YouSaid · the spoken record

Chris Patten

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81

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2024-12-02

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2024-12-02

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1. “What are the great establishment jobs could he do? Chairman of the MCC, we didn't really get into Dunfe's into cricket or not.”

   2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “I wonder if there's another job in him. So, cabinet minister Knight of the Garter and all that stuff, Chairman of the BBC, Oxford University.”

   2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “I guess what I meant by him being right was that he was always worried that the thing would end up in not just within the Hong Kong context, but that China would end up as a form of dictatorship.”

   2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Got so many letters after his name knows utterly ridiculous. I liked his Hong Kong, I enjoyed talking about Hong Kong. Think you'd have to say he's kind of been proven right.”

   2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “I wonder whether that was the response to the fact. One of the things Neil reminded us of at this event I was at with him is that Fiona and I and our kids were with Neil. We were actually playing football in his garden in Eling when John Major phoned and asked him to go to Brussels, which Neil was absolutely thrilled to do. So I wonder if that was a sort of, it was always interesting with those European commission appointments sadly no longer happening that you did have to kind of think about the politics of it, the expectation was that you'd send one labour, one Tory roughly. So yeah, maybe I wonder whether that was partly as a response to the fact that John Major had sent Neil that Tony decided to send Chris Patton.”

   2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “1960s A couple of days before the interview, I was at dinner with Neil Kinnock, and I said to him, We're doing Chris Patton on the podcast. And Neil said, oh, yeah, he's a good man. He's a good man because they became colleagues at the European Commission. And it's interesting how that Neil's experience, if Chris Patton had left Neil Kinnett's life in 1992, he would only really have known who was the sort of architect of this brutal campaign against Neil Kinnock. But then, of course, they both go off to the European Commission and become good colleagues.”

   2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “Because he thought the waters would close over him if he didn't, was how he put it. So that is a very kind of personal ambition sort of thing. When I got to know him better was when he became chairman of the Conservative Party under John Major. And you're right, by the way, he does now come across as this really affable sort of centrist dad type, centrist granddad in a way. But he was a pretty brutal campaigner.”

   2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “For the daily bearer. I can't say that he was sort of, you know, he wasn't conspiring against his own policies, it were, but you always felt that Nicholas Ridley, who was his predecessor, was an absolute true believer, partly because that was the sort of politics he believed in, but also because it was coming from the holy Margaret and therefore had to be right. Whereas I always felt there was a kind of lack of certainty about it. But he kind of gave an explanation as to why he went along with it. He thought that if he hadn't, he'd be sort of finished in politics, as it were. I'm not sure that's right, by the way, but that's his view.”

   2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “I would first be aware of him when I was a journalist and the whole poll tax thing was going on. I did have a sense that he didn't really believe in it. I don't think that's him just sort of, you know, going into national treasure mode.”

   2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Maybe parents and so on. And I say to them, Why did you come? Again and again, I'm not making this up again and again. They say, because we want to bring up our children in freedom. And when I'm gloomy about Hong Kong, I think that's the reason why... Hong Kong will be free again one day. That's a very, very good point on which to end. Chris Patton, thank you very much. Your former chairman of your former party.”

    2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “And I do start to think going back to France for a couple of weeks in my garden shortly and the weather forecast is awful. But I'm going back shortly and I will think to myself as I'm looking at a new flower bed. How many more times will I see that? And it's not morbid. It's what happens. Michael Palin was saying something rather similarly. One thing we all have in common is we die. And maybe don't think enough of it. It shouldn't necessarily make you gloomy. As you die, it might be nice to think that that flower that you've just planted is going to appear long after you've gone. Absolutely, or that something which you're thought to have stood for is likely to win the day. I mean, one nation conservatism comes back. Yeah, Hong Kong. Yeah. When I talk to people from Hong Kong, the ones who are here as refugees, as exiles, I say to people, it must have been an awful wrench leaving Hong Kong. And they say, yes, we had to, you know, leaving a job and a home and friends.”

    2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “No, about my mind, all right, about my mind. I tell you what inevitably happens when you get older. There's a certain resonance to the phrase the last time I did this or the last time I did that because you realize when you're 80, I don't want to sound morbid, that it may well be the last time. Because I've almost stopped planting trees because I'm not going to see much of them. I'm a very keen gardener and most of my gardening.”

    2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “You raised Peter Mandeless and not me. Who are you backing as your successor at Oxford? What's that remark in Michael Dobbs novel? I couldn't possibly comment. Okay. Well, if I said it would be, who do you think it'll be, Rory? And then at least he can say, you might think that I couldn't possibly comment. You've got to vote, haven't you?”

    2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “accepted and broadly implemented? Yes, except that for this, while it was going through the House of Parliament, the then Secretary of State thought that he could do a better job of abating unionist anger by trimming some of the things we'd proposed. We're talking about the then Secretary of State who followed Mo Molum, who was Peter Mandelson, and he thought that he could satisfy the Unionists by fudging things. And I was in the extraordinary position of having people like Jerry Adams, part of an organization which had spent some years trying to shoot me, saying we want pattern and nothing but pattern. And eventually to the credit of the government or their whips, maybe the Secretary of State as well, they put back into the proposals what they'd been taken out. But it's the one thing I've done in my life of which I'm most proud. I think you should be.”

    2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Of decent people who are having to give up their savings, sell their houses in order to pay for their old age. It is intolerable that we haven't dealt with this issue. It's been used as a political football by the two major parties for years. And I think that there are, and it's an old man talking and may sound like old men all the time. I think there are some issues in politics where the major parties have to work together. And I think social care for the elderly is one of them. I actually think the funding university is another because of the importance to our economy. We shouldn't turn them into political footballs. And I hope that Rachel Reeves will look again. I'm sure she has been under pressure to look again at winter fuel allowance, but the most important one is dill not. How you get decent and clever people to produce sensible reports for government anymore when the reports are simply buried is quite a good question. You would accept that the very sensible report you did on policing in Northern Ireland was...”

    2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “And lower taxes. And it's for the birds. With the Labour Party saying, well, we can deal with all these problems without putting up taxes. They can't at all. And the best example is the one which we don't talk about. And there was a big lot of fuss up about the Christmas, the winter fuel allowance, 200 quid, which has stayed the same since it was introduced in 2000. So while it's been losing value, nobody's been making a fuss about it. Now it's being taken away and understandably there's a fuss being made. What is being done? What should be done about the fact that the Dilnot report has once again been trashed? The thing we should be doing for helping the vulnerable elderly care. is curbing the costs of social care. And Wes Streeting said that the government weren't going to resign on that from that just before the election campaign. Rachel Reeves is clearly resiling on that. And that is going to have a real damaging effect on the live”

    2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “I just wish Paul Johnson was running the country because I think the IFS have been the Institute of Physical Studies, have been right about this throughout. I gave my sons-in-law in 2023, I suppose, a copy of his book, Follow the Money, which is the best analysis of what's happening to the British economy and to our public finances I've seen. I don't believe for one moment that Wes Streeting, for whom I have a very high regard, as a person, as well as, I mean, I've spent part of a weekend with him and heard him make a speech on a platform and I thought he was just terrific and very nice. I don't think he believes that you can deal with the NHS's problems without spending more money. So for Kir to stay, I understand why he does it, there'll be no more money for the NHS without reform. Of course there will be because they need more equipment. I think that an example of what's gone wrong with the Conservative Party in opposition, the leadership contest in which they're all saying they want a smaller state.”

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18. “In number 10 without Brexit. I think we would have done at all. I think it had a really appalling effect on British politics and on the two main parties. It still is. And still is. And there's obviously now going to be a tussle with smaller parties and given our curious electoral system for what's left of the vote.”

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19. “Government a lot of credit. You can talk about mobility schemes, I think, but we're not going to be able to rejoin the customs union with the same sort of terms that we had before. You've got to understand that there are people on the other side of the table who think we behaved very badly, as we did. I mean, Brexit means Brexit was taken to mean, as it turned out, that Brexit could mean that harder sort of Brexit in town. And it's damaged our economy. It's also, I think, and this is a matter of opinion, not provable more or less provable to some of the economic stuff, I think it's introduced into our politics a toxicity, which is really, really bad, and I think is partly the reason for the two major political parties getting such a small proportion of the vote at the last election. But, you know, would we have had the glorious premiership of Liz Truss without Brexit? Would we have had Boris Johnson a moral vacuum?”

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20. “But why do the ones who warned that it was going to be a scam not want to talk about it? And I guess what I'm doing here is asking you to give a bit of advice to the current Labour government as to how, because deep down they know Brace is a disaster, but they don't want to confront it. So how would you confront it if you were them? Two things. First of all, I would, as David Lammy and others have been doing, make it clear that we want in all sorts of ways to have a better relationship with Europe. And secondly, to make it plain that we can't make up for the fact that Brexit has probably cost our economy 5 or 6% of GDP, but it's going to make it even more important for us to do lots of things which will help us to grow faster.”

    2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “The scammers don't want to talk about it, and even Farage barely talks about Brexit now, and Johnson's just off sort of doing whatever Johnson's going to do. Making speeches for large amounts of money.”

    2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Idiot to have sent somebody some money on the grounds that they were the daughter of a stuff. And I felt a real idiot and I didn't want to go around telling people that I'd been a real idiot. And I think that there is a sense among sensible people in this country that they were scammed by politicians and it's difficult to face up to it. But sooner or later we're going to have to, if only to restore some sanity to political debate. I don't think we're going to go back into the European, I'm 80. Are we going to go back into the European Union when I'm alive? No. Can we have a better relationship with the European Union? Certainly yes. Will an improvement in our relationship with the European Union improve our standing in the world? Certainly, particularly since now the European Union economy is, I think, in some difficulty and trouble and there are some areas, for example, research and higher education where we can help. You can see why.”

    2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Well, it's soft power. Since we don't have soft power in terms of having the vastly strong economy or vastly strong armed forces, it would be a pity, I think, to give up the sort of authority that we have from standing up for human rights. And I'm not sure what else we should put at the heart of our foreign policy. It's in our national interest to do that. When Joe and I talked about soft power, that is one of the sort of things he meant. And he might have thought that Britain coming out of the European Union would not exactly enhance our soft power. He would have thought your way to segue into Brexit. He would have thought it was completely barking, as I do myself. And why are people so, on the whole, so mute about the consequences? I think one of the reasons is similar to how you feel if you've been scammed. I was scammed once and thought I was a real”

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24. “Well, I don't think that just because some other countries, not least because they've got 1.4 billion people, although their population is now being outpaced by India's, I don't think that just because some other people's economies have got stronger or bigger, it should dilute our concerns about human rights.”

    2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “Chambers where Keir Starmer used to be a barrister. The best human rights chambers, I suppose there is. Very, very good team. They make a terrific case for him and his sons, Sebastian Lye and the other son who've both been at school here. And the government, I think, go through the motions of raising his case. But this is a British citizen who's been treated outrageously. He's one of ten journalists who are in prison in Hong Kong at the moment for the crime of being journalists.”

    2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “That's about the people who've come here, but what I meant was more whether you think that we've just given up on political pressure to try to keep some of the elements of Hong Kong that you fought for. I hope not. For example, your assumptions remarks the other day about a Hong Kong drifting into being a totalitarian state like China, his views on the rule of law. There are some cases which I think we are insufficiently concerned about. Can I just mention one? The Jimmy Lai case. Jimmy Lai is a British citizen. He has been in prison now for over a thousand days without being tried, except early on about something, a civil case, actually. He is 23 hours and 10 minutes a day in solitary confinement. He's a Catholic. He's not allowed to take holy communion. He's been treated outrageously. He's got a very good legal team here at Doughty Street.”

    2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “Whatever the delusions of the golden era, introduced the BNO passport scheme. Twice in the last few months, I've talked to BNO meetings of BNO passport holders. I hadn't spoken to as many people from Hong Kong ever since I left. And the other one the other day they gave me a birthday party, got the OBE over Bloody 80. And on both occasions, you're talking to people who are overwhelmingly graduates. They are paramedics, their nurses, their doctors, their teachers. Last summer, I'd been back to my old school, and the new chemistry teacher had just arrived from Hong Kong. The following day, I was in Oxford and bumped into a Hong Kong family with, I suppose, 25-year-old son, who said to me he was there for an interview to become a doctor in the local health authority. So they're exactly the sort of people that we need and that Hong Kong”

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28. “He's got pretty cross and said they weren't going to buy anything from Australia anymore. The figures when you look at them have been extraordinary because the Chinese needed things like iron ore. Maybe it affected Western Australia wines, but otherwise they had to buy the things they were getting from Australia at good prices. What I've always been crossover about is the way that delusion affects people's views on China, that you have to accept that the mandate of heaven rests in Beijing and that you can't do business with China unless you recognize that. It's simply not true. The other delusion is that you need to have agreements with China because they always keep their word. It's complete balls. I mean, they don't keep completely indeed rather the reverse. Do you think we in Britain, we the people and also we, the politicians, do you think we care enough about Hong Kong? Well, I am very pleased that the last government...”

    2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “Well, the lesson is, first of all, look at the figures, and there is very little relationship between having a sort of kowtowing relationship with China and getting lots of investment. And is that how you saw it? Yeah, and if you look at the figures, for example, while I was being called a sinner condemned for a thousand generations, which they went back on later on, I'll have you know. Well, a million generations. No, no, no. I'll tell you the story in a minute. Apart from saying that and having all these arguments, if you look at the export figures from the UK to China while I was governor, they went up steadily. And by the end, we were, I think, had the best ratio of exports to GDP in the G7. I mean, the figures changed. And it's been like that with Australia recently when they tried to raise the issue of an investigation for reasons, which I could explain into the coronaviruses in Wuhan.”

    2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Human rights, the answer from people like Percy Craddock was well, yes, but he doesn't really mean it. I mean, just something we have to go through. On that, Lee, you mentioned Lee Pang on the very same subject of human rights. When at the handover, Tony Blair was summoned to go and see the Chinese on the other side. We've got a boat journey in this terrible weather. And Li Pang was there. And when Tony Blair very timidly raised the issue of human rights, just as the H was forming on human, Li Pang took out his handkerchief and spat very loudly into it.”

    2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “But one of the things which told against him, I think with John Major, is that he and Sir Percy Craddock Hygenuflect convinced John Major that in order to get Beijing's agreement to Hong Kong building a new airport, and John Major should go and sign an agreement with Li Peng, the butcher of Tianmen Square, as he was sometimes known. And John went. It made no difference at all with the airport. They went on making, making trouble for years, but John Major was embarrassed because he was made to inspect a guard of honor in Tiananmen Square. And understandably, he hated that and hated being made a fool of in that way by the Chinese and by his advisors. And you might have been there. When journalists were going away from meetings in the coach asking one or two people who'd been with John Major whether he'd raised”

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32. “Or until a week before the Tiananmen's Square, because I was as overseas development minister, I was at the time the vice president of the Asia Development Bank. You got that gig as well. So until just before the murders, till the tanks went in, Mr. Tankman and so on, I was seeing this sort of astonishing explosion of belief in freedom and democracy. And it sort of The whole thing and my experience in Hong Kong underpinned something which I'd always believed in intellectually, but had never seemed quite so vividly the best societies are those which combine free economics and free politics. And that's what people were trying to establish to some extent in Tiananmen Square and were short as a result. Quite a few of them got out into David Wilson's credit. He made space for them in Hong Kong.”

    2024-12-02 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 110. Chris Patten: Conservatism, China, and the future of democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “And there's copies of De Tocville to the publisher's amazement spiked in sales in China. Everybody in the Central Party School had to read it, and it was read across the Central Committee. And that is what Wang Qishan, this extraordinarily wise, well, interesting fellow, had clearly felt and was saying to Xi Jinping. So the Chinese Communist Party, thinking that it was starting to lose control, took the view that they had to tighten their grip on everything, whether it was the press which was becoming, they were newspapers which would attack public officials for corruption. There were attempts at democratic elections for party possessions. And I think Xi Jinping was convinced that that way was the sort of Gorbachev route that would do to the Chinese Communist Party what Gorbachev had done to communism in Russia. And that had a certain resonance with me because I was in Beijing in 1989 at the time of the Tiananmans World.”

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34. “Authoritarian countries didn't have an easier time just because people were getting better off. And more than that, that authoritarian regimes were almost at their most vulnerable and weakest when they tried to change.”

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35. “I haven't been to the Bodleian. So we summoned the librarian who was walking her dog on Port Meadow to show him the Chinese artifacts in the Bodlian. And he was interested, but he was plainly disturbed that he wasn't seeing the thing he wanted to see. And it was only later that we discovered that Alexis de Tocqueville had somebody he used to write to in Oxford about the lessons to be gained from the Ancient regime and the French Revolution for authoritarian governments. And we discovered that this correspondence was actually in all souls, not in the Bodleian. Why was he interested in this? Why did copies of de Tocqueville's Ancient regime, which I had to do, and I'm sure you did, Rory, why? Because he thought that De Tocqueville, and we're not talking about democracy in America, where De Tocqueville was very wise too, but the Tocville encipient regime made the point that governments in”

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36. “Which is thought to be the most perfect Renaissance example of perspective. It's called a hunting scene. And he went on going back to this and looking at it. And he was more interested in the European things in the Ashmolean than the others. So plainly an interesting and slightly different fellow. He was very fed up, I was going to say something ruder, that the embassy stopped him going to look at an exhibition that was on in the Ashmolin at the time of posters of the cultural revolution, which when we told him afterwards that he hadn't been allowed to see it by the ambassador, he was Reddy Cross. The Chinese embassy. The Chinese embassy. So after this, he goes to Rhodes House for a lunch with a group of Chinese students and Chinese academics. He's enjoying it, having a good conversation. Then the ambassador comes over to the table, the Chinese ambassador, and says, Minister, I'm afraid we must go back to London now. And Wankishan said, I can't go back to London.”

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37. “Was completely trusted partly because he didn't have any children. And he was married to a Prince Lingsdaughter. He came to Oxford a few years after I'd become Chancellor. He'd been the mayor of Beijing and he was vice economics minister at the time and he was coming through to Britain with a group of officials to a conference in the Caribbean and the Foreign Office thought a good idea if he came to Oxford first of all to London and they took him to the Olympic Park and I think he'd seen more bloody Olympic stadiums than he ever wanted to see so it wasn't very imaginative. He then came to Oxford and he went to the new chemistry labs and the science park and so on. What then changed his mood completely was being taken to the Ashmolean. And it was only later that we realized he'd been quite a serious historian and had once been a museum trustee. And he went on going back to one of our favorite pieces in the Ashmoli.”

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38. “The cadres in government and the party to engage in an intense struggle against and then he lists, or they list in these instructions, all the things we would describe as liberal values, whether rule of law, free elections, freedom of the press, these are all things the party was instructed to struggle against. Why? Because I think Hong Kong representing those things and those things themselves were seen as an existential threat to Chinese communism because Xi Jinping had been convinced that any change in China was going to risk the Chinese Communist Party's position. Now, I have one view about this, which some people think is eccentric, but I believe it to be true. Very close to Xi Jinping was a man called Wankishan. He was made head of the Commission Against Corruption when Xi Jinping was on the rise. And Wang Qishan”

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39. “They promised to do, none of which surprised you, presumably. Not really. I mean, I think the hope was perhaps a small equation than the pessimism. But I didn't think that it would be quite as bad as it's been under Xi Jinping. And why is it so bad under Xi Jinping? Well, you can see it from the very beginning. Xi Jinping, when he”

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40. “I wasn't going to be Beijing's man in Hong Kong, but Hong Kong's man in London and representing Hong Kong's position in Beijing. My argument has never been with China or Chinese people. The people who worked with me in Hong Kong, in example, these issues of the rule of law and democracy and so on, they were Chinese. They were Chinese patriots, but they didn't define their patriotism in terms of how much they loved the Communist Party. If I mention their names now, it'll be, you know, it won't be good for them. But they were incredibly brave having their families being attacked in the Chinese Communist press. They were very brave and they were brave because they believed that what we were doing was the decent thing to try to do. And I believed for some years after 1997 that it was probably working because under Zhang Jamin, they interfered from time to time. And they went back on some of the things.”

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41. “And I don't think we went out of our way to explain it. And I think we got away with putting into the joint declaration exactly what the Hong Kong system was. And it wasn't principally the democracy stuff they objected to. It was the two things they most objected to, things we did about human rights and the rule of law, and the fact that we involved the people of Hong Kong in the decision. They were really cross with me when we went up to Beijing for the first time with the fact that I'd told people in Hong Kong before going what we wanted to do and what I wanted them to decide. And I was much affected by the fact that my predecessor had been trying to get an agreement on the court of final appeal, which he hadn't been able to get through because the legislature and the legal profession and so on weren't having any of it because it hadn't been explained to them first. And it looked as though it was being imposed by Beijing. So I think that they were cross with me because I made it clear.”

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42. “First of all, I think the only defence of the Chinese Communist Party is that when they enunciated the formula one country, two systems, and we jumped on it, it was terrifically successful in a way of putting things together morally and politically on both sides, because in our empire we hadn't been used to preparing a society not for independence, but for handing over to a completely different political regime. So one country, two systems had a huge appeal. I'm not sure they ever really understood what our system was”

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43. “Job if I'd managed to cut taxes and increase spending in British politics, I'd have still been Prime Minister. But it was a great job, thoroughly enjoyable, and I made friends for life. But you knew it was going to end? Yes. And another reason for being emotional was that you couldn't be at all sure how it was going to go. You had to have a sort of leap of blind faith in the Communist Party being as good as their word. Something that I used to boy me up for a bit, I used to think to myself, if they've made so much of a bloody fuss over the smallest detail, why are they going to walk away from it afterwards? And to be fair, for some time after we left, it went pretty well and they didn't interfere too much. But then I think the arrival of Xi Jinping, which we can probably talk about, made a huge difference.”

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44. “And I'd made some of my greatest friends say, well, the people who worked for me in Hong Kong were the best people I've ever had working for me. They were absolutely terrific, both the Hong Kong Chinese and some of the civil servants in the foreign office, people like Peter Ricketts. So we'd been happy there. It was a wonderful job because being, as it were, mayor of a great Asian city, which had been growing for 26 years, where I was able every year to cut taxes, to increase public spending so that the Communist Party called me a socialist. They called you a lot of things. You were a serpent. You were a whore. I was a fatty pang. And I was able to build the airport out of revenue, not out of borrowing, which would have been more sensible that the Chinese wouldn't let us do it. So it was a hugely enjoyable.”

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45. “Doesn't take many renditions of Nimrod or Elgar's cello concerto to have me reaching for the handkerchief. Hong Kong was particularly emotional for two reasons. First of all, I'd been happier there and my family had been happier than at any other time, I think, in our lives. And it hadn't been easy for them because my wife had to give up a career as a barrister and my kids were between school and university or actually at university. And you'd had the pain of defeat. And we'd had the pain, yeah, it went off. I mean, Eddie Stevenson once said after, I think after he'd been beaten by Eisenhower, what it felt like, and he said he felt like the little boy who'd bumped his toe on the end of the bed. It hurt too much to laugh, but he was too old. I think that puts it extremely, well, as did Stevenson's put so many things so well in context. So we had been incredibly happy in Hong Kong.”

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46. “And me, Alistair Campbell, with Chris Patton, who would be very, very keen to talk about his years as Governor of Hong Kong. I said in part one, Chris, that I was there with Tony Blair because this happened early in Tony's premiership, right at the beginning at the handover. And you were very, very emotional. I can remember you, I think I can remember you in tears at one point, and I can remember you talking a lot about, you call them the Jewhursts. And I said, what do you mean the Jewhurst is the butchers? You had very, very strong views about what you feared for the future of Hong Kong. Give us a feel for how you actually were feeling at that time and how you feel now about what's happened to Hong Kong in the interim. Well, you should put my emotions in context. I can't watch a guitarist and pipe band playing going home without getting sort of rather emotional about it. So you're an emotional guy. I can be very, and you know.”

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47. “I think he draws the wrong conclusion, but I can understand it. I thought the conclusion he'd drawn was, for heaven's sake, here we are. We've got a huge lead in the polls. And it's like having a tray with full glasses of champagne on. You've got to walk across a cocktail party without being nudged or dropping anything. And I sympathize with that. I think there is, perhaps we can talk about this sometime. I think there is a really big and difficult issue for democratic politics. If you find yourself in a position where you're saying things which you really know you're not going to be able to do after an election. And I think one of the arguments, one of the calling cards for democratic politics is that it may be a bit scruffy and scratchy, but by and large, it's the best way of getting people to accept decisions which are in the country's interest, but not necessarily in the country.”

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48. “Yeah. It's not unreasonable to see the bad side of what oppositions are trying to do. It's unreasonable when you lie about them. And I do think that the Labour Party had got into a rather difficult position over taxes and the double whammy stuff about tax and public spending.”

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49. “Yeah, when we were unfair particularly to the Labour Party's economic policies, certain familiar themes about taxation and public spending and what was going to happen to the economy.”

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50. “A thoroughly decent man. I would have worshipped his wife Glynnis, who's sadly died not very long. As a European MP, dealing with the sort of things I was dealing with, she was almost without parallel. I mean, she was just terrific. So I think people run fast at Neil, but nevertheless, things like, I think the Sheffield rally actually massered. This is when Labour had this massive rally in Sheffield. the line that was run against Neil was that he was behaving as though they'd already won. Yeah. And I always think he's been overstated.”

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