YouSaid · the spoken record

George Osborne

lines on the record: 71
first: 2023-05-15
most recent: 2023-05-15
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

“You would have loved it, Alistair. Would have loved it. We would have been the drunkest person there. Would I? He's smashing up people than anyone else.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People. And finding that kind of modus operanda. I actually think it's a bit unfashionable at the moment because everyone thinks that kind of tensions with China are arising. I actually think tensions with China are somewhat diminishing. The US has found a way to start engaging again with China, Xi and Biden meet Macron who does his visit. Even things which are provocative like the balloon that kind of, you know, if the Chinese balloon over the United States did not lead to a kind of big international crisis that was kind of handled by the big powers. And all that speaks to me that they're finding a way and make what is the biggest geopolitical challenge of our lifetime, which is how do you manage the re-rise of China? I think they are finding a route through.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I mean, I think I was in the tradition of kind of Henry Kissinger and a whole series of US and British administrations since then that said, we've got to work with China. China's the longest, continuous existing civilization on Earth. It's a fifth of the world's population. It's the second largest economy on the planet. It can't be kind of contained and isolated in the way you could attempt to do with the Soviet Union during the Cold War or indeed Russia now. And so you have to find a way to work with it. By the way, there are issues like climate change, which are simply insoluble unless we work with China. Now, that does not mean you have to accept that their regime is, you know, one you like or that they're suppression in Xinjiang or Hong Kong or their threats towards Taiwan are acceptable. But you have to find a means of working with them because they're a very important big player in the world and they represent a large number of”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but I wouldn't say over the last 13 years, I'd say over the last, not falling for that last six or seven years. I think these are problems that many advanced democracies face. They're not unique to Britain.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think they have to move, and I think this is instinctively what they want to do towards the center, because they've also got a threat from the Liberal Democrats. And they've got to hold on to essentially middle class Britain. And yes, I know there's a lot of focus on those Red Wall seats, which, you know, to be fair, Boris Johnson won and David Cameron didn't. But there are a lot of middle class, prosperous seats in the South, city suburbs in the north that need to be held by the Tories. And they need to have a more compelling mainstream offer, which is what I think SUNAC is developing. Things like his business event this week, he's back, instead of telling businesses to F off as his predecessor did, he's trying to woo them big offers on beginning to have an offer on education. I think, you know, trying to solve the problems in the health service, he's moving into the sort of mainstream space.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All hell will be unleashed for labour because people will say you've not done enough Keer Starmer. The critics in the Labour body will start to emerge and he'll be on a sort of downward spiral. And Rishi Sunak will be on an upward spiral, which you're already seeing, for example, the Tory body uniting behind him now, of like this guy might actually win. And the British public, British media love the underdog story. The guys coming from behind, 20 points behind the polls, written off the SUNAC premiership. SUNAC pulls it off. It's actually a better story than Starmer gets his coronation flip around.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They've got to fill that time. Have we got time? Yes, they've got time, but it's rapidly running out. I mean, we're now 18 months from a general election. And this is the work you should have been doing now and over the previous year. And the last, the Tory party gifted Labor a period of political incompetence over the last 12 months, a window in which they could seal the deal with the electorate and they've that window is closed because Rishis is a competent prime minister doing effective things. And I think the kind of, some things are moving in Labor's favor, like the implosion of the SNP, you know, it's not to be neglected as a big plus for labor. But generally, if you said to me six months ago,”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He felt that there was a sea change in ideas and that labor was therefore going to lose to Margaret Thatcher. And I don't feel a kind of sea change in ideas that Labour's riding the crest of a sort of intellectual wave and a new way of addressing those questions.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say I was accepting the Thatcher economics settlement. Now, Keir Starmer has not, to my mind, said anything really interesting about how you change the country. And whilst you had Boris Johnson or indeed Liz Truss, being the kind of grown-up who could do the job was a pretty compelling offer from Keir. But it's not enough. And I don't hear, you know, if you ask me, and I ask you to, what's Labor's economic policy in a sentence? What's Labour's health policy? What's Labour's education policy? You just can't, in fact, with the exception possibly of law and order where they have made some inroads under Yvette Cooper. Nowhere else do I hear anything that's exciting, that ties in with the big kind of changes in our society that are happening around things like technology, it's just not creating that kind of sense of a zeitgeist. And my favorite kind of quote in politics is a Jim Callaghan quote, which is Tony Blair would often refer to, which was in 19”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think they've missed a big opportunity in the last six months to seal the deal. Again, to use a sporting analogy to kind of make it absolutely clear they're going to win the game. Tony Blair by this point had done that. There was nothing the John Major government could do 18 months out because Tony Blair not only defined himself against the past in the way that Keir Starmer has effectively done. He had not only presented himself and to be fair Gordon Brown had also as people who could be Prime Minister and Chancellor and I think Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have done that but, and this is the missing ingredient they had also made an argument a positive argument about the change they were going to bring to the country you knew what they were going to do to education and health and they had they dressed it up in a theory about how Britain had become a producer society to a consumer society to a sort of post-thatcher era that you know they were going to stick with Tory economic competence but they were going to deliver.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You would agree that Rishi Sunak or Kir Starma, essentially at the end of the British electorate at the next general election, is going to be presented with a decent choice of two decent people who can do the job.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which I created. And I think one lesson from that, and indeed from the sort of Johnson period where some of the rules at the very top of the game is these institutions need to be strengthened. And it would be a great Rishi Sunak agenda to put the ministerial code on a statutory footing. And the OBR should be made like the Bank of England. I hope Labour, the Labour opposition picked this up as an idea. Let's make it properly independent, give it its own independent budget, give it the power to request information from the Treasury. And then you've sort of protected the institution against someone else who wants to come along and vandalize it. It was a very poor period of British politics that autumn of last year. I think the most depressing moment was when Boris Johnson got on the plane from the Caribbean. I thought my country really is sunk. And then amazingly, we like throughout our history, we somehow managed to find the exit door from the mess. We made this agreement about Rishisuna, but, you know, I've”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think she, David Gambin did, but I certainly supported it. And, you know, I like the fact that she was full of ideas. She didn't just got to go with the brief that was handed to her. She was, you know, there's a lot about her. And so it's not to me sort of surprising she ended up as Prime Minister, but she then makes two basic errors. She first of all doesn't include any of the people she's defeated in her team, which is like politics 101, you know. And then second, she, you know, obviously there's that catastrophic budget where without reopening the austerity debate, she suddenly thinks the country can borrow a load of money it doesn't have. So what I really worry about actually during that period was a very short period of British politics, but there was a determined attempt to undermine the independence of the Bank of England and essentially close down the OBR.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually apologize to her for that, and that was said in a, well, what I thought was a private editorial meeting of the evening standard.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't disagree that she started with a great hand and she just misplayed it. She lost the camera majority. And, you know, as I observed at the time, the moment, you know, it was clear the moment the 2017 result was that she could not survive. And yet, you know, the Tory Party continued with this myth. I was criticized at the time for saying she was a dead woman walking. But that was absolutely obvious. She couldn't walk.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who wants to help in life and was enormous help to the Cameron government and the coalition eventually Theresa May fires Oliver Letwin for no good reason at all other than come some kind of spite and ultimately is the Oliver Letwin kind of amendments in Parliament that completely screw her government. And it's just how she couldn't see that her allies were people like me who I voted for in the leadership campaign, Oliver, that she was the inheritor of the Cameroon legacy, if you like. That's why she became the Prime Minister, not remember they looked like the opponents at the time of Boris Johnson and then was Andrew Ledsom, you know, and she couldn't see that the coming at her was always going to be the hard Brexiteers, that that was where the challenge was coming from. And so she basically torched her own allies. And as a result, when the”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is not the best way to fire someone. You can be nice to people or fire them. But then she fired a whole load of other people. I mean, this is a bit inside baseball, as it's in America, but it takes a particular kind of political genius to make Oliver Letwin your nemesis. Oliver Letwin is one of the nicest people who wants to generally help in politics.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually had a lot of respect for Theresa May when she was Home Secretary and I was Chancellor and we worked well together. You know, I thought she was unnecessarily callous, not particularly towards me, although...”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think he bored into this argument that you heard amongst certain sort of hedge fund types and whatever, that is great. At the moment, we're going to all be like Singapore the moment we leave the Singapore can fit inside the M25 and it would be a much different country. But the Rishi Sunak Premiership is to me a massive breath of fresh air. We have a sensible, serious person with integrity. He runs things properly. He does the work. And he's making a series of meaningful strides forward for the government. And for the first time in years, you feel, I feel just as a British citizen, like the grown-ups are back in charge.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the thing about the story body is it can be anything, as you've seen over the last 13 years. And I'm broadly in favor of the sort of principles. And I think you get to, and so for me, although it's true that Rishi Sunak supported Brexit and has never really explained why he did.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, my parents were, they weren't particularly party political. I never met an MP when I was growing up except when they would come and speak at my school. My father's interior designer set up his own business and my mother worked for Amnesty International and then she ran her own shop. My mother voted Labor, my father voted liberal. I think they both would have backed Tony Blair had I not by then sort of screwed the system by becoming working for the Tory bodies that they were.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Johnson's faults. So, you know, frankly, in 2019, I think a lot of people didn't know how to vote because if you look at my parents, I remember them asking me saying like, we don't like Boris Johnson, but we can't have Jeremy Corbyn. Who the hell are we going to vote for? I don't think they must have voted conservative, and they're not actually natural conservative voters”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, there was a kind of collusion of all the sort of, you know, because he, remember, he was quite, he's a loner and he was quite a loner inside the Tory parliamentary party. And most MPs did not, you know, would not have wanted him as leader 10 years earlier. But by the time you get to 2019, you've had the paralysis of the Teresa May period with her unable to do anything. He offers a kind of solution to that. He's also ruthless. Remember, he fires a load of Torian peas, including Ken Clark and Philip Hammond and Lori Stewart. I mean, he's absolutely ruthless when it comes to the pursuit of the prize. And let's, you know, let's not let Alistair off the hook here. Two general elections. The Labour Party offered up Jeremy Corbyn a complete disgrace of a candidate to be the Prime Minister. So you would have to be completely mad to want Jeremy Corbyn instead of Boris Johnson for all of Boris”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think on a sort of Greek tragedies that you would know more about than me, the sort of pursuit of the prize ultimately kind of corrupted him and led him to support causes that I don't think intrinsically. I remember the Boris Johnson TV program where he was extolling the virtues of the European Union and saying that Turkey should be a member of it, which I happen to agree with.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And unfortunately as Prime Minister, he demonstrated that you needed other things to be promised. You need to take the job seriously.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I always thought, you know, if it came to a leadership contest where I was contesting to be the leader of the party, I would be up against Boris Johnson and I wasn't Daija how I was going to beat him. And that's because there are aspects, and I've known Boris for a long time, aspects of Boris that are really positive. He is a very good company. His optimism is infectious. I think the sort of pre-Brexit Boris had a kind of generosity of spirit about people. Sometimes politicians can be quite mean-spirited. Boris, there's a generosity about him, which I think people like. And a kind of, you know, he sort of blows his nose at the kind of pomposity of public life that you sometimes get. There's lots of things, you know, and as London mayor, I liked all that. But that was partly because he didn't have much responsibility for a real thing.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Prime Minister can fire the Cabinet Secretary, the fire prime minister can fire the head of MI6, the head of the Foreign Office, the Prime Minister. There was a Prime Minister once who told the king they had to quit. So there is no actual check on a Prime Minister who doesn't obey the rules and there's nothing you can really do about a Prime Minister who doesn't read anything, doesn't do the work. All the Prime Ministers in my lifetime, labor and conservative, you know, have sort of worked all hours, some not really managing the workload particularly effectively, but nevertheless sort of try. And Boris, you know, was, you know, just sort of breezed through the job. And I couldn't help but smile when I saw that the way to get him kind of animated, his advisors would say, you know, come on, Boris, David.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, which is pretty kind of shocking Because what it shows is that it's something that I was sort of, I guess, aware of when I was Chancellor. But right at the top of the British state, all power flows to the Prime Minister.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it was decisive. I think, you know, Boris Johnson's support for Brexit turned it from a kind of slightly dodgy kind of right-wing Nigel Farage-ish issue to mainstream. And he was the most popular at the time, mainstream politician in Britain. Boris Johnson. So he kind of legitimized the Brexit campaign and was decisive. And so therefore, long before he arrived in Downey Street, he had already had his big impact on British politics, I think his premiership will largely be forgotten by history because she's very little in that premiership. I think the lesson, the extracts at the moment of the Anthony Selden book on”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Boris had his big impact before he ever became Prime Minister because his support for Brexit, which is a cause I don't think he actually really believed in,”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Front seat role in the EU. I saw it in terms of regulating financial markets, where a lot of the EU legislation was essentially drafted in the UK. And we don't have that anymore. So we're much more, I'm not saying we can't make our own way in the world and we can't make friends with allies like the Australians and so on. We've lost one of our big Forums where we could influence global events.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which has elements that have been undermined and need to be challenged. So outside the EU, Britain still can have a bright future. But I think it would have been brighter inside the EU. I think there is little doubt now that it is knocked our economic performance permanently. It's erected trade barriers with our nearest and biggest export markets. So all this talk of free trade is a nonsense. We've undertaken the biggest act of protectionism in British history. And it has impacted Britain's standing in the world or rather the ability of the British administration of the time to leverage membership of the EU as one way of influencing global events. And, you know, increasingly in the world, it's going to be around who sets global standards on things like artificial intelligence that you were talking to Hillary Clinton about, and who's going to do that and he's not going to be the House of Commons. It's going to be the European Union. It's going to be the United States. It's going to be China. And we had a big.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I would start, let's start with the positives, which is Britain is an incredible country, one of the few really open economies with stable institutions and a decent rule of law. So Britain's still got a good job.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the EU might actually help you because you can have a good relationship with France, for example, as we've discovered with the small boats issue. But, you know, that was the kind of killer. That connection was made between immigration and the much more sort of obscure issue, to my mind, a parliamentary sovereignty, which I think is a nonsense anyway because we pool sovereignty by being a member of NATO, for example.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Although on the timing point it is worth noting that we had already committed to have the European referendum before the Scottish referendum had happened. The problem essentially with the Brexit referendum was what had become a kind of important issue, but only to a very small relatively small group of the country, although quite a large number of conservatives, which was issues around theoretical issues around parliamentary sovereignty, was very successfully by the Brexit campaign connected to the question of immigration and borders. And the question that we couldn't answer, just like in the Scottish Independence Referendum, the SNP could not answer the question, what is the currency you're going to use tomorrow if you're independent? We could not answer this question, which is how can you control your borders if you're in the EU? Because if you're in the EU, you have to let people in. Now, in fact, the answer is controlling your borders is a very complicated issue.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Euro comfortable with economic sovereignty being pooled, not comfortable with other aspects of political sovereignty being pulled. And he felt, and lots of other people I respect in the Conservative Party at the time, felt that it would be good to sort of essentially confront that issue with a referendum, as we had done in the Scottish independence referendum, which I think now with, again, both the time and with hindsight, turns out to have been a really important moment because it kind of basically called the bluff on Scottish nationalism. And ever since then, although they've endlessly talked about it, and I'm not talking just about the recent implosion of the S&P, I'm talking about the kind of golden period of the Nicholas Sturgeon leadership. She was never able to get the Scottish public back into thinking that independence was a good idea.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the country was not clamoring for a referendum, but it is true that European issues were intruding more and more into the sort of domestic political debate. Now, I didn't think they had to be put to the kind of, we didn't have to bet the farm on and in or out referendum. And I never, and I always thought, you know, people blame the European Union essentially for things that we ourselves couldn't get right as a country, which has proved to be the case now. Years after we've left the EU, we've got more red tape than we had when we were in the EU and higher taxes and more intervention in the economy than we had when the EU. And yet the EU used to be blamed for all those things. So it became a kind of bugbear. And David would say it was a way of trying to resolve it. Obviously, he hopes to win the referendum, and we all hope to win the referendum, that this was a way of bringing the issue to resolving it, and therefore cementing Britain's relationship as being in the EU, not in the EU.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I did disagree with David on that, but it was done very amicably. And his reasons, I think, were reasons that a Conservative Party leader would hold, and I was not the Conservative Party leader. And actually, unlike Gordon Brown, who I think underestimated the step up from Chancellor to Prime Minister, I never underestimated that the job of leading the party was a lot more difficult than being the Chancellor or the Shadow Chancellor. And it was clear to David that the Conservative Party, as he had to try and resolve this issue. The Conservative Party is itself an expression of a lot of views in the country.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think he, you know, in fact, his skill, I mean, he has many things that aren't that he's not very good at. But I think he always was quite good at noticing how people saw him. I thought he was good at sort of stepping out of himself to a degree and having a wry smile on his face when people he knew didn't like him would come up and say, Boris, I think the other best thing since liced bread. And he would just, you know, a lot of the like a kind of king in a court. He would know, he would spot the courtiers coming.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It and an element of theatre and an element of nonsense, even if the issues you're dealing with are incredibly important.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Example, recognizing marriage in the tax system, but David Cameron wanted to do it. He was the leader, that's fine. He was the boss. So individual policies, I wasn't hugely keen on, but I didn't, I fundamentally believed in him and I believed in what we were doing. And so I didn't have that sort of awful period of having to sort of pretend, you know, I guess with Keir Stalmer had to do with Jeremy Corbyn or some people have had to do, you know, with Brexit, which is sort of pretend this is all going really well or this is what they wanted. So those two things I think were very lucky. I think generally also, you know, I just think you have to have be able in politics to sort of step back a little and sort of observe yourself and recognize that there's an element of kind of ridiculousness.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, gosh, right? I think politicians come in all shapes and sizes and temperaments. I also think I was very lucky. And I'm sure I necessarily appreciated this at the time, but I do with sort of hindsight. First of all, I was working with people I really liked who are friends of mine and they're still friends of mine. And that has not been the case for many other people I know in politics who found, you know, for example, the recent years in the Tory party very difficult. Although interestingly, a message I get from a lot of them right now, in fact, someone who's in the cabinet texted me yesterday saying, for the first time since 2016, I'm actually enjoying it and I'm working with people I like. So I was lucky to work with people I liked. And I was lucky essentially not to have to sort of live a lie. There was never a time, particularly in government and when I was shadow chancellor that I was saying things I really didn't agree with. There were some policies I didn't particularly support. I wasn't a big fan of.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was actually, and then at nine in the morning, you'd need to leave, but he wouldn't want to say, look Ian, I've got to go. And so he would start to sort of move slowly towards the door. And then, you know, David or I would go, Boris is leaving. And he would go, no, no, no, leader. I'm just going out to get a cup of coffee. You've got Tony nailed to the floor. Don't worry. You don't need me anymore. And then he would leave the scene of the crime.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think that's the biggest crime you can lay at his door. And anyway, at about night, we started seven in the morning. It was pretty early.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His mouth with a kind of cough. He had a sort of nervous cough. And a Labour MP shouted out, how many? And that sure enough was his first two words. And that was the end of that strategy. Much as I love Ian, that was not a great, but Boris would always, he was editing The Spectator at the time. And at about nine in the morning.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every Wednesday morning we had to work out how Ian would face Tony. Actually, to be fair, there was also another Torian P, Paul Goodman, that session who now runs Conservative Home. And we basically came up with a strategy, which was we had to ask Tony Blair. It was a bit like getting your first serve-in to use your sporting analogy, right? Ian would have no chance if he didn't try and kind of land the first blow at Prime's discussions. And so he was basically find some really obscure fact and ask Tony Blair, like, how many people are waiting more than, you know, X weeks in hospitals in the north of England? You don't know, right? Anyway, and this worked for a while, finding things that definitely Tony Blair would not know the answer to just a simple until one day and a labor MP just before he opened his mouth because he used to have to clear.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You would have enjoyed being in the Prime Minister's questions prep sessions with Ian Duncan Smith because there were three young MPs who were drafted in to help him, myself, David Cameron and Boris Johnson.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To the other side of the world to go and talk to Rupert to try and persuade him to get his newspapers to back you, then that's what you need to do. We did everything we could and we learned, David, myself, that kind of generation of, we were the sort of survivors of the new labor destruction of the Tory party. And we kind of emerged from our holes to this sort of scorched earth that New Labour had created for the conservative movement. And we started to rebuild. And we did. We learned a lot. Much as I think Tony Blair or Gordon Brown would say, they learned a huge amount from the Thatcher period and they were formed as politicians during that period. David and I were formed during the Blair Brown Campbell period.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Number of meetings I was in where people said we need our own Alistair Campbell with a whole string of communication directors until we actually landed on a very effective communication director and Andy Coulson you know Alice was a really formidable opponent I was in the opposition leader's office William Hagg's office still remains a good friend of mine and I kind of was my mentor in politics in that period 97 to 2001 and you know we were we were a little happy band of brothers and sisters but my god were we facing the standing army of Tony Blair Gordon Brown Alistair Campbell and Co. And it was very effective. I think the lesson we learned from Alistair and his colleagues was do everything required to win. You know, they were ruthless and I had been working as a very junior photocopy boy in John Majors Downing Street so I'd also seen the kind of opposition coming. If you have to try”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On a very formidable patent in Gordon Brown. When I became the show, I was a bit like, I used to think it was a bit like a kind of First World War trench. I was like the next second lieutenant told to jump out of the trench to fight Gordon Brown, the kind of tank of Gordon Brown. And, you know, and I was the seventh shadow Chancellor he'd faced. And I was only 33 years old. It was absolutely terrifying. But it meant though, and I actually became Chancellor, I had had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do with the job, which you just don't get in the nature of government's been in for 13 years and a chancellor gets five minutes notice that they're about to take on the job.”
2023-05-15 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 18: George Osborne: Austerity, Boris Johnson, and the UK's next Prime Minister · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source