YouSaid · the spoken record

Jonathan Sumption

lines on the record: 35
first: 2020-05-29
most recent: 2020-05-29
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

“When they are formally restored I will certainly do that and when I start covently taking my freedom back then I shall perhaps post them quietly with my wife.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“South End Beach isn't my favourite place of recreation, but I'll certainly be rushing to a pub, if I can, I'll be rushing to the theatre. I'm happy to take the risk. I think I'm reasonably fit and healthy, and it's a matter for me. And yes, that's what I would do. I would go straight to a pub. But, you know, I have observed the lockdown, but we are reaching the point where I, in common with a very large proportion of the population, are basically not going to bother with it for much longer.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The idea was that a minister was responsible to the crown. The current Convention Constitutional Convention is that the ministers are not in any real sense responsible to the Crown because the Crown is bound to take their advice. The ministers control what the Crown does. So you have a situation which the government is saying we are not responsible to anybody for the exercise of a fundamentally public power. Now that is a situation which is frankly intolerable. It produces a void which had to be filled by something.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's inescapable that some judicial decisions will always have political consequences. It doesn't mean to say that their political decisions, but they are decisions about law which necessarily have political results and prorogation case was one of those. The problem about the prorogation case is that the common law has never accepted that a public officer can be responsible to absolutely nobody for his decisions. And the Supreme Court was presented with a situation in which the government was saying, we are not answerable to the law. We are not answerable to parliaments because we propose to prorogue it. We're not answerable to the public because there won't be a chance until the next election for the public to pronounce about this. We are answerable only to ourselves. Indeed, we're not answerable to the crown either.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there are pluses and minuses in doing any job like that at my age. It would be very time consuming. One would have to put one's back into it. It would mean there would be many other things I like doing which I can't do. If I were asked to do it, I would certainly do it. I don't think I'm very likely to be asked to do it, because this is not a government which is famous for its sympathy for people who disagree with it on issues, as I have done, not just on lockdown, but I didn't think that their prorogation of Parliament was justified.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To be one, I think we have made serious mistakes, but whether I am right or wrong about that, it seems to me to be important to ascertain with care whether we've made mistakes and what they are, because this isn't going to be the last pandemic by any means. Indeed, it's at the milder end of the scale. There's a very interesting cabinet office paper showing the pandemics of the 20th century. And this is right down the bottom of the infectiousness and mortality levels. We're going to get worse. And we can't put our head in a sack every time it happens.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With the advantage of judges is that they are widely trusted to be independent of the government which appoints them to conduct the inquiry. But I don't see any reason why it necessarily has to be a judge. I think there's a very good reason why it should not be a specialist in behavioral sciences or epidemiology because its main task would, I think, or one of its main tasks would be to sort out the lessons for the future in those areas, and it's extremely difficult to be a specialist in those areas without having pronounced views and a professional intolerance of pronounced views to the opposite effect. So to that extent, I think that a judge would probably be a good choice. Judicial inquiries have had a bad name lately because they've taken so long and because they get bound up with endless witnesses and I certainly think one would need to give a lot of attention to the sort of inquiry.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it would, I think, have been a truer verdict, and it would have been a more persuasive verdict, and for that reason it would have been a more politically valuable verdict.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“was wholly right or was really defensible. I think they were a lot more right than the press or the public gave them credit for, but clearly some things had not been terribly well handled. And I think one of the problems about the Hutton Report was that it accepted without qualification the government's case, whereas I think the government had a good case, but it should have been accepted, I think, with some qualifications that didn't appear.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it depends on what you regard the objective of the thing as being. I felt, just as a citizen rather than because I was privy to any particular information, that it may have been hoped that this would be a way of having some sort of inquiry without its being an inquiry into the justification for the war itself, but shifting it onto an area which was perhaps easier to justify. It probably didn't succeed in doing that. The problem about the report when it came out was that my victory and that of my clients was too complete. I think, I mean, Lord Hutton is a man who believes in black and white, in sheep and goats, and you come into one category or into the other, there's not much nuance in it. Either the government was wholly right or it was wholly wrong. I don't think the notion that the government”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, not just him, I argued the case for everybody on the north side of Whitehall, in other words, the security services Alistair Campbell, but not the Ministry of Defence.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One reason why I left Oxford was that I didn't want to be poor. I didn't want to be rich I mean I wouldn't have said no to being rich but that wasn't the objective I just didn't want to be poor I wanted to bring up my family in greater comforts than a Don would be able to do but there were many other reasons I wanted to be an independent spirit and the bar is very good at giving you complete intellectual autonomy I wanted to be self employed because I am constitutionally unfit to be an employee I know I was an employee of Her Majesty for seven years but it didn't feel like that”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I doubt whether he would have become Prime Minister in fact, because although Keith Joseph was a highly intelligent and very interesting and original mind, he was actually a hopeless politician and in a sense the Edgebaston speech illustrates the fact that he did not have the political antennae which you need to be a successful politician.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know what I would have said quite frankly, but I mean, I did read the speech after it had been delivered when it was widely publicised in the press. It's not about eugenics. It wasn't terribly well expressed, but Keith Joseph's point essentially was that we were, he was making a case as much as anything else for helping some of the most vulnerable and socially disadvantaged people in society. And he was making the point that if we don't help them, we are going to get a situation in which they bring up children who have the same difficulties as they do. And having, as he saw it, a kind of hereditary social disadvantage in our society was something that really did urgently need to be sorted out. That was his view. He used phrases like human stock in the speech, which are triggered.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was not I was working for Keith Joseph at the time in the Centre for Policy Studies, the first that I knew about it was when I read about it in the newspapers and saw the Bruha. I worked in the Centre for Policy Studies on educational policy. I wrote one speech for Keith Joseph about educational policy in my entire time there. I had nothing to do with that one and I do not know where the idea came that I did. It was written by the distinguished...”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was not. I have seen statements to that effect. The speech was written by his speechwriter, Sir Alfred Sherman. I had nothing to do with it.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The thing about Keith Joseph is that he was a man of huge political intellectual curiosity. He liked talking to people who didn't necessarily agree with him politically. He had one of the most open minds of any politician that I ever met. He was also very unusual by the standards of conservative politicians of the time in being seriously interested in social policy. And I found that attractive. I liked talking to him. I thought that he was a highly intelligent person who didn't fit into any regular mold. And so if one respecting which he didn't fit into a mold was to employ somebody who didn't agree with him, well, good for him.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I saw myself then as a libertarian, and I see myself now as a libertarian. As a matter of fact, I was a labour supporter when I worked for Keith Joseph. I wasn't a conservative then.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. I think that, I mean, the Prime Minister doesn't accept that there was a breach of the rules, and actually I don't think that there was because the rules don't say you can't go out of your house. They say you can't go out without a reasonable excuse. So there's a big debate about whether going to Durham was a reasonable excuse in the circumstances. I don't think it's by any means clear. But these are rules which err in two directions. First of all, some of them are impossibly vague and therefore impossible to apply sensibly without common sense which is not allowed. Others are ridiculously intrusive and despotic, and these are two extremes, both to be found in the same rules.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To do the sensible thing, but we're perfectly happy to trust ourselves to do it. Now that is where the emotional force of the backlash against Dominic Cummings comes, and it's entirely understandable, and to that extent I would actually agree with it.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there are a large number of different issues thrown up by the whole Cummings business. I don't think it is necessarily the case that he broke the rules. What he undoubtedly did break was the government's guidance, which are not rules but advice. I think that the lesson of the Cummings business is that the government has basically treated us all like children. They've said we are going to impose this on you by law because we think that you are too infantile, too thick, too obtuse or too selfish to do this voluntarily. And therefore, we are going to deprive you of your liberty. And people who have been told that, even if they agreed with the sentiment, are going to say to themselves, indeed have said to themselves, well, it seems odd that the government should be saying, we don't trust any of you lot”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We must stop people getting ill, and that is the point at which I think that the debate changes and that the government is intruding into areas where we are entitled to make our own decisions.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think that one part of what you've just said is right, and the rest of it is not. There was a respectable argument, not one which I personally accept, but I think that it's a powerful argument and I acknowledge that, that we needed to spread the effect of the virus over a longer period in order to prevent the National Health Service from being overwhelmed. Now, that is no longer part of the government's rationale from at least May the 13th. They have dropped, save the NHS from their slogan, and they've done it for good reasons, because they have actually very successfully been able to increase the ICU capacity of the National Health Service, and they've also found that the demands on that capacity have been much less than they predicted, so frankly the NHS is no longer the issue. The issue now is quite simply”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But compulsion is neither necessary nor appropriate for doing that. They can certainly give advice, and in practice most people are likely, in fact a huge majority of people who are vulnerable, whether because of age or underlying medical conditions are likely to observe that. They can voluntarily inflict on themselves what the government is currently imposing on them. And therefore, they don't need to be either at South End Beach or on the bus from South End Beach. They can lock themselves down. What I object to is the notion that to protect the proportion of the population that is particularly vulnerable and who can look after themselves, we are imposing an altogether unjustifiable deprivation of liberty on everybody else.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's what the government has imposed on them at the moment, so they're no worse off by locking themselves in their home.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and certainly not as self-flagellant. But you're absolutely right. He has pursued a libertarian rhetoric, but I think that this whole incident, the COVID-19 business, has turned on its head many of the traditional categorizations, left, right, libertarian, collectivist. These labels no longer correspond to the positions that people are actually adopting. And this is actually quite an interesting phenomenon. For example, one of the striking things is the absolute silence of the human rights lobby. Now, these were people who quite rightly and justifiably campaigned vigorously against the attempt to imprison without trial suspected but unconvicted terrorists or the attempt to impose house arrest, but it seems that it's okay to impose house arrest.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that history is a terrific source of vicarious experience, and it does help to get into proportion an incident like this which to a historian you don't have to be a medievalist, to a historian with a view over any reasonably long period of time, this epidemic does not look particularly exceptional, and human beings have coped with it in the past without lacerating themselves and destroying their social and economic lives. And that was true even of the Black Death, which was a great deal more murderous than this. One other thing that you learn from the Black Death in particular is that during the Black Death inhabitants of European towns used to go around once a week or so the walls of the town flagellating themselves on their bare backs. Now that is what the British people have been doing for the last three months.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, now the time retired, it's not particularly difficult. I'm often asked how did I manage to combine a reasonably successful legal practice with writing a lot about the Middle Ages and indeed a time as a judge with that activity, and the answer is I just don't know. Somehow or other it got done. But you know, people have fads, they like Morris dancing, they tinker around with cars, they go in for bell ringing, this is my equivalent.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I probably am a conservative with a small C, but I have no natural political home and haven't had for quite a number of years, and I voted for all three parties in my time.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there was a time just after I'd taken schools as an undergraduate and when I was a young Don, when I thought of putting myself on the candidates list for the Conservative Party. But I rapidly decided one that I didn't want to be an MP. That was partly because I wanted to stay married. And two, that I wasn't a conservative. So those two things in combination seemed a fairly powerful reason for not going ahead with that idea.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He made it the great ambition of his life, and anybody who does that and doesn't achieve it is going to be bitterly disappointed and resentful. My father never recovered from failing in politics. The thing about politics is there are in most fields of human endeavour being halfway up the tree is half as much fun as being at the top of it. Politics is special. Being halfway up the tree is dog's business. Really, the only place that's interesting in politics is at the top. And that's why politics is full of disappointed people.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He certainly did. He never succeeded in becoming one. And it ruined his life. One reason why, apart from a brief flirtation a long time ago, I never have wanted to be in Parliament.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree that I am effectively on this subject acting as a political figure. I don't see that as ironic because I am not acting judicially. Having retired from the bench I am a citizen. I have the advantage which many citizens don't have of having a platform, which is more, I think, due to the reflectures than to the fact that I used to be a Supreme Court judge, and I've used it in order to express a point of view that is undoubtedly a minority point of view but needs to be heard”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's both I know that many of them do think the same as me, because many of them have got in touch with me, either directly or through intermediaries, to express their agreement, but they some of them are honest enough to say, that they don't dare open their mouths. Now this was the last of them was probably about ten days ago, and my impression is that the situation is changing. All those photographs of people crowding into South End beaches, they aren't antisocial, they aren't obtuse, they aren't stupid. These are people who have suddenly decided that they can make up their own mind about what the risks are. They all look from the photographs as if they are young, fit, healthy people, the risks for their more absolutely minimal, and they have suddenly realized that they can think for themselves instead of taking their cue from what I can only describe as government hype.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I neither enjoy it nor object to it. I think that it would be very much more satisfactory if the sort of points that I have been making had been made by professional politicians. But the amount of groupthink and collective hysteria, partly I have to say officially generated, has meant that nobody outside the press is actually making these points. Somebody has got to stand up for a sense of proportion. Somebody has got to stand up for a measure of balance, and somebody has got to stand up for the millions of people who are being propelled into misery and in many cases financial ruin by the lockdown. I'm really sorry that it should be me, and I think that it's a sad reflection on the quality of our democracy that it should be me. But if no one else is going to do it, then I am.”
2020-05-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Jonathan Sumption One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source