Rupert Soames
The Diplomat
People, composure and the difficult conversation held well.
Rupert Soames is the chair of the CBI, an organization that represents the interests of British businesses. This interview reveals his focus on collaboration and trust-building as essential elements in navigating the complexities of business and government relations.
“And you keep stumbling across things that he said and did and his vocabulary was huge. And you don't have to know him to read him. I mean, his speeches and stuff like that.”
“There's always an incentive to innovate, to bring change, to go and do things differently. It's not about, I mean, every prison in the land has a budget. It has a budget and they're not allowed to overspend it. So you can go and say that the people running public prisons are only there to make sure that they don't go over their budget.”
“But there's always an incentive for behavior, bad behavior. People don't need incentive to go and behave badly. Just look at all the scandals in public service that we hear about, all the time, the blood scandal. The behaving badly.”
“Because I think that the things that make you good at business are not necessarily things that equip you for being good in politics and vice versa. And over the last 20, 25 years, we've had a professionalization of politics and the gap in understanding between politicians of all parties and business has grown ever wider.”
Political Thinking with Nick Robinson — The Rupert Soames CBI One
LISTEN AT THE SOURCE ↗THE RECORD IS CHECKABLE