YouSaid · the spoken record

Alan Johnson

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49
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2024-10-13
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2024-10-13
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  1. “Because I was so fascinated to know whether. Someone who can write string of sentence together, let's face it, he can adapt to fiction and he can't. So I've not read Disraelis. Disraelis are probably the only ones that I probably would like. So on fiction, no. On non-fiction, I think I'm sitting in front of my, at least my one favorite writer. You can come into it with the diaries, but politics on the edge is a masterclass.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Oh, God. Well, there's a little bit of the musician bit in me, you know, that you're on the stage. There's a little bit of the politician that you get very interesting questions from very nice people who are not out to slit your throat, as they sometimes were at political meetings. And, you know, people who like books, I've been steeped in books since I was a kid. And meeting other people who like books. What's not to like? They're wonderful.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “When it looked like we might go into coalition with the lib dems, you know, there was that weekend, you know, you were in 10 downing street most of the time. And it looked like Lib Dems came to talk to us. I've always been a supporter of proportional representation. I was dealing with Chris Hoon and all. And I thought the cabinet was thinking, well, we'll have to appoint someone if this works. And it was going to be for three years. Gordon knew he had to go. Yeah. It would be for three years. And I would have put my hat in a ring. So on Sunday night, I was thinking, yeah, okay, you know Derelict's duty if you don't really do that by Monday, of course, the coalition had formed very sensibly. But I think we could have just about put the numbers together.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I nominated David Mulliband. I thought I went on the Today program specifically to say, look, I'm not standing, but here's this guy.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “And saying to me, Well, someone's got to step in there. You know, it should be has no world that's going to have anything to do with And the same happened with Ed Miliban, by”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “That's because, number one, they thought I should stab Gordon in the back. In the midst of the People coming to me, you know, the PLP, they're going to put this letter in, Alan. This is called in the middle of dealing with the financial services crash, which he did very well, by the way.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I couldn't have been. I'm not top draw material. And that's the simple factor, unless you think your top draw material, you're not top draw material.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “I should have been Tuned in to politics as a whole. It was always to me, it was fun. I was enjoying it, but I was also enjoying reading books. I was enjoying listening to music. I think really it's so all-consuming that the times when I thought, when that's gone wrong was because I didn't pay enough attention to it. And I should have been all over it. And I admire the ministers who really are thinking about it day and night, but I'm afraid that's just not me.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I think that's crucial. I think special advisors is a crucial issue here. I had brilliant special advisors. They came with me to every department and they didn't have any expertise, obviously. They need expertise in that department. They had expertise at work and pensions when I originally recruited them. But they were good at linking the civil service with the ministerial team. You know, you hear so many stories about special advisors who kind of walk around as Jack the Lads because they've got a minister's ear and treat civil servants with disdain mine never did do that, which I think was part of our success. Any success in a sense of staying and not getting sacked.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Like being on the psychiatrist's couch with you to decisiveness is crucial. Decisiveness is crucial. I like to think I was decisive. I know of Junior ministers and even ministers whose problem was that they couldn't make a decision. They waited ages and ages and ages before they make a decision. Now, I know sometimes that can be the wrong decision, but what the civil service want, you know this, is a decisive minister and they'll put, you know, they'll put all the arguments, but once you're in a car, it's dual control, you've got a civil service next to you, if you're not going to put the car in gear and drive it away. They will.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “It was okay because I was on the Labour side and the Labour side had people like Blunket coming to talk and we had Tony we were amongst friends it was the big campaign that was taxpayer funded that should have been making the argument to the general public not us we were making the argument to labor supporters if we could have got more Labour supporters out I think we might well have tipped the balance because it was so close I knew I told Kevin Maguire famous Daily Mirror journalist the night before I think it's going to be a leave vote I felt in fact in the end I thought 5248 was closer than I thought it was going to be because they had everything in their favor you go on the doorstep in whole western Hessel wherever you were and try and explain this great idea of Monet and Schumann about bringing countries together after the war or you go on the doorstep and you say take back control who's going to win that it's quite obvious”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Well, my job was to get a Labour vote out, and I suppose I would say this, wouldn't I? The statistics show that we 67% of Labour supporters voted to remain, right? So in that sense, it's job done. I'm convinced it would have been 75% if we had a different leader. I mean, Jeremy was”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “The European Union because people want in this country and I think in most other countries they want immigrants to feel safe here. They are liberal about immigration as long as it's controlled. And when it looks like it's not controlled, you're going to get people saying, well,”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Sarkozy. So, what happened? My view on this is that we, in the end, when that referendum came, the majority of British people, I think, if you say to them, immigration's been good for this country, they will agree, but it needs to be controlled, they will agree. In the end, when it came to the referendum in 2016, Farage and others were able to say with some justification, but it's not controlled from 26 countries in Europe. It's not controlled. Not just that. They were meant to tell us we were never part of Schengen. We were meant to know if serious criminals were trying to come into this country from countries in the European Union. We never got the information. So we didn't know. And all of that just happening in Germany now, you know, kind of looking to go back on Schengen. Well, if they'd been in that ball game in 2015, 2016.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Well, we didn't handle it in the way we're accused of handling it, i.e. an open door. That all comes from 2004 when the Eastern Bloc came in. And we said, as Sweden and Ireland, who were the three most successful economies in Europe, we had 600,000 vacancies. I was at work and pensions at the time. We need, you know, there's no qualifying period. People can come here straight away. And then you had the Polish plumber and all of that. And probably in hindsight, that was a mistake, only because of the optics of it. I mean, you know as well as I know, people say Tony wasn't concerned in, you know, open door emigrate. God, he was fanatical about ensuring that we had that. That's why David Blunkett went and did that deal in France.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “There are forms of public private partnership that companies are willing to get involved in if we come up with the right model. There's not been any kind of model for nine years. That has to be one solution on capital while you wait for the revenue situation, maybe, although there is £160 billion going into the NHS now. So you need that reform before any more money comes in. But you can tackle what is really the, Arrows pointed it out as the priority now because why is productivity bad? Because they don't have good equipment.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “It's going to be difficult, but that's capital, it's not revenue. So arrows making the point on that. That backlog will just get worse if it's So leave aside the revenue issue. How can you raise money there? Well, we know the private sector have been sitting on wads of cash. We know there's been no public-private partnership since Hammond stood up in Parliament in 2018. You were there, Rory, and said not just at PFI is going to go, mentioned PFI in a second, but no form of public-private partnership. There's forms of public-private partnership out there, like the Lyft model that built the health centers all around the country that are not PFIs. They're not 90% 10%, i.e. 90 private sector 10%. They're 60-40. The developer actually is in charge of it, not the contractor.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Waited at least 18 months. In fact, John Major had said under the Citizens Charter, no one will wait more than 18 Months we were reducing it down eventually to an average of nine weeks, maximum 18 weeks. Can you do that again? Yes, but you need help and you have to bring in all hands on. Well, you see that the way we did it and the beauty of it was a single tariff. You didn't pay extra because you were using the private sector. You didn't pay extra because it was one tariff. And that tariff applied for a hip operation, whether it's in the private sector or the public sector. So it's not willing beyond. The budget never was $160 billion.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Well, let me just tell you a little anecdote. Ara's first report came out and said. GP surgeries ought to be open in the evening when people are free to go there. They go, Why are they closed on Saturday mornings? Big BMA campaign against it. Who joined them? The Conservative Party. Andrew Lansley joined the BMA in saying no to extended opening hours. Seems incredible, doesn't it? But that's what happened. How are they going to turn it around now? Well, I think to a certain extent this is history repeating itself because the waiting times are now back. I'm not sure they're as bad. When we came in in 97, people waited years for a simple cataract operation.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “They decide whether the drugs, yeah, and now all over the world people follow the nice judgments, anyway. If someone who was terminally ill paid for that drug, if they could for whatever reason, all NHS treatment was withdrawn from them. And it was barbaric. And everyone told me, including Andrew Lazley, who's my opposite number, by the way. He wasn't pressing for this. People told me, if you removed that, the whole of the NHS will collapse. And I got a very good surgeon called Mike Richards. We used to have some really good people around, not just Arab surgeons, health professionals. I said, Mike, have a look at this because this seems to me to be absolutely awful. If we change this rule that's been there since 1947, would it mean, you know, the sky will fall in? And he came back and said, just do it. Just do it. So we just did it. And it's never been mentioned since. It's fine. Not many people can do that.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Yeah, it was two years. We dealt with some really big issues. I loved everything about it. The NHS used to withdraw treatment from someone who couldn't get a drug. Nice, which was probably Alan Milburn's greatest contribution, by the way. Nice hadn't approved the drug”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Would this guy be satisfied to be a minister of state because it was Ara, who is a wonderful person, by the way? I mean, you wouldn't know. He used to, you know, at St. Mary's where he's a surgeon, used to go in sometimes, dressed as a poulter. Because when he stepped in the lift as a surgeon, everyone drew back and bowed to him and paid homage. He went as a poulter to see what the kind of reaction was to him as a poulter. I mean, he's that kind of guy. There's no airs and graces about. And we forged a very good relationship. And that was Gordon's idea. I had two great years. First of all, because it was two years and I was usually moved on, you know, after a year. But it was utility.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Like to bring Ara in as a minister and be able to work with you as a minister of state. Now, the first thing that springs to mind when you think of a major leading surgeon isn't humility, is it? I mean, let's face it. No.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Yeah, yeah. Well, he's a hero of mine as well, his good friend, and he's back doing the same thing again, I see, or is certainly in the picture. Gordon knew what he wanted to do on health. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, one of which was to say, look, there's this guy, Aradazi, who's a surgeon. And Gordon had been to a presentation that Arra made about a number of visits people have to make, the bus journeys to here, to there, to there, shifting healthcare to the communities, all of that. He said, I'd like to bring Aradazi in. Remember, they were called goats, government of all the talent.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “The budget of that helps we were now going towards 110 billion, it's 160 now, but we're going towards 110 billion, which was incredible. Investment per head of population. So, Patricia Hewitt, my predecessor, had been through hell, you might remember, nurses screaming and shouting at her at conferences. That's because she was sorting out the budgets of the local primary care groups. This is a long story.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “This is now Gordon Brown. Yeah. So Alice has departed to scene. Tony's departed to scene. On the day he went, on the evening he went. Gordon said, Well, you can stay at education if you want, but instantly I'm going to make it this schools and families thing, and I'm going to take higher education and further education, put it in another department. But you can do that if you want. My priority is health. And I'd quite like you to go to health. Well, you know, of course you go to health. I was really fortunate because the heavy lifting, we're now talking about 2007, the 10-year plan, and we're living this life again now. Including Arid Mention him in a second 10 year plan was well underway. We had been recruiting nurses and doctors. The famous announcement Tony made on the Sunday TV that is going to increase the...”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Precisely. The reason I thought your hand might be a nest is because we'd unveiled the need for tuition fees at the back of the Deering Commission on higher education, Deering from Hull, my old mate from the post office as well. And he had said, look, you know, those who benefit from higher education should make a contribution. And that included not students, graduates. Once they've graduated, once they're earning blah, blah, blah. Perfect formula. I supported it instinctively. It was very controversial. The minister at the time was under the accusation that came to all of them. You're pulling up the ladder. University education with generous grants, Tony had clocked, and this is where I saw the hand of Alistair Campbell, that actually if you put someone in there that didn't go to university, Going to stand up”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “I've got this suspicion that you were behind. I'm not becoming a minister. I was a minister. I was PPS same year I got elected to a wonderful woman called Dorn Primarola. As Playmaster General. Then in 1999, junior minister DTI Pass. Their Minister of State, then I get a phone call after the 2001 election. And I'm going over the Humber Bridge in the back of a government jag because I'd done something at Bishop Burton College. My role as DTI minister. And the phone rings, there's a reshuffle going on. And Tony said, Alan, I'd like you to go to education. I'd like you to be the minister for higher education. There's absolutely no word of a lie. I said, Tony, Minister for Higher Education, you realize I left school at 15. I never went to university. He said precisely.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “From him, we don't know what that means. I didn't even try to argue that I want to be a minister. But, you know, I thought, am I going to get to 60 and look back and think, I missed that opportunity? Here's the leader asking me. And so having thought it over, I didn't care where it was.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “He never made any, there was no deal. He never said, Oh, you're banning it. You have to, you know, you've got to make sure you.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “That was coming up, but I mean, this is where I feel guilty because, I mean, you did it through a very unique route, through the kind of Cameron's flirtation with primaries. I see some in my colleagues who slogged away for years, moved the family to places where they thought the MP was going to breathe their last. And here was I being asked by the leader of the party.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “But he said, but Alan, just as I'm trying to get away because I've got my mother-in-law way. I hear you want to be an MP. I said, I told you that, Tony, I've got the slightest wish to be an MP. And I didn't have the slightest wish to be an MP. I mean, why would I want to go to the back benches? Anyway, he said, well, I'd quite like you to be an MP. You know the way he'd quite like you to be an MP. I thought, bloody hell, you know. Come and talk to me, he said, I was on the NEC at the Labour Party. So I went and spoke to him. I said, well, where would the seat be? He said, well, where do you want it to be? Because what we know now is all those MPs who are going to step down.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Because of that, really, I had a profile, only because of that But no, I'm driving up Gypsy Hill. This thing that's like a brick next to me, which is apparently called a mobile phone, goes, I did pull over because I was late for my mother-in-law's birthday party, picked it up. I'd had a thing with Tony about a candidate election in Newport. Remember when Alan Howorth crossed the floor? I wanted to talk to him because we had a good guy, Reg Kelly, who was in Newport, and we wanted to be assured there was going to be a vote of the members. Angie comes online. Angie puts me through to Tony. Tony says, yes, yes, no question of it. It's going to be an open ballot”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “About it. We employed the Tories, PR agents, and we got behind Tory lines and we got the Tories really, really rabid about the effect of this, your local post office will close. NGO Saturday delivery and all of that. Forget two deliveries a day. All the things that have happened post-privatization, by the way. But this was the early 90s. And because we won it, it was seen as a big thing. Tony was very pleased. And this documentary by Michael Cockrell that Tony might well have watched. I doubt it. It was a word in the right ear. It was about lobbying. And he made our campaign the centerpiece of a one-hour program.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “I know about a big deal. It was a big union, and we'd had a big victory. We stopped Hesseltine and major privatizing the post office. Everyone had lost those disputes, you know, whether it was rail, whether it was steel, whether it was tell us a bit about your tax. Oh, there was a great documentary about it, Michael Cockrell documentary.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Absolutely. And, you know, we'd seen it. Jeremy had been there for a long time. What he's doing now, which is not a Labour MP. Difference was he was sitting on Labour's benches. He's never. Into our constitution, particularly the new one”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Yeah, things can only get better, the great book by John O'Farrell. He explains in that, and this is very much my experience of this as I was in Slough at the time, Slough Labour Party, he describes a constituency meeting. They only had a bit of money, one leaflet to a big council of state. Should we make it about the cuts to local council and bin collectors not coming around? Or should we make it about Nicaragua? Militant were in the majority and they had to walk around this council of state delivering leaflets on Nicaragua. That's a great example of what things were like.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Was betrayed. The revolution was betrayed because internationalism and, you know, ensuring that there was a proletariat dictatorship.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Radical. I mean, Time of Wilson was crypto communist, they used to call him, and they were all over the place. But this was very, this was Trotskyist, basically. I mean, you know, there'd no time for Stalin.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “If you think of momentum more recently Around Corbyn. Militant was in a way much more pernicious. Much more pernicious and much nastier. And really, it was one of the things that have happened ever since the Labour Party was created in 1900. These kind of off to the, on a different planet, far left groups decide the only way they can manage to get any power is to wear Labour's clothes to get elected. They couldn't get elected on their own platform. So entryism was a big thing, or has always been a big thing.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Not really, mainly because Stuart had an awful lot of problems through the age of militant and all that. He kind of was a bit of a matinee idol, pretending he was militant and then wasn't. I might be being unfair to him, but he promised he'd move to the constituency and never did. There was a vote of no confidence in him. He only won it by one vote. So in a sense, I came in and he had a different headquarters. There were two headquarters in here. I came in halfway through the general election. And there were two headquarters, and one Stewart had the key to, and the other one he didn't”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Yeah, I did have an auntie, my mother's sister, which you made a great deal of, I'm sure. She featured all publications who married a soldier, a whole soldier, who was actually my mum's boyfriend. My auntie nicked him off of her. They went to Hull and had nine kids. So I figured I had a built-in majority, but they didn't all live in my constituency. I'd been there once.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “And through that slump, by the way, the trawlermen were promised all kinds of things, promised retraining, promised money, promised redeployment. They got nothing. They were classified as casual workers.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “Wouldn't have said any of that, no. And when I got there, Larkin wasn't a great hero, by the way, there wasn't even a statue of him, but it was the biggest fishing pool. Distant water fishing pool in the world. It had been. And that had all disappeared overnight. You could walk across St. Andrew's quay from one trawler to the others. There were 250 of them. And now there was just one.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “Yeah, and I suppose that's true, although in labour terms, talking about being on the right, we're all on the left. The people on the far left are just, you know, away with the birds on a different planet. But all of us are on the left. We are democratic socialists or social democrats, whatever you want to call it. And so I quickly settled in, mainly because, and this is where I'm absolutely with you, Rory, because I read your fabulous book, I reviewed it as well and said it was fabulous at the time. So I'm not just saying it here. I loved my constituency. My constituency didn't choose me. I was imposed. When I took the parachute off and looked around in Hull Western Hessel, I found a wonderful place, not just because I've always been interested in poetry, where here's the place where Andrew Marvel was the MP. Forget Larkin. Andrew Stevie Smith not waving, but drowning born in West Hole.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “And I thought, I don't know where I'm going. I recognize Alan Clark. I'll just follow him. And I followed him up the escalator. And he's almost whistling. It wasn't quite, but almost whistling. And I chunted along to try and keep up with him with all this stuff. And eventually you got, because it was such a huge majority, rather like now, I guess, you had all these people wandering around, didn't know where to go or what to do, and you had little lockers to put your stuff. And then it took you a while before you got some stuff. It was very traumatic, I think, is the main thing. But, you know, we were on the government benches that always attracted me. That's why in the end, Tony, I think persuaded me, not just because I was absolutely behind him. I'd stood up, the only trade union leader to support. Changing Clause 4 of the Constitution”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “And he put his hands in his pockets, nonchalantly ran his hands through his hair. I had briefcases, documents, boxes, you know, the kind. I didn't know where I was going. This was a completely new world for me. I'd been to the commons, yeah, but not through that member's entrance and little cloakroom with a bit of ribbon to hang and all that.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “I never met. I never met him, but I followed him into the comments. And he, as I say, leapt out of that car, had nothing. He'd come back into Parliament in the 97 election. Remember, he'd lost his seat. 92 came back. For Kensington and Chelsea. Kensington and Chelsea, where I was born, could have been my MP.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “I remember it very well. Those days, you could drive in through the gate. Yeah, there were a couple of coppers there. Nobody even searched the car, I think. I drove there from where we lived in Crystal Palace. So it wasn't very long, sort of 20 minute drive. I went down to that underground garage. And next to the space I parked in, next to it was an open top, two-seated sports car. And out of it unfolded Alan Clark. I mean, I say unfolded this Alistair.”

    2024-10-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 102. Alan Johnson: From Blair to Starmer - What can Labour learn? (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source