YouSaid · the spoken record

Chris Patten

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2024-12-02
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2024-12-02
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  1. “In the introduction in 1992. Now, I actually was never convinced you were going to lose that campaign, but most of your colleagues seem to think that you were. So what was that like to feel like you're losing, but then to win, and then alongside it, probably to know that you're losing your own constituency? Yeah, well, it was interesting because, I mean, I'm generally thought to be rather a gloomster, rather pessimistic about things. So when I told John Major that he was going to win the election, but I was going to lose my seat. And I told him that at the beginning of the campaign, I told him at three or four nights before he didn't believe me. On both counts. No, he didn't believe on the second count. And the end, I think he really thought he was likely to win the election because, to be frank, rather unfairly, people simply had made a choice between him and Neil Kinnock. I've always believed, because I work with Neil Kinnock in Brussels, I've always believed these...”

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

  2. “Own. I'd be sitting there with responsible for everything from capital grants from local authorities to housing benefit and all the details of it. And John would know all the detail as well as or better than me. And on one occasion I was doing this and my officials were sitting outside hoping I didn't screw everything up and give the department away. And one of my officials said to his senior guy on the budget about spending. Looking at a row of pictures of chief secretaries and chancellors said to this guy, are all your chief secretaries? He said, who's the best of them? And he said, pointing at the door, this one, John Major. He was colossally well respected because he worked so bloody out. He never stopped. He never went to bed. His main failing in politics, which he would concede was he cared too much about what the newspapers said. Yeah, absolutely. And then you became jury chairman for him, as I said.”

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

  3. “Which dominates. Well, the Tristan Garrell Jones loved law. They did when he was in a wheelchair, he was going into the house of Lords every day. We'll come on to Hong Kong in part two, but can we just close off by maybe going to John Major, who I think is fair to say became a friend as well as a boss. Is that fair? Yes. I was very lucky with the people I worked with, but he's as nice as anybody I've ever worked with. A thoroughly decent man and much cleverer than people ever supposed. And if my generation, there were some outstandingly clever people like William Walgrove, who was a fellow of All Souls and Matthew, who was wrote so well and so wittily, John always knew more about the job you were doing than you yourself. When he was chief secretary of the Treasury and you were going in as a departmental minister to negotiate your budget for the next year or more, John used to say to you, do we need officials or should we just do this on our own?”

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

  4. “Yeah, I did. I enjoyed it because if you, especially if you become a professional sportsman, professional cricketer and can't catch, it's not a disadvantage, but I turned out to be quite good at some of the things that mattered, like speaking and writing and taking decisions. And I think I'm quite good at running things. And was one of the reasons why we'll get onto this, I'm sure, is why I enjoyed being in Hong Kong so much. So yes, it was enjoyable. I was never, and I doubt you were, Rory. I was never sort of captivated by the smoking room and thought that anything outside the smoking room wasn't worth bothering with. My old friend Tristan thought I thought loved it. Absolutely loved it. And I used to get rather bored with the halatosis and the drunks and so on. It was never my ideal and nothing but political gossip. We'll come on to who's up, who's down? You know, that.”

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

  5. “To her credit, she went on punching and punching very hard right up to the end. I mean, the no-no, no speech in the House of Commons may have thought was suicidal. You may not have thought what she was saying no to and made very much sense, but it was quite a performance. So she went on hitting hard and she was unfortunately advised when her leadership was being questioned, particularly after a stalking horse. Anthony Mayer. Anthony Mayer. We loved Anthony Mayer on the Daily Mirror, absolutely. She had some awful advice and the management of her campaign was useless. My best friend in politics was Tristan Garrell Jones, and Tristan, who was in the whip's office, offered to go and help her and was turned down by some real goons who were around her and telling her what she wanted to hear. It's the usual thing in politics that it's all very well having”

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

  6. “I would have been vindicated, yeah. But vindication in politics doesn't have a great track record for future employment. You said, and I think you're right that it was less Europe. I think Europe became this convulsive issue for the Conservative Party. But I think you're right that the poll tax was the sort of beginning of the end. What were those last few days and weeks like? I mean, I was covering it as a journalist, but you were very much at the heart of the Tory party. What were those last few days and weeks of the Thatcher era like? Pretty awful because...”

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

  7. “I stuck with it because I didn't think there was much alternative because I didn't think I was going to stop it and I wouldn't have stopped it.”

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

  8. “I regard it as a test of something which I've always thought extremely important. That is, my ability to speak in the House of Commons. Because several of us in my generation had taken speaking in the House of Commons very seriously. Tristan Garrell Jones, William, David Hunt, and others. And we taught ourselves to speak without reading out the bloody speaking notes. When you watch people asking questions in the House of Commons and reading out the name of their constituency, I mean, it's all ridiculous. And George Thomas would never have called you if you made speeches like that. He was a speaker. He would call you again and again if you could hold the house. And I think it was a delusion to think that because you could win votes in the House of Commons and win the argument in the House of Commons, you were winning the House. Why did that affect your decision as to whether to stay or go? Because I realized I was vanity, vanity again. I was good at it.”

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

  9. “It was quite extraordinary. I mean, you remember what it was like. So I said to her, we've got to do something about this. And I had a meeting with her and a very nice guy who subsequently became cabinet secretary. And we had a meeting. And I said, we just need to be able to cap the losses. And Nigel Lawson heard about it and made a huge fuss. And I was hauled over the coals with him and Margaret and he wouldn't stand for it. And so the thing went ahead and was, as we'd all suggested, dynamite. I mean, when people say that it was Europe that finished Margaret Thatcher, it wasn't Europe at all. It was the poll tax, which was so horribly, horribly effective in turning people off being conservatives. You asked me whether I thought of my own position. I tell you what I thought if I resigned over anything when I'd just been made sort of very young Secretary of State in the Cabinet, I was very unlikely to get anything else back in the future. But above all,”

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

  10. “And defends everything you ever did to his head. Nigel Lawson had opposed it vigorously in cabinet. And frankly, if you were the minister responsible for taxation, you should have been able to stop it. He opposed it, but the government went ahead with it, and he then, I think, set his mind against making it more acceptable. So he would never countenance giving any more from the treasury, for example, to limit the number with the amount that people would pay extra. The first thing I did when I was Secretary of State for the Environment was commission a guy who was very good on local government, knew more about local government in London than any other human being should want to know, for example. Ted Travers. Yeah. He did some polling, which we then showed Margaret. I went in to see her. And it demonstrated that the poll tax homed in on floating voters in marginal constituencies like an exorcet missile.”

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

  11. “Well, it meant that everybody above a certain age, if they were living in a household, would pay a part of the local taxation. So you get, it was memorably said quite correctly, that a dustman and a duke paid the same. And people would say, but it's fair. Look, that's how we fund the BBC. And you'd say, well, if the poll tax was the same as the BBC license fee, maybe there'd be a better chance of demonstrating it was fair, but it was a terrible burden on people. And there was no way you could make it acceptable unless you increased the amount of money to underpin local government taxation and unless you could cap the amount people could lose. Was there ever a point where you thought I just can't promote this? I can't do this. I should get my career. Yes, I suppose there was. One of the difficulties that we had was Nigel Lawson, who was a very clever man. I didn't always agree with him, but a very, very clever man and admirably Dominic Law.”

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

  12. “Yeah, what they thought was that it was fair because it meant that everybody would pay towards local services. And don't forget, I didn't invent it. The biggest hospital pass in my life was suddenly being moved from a job I loved overseas development to being responsible for the environment. So I find myself doing this job. I was aware of the fact as an MP of how unpopular it was. I could remember canvassing a street in Bath and knocking on the door and a chap coming to the door and say I'm your conservative MP and I'd love to talk to you about what's going on at the moment. He said, oh, really pleased you came. He said, just hang on a moment. I've got some people who'd like to meet you. And he came out with his wife and the three adult children, all of whom were paying this bloody tax. So their views were not supportive of the notion this was a fair way of dealing with local government spending.”

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

  13. “But it's not very surprising because they're not entirely bereft of reason, even though they were at the time. But some of my best friends...”

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

  14. “Younger listeners, can you just tell us why Margaret Thatcher thought the poll tax was a good idea, what it was and why in your view it led to such, I mean, it's probably one of the biggest riots in our history, led to such anger. It was so unpopular because it was deeply unfair. You saw that at the time? Yeah, but I can go down that miserable boulevard if you want. But I guess it's probably almost certainly the single biggest political mistake a government's ever been responsible for. Yeah, you put it out. It goes back to when Margaret was running for the leadership of the Conservative Party. And she was convinced that one of the things she should do was to promise to abolish the domestic rates. And she was always dogged by the fact that she hadn't done anything about it. And she appointed a group of frightfully clever people whose answer to doing something about it was the poll tax.”

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

  15. “I like the fact that they weren't. I like the fact that they seem to me to be more in touch with sort of middle opinion, middle ground opinion, consensus building in British public life than Labour. I'd read Michael Oakeshot, who I think is the best modern exponent of conservatism that I've read. When I looked at history, the people who I most admired in the 19th century tended to be conservatives. It was a collection of those things. I think I was probably a natural Tory, but a Tory with a very strong sense of, I hope, of social obligation and of the fact that just as anti-market views can be ideologically stupid, so can market views. You became an MP in 1979 and did a number of ministerial jobs and ended up in the cabinet. And of course, you were largely known as the Minister for the Poll Tax. Now for you.”

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

  16. “I went into politics, which is the best way to start because when I came back from this American trip, I was supposed to be joining nine months later the BBC as a graduate trainee, a celebration of my editing of Mesopotamia. I had to do something before this came up. And I asked around the Conservative Research Department. I guess I could have gone either way, but I always regarded being a conservative as a sort of way of looking at the world rather than an ideology. And I was much more comfortable with that than with signing up to things that seemed dogmatic or ideological. And I didn't much care for Harold Wilson, perhaps unfairly, because he did quite a good job helping to manage decline. So I wrote to the Conservative Research Department with my record in America, and they gave me a job, and I was in a very short while. I was helping Ted Heath prepare for Prime Minister's question.”

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

  17. “Done. He was very funny. I mean, New York was in a terrible state when somebody said to him, So, what would be the first thing you would do if you won the Meralty of New York? And he said, demand a recount, which was wonderfully oppositive Trumpism.”

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

  18. “Said to Bill Coolidge, the donor of the philanthropist Should I go back too? And he said, No, he said, I'm helping fund a political campaign in New York, a Republican called John Lindsay, who most Republicans don't much care for, but is very good. And if you'd like, I can find you somewhere to stay in New York and you could go and work in the research department for him. And I did that. And it really did change my life because I turned out to be fantasy about to come over the horizon. I turned out to be rather good at it. I was responsible for covering the then conservative with a small C candidate, Bill Buckley, who was very funny, very clever, pretty outrageous. But I had to cover his remarks. And he was genuinely witty. Cover as in fine things John Lindsay could use to shoot him down. So when you say cover, you're sort of basically a hitman. Yeah, I'm doing that grown up hitman stuff. I mean, looking up what he said, what he said.”

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

  19. “And if you ran out as Peter Snow memorably did, largely thanks to the tables in Las Vegas, you'd just get more money. And I went around with somebody who became one of my best friends, Edward Mortimer. So we went around the States together. We were in Los Angeles at the time of the riots. I can remember driving through the States and hearing Lyndon Johnson talking about the first commitment of troops from the United States to Vietnam. And it had quite an effect on me. So that really helped to change my life. I don't think of myself as necessarily being a part of the Beatles generation. The first gig I ever took my wife to, I think she paid actually, was a college ball where the band was the rolling stones. So I didn't come from Liverpool, but came from, I think they came from Richmond. Towards the end of that scholarship, Edward went back to do the All Souls exam.”

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

  20. “Yeah, the Coolidge sculpture. The Coolidge, yeah. Which was amazing. I mean, he was extraordinarily generous. And I was only worried that a bit later, Baliol sort of democratized the thing a bit. Because when I did it, there were six or eight people who got it every year for generally being thought to be a jolly good fellows. It was in the days before women. You got a crossing on the liner with lots of rather attractive girls to New York. You then were flown up to Massachusetts and he lived in the countryside outside Boston. Had the most extraordinary collection of paintings and wine. And the idea of the scholarship was that you would drive around in pairs. I mean, Rory knows about all this and stay with either old baliol men who were happy to put you up or to his friends. And you just have to phone them up or send them a letter in advance, a week or so in advance, and you'd turn up. We had a Hertz credit card. We had $1,000.”

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

  21. “Of the 60s, it's much better to say I was a child of the 1944 Education Act. So I was a scholarship boy. I go to Oxford. I do lots of reviews and reviews and acting. I'm about a year later than Michael Palin and obviously wasn't as good. But giving him an honorary degree at Oxford recently was a terrific fun. So I did reviews. I edited a magazine called Mesopotamia, which had been started by the people who started Private Eye. And we were disappointed if we weren't closed down regularly by the Procters. So no politics. I went to the union once. I had friends who were political. Neil McCormack, who was a great national, and if he'd been a member of the Labour Party, he would have been another John Smith. The only other political person in my year was James Douglas Hamilton, who was a very different sort of Tory, a very, very decent man. Then I went to America on a scholarship from my college.”

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

  22. “My whole vision of the 60s. I have to say about my dad that I didn't think I ever heard my mum and dad talking about politics. Really? It wasn't a physical family? It wasn't at all political. The nearest we came to politics was that the local conservative association club was at the corner of the road. I don't think my mum and dad ever darkened its door. And they took the Daily Express, but in the days when it was actually a pretty good newspaper with Renee McColl and Chapman Pincher and so on, it wasn't what it's become. They didn't talk much about religion. We were very much practicing, but certainly not practicing politics. And I cannot remember anybody except my grandmother uttering a political view. Where did your politics come from? Rory hates this question when I ask it. And why did you become a Tory? I'm not sure whether become a Tory is quite right. And I think you have to go back one step. Why did I go into politics? I wasn't remotely political at university. You were talking about being a child.”

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

  23. “I've always thought that surprisingly, perhaps the best definition was what she said on the steps of Downing Street after she'd been asked by the thin queen to form a government, and she talked about the burning injustices of our society with people who were born in poverty living nine years less with most of the professions run by people who went to independent schools, not state schools, with the fact that the kids who are least likely to go to university being white working class boys, and so on. It's amazingly, and her views on women and the extent to which they have to operate under such a low glass ceiling, and as we know already, suffer all sorts of other abuse. The fact that people who are black are discriminated against right across the board in our justice system. And I thought the way she did that was, and the clarity was much better than the usual sort of”

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

  24. “That it was ever held against me that I was a Catholic. I think as well that while you and a former boss famously said we don't do God, and it's right that we're not like America in that regard, I think people have become a much more comfortable with politicians talking about their faith. And I think that owes quite a bit to Tony Blair and Cherry, as well as to some others. I think they're most obviously the political leaders who have had most interest in religious affairs. I'm not criticizing any of the others, but I can't think of any others doing a serious interview about Theresa May. Theresa May, maybe. I'm sure she's an active Christian. Of course, I should have remembered that. Her father was a vicar. And in many of the best ways, she's a good example of a vicar's daughter. I mean, when people talk about one nation concerned,”

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

  25. “Remember that. So, how important has your faith been? Oh, it's been important to me, partly not for intellectual, but for tribal reasons. I am not without doubts, and I'm not without being argumentative about some things, particularly these days about the Catholic Church's rather spotty record on human rights issues. I'm quite a fan of this pope, though he's, I think some of his views are a bit too Argentinian nationalist, and he's obviously says some rather not very wise things about China. But it was important to me, and I don't think ever impeded my political advancement. There was perhaps one occasion when I was chosen, heaven helped me to be the candidate in Bath, and the previous MP had been a very active Freemason. And I think he was a bit anxious about what happened to me, the fact that I was taking over from him. It never impeded me, and I don't think”

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

  26. “Beautiful, kind, loving was not without some views on class and would have liked to have been, I think, slightly higher up the scale. My dad, who was a very good, a very good man, he used to spend every Sunday afternoon at the local mental hospital with the St. Vincent-Stepaul Society. My dad was the funniest person I've ever known. He was incredibly funny. He was very decent, kind. Unfortunately, useless at business and also smoked like a chimney and died before he was 60. You've mentioned his faith and your mother's conversion to his faith. I can remember, I was saying to Rory earlier, I remember when I was a journalist and you were often talked about as a future leader of the Conservative Party, and I can remember talking to Tory and say, well, this can't possibly happen because he's a Catholic. He couldn't possibly have a Catholic prime minister. They wouldn't be able to appoint the bishops.”

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

  27. “He learnt every night to make the sign on his forehead when he was in the convoys I-N-R-I, may Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, preserve me from unprepared death. And he used to do that to us when we were kids growing up. He was in charge amazingly of gas warfare in the Middle East. He was a flight lieutenant. Came back from the Middle East, got a job not as a jazz drummer, but as a music publisher. And I was brought up by my parents in a new development in Greenford which had been built, I think, mostly for people who were constructing Heathrow Airport. And later on they moved to what my mother regarded as a more salubrious street in Greenford. My mum, who was...”

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

  28. “Just before the war, he met my mum, who was very beautiful. She did a lot of amateur acting. She was offered a place with the Malvern players, but her parents were terribly opposed to it because they thought that going off to be an actress was the second only to going off to be a street walker. Anyway, my mum met my dad at this gig in Rougemont Hotel, fell in love with him, to the horror of her parents because they're beautiful and well-regarded. Daughter was getting married not just to a drummer in a band, but a Catholic Irish drummer in a band. Say it wasn't easy for them. My mum, those were the days, became a Catholic in order to marry my dad. I don't think without being disrespectful to her that religion ever played a huge part in her life. My father went off to the Middle East during the war, where”

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

  29. “My dad was the grandson of a potato famine Irish immigrant. My great-grandfather was born in Ross Common, 1829, and left during the famine for Lancashire. He had five children, four girls and a son, and the son, my grandfather, became a schoolteacher. And he married a schoolteacher, and they both became heads of primary schools. And they're very good examples of how immigrants very often become so good at using education to climb up the ladder. Against that background, my father, who had two older sisters, both of whom were music teachers, my father, who I imagine, the horror of his parents, was passionate about percussion. And he left Manchester University in order to play the drums in a dance band called The Phil Richardson. Band.”

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

  30. “And me, Alistair Campbell. And today's guest, he was an MP from 1979 when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister. He became a cabinet minister under Mrs Thatcher. He became chairman of the Tory Party under John Major and won a general election that many expected them to lose, but he lost his own seat in the process. He then became the last governor of Hong Kong, and I vividly remember his emotion and his anger as the colony was handed over to the Chinese in 1997. Since then, architect of new policing arrangements in Northern Ireland as part of the Good Friday Agreement, European Commissioner, Chairman of the BBC, Chancellor of Oxford University, until quite recently for 21 years, and also once an advisor to the Vatican on dealing with the media. So all of this is not bad for the Lancashire-born son of a Jasmine.”

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

  31. “Thanks for listening to the rest of his politics. Sign up to the Rest is Politics Plus to enjoy ad free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room again, early access to live show tickets. Just go to the restispolitics.com. That's the restispolitics.com.”

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