YouSaid · the spoken record

Ben Wallace

lines on the record: 114
first: 2025-01-06
most recent: 2025-01-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Would have liked, well, they sought to influence Scottish independence. I mean, they would have liked, they liked division. There's no logic to it. They did try, it was pathetic, actually, in the Brexit debate at one stage. I remember there was some troll factory in St. Petersburg. And the problem was they couldn't quite get British humour rights. You know how, you know, because for these memes to take off, you do need to get the humour in the right place for someone to think. And it never quite worked. It never took off. It's like, no, that's not funny. So you have to... But genuinely, and I say this as a remainer, their efforts did not have an effect.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think it's a mindset, which is And it's very different from Chinese mindset, which is I think Russia thinks, well, if I can make my rivals weaker, then by default I become stronger. I mean, never mind actually looking after your own population and giving them heating and indoor toilets and making sure that they have a better standard. That doesn't really matter by the looks of things, you know, or broadband, whatever. As long as my enemy is weakened, I become stronger.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kind of up there. No, we've done quite a lot now. I brought in the first criminal finance act. With the unexplained wealth orders, again, people who didn't like it were people like the Treasury, they wouldn't give us liability coverage. So if the NCA put an unexplained wealth order on someone and that person sued for reputation, you should be able to cap that. So they got quite frightened that some oligarch would annihilate them with a law case. And you could then see the tentacles of Russia all over the corrupting methods of corrupting us both financially, politically. I remember the Russians during the Black Lives Matter riots in America when it got really bad. We discovered that the Russians were magnifying both extremes of the debate, both the sort of KKK and the hard militant Black Lives Matala deliberately to harvest division.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Treasury Treasury blocked every effort I ever did to try and make it. I remember discovering that you could register on company's house, a company without even an identity check or a Google check to find out if you were sanctioned. And of course the owner of the regulators of these bodies are either the treasury or the bays, but the treasury wins. Every time I remember finding that almost no estate agents had ever reported under a suspicious activity report bags of cash or dodgy purchases of houses. And I'd say we've got to really clamp down on these things. And I spoke to Ken Clark about it. He said, oh, I was always the same when I was Chancellor. I never wanted to do anything that did that. So I sound a bit like Angry Treasury personally.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We could have done more in 2014. I think when he invaded Ukraine, so first of all, after the Scripple, that was the foreign office at its best, when they pulled together and we got 153 Russian spies from around the world expelled. And that was definitely the foreign office at its best, doing a really good job in our Italian service and everything else and getting that done. I think we could have all done more then. We could have realized enough's enough, put in financial sanctions much earlier, got rid of all these oligarchs in London who, you know, I mean, I was also, I mean, the security job was as fascinating as a defense job because I was economic crime minister as well, organized crime. So I could see the dirty money flows. And, you know, every time.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and he'd murdered someone in Berlin An attempt to murder in Austria. And the other thing I'd seen as security minister is that daily Russia was attacking us in cyber. And what was interesting is across Europe, different countries. As if it was some national embarrassment. So I went”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I think one of the fallings out of the post-Iraq war was in order to protect. Politicians using too much intelligence or being too reliable on a single report, which is one of the things that came out of Chilco, is SIS and others were too reliable on one report. We quite rightly do a proper assessment through the joint intelligence assessment, and it's all sort of matrix and washed and very, very logical. That's brilliant. But it is only, in my view, advice. And people are not always rational. I mean, I'm having a big row with somebody who said, oh no, well, Putin's terribly rational. He's not going to do it. Oh, really? Really? I mean, you know, is it rational to use nerve agent in Britain? I mean, when did that become a rational response?”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, so it was pretty obvious from the April before. So Putin wrote an article, which he wrote most of it the year before called the sort of historical links between Ukraine and... Which was read like a Mein Kampf novel. It evoked ethnic nationalism. NATO was only mentioned in one paragraph in 19 pages. So let's, you know, the talking points from the sort of MAGA crowd in the United States are all Kremlin talking points. It wasn't mentioned. It was all about his view of destiny and Crimea and all that. And that was him, right? So that's not a spin doctor writing. That was him. So you realize that. And then they had this big exercise the April before. They left all their armored vehicles, you know, surprisingly nearby. And we did, you know, we could see signs that this was not just a normal exercise. And you add that to the rhetoric. And my judgment was he's going to do it. And I can't talk about intelligence, et cetera. But there were people within the establishment who didn't believe it.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Foreign policy, you have to also read human. You have to read the people. I mean, going back to why you should be in politics, politicians can't read the room. It shouldn't be politics. I mean, it's staggering how many very bright people can't read the room and make judgments that...”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And put under a bush. Well, I think in a small park where poor old, we think dawn surges a boyfriend had found it. If that had been delivered in aerosol, it would kill 10,000 people. I mean, this was not a sort of joke. And, you know, I knew then that we are in a very more dangerous place. And totalitarian states or messionic leaders, wherever they are, you need to read them. You need to read who they are and what they are and what they're thinking. So I went out to Ukraine where we'd had a frozen line since 2014. And people forget even before the invasion, Ukraine had lost 18,000 people. People were being killed every week on that line. So I went over there to understand the wider network of how Russia was functioning. And so the time we fast forwarded to the Ukraine invasion. And as you know,”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who are mainly currently the in vogue intelligence service that have been assassinating people around Europe or trying to? And in fact, only in May this year they were part of a plot to burn down a warehouse in London. So to deploy nerve agent on our streets to kill what they viewed was a traitor and then tragically took the life of Dawn Sturgeon is not something any government takes lightly and it's not something that would have been decided by a junior rank of the GRU. It would have come absolutely from the Kremlin and from Putin himself. And I realized that this was a very, very different Putin and Russia from the man who started the journey under Yeltsin. And he didn't seem to care the risks he was putting people in. The Novichok bottle that was full of almost pure Novichok that was thrown away.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it actually started beforehand. I'd been to Ukraine as security minister. I'd been the security minister in some pretty horrendous times, the terrible 2017 terrorist attacks, Manchester, Westminster, all of those attacks, London Bridge. But I'd also been the minister when the Scripple poisoning happened. And it became abundantly clear that to use the GRU on our streets to deploy nerve agent.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, but I don't control the treasury, right? And it's a very easy thing for the minister to say, all right, you know, because what the treasury likes to do is push everything to one big grand bilateral between the prime minister and the chancellor. And you would have seen that in your own down exit, which is, so every small thing, like, well, the treasury won't let me have... 50 million to do an Africa strategy. The Prime Minister isn't going to call in off any colour. The Prime Minister is not going to call in the chance to say give or his shirt 50 million. And the Treasury loves to wait till it's a big, well, Prime Minister, this is the envelope we've set. And, you know, that's it.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're bloody lucky to have power, and it might last a year, and it might last 10 years. So while you have it, make a change, if that's what you want to do, and fight, and you do have to fight. I mean, one of the reasons I thought I don't want to be Prime Minister is there's only so much fight you can have in you. I mean, it is a daily, daily fight. Fight to be heard by your boss, fight to overrule the very civil servants just been told by the Prime Minister, we want this for the African strategy, fight to make sure you triangulate to get the treasury in the room. Here's a really good example that's frustrating to ministers of treasury tactics. They don't turn up to meetings, or they send an official, not a minister. Because if they send an official, they cannot be bound by collective ministerial making. So time and time again, but that's...”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then you get the greasy pole people who they'll just do exactly as they're told by number 10 and not really care about the subject they're looking at because they want to be the next X and the next Y. And then I think you get people who I think, you know, Rory, you were one of these people is...”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know, I don't agree with it, but the growth of the PFI structures to get around his own rules, all of those sort of things, he was innovating. I don't believe HREV is remotely innovative. I think she'll just be a passenger. And I think Rory and I saw this. There are two types of ministers in government, or three. One is the passenger, which is I have no respect for at all. And they do what they do, they get their submission, they just tick the box, and they just carry on. And they're not trying to shape anything or change anything. They're just trying to be a passenger in there.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he was running it right, and you have to be the boss of the treasury. Otherwise, the treasury will lose you in process deliberately. They will appeal to your risk aversion of, oh, let's just one year, Secretary of State Chancellor. They will divide and rule all the different ministers. I mean, the number of treasury ministers you and I would meet had no power at all. I mean, just going around the houses. And you have to be the master of it, right? And Gordon came with power of labor, as in he was, in his eye, the Labour Party. I speak for the Labour Party, not that chap in number 10. I am the pedigree. And he mastered the Treasury at first. I can disagree with lots of things he did. And you have to also be innovative, right? So, you know, the Bank of England.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A real successful prime minister will master the treasury and has to be a master of the treasury. And, you know, I wrote a column in the telegraph about a year ago or whatever it was saying that I believe Rachel Reeves will be the Achilles heel of the Labour government because I don't believe she's going to master the Treasury. Whereas, you know, and I don't think Keir's the type who's going to sit down and sort of knock heads together and say, well, I'm running the Treasury, you're not. Whereas, you know, there was always that help.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did that in defense. And I learned I had one boss who hardly even spoke to me. Didn't even ask if I'd been on holiday or what did I do for the summer? And the civil servants love that because when they don't have a connection between the minister and the secretary of state, they can get in between, as you know, and the foreign office is incredibly hierarchical. I mean, it's the foreign secretary or no one. And junior ministers are told, oh, you can't go to this country yet because the foreign secretary hasn't been. And you go, but he's never going. And it's the foreign office is hierarchical. The treasury is belligerent. And I, I,”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But is that Boris's fault, right? Or is that the rearguard action of the system? The deep state. I've been a member of the deep state for many years. All the prime ministers, and I served all five, I think that must be a record. We don't we ever had so many prime ministers in one gig anyhow. But nevertheless, some are detailed people, Rishi and Gordon Brown were technocrats. I mean, they absolutely couldn't move without another paper being commissioned. Gordon Brown and Co used to think if they stay at the problem long enough, suddenly a miraculous solution would appear. Then we have people that lead from the belly, you know, like instinct. That's what I want to do. You sort out Africa, but then don't do the detail by sitting down and saying to the foreign secretary, do as you're bloody told and to the permsec saying, do as you're told. I've rubber stuff. I spent my life with rearguard actions to things that Boris had agreed to.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People have rights, people don't like you building railways over their land, people have, you know, the parliament is not as straightforward. The treasury hates anything that's longer than a year. I mean, just cannot stand. I think remember the treasury even resisted, I think Gordon Brown's efforts to go to three-year spending reviews. Because when you're in a one-year review, all the powers of the Treasury. And so some of the, like the 40 hospitals, for example, you know, that will take 15 years to deliver, right? That's how it is, right? And HS2, all these things are very difficult. But he genuinely, you know, I remember he came back from Govern and he said, I met these people, the apprenticeships working on the yards. He says, I want you to be the shipbuilder's because I want them to have a proper future. I want British shipbuilding to be turned around. And, you know, he never stood in the way of what I wanted to do. The treasury stood in the way of every single thing, every single thing.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He spent a lot of money doing it, and you might say it wasn't successful in some areas, but also, and this goes back to the point about governance, right? Which is When you realize you arrive in opposition, and I've already looked at some of Labour's promises and I go, that won't be there in four years, not because they're being dishonest, but whether we like it or not, delivering capital projects. Takes up is hard and takes a long time”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People felt estrained from both the political process here, you know, your own book. It talks about that sort of feeling. And we need a leader who actually was Walz and All interested in people. And I remember taking Boris to see a submarine launch with the Australians in Barrow in the August as he was going to stand down. And they all came out to see him. Now, I guarantee they wouldn't come out to see Kir. Probably wouldn't come out to see Rishi, right? But they all came out to see Boris. And that's not about he was providing a con to them. There was a sense of he's our guy, right? You have been giving us your guy. For the last 20 years, you know,”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I still think he was. And I'll tell you why. And there is a line across here to Ken Clark, is if you live in our part of the world, I was a remainer. I couldn't actually understand how in my part of the world where we make the Eurofighter and the typhoon, we're big exporters. We still have cotton mills doing top-end fashion and stuff like that that still needs export markets. I presume that my constituents and all the others were devoted to Remain. What became apparent, actually, is a large part of their Brexit vote was actually about London. It was about the metropolitan bubble as they saw it. I often think some of my party got completely confused differently in urban and metropolitan, which is not the same thing.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that leads to one more heave, right? But also opposition is healthy for any party. Opposition allows you to regenerate, recenter, find your common endeavor, build a team. And there's something amazing when you are in opposition and you think you're about to win power, which is suddenly all your differences internally disappear because you coalesce around a common endeavor. You become a team and genuinely you become a team. And then literally the day you win power, it just starts to peel away because of the nature of things.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think when I say one more, it was a one more heave election as well. Every time Rachel Reeves said we're going to pay for this through growth, I didn't really hear many media outlets saying, how? How are you going to get growth? I don't think she was tested. Now, I think she would have been four years before or whatever. And I think labor in 1997 had to prove the how, because that was their challenge. And have you really changed how are you going to talk about that?”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the pay deals without productivity link, that would have been very much part of New Labor. I mean, new labour, you know, I mean, Alan Milburn and those, they understood that you had to make money go further and you had to reform public services. It was often one of the main mantras of Tony Blair. And I don't think I don't hear reform attached to the Keirstarmer government. I hear, oh my God, look what we've discovered coming into this department. And we've got all this money, we just better take some more money. And I don't think he would have made any of those business decisions in the same way. I think they have been negative.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Always benchmark the big change with Tony Blair because I believe that the labor movement realized it had to really change. And it chose a man that embodied that change. I grew up with lots of people who became part of the New Labour movement. My father had been in advertising in the 60s and early 70s and even beyond that. And I met a lot of them. My sister shared an office with Peter Mandelson in the late 80s, literally in the room this size. Tony Blair embodied changed. He wasn't the key architect for the chain, but he was part of that chain. And my worry about the Kirstarmer government would be, in my view, I think it's a one more heave government. I don't think they really changed. They did a bit of changing, but deep down, I think some of the decisions Kir's government has already taken. I don't think Tony Blair would have ever made that decision.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not my thing, right? I mean, so I think they were determined to win power. They wanted power. They knew, I think they were alert enough to know that we had to really change. And, you know, I remember the sort of lobby against David Davis in the leadership election then was, you know, we cannot have one more heave. We have to actually change. And your listeners will have a view of how deep they really changed or not. Was it superficial or not? But ultimately, the green agenda, some of the more social liberal agendas was absolutely about saying, look, we have to appeal to the LibDem voters. We have to talk about a certain subject that Tories might have previously not. And if that necessarily means a falling out on certain subjects, then we will do. And look, I will...”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not sure any of them really had any foreign affairs interest. And in defence, Some of them don't. Some of them are just pure economists. And I think you and I know very well, Rory, that there are people who like foreign affairs. But, you know, if someone wants to ask me about the bond market,”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They all come in. And I think that is, I mean, you definitely felt there was an inner circle and there was an outer circle.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they were the spads, right? They'd inherited the earth, the end of John Major's government came. They'd all been special advisors. So one level, they had the advantage of the New Haite Hall worked, but apart from Michael Gove, these guys inherited the earth. And, you know, they bought quite a few other people with them. Ed Vasey had been a special advisor.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But also the right or wing of my party, you know, because he liked people. And I think the thread of politics to me has to be, you need to be interested in people. And if you're not, You shouldn't be a leader. You shouldn't really be in politics. And that's what the army teaches you, is that you lead not by saying, I've got rank. In the Scots guards, if you did that, you'd get duffed up in the middle of the night.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He never switched it on. But he was also. Love debate. He wasn't having a go at someone on the right or someone on the left. You'd find him going out to a jazz club with some of our colleagues from Prescott.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But when you arrive in government as a minister, someone will say, Oh, you've got to go to the PBL. And you go, What's the PBL? And it's the public bills liaison committee, which is where you are supposed to take whatever piece of legislation you want in front of effectively a star chamber off the chief whip, the leader of the house, who will then test you on the bill. The lawyers will be there saying, is it compliant? What's your handling plan? The leader of the lords will be there. No one tells you. I mean, no one tells you that. And, you know, you don't even know how to read a proper minister. And so I think that's why I was eternally grateful and Ken brought me with them. And he also didn't use his mobile phone very much. I was his number 10.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Batman and Robin. I would attend meetings with officials. He would let me, and actually I do remember proposing, I think in the Boris Johnson government, that what we should do is we should formally make the PPS part of a government, albeit unpaid, so that the civil service can't shut them out. And it becomes the apprenticeship. I mean, Tony Blair made an amazing, you know, quite right. His point was the day I left was when I knew how to govern. And, you know, when I arrived, they didn't really know what was going on in the same way. And if we could formalize PPSs into the government structure and that they are allowed access to the meetings, I mean, they can't do things like NSC and secret stuff, but fundamentally they're part of that. That's the best training ground. And if you want to become a minister, everyone needs to be a PPS for a year. And then we'll understand how it works. I mean, you remember this.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, he let me be part of his job, right? And what people don't understand about Secretary of State is the private office can sort of put its arm around you. Your diary, no one gets to see your diary, and your poor old PPS is sort of loitering around Parliament waiting for you to appear, not a beer.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Tory Party now that Brexit has happened, the Toy Party has to work out its central gravity again without having to evoke Europe as defining you as left or right.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think economically, I mean The problem a Tory parties had for the last twenty years is we defined ourselves left or right by Europe. But if you actually look pre that, we will always find by economics. So Ken Clark is a Thatcherite economist. He's a deficit hawk. He privatized. He modernized the NHS after the Griffiths report. As a Chancellor, he would have always been in favor of trying to lower the tax burden. He was definitely not a tax and spender. But because he was pro-Europe, he was viewed as being left-wing. Boris Johnson is viewed as being right-wing because he was Brexiteer. But if you actually look at his policies, it was quite a lot of tax and spend, quite a lot of big state intervention. And all of that.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they're just all around, you know, of course we have disagreements, but they're not chippy. They don't, most of them don't take it to heart. They don't agree with you and you don't agree with them. And it's why I've remained there and I will remain there to the end, I think.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we went on this trip, the four of us, to Iran. But I always, and we had a common interest in the Middle East and Iran. And then there was the Lancashire link. And Lancashire labor just lovely people. I got on very well with most of the Labour Party in Lancashire. Lindsay Hoyle is a good friend of mine. And you'll know Alistair from that part of the world that what Jeremy Corbyn completely got wrong about the stewardship of the Labour Party is the Labour voters in our part of the world are deeply patriotic at some level, conserved with a small C, hardworking. They feel completely removed from the sort of, I'm going to say it, the North London bubble of Jeremy Corbyn.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we were Lancashire. Yeah, we got Iran together. You could do a whole different podcast on Mejack Straw and Jeremy Corbyn going to Iran for a week, which we did. And Norman Lamont, we all went to Iran. And I was the only pro-European on the whole trip. I mean, I was quite staggered how both neither Jack nor Jeremy had any real excitement or like of the EU. And I was like, well, I know.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want to stay with Ken, which so then I got told that'll be the end of your career, you never turned down a whip, but I stayed with Ken Clark and I learned from him. And, you know, my two friends in politics would be Ken Clark and Jack Straw, right? I mean, they were both mentors and advisors and good people. And so I did PPS for that. And then eventually I did say yes to being with David Cameron the second time around. So I was appointed as what they kept telling me was a minister from there. And then when I actually did stand down, I was the last one left who'd never had been out. I'd survived, I think it was 19 reshuffles.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did start that in shadow. Then we had the election and we had the coalition. And it's a very good example of how poor management is HR is in modern politics. So I remember there was the government and we sort of roughly went along with the idea of the coalition. Coalition appears. And they start announcing the jobs. And then somebody is announced in my job. And then no one actually rings to say, sorry, Ben, there'sn't any room. And I remember it was my 40th birthday, I think. I was sitting in a rain-swept car park in Anglesey where eventually, a few days later the chief whip rings up and goes, oh, sorry, I haven't got any space. But would you like to be Ken Clark's PPS? And actually, that was the best I did. And I then David Cameron asked me to be a whip. And I said, no the first time. Andrew Mitchell was asking me, so it wasn't the greatest recruitment video. And I said, look, no, thank you.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I came in, I was made shadow Deputy Scotland to David Mandel, as we were the two Scots who devolution. It was that sort of, remember, we didn't, David Mandell was basically the only Scottish Tory MP, a bit like Labour went through with lovely guy Murray. Ian Murray. I mean, he was it for a bit.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why a lot of people find it hard to leave the broader family is a regiment, for example, is everything. Everyone knows where they stand. It's tradition. It's history. You're something in it, no matter what you are, whether you're the storman or whether you are the regimental sergeant major, you are something, you have a status. And then it comes tumbling down really quite quickly. And you go into real world where less people have ever been in the military. And there's like a sort of no one cares you're a sergeant or a young officer or a colonel. And that's quite hard for some people.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I suppose it's where you go to see it. I mean, if you spend a lot of time mixing with military types, they will talk about the MPs who are talking about the politics. I think, I mean, your brother and for your listeners was the most wonderful piper. And I served with him and he was fantastic. And I would see him at association sometimes as well. For a lot of people in the military, it's their whole life. They've joined at 16, certainly in Scottish regiments who used to be able to join in your 16th year. So you could be 15. You were a junior leader. And for many, it took them away from very dysfunctional and difficult upbringings. It gave them in their mind everything. So of course it's going to be part of their life. I think as I get older, I suddenly realized that you do all 22 years as a soldier. You've finished at 41. I mean, you're out. Suddenly you've got to find. And I think that's their part of it.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The special advisor class takeover. They come in, you know, everyone else has left, gone to do something else. And so the special advisor class become the cabinet. They become the politicians. And what gives way to that are people with experience and who are not perfectly polished as a politician. And when the public get more frustrated, actually.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So inevitably he is going to talk about that. That's what he wants to be. And I totally admire him for that. And he did put on the map. And through thick or thin, he got a post in the cabinet as in a veterans minister in the cabinet. The office cabinet affairs. And I think if you go into politics for a campaigning issue, whether it's nursing or NHS, you're going to talk about it all the time because you have to have credibility. And especially if you are not a senior cabinet minister where your credibility has to come from your experience or in opposition, where you have to have credibility. I mean, I remember saying to one of my colleagues who was quite disappointed he wasn't getting promoted and he'd been a soldier. And I said, wait till we're in opposition. They will be desperate to have a real genuine soldier on the front bench. Desperate. But as you get to the end of a long period in government, what my experience was,”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, it wasn't. No, I think it's who I had. I think it depends why you go into politics. I mean, you know, Johnny Massa, my colleague, wanted to go into politics, and his main drive was improving veterans and putting veterans on the map.”
2025-01-06 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source