YouSaid · the spoken record

Douglas Alexander

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70
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2024-09-22
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2024-09-22
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  1. “And give us the background because Alice is very coy about this. But what was the division? What was the nature of the tension between the two? So essentially I joined the Labour Party in 1982. I met David Miliband before I met either Gordon or Tony and indeed was holidayed with David because he was a great friend of...”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I can tell you it was the Labour Party conference in 1992 when we were still, I think, political leaders of the Daily Mirror. Yes, and I was working with Gordon at the 92”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I think it informs me. I think I have imbibed deeply from your maxim that it's not a subject I spend a lot of time talking about. I don't think people like politicians who wear their religion on their sleeve. But I was sitting in church on Sunday morning. It's a big part of my life.”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “But in that sense, I've got friends who genuinely believe something better will come if we lose parish ministers. Actually, what I found when I was an MP after 1997 was in a way I would never have predicted the way my dad served his parish informed a lot of my thinking about how you try and be an MP in the sense that one of the maxims my father lived by was that he was called to serve the people outside the walls of the church as much as the people inside. And in that sense fundamentally what are you as a Church of Scotland minister? You're both serving a community, but you're also serving a cause. You're serving something redemptive and different from simply the day-to-day work. Exactly. You didn't use the word God, which interests me. I mean, you made it quite secular account of that. But do you feel in your politics?”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Honestly, I'm deeply countercultural in a secular an age as today, in the even many Christians are culturally ill at ease with the institution of the church. I look back at the parish ministry of which my father served for 40 years, and I'm a practicing member of the Church of Scotland. And you've never lost your faith. No, well, as I say, I did not rebel against the Donald Duhr used to call himself a cultural Presbyterian. I was very comfortable within that tradition and I mourn the fact that as the number of ministers decline, the likelihood of being able to retain that sense of a parish ministry goes with it. And I've got friends in the church who are much more optimistic and say, listen, something good will come in its place. I'm afraid I'm doing good, Alistair. I can see your eyebrows right. I'm fine.”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “As you're growing up and as you're a teenager, particularly as your own faith gets tested, it becomes quite problematic. I mean, we live in a very, very secular society. There must have been times when you lost your faith in God. And that must provide a very odd relationship to someone who's entirely invested in something that you may lose belief in.”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Student non violent coordination committee, one of the key civil rights organizations. And they told me that my dad told me this story on the night Obama was elected, he was in dears, that they had stood on that Sunday morning waiting to get into the congregation to listen to a young Baptist preacher. And that was Martin Luther King. And my dad, one of his great regrets was he didn't shake his hand because he said at the end of the service after this spellbinding sermon, Martin Luther King was sitting in a chair at the outside of the sanctuary just completely spent by having done the speech and having delivered the sermon. And my dad, out of respect, didn't want to interrupt him by shaking hands. But they left America, came back, and were heavily involved in a very radical interpretation of Christian theology at the time. So those roots ran deep and that very much informed the kind of conversations we had around the kitchen table. One of the things that people sometimes say about having a clergyman as a father is that”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Deeply about the written and spoken word in the tradition of the Church of Scotland of which I'm part when the Bible is carried into the sanctuary we all stand. It is a reverence for the spoken word and in that sense I think I certainly got that from my dad and Gordon got that from his dad. That was something that we shared in common. But I think also there's a broader sense of being part of the common life depending on your theology. My parents graduated in 1959 from Glasgow University four days later they got on a plane for the first time in their life and travelled to what became JFK was Idlewild Airport in New York at the time. My dad had a master's to study for a scholarship at Union Theological Seminary in New York. My mum was working at Mount Sinai. In the April of 1960, so just a few months later they travelled on a bus to Raleigh, North Carolina for the inaugural meeting of the”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “And in fact, I come from Creef, where the Creef Hydro was a great place for people going on a holiday. I stooped for a little in Creef in 1995. As I like to say, I fought Creef for labour. But Creefe as a child with your parents? Yes. There was a special deal at the Creeh Hydro for Scotland for Scotland Ministers. I remember bonding with Gordon Brown about this. Yes. What is it that brings the kind of sons, the mans into politics? Have you ever spoken to John Stevenson about this? Do you know John at all? I don't know John directly, but I've talked a lot to Gordon about it. And I think one of the reasons we kind of bonded in terms of writing speeches and budgets was Gordon was very sermonical in the way that he wrote. Like he literally figured out what he thought by the discipline and process of writing a sermon. And if I remember growing up in The Mans, my dad was constitutionally incapable of finishing his sermon before about 1am on the Sunday morning. He cared.”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Never I've never been a proper minister. I've only ever been a government minister. Can I on the minister thing? So, my colleague in Cala, Conservative MP in Calais, John Stevenson's father was a minister, Gordon Brown's father was a minister. I come to Reason. There is a Maisie. I come from But particularly Church of Scotland Minister that I'm talking about here, not Anglo-American Theresa May.”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I'd probably start with my grandparents. On my mother's side, my grandparents were both medical missionaries in China. Unusually, my grandmother was a qualified doctor. As well as my grandfather, so they taught medical students in Manchuria and China before the Second World War. My mother herself was a doctor. She's a hematologist and worked in the health service in West Central Scotland for 40 years. On my father's side, my grandfather was an engineer in Glasgow, famously had his theology books on his lathe and requalified as a minister. So he was a church Scotland minister, my grandfather. And my dad was a minister in the church of Scotland as well. There was a very deep sense of public service.”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “In terms of Marty Black, even on the night I had an overwhelming sense that it was happening to both of us, but it wasn't about us, in the sense I'd never spoken to her. The only conversation I've ever had with Marie Black was on the stage in the leisure centre that night. There'd not been any hustings. We hadn't encountered each other. So in that sense, I was very careful during the campaign to never utter a disobliging word about her. I was admiring of the fact that this was a young female candidate who did the gumption and guts to say I want to represent the SNP. I've never uttered a word of criticism ever since. I saw it on the night, despite my own disappointment to be faultlessly generous in wishing her well. And in that sense, I know that she's now transitioned away from politics herself. I've got nothing but goodwill towards her.”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “So, the politics and the personality in terms of politics, yeah, it's not a world exclusive that I'm not a great fan of nationalism. My politics is about corporation, independence, solidarity, but I've always known from the very first time I stood as a Labour candidate that there is, if you like, a mortal struggle between the SNP and Labour in Scotland, because ultimately they know they have to destroy the Scottish Labour Party if there's a prospect of securing their goal of independence. So in that sense, it was only ever going to be the SNP if someone was going to win in Paisley and it wasn't Labour Party.”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “You've been a member of parliament, or indeed if you've been a cabinet member, you're bound to walk into any number of interesting remunerated, exciting jobs, that's honestly not the case for quite a lot of our former colleagues. Certainly in 2015, there was nothing as ex as an ex-Scottish Labour MP. Those of us who had networks Firth of Scotland found it much easier than if you were looking in the jobs market within Scotland. And in that sense, I mean, listen, Michael Ashcroft had paid for two opinion polls in my constituency saying I was underwater and was bound to lose, so I couldn't credibly claim that there were no data points or evidence that I was going to lose. But psychologically, I thought you've got to campaign in defiance of those numbers, if not in denial of them, because otherwise if you anticipate your defeat, you guarantee your defeat. And truthfully, that was really psychologically adaptive. It meant I was able to motivate my team all the way through the 2015 campaign, although we were in bad shape.”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “And I say it with great respect, Rory. My experience suggests once you're out, there are two circumstances in which you might be appointed the British Ambassador to NATO. One is that the governing party really likes you, respectively Boris Johnson might not be the case now. Or they really fear you and they want to get rid of you. And I was trying to be diplomatic and saying, I'm not sure you're in quite either of those categories. You were very charming and polite about that, but I think you had a broader point, which is that you weren't quite sure how much of a market there was for XMPs and ex-ministers. And you seem to say that you talked to a lot of people. Many of them had really struggled to find work. I mean, I think you've spoken very eloquently about this on the podcast. The assumption is”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Is a core decency amongst people in public life, and if you can repay that, you should. If I remember correctly, part of the advice was saying don't overrate your chances of getting a job as a former MP administer. I think part of what you were saying is that I was trying to be plate. If you remember what you actually said was I quite fancy being the British ambassador to Nito.”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “And he came straight back and said, Greece and courage will carry you so far, but you also need your friends. I'm expecting monthly sit reps. And he was entirely true to his word. The other example I would give you, which was part of my motivation for calling you, was about a month after the election. I was having an admittedly very dull lunch in Mayfear. I was out kind of talking to people. Joan Major was at the next table. I had never spoken to John Major in my life. I'd campaigned hard as a Labour Party member to see him defeated in 1992 when he won the election. And he sent across a message saying, would Douglas Alexander like to join me for coffee at the end of the meal? So it was a great credential stamp for whoever it was I was meeting at that lunchtime. And he was faultlessly decent and generous in spending about half an hour saying, very sorry to see you lose your seat. I've left politics myself. I just wondered, can I offer you any advice? And in that sense, my call to you was paying it forward, a sense that”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “David Petreus sent me a text message while I'm on the stage saying he'd just been fired from the CIA. As I've discovered recently, it's not how high you soar, but how you bounce back after adversity. I'm thinking, what does one text back to a five-star US general? So I sent back a message saying, thank you, David. It's a time for grace and courage.”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Country. Douglas, one of the things you sweetly did when I stepped down from parliament. I remember I was teaching at Yale is you very kindly called me to talk through options available for people who are former MPs. It's a club none of us wanted to be in Roy. Can you remember a little bit of the advice that you give and why you called me and why you thought it was worth reaching out and talking about what to do after a political life? Because I think when you lose your seat or when you're rejected from politics you see the worst and the best of people. And I was determined to try and exemplify the best, partly because my own experience is pretty tough losing. It sets a very high bar for career trauma whenever any of my friends are having problems at work. I'm like, come on guys, you've not lost your job in front of 17 million people live on television. But even when I was standing on that stage, I saw the Baston people. So someone you know.”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “For many years, I've not just wanted to observe the world, but to try and change it. I think that's common for a lot of politicians. I was extraordinarily privileged in, as you say, being elected in 1997 and being part of that extraordinary wave of which we were both part that first changed the Labour Party and then changed the country. Then in 2015, it was a bit like an amputation. There was, what, 41 Labour seats in Scotland, 40 of us lost. And in that sense, there was a sense of unfinished business. And truthfully, for what's almost a decade now, I've lived far away from politics and public life. I've been working and learning in other areas and domains and really enjoyed myself. But you're right, the fire still burnt. And part of that was, I think maybe something we share, Rory, a kind of old-fashioned sense of duty, just a sense we can be better and we should be better as a”

    2024-09-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source