YouSaid · the spoken record

James Cleverly

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2026-06-14
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2026-06-14
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  1. “Because the question I ask myself is how does nonsense like that happen? And it happens because the Labour Party at the moment is completely unanchored because it defined itself as being not the Tories rather than being the Labour Party. And I think it's a massive error to repeat that mistake. And that's why I think it's so important that we as a party, the Conservative Party, and Kemi personally as a leader, create a self-definition anchored in our values, not just as a response to someone else.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “And fast forward twelve months and the Prime Minister and the Chancellor lauding the fact they've increased the benefits bill, which they removed the whip from Labour MPs. So a complete U-turn on...”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Like a show bull in an agricultural show, by circumstances beyond your control. And you're just constantly responding to other people's positions on staff and you're not ever really defining yourself. And I think there's a danger to that. And I think this is one of the things that we see now with the Labour Party in government. The Labour Party, in the lead-up to the last general election, defined itself exclusively about as not being the Conservatives. And that's fine until they became the government and they had no anchor. They've been blown around all over the place. So that's why you have the perverse circumstance of labor backbenchers having the whip withdrawn for voting to increase the benefits.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Well, I've I have always Through what we do and what we say rather than defining our values In opposition to something else. And that's, and I think, and the reason I make that distinction is because I do think there is a real danger that you can be led around by the nose.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Let me just finish. Stommer does not understand how diplomacy works. Wait a minute. Stommer thinks if you give stuff away and he's done it with Chinese with regard to the Chinese embassy, he's done it to the EU with regard to Erasmus. He's done it with the US with regard to the state visits. He gives things away in the hope that he's buying good work. It doesn't work like that. It's a negotiation. He's awful on the international stage. He's useless. And the US, and the fact that he didn't have any bargaining chips with the US because he gave them all the way up front is the reason why we weren't as influential with regard to Iran. Ditto with the EU.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Because if it isn't that, then what's the point? The point is to have values. Alistair, when I was foreign secretary, there are a couple of things I really, really push hard on. One thing I absolutely hated was the habitual use of the phrase deeply concerned because it relegates us to observer status. We're just passing comment on world affairs. And I said we are not in the commentary box, we are on the pitch. We don't tell the world what we feel. We tell the world what we are doing. Now, you talk about, we should call it out, we should call it out lovely. But the point I'm asking is what is the best way of changing the US president's position in terms of support to Ukraine? That should be the starting point. That should be the first question ahead of every action. If it doesn't help us get the US administration into the place that we think is the right place, then we should probably not be doing that. Even if it's a little bit uncomfortable.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Hang on a second. What are you trying to? So, the question, what are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to feel good? Are you trying to get stuff done? Because rowing with the White House, either embarrassing the White House would be deeply counterproductive. Because we know what the president is like. We need to bring him to where we think the US should be rather than stand on the touchlines and shout. And that's difficult. I agree.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “But also it's the White House that is currently running America, and that is one of, if not the most important bilateral relationships the UK has, and we have got to make it work. And this is one of these things with diplomacy and foreign affairs. I don't like the word diplomacy because it kind of implies you're being terribly diplomatic. International relations, you've got to make the relationships work that need to work. And that sometimes means you have to pull your punches or bite your lip. But ultimately, for example, the White House position towards supporting Ukraine in their defense against Russia's brutal full-scale invasion is more important than our diplomatic. We're not calling that out.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “So now David Lamy tried to play this with regard to the Labour position Black Lives Matter. He basically said, when you're in opposition, you're allowed to do these kind of things. We're much more tried.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Political, geopolitical, diplomatic world, we dish out criticism like that online and in speeches, or we agree we don't. And if we agree that we do, if that's part of how the modern world of diplomacy works, then we should expect to get some incoming. You can't push, but not expect pushback. And I'm not saying it's legit. I'm not saying I agree with it.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I'm not defending the positions they've taken. I am not cheerleading for the Trump White House or his administration. What I'm saying is that if we're saying that it's wrong when that administration criticizes us, and I think that was kind of the implication of the question, then we've got to ask ourselves, have we been doing it? And we have. Lots of us have. Now, you can argue that, oh, well, when we do it, it's completely legit and when they do it, it's illegit. And that may be true, but it just makes it a harder argument to make. So either we agree that in the contemporary...”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “President and relentlessly negative ways under Trump. And then we're getting some of it back and it's not nice. Now I don't agree with the Vice President's comments. I didn't agree with his comments about British contribution to the Second World War. There are lots of things he says I fundamentally disagree with. But what I don't do is, and I'm pretty sure that I've not done an audit of myself, but I'm pretty sure that there is no or not much of me going studs up on other countries' administrations other than the time of when it was my job to do so. So when I was a foreign minister, a big part of the job is laying down the UK position on the conduct of other countries both domestically and internationally as part of the job. But slating individuals of other countries and very much personalising it, the Trump administration have got a lot of this, and they're doing it back to us and we don't like it.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yet I'm not, but lots of other people in British politics, particularly on the left. Lots of people in the Labour Party have. I mean, lots of people in the Labour Party. You look at what the Mayor of London says about Donald Trump. You look at what David Lamy said about Donald Trump during his first term. So lots of Brits, particularly on the left, have done that. No, hang on. In uncritically positive ways when Obama was...”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Project a lot of assumptions onto words and actions. And I think we seek, and I'm not saying you did this just now, But I think collectively we seek to condemn, more quickly than we seek to understand. And I think that's taking us in a really, really, really difficult and fundamentally dangerous place. I can't remember a point in time when we've had, I think, a more divided society, a more divisive politics. And as I say, I grew up with the National Front marching down past the end of my street.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “And here's the thing, and this is the point. So, here's the point. Exactly the same words and exactly the same circumstance when your mental image of him was of a traditional white British colour sergeant. There was maybe the sniff, was this a bit of racism, whatever. As soon as you found out who was black, it was like, oh, this is an inspirational, motivational. I think this is where we are, problematic. I think one of the big problems at the moment is, and I don't want to go studs up on you, but because we all do this and I think it's been amplified recently. We...”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Oh, but here, right, here's the thing, Alistair. Here's the thing. When you thought he was white, your implication was that it came.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “And it was one of these things, and for him, I suppose it was a bit of a high risk. I could have just crumbled under the pressure as it was. I like to describe, I finished in the top three, which, as Rory will know, means third. Because if you finish first, you get a sword and I didn't get a sword. And if I'd finished second, I would have said I finished second. I finished in the top three of my intakers.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “But Conasant Thomas, at one point, and we were sat under Saint Basher in the room. And he said, I don't normally do this, but you're doing very, very well. And it didn't feel like it at the time. He said, you're doing very, very well. You've got a decent chance of getting sort of honour to just get a grip. And I was like, okay. And he said, and also you're the only black guy on the intake. So everybody's watching. It's not just about you. Because all the black soldiers that come after you will be judged by your performance, by all the people on this course. And I'm like, oh, cheers a lot. Enough pressure as it is. And he's basically saying you're also carrying the weight of others. And I had never I had never thought like that before”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Yeah, yeah, okay. Do you Yeah, Black Watch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do. He was my color sergeant. There's a picture of him on my wall. Well, this picture of me on my wall with him in the picture, yeah.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Probably try being ginger in the military. Try having big ears in the military. Try having a big nose in the military. Everybody has the piss taken out of them for their physical attributes. But actually one of the things that did strike me, not racism, but well, you can judge what it was. So one of my colour sergeants at Sandhurst, colour sergeant Thomas from the King's Regiment, which was the old regiment that was around Manchester. So not Cheshire Countryside. That was the Cheshire Regiment, Manchester. And at one point, I can't remember.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Comedy programs like Mind Your Language. Remember that set in an ESOL school, which was basically every single racial stereotype gag from everyone around the world. And it was mainstream TV. And this was normal. This was the backdrop of my growing up. But that said, did I feel particularly oppressed? No, and look, I had a loving family. I had a very, very stable childhood. I went to a good school and I had lots of good and close friends. So I didn't feel particularly victimized. I didn't feel particularly held back. I applied to join the British Army back when you just did not see black faces in the British Army because I came from a military family. All my African family were military. My aunt was a full colonel in the Sierra Leone Army Medical Corps. It just didn't occur to me that that shouldn't be a career choice. And because my family rule officers, my African family rule officers.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Which today would cause Out Absolute outrage. In terms of proper nasty racism, and look, i.e. I was in Lewisham. I grew up in Lewisham in Southeast London. I lived on a street which was at the end of the marching route for the National Front in the 1970s. The National Front marched literally, it was a long road, so I'm not going to pretend I was looking out the window watching it happen, but they marched through New Cross down into Lewisham, down towards Lursham whilst I was a kid. So that was the backdrop of what was going on. But as I say, there was language that was used on the TV. I horrify my kids, not Alf Garner, I horrify my kids when I show them, when I show them on my phone footage of the black and white minstrel show. I say, look, this is mainstream TV.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “History, but the point is, of course, there was racism and there were Good natured jokey names that I heard about me when I was at school from people that I would regard as friends. They weren't being nasty.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Oh, I mean, well what we nowadays define as racism wouldn't have been defined as racism back when I was growing up. Which is a good thing. Yeah, well I think we maybe come on to that in terms of whether we become overly sensitive to some things and whether we take a pragmatic look at”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Once I stepped out of my family, but of course you only know what you know. And so growing up, I had white cousins, I had black cousins, and I had light brown cousins, same color as me. And so for me, that was just what family looked like.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “So the funny thing was, I mean, twofold. One, my English family. So my dad's brothers, two brothers, his older brother married a German woman. Remember, this is only a couple, a decade and a bit after the end of the Second World War. That was a thing. My dad's younger brother, met and married and had a family with my mum's best friend from Sierra Leone, and my dad met my mum through his brother and his then girlfriend. So of my grandfather's three sons, while I married a German girl just after the war, and two married black girls from West Africa. So for me, growing up, that kind of ethnic mix, racial mix, that was just family. That was what my perception of family was.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Dad was a surveyor by profession, a surveyor stroker state agent in terms of how he earned his living. Mum was a midwife in the NHS and had been through her whole adult life, came over here as a young woman to study and stayed And my grandfather, my dad's father, staunch socialist, originally from Wiltshire, and then moved to South East London after the war. So I suppose dad from a traditionally left-wing family. Mom's family in West Africa, very, very high status, absolute social elite, senior civil service, senior military, so very much what would have been thought of as the Tories, obviously it doesn't map exactly like, but my West African family were my establishment family, my English family were my left-wing family. But that was a small businessman. And born in Southeast London 1969,”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “So I came from a mixed heritage family. The joke that I used at my party conference interview, which is still one I really like. So I'm immigrant stock on both sides of my family. Mum came to the UK from Sierra Leone and West Africa in 1966. My dad's family came from northern France in 1066. So it's still a good gag, isn't it? Yeah, it's good. It's still a good. So Anglo-African, born and brought up in southeast London”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Get over the line. In the end, it didn't work for me. But I don't regret it. I don't regret going for it. I don't regret the things that I said during the campaign. I went in with my head held high. I came out with my head held high. But I think the last couple of weeks have shown that she is really, really grown into the job and she is setting a much more thoughtful, proper, conservative, right-wing but thoughtful, balanced tone whilst everyone else in the political landscape is scrabbling around because if you don't really instinctively know who you are, you get blown off course by everything and that's happening all over the place.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Again, I think that is a fundamental risk reading because he was scrabbling to get through to the final. The idea that he was so confident of his numbers that he could start lending, borrowing, that is a caricature of the system which people keep applying to it. There were very few votes up for grabs. By the time you locked in your core team and the people that you pretty much, as we know, it's never 100%. But in your whipping list, those kind of people like solid, solid, solid. By the time you did that for each of the three camps, it's probably only about 20, 25 people that are in play. And none of us, none of us had the luxury of saying, you vote for them, then come back to me. You just didn't play out like that. Everyone was scrabbling for votes. Everyone was trying to use every bit of leverage. Everyone's trying to guilt trip. Everyone they'd ever campaigned with or done a favor for or bought a drink at some point in their political past to try and...”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “And I think I think there was, maybe we'll discuss this in other ways that this phenomenon manifested itself, is we'd forgotten how many MPs we had or how few MPs we had. And I was trying to make the point, a couple of people trying to help me out by lending someone their vote is enough to upset the Apocalypse. We just haven't got that many votes to play with. So a couple of votes changing from one column to another. But, you know what, I don't regret putting it at all.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “And that's how it played out. And I think I went from all the MPs thinking I couldn't possibly win to a load of them thinking I couldn't possibly lose. And I lost track of the number of conversations where people were saying, MPs were saying, who do you want to be up against in the final? Who do you think? Who are you in the best place to beat? And I thought, oh, we're going to do it, aren't we? We're going to do something which should be a simple process. Vote for the person you want to win because we're conservative MPs and because this is our habit at the time, we decided to make it overly complicated.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “But So I think what happened is that I started late. So a number of the other people, and this is not a criticism, it's just an observation, a number of other people that were running could see the writing on the wall. They could see we weren't going to win the election and they could see that there was going to be a leadership campaign. I was home secretary and we had the illegal immigration staff. We were trying to get the Rwanda scheme through the house and operationalized. We were trying to get visa changes. So I was absolutely immersed in the day job. So I didn't start any kind of preparatory work for the leadership thing, which meant I started late. And I think a lot of people, a lot of MPs, assumed that I was in it to get a good job in the shadow cabinet rather than to win. So I don't think I got the kind of early momentum. So initially it looks as if I couldn't win. And then we got to party conference, which is always my plan because I knew that I would outperform everyone else at party conference.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Well, I never got to the membership. I never got to the membership. I think if I'd got to the membership, I would have won. I think the fact that I'd been party chairman, that I'd been in the party a long time, I'd spent a lot of time helping other conservatives get elected at local government level and mayoral level and things like that. I think if I'd got to the membership, I think I would have won.”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Stomach does not understand how diplomacy works. He gives things away in the hope that he's buying good work. It doesn't work like that. It's a negotiation. He's awful on the international stage. He's useless. Nigel Farage, I think his big motivation is to be able to say to people, you wrote me off and you were wrong. That's all he wants. If he ever walked through the door of number 10, he would regard the job done as he crossed the threshold rather than saying this is the start of the job. And I think that would be catastrophic”

    2026-06-14 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 193. James Cleverly: Why Has There Been A Radical Shift On The Right? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source