YouSaid · the spoken record

Oliver Letwin

lines on the record: 48
first: 2019-03-29
most recent: 2019-03-29
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

“That's a really, really precious inheritance, and we absolutely shouldn't let it go. And it depends in the end on civility and mutual respect and the ability to disagree without falling out and the thing I really, really, really hate about what's happened in the last few months and indeed the last few years is that increasingly we've seen armies clashing by night and people many people of course have maintained a completely sensible view but there are many too many people who have felt somehow that it's reasonable to shout at somebody else and to behave in an aggressive way about these things and that's not a good way for us to proceed.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doesn't make me despair, it does make me worry terribly, and it means, I think, that those of us who feel that politics shouldn't be like that, shouldn't polarise to the extremes, need to fight back. Almost all the really terrible things that have ever happened in the history of the world have happened because people were polarized into extremes. Wars happen that way, civil wars happen that way, terrible governments and tyrannies happen that way. This is not a good way to live. And this is a country which, of all the countries in the world, possible exception of Sweden, has the longest tradition of an evolving liberal democracy under the rule of law of any country on earth. That's an incredible British achievement. It is the British achievement.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Norway's and Canada's and Switzerland possibilities, exactly. And so the question is how, when it brings back the withdrawal act implementation bill, does it intend to proceed to get that agreement? If it introduces through that bill, as I hope it might, a process to involve cross-party discussion from that point onwards, that would, I think, represent a major step forward for our country, and it would mean that these sort of informal and backbench efforts to get cross-party discussion and cross-party agreement could stop, and instead we'd have a formal, proper government-controlled process for doing that. That would be a massive advance.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's a very interesting question which we'll have to consider very carefully because if the government gets agreement to the withdrawal agreement, It doesn't thereby obtain agreement to the political declaration that sets out the future relationship.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The vote will happen for your philosopher David Hume tells us that there's a thing called the inductive fallacy, which means you should never assume that just because Monday is always followed Sunday, it always will. But nevertheless, I agree with you. There's an extremely high chance that there will be a Monday. But what I hope there won't be, I would be really pleased if there wasn't, is any of the actions which at the moment my colleagues and I are planning for Monday. And the reason I hope there won't be that is I hope that tomorrow, Friday, my colleagues and I in the Conservative Party will join together and I shall certainly be doing this and vote for the Prime Minister's withdrawal agreement and then we won't have to have Monday and we'll never have to have that sort of arrangement and we can just go back to business as usual. That would be very sensible result.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a real and serious risk for our country, I don't believe you can possibly participate in imposing this risk on the country regardless of what the interests of your party may or may not be.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think from many different points of view, that's not a good argument. It's not sound, it's not sensible. First of all, if we were to leave without a deal, which is what we're talking about trying to prevent, and if it might be perfectly all right, but if the risks that I fear materialized and things were really pretty rocky for this country for quite a number of months, of course in the long run we get over it with very resilient country, but I think that would actually do much more damage to the Conservative Party and much more likely to precipitate a Corbyn majority government in the not too distant future than any other outcome. So first of all, I think that argument is just wrong in political terms. Secondly, and crucially, I don't think that you can possibly be a responsible parliamentarian and say to yourself, if you do believe, and I quite respect the fact there are many of my colleagues that don't believe this, but if you do believe as I believe that this...”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But then I have to concern myself, I think, with one thing and one thing only, what is it that I genuinely believe is in the national interest?”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Nick, there are moments, and it's the sort of most difficult thing about politics. There are moments when you do have to ask yourself, what is my order of priorities? And I accept that what is going on now will impose very severe strains, probably on all political parties, certainly on the Conservative Party. I accept that. It would be dishonest if I didn't face that fact. And I have to ask myself, what is my duty as an elected Member of Parliament under these circumstances? That may sound very pompous and pious, but the truth is we are facing a national crisis here.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't think that's probably either likely or desirable. I think that it's perfectly orderly process, which is for Parliament to come to a view, for Parliament, if necessary to pass a law, and for the government of the day to carry it out.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, this prime minister is just a very upright person. I mean, really unbelievably upright person. And I spent 17 years in shadow covenants and cabinets with her, and I know very well that she just always obeys the law. So if there was a law, she would obey it. And actually, to tell you the truth, I mean, one way or another I've worked with quite a lot of prime ministers, and they all like that. We're very lucky in Britain that actually our prime ministers don't break the law.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can't believe with it. That isn't the position of this Prime Minister, or I suspect any Prime Minister. This Prime Minister is the most law-abiding person I've ever come across in my life. She's a person with almost no deviation from perfect compliance. If you remember when she was asked, had she ever really done anything wrong? I think she said it was wandering through a wheat field.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, oh, there's no doubt at all that the only people who can implement and negotiate a proposition of this kind is the government. But Parliament can take steps to make sure that the government does implement what Parliament reaches as a majority view. And there are various ways it can try to do that. Ultimately, the way that is compelling is to legislate. And so we have a lot.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But actually the suspicions and mutual concerns are so considerable that it turned out when we talked about it all it's very difficult to design at very short notice a complicated process that everyone can understand and operate on and not be suspicious of whereas this process this very simple process at least everyone knows is fair.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes. It must be rankings and so on. Isn't that more rationalization? I think, first of all, if you had a long time to work out what that system should be and you could explain it to everyone very fully and sort of practice it and so on, if we had all the time in the world, which is the very last thing we have here, it might be a perfectly sensible way. Secondly, it might be sensible if everybody could agree about it.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, the business of the House motion, as it's called, that governs the procedure. We have laid already today. And it's just a repeat of a very simple, as you say, yes-no to each of a set of propositions that are put forward by MPs. So they bring a motion forward. The Speaker selects it, and the House as a whole gets to vote on it”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the point is we don't know it will be, but there's a reason for hoping that it will be, and that is that when serious politicians who are faced with a serious national crisis, Can see how the votes fell the first time, and can see that there were a couple of propositions that got very close to majorities and can feel how the other propositions relate to those things and so on. There is the scope for trying to adjust the propositions and also trying to negotiate a bit and to talk to individuals in a way that may lead to majorities emerging. And you can't manage this, you can't predict it, you can't be certain of it, but you can try to engender circumstances in which it's maximally likely. And I think we have more or less got that.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think is the honest answer to that, but I think the process we're engaged in may, it's not certain, on Monday, reveal. Or more sweet spots where you could accumulate a majority. And that's what we're trying to do. It's not easy because people start with very settled preferences and because this hasn't been done over a two-year period but is being done very late, much too late in the process, there's a lot of built-up suspicion and concern that people are trying to get an edge over one another and so on. And it would have been much easier if we've been a long way from the scene of the action a couple of years, maybe two or three years earlier. It would have been able to have discussions and build up trust and so on. So inevitably it's very difficult to get to a satisfactory conclusion but we might and we have to try because although I hope that the Prime Minister will get approval for her deal through and I shall be voting for it again, I don't think any of us can be confident that she will and we need an alternative as a plan B.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, sir, no doubt. It's a long list. I found myself in that room late at night. So this was kind of the third dip into that room. And I may say incidentally that it's very appropriately spare. I mean, it's not over-decorated, if I can put it that way, under its current regime. But I have to tell you, I'm sure that this is sort of unfashionable and improper thing for me to say, will be thought in some quarters, but I have to tell you, I found Jeremy Corbyn perfectly charming. Yes, charming.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's a room I have had a lot of experience of because, of course, it was David Cameron's room when he was leader of the opposition and my office was just around the corner. And so he used to go in every day and often for many hours. And so I have memories of it from that time. It was also a room in which, when I was negotiating the Leverson report.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that is true. I mean, I was a very unnotable academic, so it wasn't so much that I turned my back on academic life, it was more that academic life turned its back on me. I discovered that I was never going to write anything of very great significance to mankind and so did something else. But I do still hanker often for the quiet academic life. But as you rightly say, at least I can claim, which is an incredible privilege, and most of our fellow citizens, I think, would feel that there are boring moments at least in their daily working lives. And of course I have some moments of boredom in my working life, but I have incredibly few. Politics is endlessly fascinating.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've never taken Dari, never taken notes. When I wrote a memoir of my times, so to speak, and my impressions of the evolution of conservatism over the last sort of 40 years, I did that.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, there was a hilarious sort of effort to pretend that it was somehow a massive national security issue, that it was not. But actually, it was the wrong thing to do because you should shred these things, which I have done since.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's very They weren't official, they dogged you. Yes, they were not official papers, as a matter of fact, but they were copies of correspondence from constituents that I was answering on my telephone in the early mornings when I dictate to my secretary answers because I answer every single constituent that writes me a serious personal letter as opposed to identicate campaign things. So you were walking through the book and displacing the very silly and I'm prone to that kind of thing. I should have guessed that someone would take a supreme interest in this and photograph it there and they did. If you ask me why did I do that? I have no idea why I did that. It just seemed at the time the obvious thing to do. I was trying to get on with my business and dictate letters to my constituents.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To get applause, not people who let thieves in front of the front door. That was part of the problem that my sense when I was Shadow Home Secretary was, and I made a lot of speeches about this and wrote a lot of articles about it and so on, increasingly that actually what gives rise to crime is largely, of course, there are some psychopaths and so on, but largely that people get into a terrible condition when they're young, often, mainly not through their own fault, and they then find themselves trapped in a vortex of drug misuse and gangs and so on. So I was trying to get the Conservative Party out of thinking that handguffs and prisons are the answer to crime. They are things you have to have, but they are not the answer to crime. And that wasn't very popular with a lot of people, and I don't know exactly which newspapers you're referring to, but I can imagine. And I know that those newspapers...”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A certain amount of jewelry and things, yes. What made it embarrassing at the time was that I was Shadow Home Secretary. That was what really did it. If I'd been the shadow minister for Tiddlewings, I don't suppose anyone paid much attention. But it's already...”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think quite a lot of the readers of those newspapers actually, if someone arrived outside their house with fingers filled with grease and said they wanted to wash their hands, would probably let them in to do so. But, I mean, how do I know?”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think the health reform is a classical case. Again, I've written about this. I think we were aiming at the wrong object. We didn't understand enough about what the real problem of the health service. The health service today is basically, as I now think I see it, impeded by and having to deal with this massive difficulty of the frail elderly population, which is growing all the time. And I don't think that that issue can be resolved without massive, which now I'm glad to say Matt Hancock and others are dealing with, massive integration of health and social care for the elderly. And we didn't understand the huge importance of that, the overwhelming importance of that. We understood, of course, that it existed, but we didn't put it in the central position that you need to. And so we've lived and learned.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, let me tell you. I don't actually think those were cases in which we didn't have enough brain. I think we just got things wrong.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, look, obviously people will say this, that and the other and think this, that and the other. To tell you the truth, in the end, I've got to the point where I'm way past caring too much about what people are saying, and I'm much more concerned about trying to get some decent result. I think in the end that's what people get judged by.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Understanding that we didn't take enough account of that, and I think we didn't, we were so keen to give people opportunities to rise, which I think is marvellous, that we didn't pay enough attention to those who don't have the capacity to rise because they're held back by whatever it may be, disability or poverty or lack of education or whatever. And I think we weren't paying enough attention to helping people over the hump.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't know about you, but my experience is that all the way through my life, having made innumerable mistakes and wrong turnings and so on, I have learned from them. And I think I was too brash and I think I was too mono-focused, as I think often people when they're younger are. And I think I graduated, I wasn't tribal, accidentally, even then. I'd literally never been involved in the sort of hygienics you see at Prime Minister's questions, which I think is just ghastly. But I was, as you put it, bone dry. I gradually discovered more and more I've charted this in a book I've written that actually that wasn't enough to get the results which actually our citizens need. So I changed my mind about it.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it does disentangle every knock because I think sometimes I say actually it's the emotions that matter more. But I do think that if you are non-tribal and you're sufficiently consensual to discuss things with people, you can very often get over problems.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think most serious problems in social policy and economic policy and the practice of government actually require all sorts of different things. So people who have very high degrees of emotional intelligence can understand how other human beings operate and where they're coming from are very important. People who have an imagination about what can be effectively explained to in a persuasive way the population at large, which is not something I'm particularly good at, are very important to the process. People who can dissect policy and understand it in detail are important. People who actually care about administration and whether things actually happen all the policies you want in the world, if you aren't actually administering things properly, our citizens don't benefit.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the second in certain nature, I am not at all troubled. In fact, I think I could accurately say I hate tribes. I don't approve of tribal politics. I think the national interest is served, and actually it's also a lot more fun for all those involved in it, and it's a lot pleasanter for our population if actually we agree about what we agree about, disagree what we disagree about, do it politely, and get on with one another. And there are many, many things where people across the political spectrum actually more or less agree. And I don't think there's some shame in admitting that, and I don't think it gets us anywhere to be shouting at one another in a sort of crude way. So yes, I'm not tribal, and that is, I think, an advantage if you're trying to work across party or evidently.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do is that anybody turned to me, I turn to them, and so did others. I mean, I think the point is I wasn't the only person recognising that this was a problem. On the contrary, there was a group of us who recognised a cross-parties, and we got together.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of staff at the time. I just didn't know how that happened. But I do know that they came out of the traps with this very determined set of red lines. They didn't cooperate with Labour. It was a Tory-only strategy. The preparations for leaving without a deal were put in the hands of DXU, which was a non-existent department, quite incapable of managing these things around Whitehall. And the upshot is we are where we are now. And I think that was not a good situation.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, I have absolutely no knowledge of that. Because I was for six years in the Centre of Government, I very well know that the stories about who does what are usually completely erroneous. And so it's always...”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, there was, but it was thoroughly and soundly and completely rejected. And what happened was that when the new government came in under the current Prime Minister, they decided not to cooperate with the Labour Party at all, instead to go for a Tory-only solution, which is fine in itself. I don't object to that. But it was somewhat impeded by the 2017 election and losing a majority, and it was further impeded by the fact that the solution that was negotiated was one that it has now transpired, a very large part of the Conservative Party had terrible difficulty with.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that not so that you had a leverage over the year, because I don't think it is leverage, but so that you had an option to say, I don't like what we've agreed, we'll do something else on our end.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, not, of course, making any kind of decisions because it wasn't proper to do that, as David Cameron's on the way out. We were all on the way out. But I was trying to prepare the ground. And it became rapidly apparent to me that the sensible thing to do was actually to try and get a complete cross-party agreement, as Radka did, the Taoiseach in Ireland, with his counterparts in the Doyle, their equivalent of our parliament. He got a complete lockdown agreement right across the door. And that's made him very, very strong in the negotiations. I thought that was the first thing we ought to do, and I started the process in retrospect, ironically, in conversations with people like Yvette Cooper and Helen Goodman and others from the Labour Party, very grown-up people. I thought we could get something together. And I also thought it was absolutely crucial from the beginning to prepare very fully and very professionally for leaving without a deal.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What happened was that Towards the end of last year it became apparent to me that the course of action she was following the strategy was following, however well intention, I think it was entirely well intentioned, was virtually doomed to failure, anyway had a very high risk of failure attached to it because she had got herself into position where the terms on which she'd got things from the EU were terms she couldn't sell to the group of people she was trying to sell it to, namely my colleagues in the ERG, and she hadn't got a plan B because there were also terms that she wasn't going to sell to people across the house. When I was first involved in this whole exercise way, way back just after the referendum for six weeks or something, as you may remember, it was a nightmare of six weeks. I was actually in charge of this process before the new Prime Minister. Just a reminder, because”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it's not too strong a word. I voted to remain, as you know. But when the result came in and it was a leave vote, I thought we all had a responsibility to find a way of leaving because that's what the nation had voted for. Didn't think it was very sensible of the Prime Minister to set out She fought an election in which she reiterated this, and so I thought it was my job alongside that of all the other Conservative embassies. And I imagine it would be all the other Conservative MPs to try and make that happen. And I was sort of occasionally involved in, as you may remember, a sort of brokering solutions to let it happen. And that was all going on perfectly happily until one day I realized that's what you wanted. Yes.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I don't like the sole idea, partly because it's very important that the thing we are doing at the moment Although obviously a lot of people find it very controversial, is actually an incredibly serious thing. We are collectively across party trying to find a solution that does not leave our fellow citizens exposed to leaving the EU without a deal with some terrible risks attached to it. And I don't think this is all constructive that this should be regarded as somehow a personal crusade of me or anybody else.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“retired entirely from frontline politics and into looking after my constituents and writing books about large long-term issues in the House of Commons Library and occasionally intervening in very detailed pieces of legislation in a way that I find interesting and may make a minor contribution after years of frontbench, frontline politics, quite enough years, in fact, probably too many years. And I was looking forward to retirement. So no, this is not what I want to be doing.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the first point to make is that actually this has been a very considerable collective effort, and there are an awful lot of people who've been involved in a relay race, and this just happens to be my turn with a baton, but there's a group of us across the parties who've been working together, and it is not my endeavor, it's our endeavor. The second point is, no, I don't particularly enjoy this, and I never intended it. I was actually very happily...”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As it's part of the telegraph, I shan't take it with me. Not a newspaper of choice from my point of view. How interesting.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have to tell you, I don't look at the front page of the telegraphs. I'm seeing this for the first time, but it's hilarious.”
2019-03-29 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Oliver Letwin One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source