surprise many people who read the book, and I suspect there won’t be all that many who’ll read the book in its entirety. But, I mean, that does strike . . . I think anyone reading that in American politics, for example, would find that extraordinary, the lack of support. And I suppose on one level you can feel sympathy for Liz Truss.

But I think a lot of people would just think, you know, the lack of self-awareness is extraordinary for someone who got to the top of British politics. I think, you know, one of the standout lines in her book was two days into her premiership when the Queen died and her first thought seemed to be why me, why now? You know, that may be something that you would think if you were prime minister at the time, but the lack of self-awareness to actually write that down and have it printed in a book I find extraordinary.

And at the same time, you know, she says that she was let down by the Treasury and the Bank of England and the regulators, who failed to spot the fact that the pensions industry in the UK was like a tinderbox ready to go up. But at the same time, in the interview with me, she said she didn’t believe in guardrails. And so she sort of, on the one hand, sort of saying she felt she should be able to do what she wants and that the Treasury, the Bank of England were a load of incompetents and then blaming them for not stopping her from doing what she wanted to do. So I think sympathy for Liz Truss will be in reasonably short supply, frankly, for those reading the book or indeed extracts of the book.

Lucy Fisher
George, I’m glad you also got a chance to ask Liz Truss about her claim that the Financial Times is part of the deep state. She did slightly resile from that position in your interview, didn’t she? I think she said we weren’t pure capital-E establishment, more of what you called a “flying buttress” to it. That was a claim she made during an interview with Steve Bannon, the former white House chief strategist under Donald Trump. Quite a controversial character. That whole interview really raised a lot of eyebrows. And since then, Truss has really gone heavy on her endorsement for Trump, hasn’t she? This is what she had to say to you about it.

Liz Truss in audio clip
You know, look at what’s happened in the Middle East. I mean, would Putin have invaded Ukraine? Look at the belligerence we’re seeing from China. Look at the kowtowing we’re seeing to China from the US administration. So I would absolutely choose Trump over Biden.

Lucy Fisher
What’s all that about?

George Parker
Well, if you speak to some of her former allies, they are dismayed at the way she’s embraced parts of the Republican right in the United States. The fact that she shared this platform with Steve Bannon at the Cpac conference earlier this year, some of the stuff she says. I mean, her book is titled Ten Years to Save the West. And at the same time, she’s endorsing a presumptive Republican nominee for the presidency who has suggested that he might turn his back on Nato; has said publicly, who has encouraged publicly President Putin to attack Nato member states which don’t make the necessary contributions to the Nato budget. And you wonder how that tallies with the idea of “saving the west”. And, you know, her former supporters think she’s sailing perilously close to the wind and sort of endorsing this Republican Trumpian, I don’t know, sort of . . . It’s a kind of politics which she admits herself won’t necessarily resonate with the British public at the moment, but she thinks the British public need a bit of education.

So I challenged her. I said, all these things you’re saying, they might have got you elected to the premiership in this country because this electorate was, you know, a group of Conservative members who are typically older and more rightwing than the British public, more generally. What do you think the British public at large would have made if you’d have had the chance to present them with this prospectus at an election? And she sort of admitted that, you know, we weren’t quite there yet. But you can see that she hopes that the Conservative party will be exploring this electoral terrain if the party loses as, you know, many people think it will do in the general election, and a leadership campaign follows. And she’s been at pains doing a series of interviews this week not to exclude the possibility that at some point she could make some sort of a comeback.

Lucy Fisher
Miranda.

Miranda Green
Well, what an amazing contrast those two interviews are. You know, I was struck by Liz Truss’s definition of patriotism, George, being to finally abandon her crazy ideas when, you know, the country was threatened with the gilts crisis, you know, versus Gordon Brown’s patriotism being going back to his former constituency and, you know, trying to help people on the ground.

But I think, you know, the problem with the whole Truss episode — because we can’t really call it an era, I guess — is that she’s an incredibly bad example of challenging some things that probably do need to be challenged, not in the way that she did. You know, Henry, talking about the Gordon Brown definition of austerity, your challenge to him on what he would have done had he survived the 2010 election.

You know, the incoming potential Labour government now is going to have to think about this idea of the Treasury brain and the fact that actually, the way we’re governed and the bias towards the status quo in working out things to do with the economy and public spending — you know, there is a bias there. And, you know, Chris Giles, our economics editor, actually wrote a brilliant column saying the real problem with the Truss episode is the way that it’s completely discredited all sorts of challenges to the established way of doing things. And I think that’s, you know, something that sort of is worth pondering as well.

But I did also think, you know, in George’s interview with Liz Truss, it is extraordinary her particularly having argued for Remain at the time in the 2016 referendum to now say that the thing that’s gone wrong since the Brexit referendum is that we haven’t turned into Singapore on steroids, as she puts it in her interview with you. 

Lucy Fisher
Stephen. 

Stephen Bush
Yeah. Although, I mean, the interesting thing is that one of the reasons why Liz Truss was reluctant to campaign for Leave is she thought it would prove a huge distraction from reforming, in her mind, moving the country to the right. And actually, if you look at the way that the size of the British state has increased and the drift of British politics since then, that is one where she was right.

I think the really interesting thing about these two terrific interviews is that broadly speaking, if you’re a former prime minister, you’re a former prime minister ’cause something’s gone wrong. And what you do to rehabilitate yourself is you focus on the things you did well.

So if you’re Gordon Brown, that gives you helping navigate through the global financial crisis and reducing poverty while as chancellor, and actually because of the way the automatic stabilisers of tax credits worked, child poverty continued for even during the crisis in from ’08 to ’10. And, you know, ditto in some ways Theresa May talking about ending modern slavery; you know, Tony Blair talking about public service reform.

The difficulty of your Liz Truss is that your central success as prime minister is making the Conservative party’s life much worse. And in many ways, she’s returning to that theme in her interventions this week. 

Lucy Fisher
George, it struck me as a really interesting moment at prime minister’s questions this week, where Rishi Sunak really went out of his way to disown Truss and put some distance between them.

And he made the point that, you know, at the time when he was running against her for the leadership in the summer of 2022, he’d, as he put it, had the stomach to say her policies were wrong. And he contrasted that with Starmer, who he sort of said was shifty and had tried to put, you know, Corbyn in Number 10 even though, you know, his ambivalence towards Nato and Trident and all the problems in Labour with antisemitism during Corbyn’s reign had prevailed.

Is that something that you think will get some sort of play during the election, that people, the voters, will think, well actually Rishi Sunak did stand up for what he believed in and said she was wrong, whereas Starmer, you know, didn’t take on Jeremy Corbyn when he was leader?  

George Parker
Well, I thought it was a nice try and I thought Rishi Sunak did as well as he possibly could have done in that round of prime minister’s question time, given the amount of Liz Truss ammunition at Keir Starmer’s disposal.

I don’t know, I don’t think . . . I mean, for a long time Rishi Sunak’s been trying to pin Keir Starmer as someone who was an apologist for Jeremy Corbyn and a facilitator of Jeremy Corbyn. I’m not sure it’s really cut through, whereas the polls do suggest very strongly indeed that the moment the public finally lost trust and faith in the Conservative party was during those two months in the autumn of 2022, when Liz Truss was prime minister. You can see it in all of the tracker polls. The party’s never recovered. So I think Liz Truss will always be more of an albatross around the neck of Rishi Sunak than Jeremy Corbyn will be around the neck of Keir Starmer. 

Lucy Fisher
Well, George and Henry, thank you so much for joining. I’ll put both the interviews in the show notes, and I think they really are examples of the best of FT writing as well as being very insightful about these two characters.

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Finally, let’s talk about Political Fix stock picks this week. Henry, who are you buying or selling? 

Henry Mance
I can’t buy any Conservative MPs ’cause I think they would fail my fund’s ESG criteria given some of the stories I’ve read. But I think I would buy Climate Action. I mean, it looks really miserable out there. Scotland abandoned its climate targets. And I think if you believe in green action, you think, oh my goodness, is everyone just giving up? But I think there will come a time when these policies are seen as, you know, almost inevitable that we have to do much more. It could be a very hot summer. People have already had a very wet winter. And I think just the reality of the climate change is gonna keep these issues on the agenda. 

Lucy Fisher
George. 

George Parker
I’m gonna sell Robert Jenrick, the former cabinet minister, former immigration minister. When someone who this week has been desperately trying to appeal to the rightwing of the Conservative party, coming out in support of Donald Trump for president of the United States, saying he’s completely changed his mind on Brexit and what a great idea it was, having supported Remain.

To be honest, it all seems to me a little bit desperate, and I don’t think it’s convincing the people on the right who regard him as a bit of a Johnny-come-lately to the party. So I think it’s a bit shallow and a bit desperate, and I don’t think it’s gonna work. 

Lucy Fisher
Stephen, who are you buying or selling? 

Stephen Bush
I really wanted to be the one who wowed the crowd with the Jenrick thing. I’m also gonna sell Robert Jenrick. I was really struck. I had just come from a lunch with a contact, you know, in the Lords. And as I was walking back, I bumped into three separate Conservative MPs who all made essentially the same joke at Robert Jenrick’s approach. And it clearly wasn’t . . . this was a joke that had been going round. It was precisely, as George says, right, he’s just regarded as, you know, a kind of Johnny-come-lately, someone who’s kind of got a big list of what are the things I say to make the right of the party like me? This is a pretty good cross-section of the whole of the parliamentary party. Maybe Robert Jenrick’s transformation is sincere; I am dubious, but more importantly, so as far as I can tell is every other member of the Conservative parliamentary party not called Robert Jenrick. And yeah, I think that he has really done himself quite a lot of damage this week. 

Lucy Fisher
That’s Jenrick well and truly trashed. Miranda. 

Miranda Green
Well, I’m also selling this week, but I’m selling with some regret Andy Street, the Conservative mayor of the West Midlands region, because on May the 2nd as well as the local elections, there are these huge mayoralties up for election. And Andy Street is in considerable amount of trouble trying to hold on there.

And I say with regret because, you know, we are always bemoaning as a nation the dearth of people going into politics with serious experience of business and the outside world. You know, having run John Lewis, he’s an enormous successful, you know, high street retailer, a mutual kind of a symbol of the things that are good about Britain, British business in a way. You know, he’s in serious trouble there. He had a huge falling out with Rishi Sunak when Sunak cancelled the northern leg of HS2 at the Tory party conference, may well have seriously considered actually resigning from the party.

He could have then stood of course as an independent candidate for the mayoralty, but there he is, with the Tory brand stuck on him on May the 2nd and could come a cropper. So it’s a sell with regret.

And what about you, Lucy? 

Lucy Fisher
I’m going to sell the junk stock of Mark Menzies. I feel the podcast can’t conclude without me mentioning this absolutely outlandish story in The Times suggesting that he called a long-standing constituency aide, a 78-year-old lady, at 3:15am in the morning saying that he was, beggars belief, being held captive by bad people and that it was a matter of life or death that she hand over £5,000 from his campaign funds, money given by local supporters for, you know, legitimate Tory campaigning activity.

Gets stranger still: in the morning, another constituency manager agreed to cash in her Isa to give him the money, which the demand had by that stage risen to £6,500. And luckily this woman was later reimbursed, but again, from campaign funds. Mark Menzies disputes these allegations.

Henry Mance
I’m sure he has a perfectly good explanation. I mean, it sounds to me a normal day at the office. 

Lucy Fisher
Well, the Conservative party has stripped him of the whip while it’s investigating. He’s also been suspended as a government trade envoy to a suite of South American nations. But it is just the most eye-popping story. 

Miranda Green
It’s got that wonderful kind of fall-of-the-ancien-régime air about it, this story though, hasn’t it? They just keep coming. 

Lucy Fisher
They certainly do.

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That’s it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. I’ve put links to subjects discussed in the episode in the show notes. Do check them out. They’re articles we’ve made free for Political Fix listeners. There’s also a link there to Stephen Bush’s award-winning Inside Politics newsletter. You get 30 days free. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show. Plus, do leave a review or a star rating if you have time. It really helps us spread the word.

Political Fix was presented by me, Lucy Fisher, and produced by Audrey Tinline with help from Leah Quinn. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Original music and sound engineering by Breen Turner. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. We’ll meet again here next week.

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