YouSaid · the spoken record

Steve Baker

lines on the record: 43
first: 2019-04-12
most recent: 2019-04-12
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

“Well, you remember, I think I raised that in relation to the Brexiteers, but no, I don't think so. I'm so looking forward, Nick, to launch a conservative way forward. When you look at the team that I've assembled and the breadth of the party that it covers and the extent of our agreement and the joy of the vision that we're going to present, I am so excited about showing it to you. And all this old nonsense about angry Tory right-wingers will just pale away and fade and no one will care about it when we do what we are going to do.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know I'm pretty confident given my record that I will be busy during the next leadership election, but I'm not at all certain who for.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, not now, because it's a totally implausible idea that at any backbencher is going to be catapulted into the last two past every government minister in the whole cabinet by conservative MPs. You might as well ask if I'd like to be a ballerina or an astronaut. It's not going to happen.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the suffering that there is going to be as a result, I feel that burden keenly. But I'm not ashamed about it. And neither am I of some kind of emotional wreck. You know, I go through my life, like everybody else with highs and lows and all the rest of it, but I do feel that it's essential that members of Parliament take seriously their duty. We're trying to construct a better society here, one which is happy, prosperous and free. People have got about five questions they need to answer. Imagine you wake up on a desert island. Am I safe? Who am I? Who cares? What shall I do? And how will I find joy? And we should have good answers in our life to all those things.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a very stressful time, but I wouldn't call it emotional time. I'm a passionate person, but I genuinely believe that people are driven by instinct, by reason, and also by emotion. And there's a brilliant book written by C.S. Lewis called The Abolition of Man, which makes this point. And in particular, Lewis argues that by taking out of our existence as individuals, the emotional grounding, the centre which is the passion that we feel, the love that we have for one another, taking that out of life and philosophy and practical politics, that actually we were heading down the road to the abolition of the much that we held dear. It's a brilliant book that Lewis wrote and I love it. So I'm not ashamed to say that I feel my obligation to my constituents very keenly when I drive around Wickham and see those hills and all those houses laid out when I remember that the food bank's become an industrial operation, when I think about what now are I believe in electable consequences of the policies we've had.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I dunno he might be. I think it remains to be seen. It's all very sad. I had huge hopes and I think it was always priced in that Boris might have things like the wallpaper thing and that he might not, he might imperfectly declare who paid for his holiday on the islands or whatever. But I don't think we expected anything like this. So I want, even now, I want Boris to be a huge success. But I do think that Dom has done very much what we all expected he might do if he didn't get what he wanted. So here we are.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Later on, it started to sound like advice that Cummings might have given. And I said, Boris, where's Cummings involved? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's no Cummings. And then on the day he became Prime Minister, Cummings was in number 10, I kicked off on a WhatsApp group and said, we've got to stop this now whenever it'll be a disaster. No one was with me. The Prime Minister called me, in fact, just before he went to see the Queen, I think. I walked out of a select committee meeting, talking to Boris. I agreed to go up and talk to Dom. I found myself in the Prime Minister's study talking with Dominic Cummings, as Boris was appointing the cabinet, and I said, Dom, what are you here to do? Get us out with no deal. I said, well, okay. Because actually I would always have preferred a deal where I'm, you know, the one we've got, okay. And I said, the other thing is, Dom, there's going to be too much collateral damage. You always do so much collateral damage. And he just looked at me and said, Steve, there will be collateral damage. And, you know, warn them and I was right. And it's just tough now, but we'll make the...”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He won't allow himself to be answerable to others, and we all need to be held to account. You've held me to account in this interview. Every time I set up a campaign, I always set up a steering group. So if the ERG I set up a steering group to hold me to account and place boundaries around me as the chairman, because I knew we were going to have a fight and that it was important to have those boundaries and that accountability. But what I saw for myself with Vote Leave is Dominic is absolutely uninterested in being challenged, questioned or held to account. And you simply cannot have someone at the heart of power who is not willing to be held to account, treats any attempt to control him with contempt. That is intolerable. So I have great respect for him. The problem with Dominic is not that he doesn't have deep thoughts or that he's not effective, he's actually a real weapon when it comes to politics. And that's why I said to Boris, no comings. If you want my support, no comings. And he agreed, no comings.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Won't mind me saying this because I just had this conversation with him one to one. He agrees with me that if I hadn't taken the other choice we would not have got the Eurosceptics to back the deal.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but that was for a, I'm afraid I'm a dissident cursed by the malady of thought as somebody once said. I'm fortunately, I think, things through. If I had joined Boris Johnson's government as Minister of State in a stripped-out Brexit department, all of the Eurosceptics would have known that I had no power and that I'd sold out just to get a job. And that would have meant they would have simply ceased listening to me. I sat in the cabinet room with Boris Johnson. I've taken ten pages of notes on that meeting as hell of a meeting. But in particular I said to him there was only two ways this was going to work either I had to be the Secretary of State for exiting the European Union so that it was my deal I was selling to the Eurosceptics and they knew they were negotiating with someone who had power or I had to be on the back benches so that I could work with them to get something they could secure and then persuade them to compromise but there was no middle ground. If I was to play a meaningful role I had to be secretary of state or backbench and you know what I hope David”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, absolutely not. You might remember me coming on the Today program to talk about Boris's deal being a tolerable path to a great future, and the tolerable bit was the Northern Ireland protocol, which we agreed under duress and which I knew would need further work. But we couldn't push things any further. We just couldn't. We had to compromise. And not only did I compromise, I And I'm sure of it because I sat across the cabinet table and secured the necessary concessions to secure the compromise they all made, with the two exceptions.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, absolutely. It's a sound theoretical idea about how society works, which is then practically applied. So I am an engineer. I'm an aerospace engineer and a software engineer. Now, if you were getting into an aeroplane, which I had signed off the airworthiness of or supervised the maintenance of, you would really not want to be getting in that aeroplane if you thought the engineers didn't understand how theoretically it flew and should be maintained. But equally, not only do you want us to understand what we're doing when there's time, when you're sitting in the aeroplane and something's gone wrong with it just before takeoff, you'd probably like me to be pragmatic and getting it fixed so you get off the ground. And that's what I bring to this. I want a serious theoretical understanding of the issues that we face, but then pragmatism in the application so that we actually get things done. And that is the engineer's approach, and that's what I seek to do.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“National Settlements report on this so that looks at all the Western welfare states, they've all got basically the same demographic problem. In our lifetimes, I believe we're going to see a default on age-related spending obligations unless we work out how to do things differently. And along the way, by the way, I do think we might destroy our currencies as well. But I do think that's what we face. Now, given that that's what I think we face, I'm under a duty, therefore, to tell people and to ask for a change of direction.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's not really any question of having small government in the UK. We are not going to be going back to government spending being 10-15% of GDP as it was depending how you measure it before the First World War. That isn't going to happen. And not in our lifetimes and not for several generations, if ever. What we could do with is at least balancing the budget. Now, what I believe is happening, the trajectory that we're on, if people look at the Office for Budget Responsibilities, fiscal sustainability report, it shows a really genuinely catastrophic trajectory of debt. In the 2018 report, they said, of course, these debt, this level, these hundreds of percent of GDP debts, won't happen, and they said policy will have to change. But when they say policy will have to change, what they mean is the state will default on pensions and healthcare and welfare and education will default. We won't keep our age-related spending promises. Very early in my career, I stood up in the Commons and waved about a”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe in liberty under the rule of law and right relationships. So we absolutely do have to counter the new radical form of protesting that we have. But if you're asking, am I concerned about some of the stuff on noise, for example, and protest? Yes, and that's why Dominic Greeve and I jointly wrote an article about just that. But in the end, I stood as a conservative, and the question is yes or no very often, and therefore sometimes I have to hold my nose. But back to your point, that's where I'm compromising.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that sort of thing is exactly absolutely the stuff of political debate. You know, I've taken an extremely strident view on COVID status certifications of vaccine passports, but I am in favour of voter ID. But I do consider if we can get into it, if you like, they're categorically different circumstances. But of course, people equate them and then accuse me of not being principled, and that's on the debate goes. But on protest in particular, the problem that we've got is in an environment where people are willing to climb on the top of tube trains or glue their face to the ground, so absurd you couldn't make it up. But the tactics of XR in particular, which have been brilliantly catalogued by policy exchange in a paper called Extremism Rebellion, when you're talking about people who are willing to disrupt our society by deliberately getting people arrested to flood the courts and bring them to a standstill, you do actually have to stop that. We've got a duty to have the rule of law. I mean, I am not some kind of anarchist.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The heart of this debate is this idea about what it means to be a virtuous human being, because presumably we do want to live in a society of virtue, well, are we going to keep on terrifying people to comply with, to be obedient to very strict rules, or are we instead going to be a responsible society which thinks for itself and does the right thing? Now what I find is time and again people say they want responsibility and they can defend it when it's easy, but once it gets difficult and we might actually learn something and change, they give in and coerce instead. And that's what I'm really opposed to. Let's really make progress here.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'm absolutely clear in my own mind that if it prevents people from having contact with one another, that will restrict the spread of a disease. Yes. Of course, I am clear about that. But the point that I'm making is...”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, actually, I would make the same criticism of them. I mean, I'm desperately don't want to have a row here over this because there is huge uncertainty in all of the, not all of it. Number of people who've died is very certain, but the number of people who've died of COVID rather than with COVID is perhaps less certain. So there's a huge room for debate in all of these things. What I would say is that some scientists were absolutely insisting we had to have a circuit breaker lockdown, but Wales did have one and didn't seem to do very much good. And when I compare, as anyone can on our World in Data, for example, the experience of Germany, the UK and Sweden, it does look rather like it doesn't matter what you do on the non pharmaceutical interventions, the restrictions of liberty, you get about the same progression of the disease.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Visiting their family and care homes, that it's desirable to prevent you sitting on a park bench or going for a walk with a coffee or indeed leaving your house for exercise more than once in a day. I really don't think anyone thinks these things are desirable. And I think we're going to find in the inquiry that a large proportion of deaths resulted from infections in care homes and hospitals, not for example amongst young people. So it might well be that actually a policy of focused protection might have worked much more successfully without the huge collateral costs of the restrictions that we took, but that remains to be seen.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I suppose because we are in search of simplicity, I take that Brooke characterization is broadly correct, but thought nothing is, of course, simple. The harm principle entitles the state to restrain people's behaviour to protect others, and that is the fundamental legitimacy of the kinds of measures which government used. And many classical liberal commentators today used that argument to justify their support for lockdowns. I think lockdown was most justifiable when the vaccines appeared, and indeed I made sure that we put Sir Jeremy Farrar in front of sceptical MPs at that time so that the best possible case could be made to them by the government's best advocate of that idea. But the point was, lockdown now reduced the case numbers, get the vaccines into arms. We really will save large numbers of life. That was the best argument they ever had. In a sense, put the argument on its head. Ask, do I think, who really thinks that it is desirable to prevent businesses operating, that it's desirable to prevent people...”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At that stage, I said the Prime Minister should sleep soundly because of the scale of the uncertainty and the death that we expected. And I considered it my duty to take that moderate and supportive tone.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think we all expected at that time really horrific levels of death and suffering. You know, I had had a call with, I forget the exact timing, but at an early stage in this, I had a call with the council. They doubled mortuary capacity and doubled it again. And then we were on the call once again talking about doubling mortuary capacity once more. We expected to run out of crematorium capacity. Muslims in my constituent were worried about being cremated, not buried, but of course the reverse was the concern that people who wanted to be cremated might have had to be buried just because we had too many bodies to deal with. That was the kind of atmosphere we faced then. And I am a conservative member of parliament, 75,000 people to represent, and I'm not at liberty to just satisfy myself.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, so I was always very sceptical, but at the beginning, you know, when we were bounced into a lockdown, I remember seeing the announcement during the debate on the Coronavirus Act, which I criticised or expressed great misgrivings about. And we were locked down during that debate.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so what we have to do is think about individuals in relationship and what does it mean to have a good relationship. So, you know, to talk about things like temperance and prudence and kindness and nobility and magnanimity. You know, the kind of virtues which our society has always been founded on at its best. And that's what conservatism should be about, preserving what's best of society, recognising that good relationships are voluntary, rather than using state power and law to coerce relationships, which is in the end, that's what the law does. It forces issues. We need to be much kinder and gentler about what we use the law to do.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, of course, it's a mischaracterization of a position. But what I would say is that when you look at the Sermon on the Mound, the famously she did, she was very pro-society, but the message really, my message is, and I think this does, she would agree with it, is that relationships are at their best and their most fulfilling and their most healthy and virtuous when they're voluntary.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that's right. That is true. It is heading in the opposite direction. I suppose that I recognize that the party's always had a broad spectrum of people, sort of high Tories, traditionalists, people who preserve the institutions just because they're there, and people like me who are sort of radical liberals without home. And we've ended up migrating progressively into the Conservative Party. You know, I've always recognized it's a broad church, and I'm willing to compromise and build consensus. You mentioned Conservative Way forward, and people may have seen a clip I put out about that. I'm trying to define a new terrain. We can't reheat conservatism. We need to be much more relational, much more aware of community and people's place in society in relationship. And so, you know, I'm going to confound people who think we're just reinventing Thatcherism. That's not what we'll do.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The sheer scale of spending and intervention in people's lives. You know, Boris did at one point promise to be a Brexity Hezzer, and after Michael Hesseltine, and that really is where he is. He's a power politician. People regard him as a libertarian. I've never thought of him as a philosophical libertarian. He's definitely likes his freedom, but he's not a philosophical libertarian. I think that he and Dominic Cummings had the approach post-Brexit of spending an enormous amount of money to pump prime the economy, to spend money on science, basic science, on infrastructure, a big boost of investment to reset the country. I think that's what his plan was. And I think one of the problems he's got is the money's been spent on COVID responses. But Boris is an interventionist, he's a power politician, he's led by polls. He likes to promise big, dramatic things and then provide them. That's all very expensive. And I don't think it's quite matches the times that we face, but perhaps you'll ask me about that.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, it's difficult for me to say that I'm not because, as you say, I'm a skydiver, a fast motor, well, I ride fast motorcycles within the law, of course. I've previously was a fast catamaran sailor. I suppose what I like to do is big, exciting, dangerous things, but keep the risks under control. That's what I think I find satisfaction in, doing things which are thrilling, but containing the risk and succeeding. And I suppose that's one of the themes of my life. I do like excitement. I get bored quickly and I like to do thrilling things, you know.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nick, I don't go slamming into the ground. No, I mean, no, I'm a free fall skydiver, yes, but you normally deploy the parachute about 3,000 feet.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, it's his humour, and I know humour is always risky, particularly when it's quoted back to you on an interview. But look, in the Royal Air Force, whenever you went on an operation or an exercise, the Kit packing list would always say bring your sense of humour because stuff goes wrong, stuff is stressful, you've got to get through difficult circumstances. And I have always believed that when times are at their toughest and most difficult, mobilizing and motivating people, keeping the troops going in times of difficulty requires a sense of humour and a sense of perspective, and that's really what that quote was about.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't, I'm not a combative person, this is the irony, and people said it to me when I came into politics I'm an introverted person who doesn't like conflict, but I'm afraid there are some things which I find intolerable and people keep doing things I find intolerable. And I suppose, you know, it's rage against injustice and rage against suffering. You know, we look about COVID stuff. It's not an imprinci. The main motivating factor is not just a mere in-principle desire to be free. The main motivating factor is people are suffering terribly from the collateral damage, from restrictions on them being able to, for example, see their wife for 50 years in the care home before she died, to recall one story. So that's the animating force really, not some mere principle.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, politics has always got to be about compromise. I think if you only had people in politics with a radical zeal that could never know compromise, you'd just constantly have a series of revolutions. So, you know, I am willing to compromise. And of course, on the big issues where I've taken a stand, I can see why people would say was uncompromising, but that's because I've taken the stand on an issue. But even on Brexit, in the end, I compromised, as I remember discussing with you on the Today program. But day after day after day, I need to look at measures and say, well, I'm just going to support the government. You know, I've got some concerns, for example, about the way protests will be policed. But in the end, I'm going to support the relevant bill.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Blackmails are a very big allegation. My attitude is that I won't tolerate anything like that, that I have always found that if one makes oneself an immovable object, then the whips do not try and apply irresistible force. I think I've tested that proposition almost to destruction during the Brexit years. But my advice to MPs is do what you know to be right and stand by it. And if somebody threatens you in a way which you consider improper, then tell them so, and take appropriate action. I do believe it's up to all of us as members of Parliament to think carefully about how we conduct ourselves. I mean, a lot of people don't want our leadership, but nevertheless we are leaders of our society, and we should conduct ourselves unimpeachably, and I try to, we all fall sure, I don't doubt I've made mistakes, and people will criticise, of course, but I think every last member of Parliament is under a duty to behave with integrity, as Perl Nolan principles of public life, and that's what they should do.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm not aware of the specific evidence on which Will is relying, and he would have to speak to that. But if I were to tell your listeners the story of in the 2010 Parliament when I'd not long been elected, I watched a new MP, a young lady walking down the corridor. We happened to all be in the corridor. She was there with her whip. And the conversation I heard was, well, I don't really want to vote for this.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things that is wrong with politics and has been wrong for a long time, one of the things which I think corrupts democracy is where people don't take seriously the set of rules that we're under an obligation to follow. So, for example, the Nolan principles. So we should, in a nutshell, be first doing what is right. I do recognise that some people put the political calculation ahead of the law and the ethics, but actually in a situation like this, I'm not willing to. We must the law comes first, the ministerial code, as it were second, because it's not actually law, and then other moral considerations. But if in the end this is a political decision, then I'll make a political calculation. But I think it will be first and foremost not a political question. Not everything's politics, right?”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I would imagine that Sue Grey will keep herself to the facts and in the end not do the political judgments for MPs. That would be what I expected. My heart goes out to her because she's only human too, and as you say, I've met her a number of times while I was a minister. I've enormous respect for her. I consider her incorruptible, and I would expect that she will do a very professional job that she will be proud of. But I actually would expect her to stop short of making the political judgments. I think she'll look at the facts. But as you say, she's a civil servant. You know, this is not an investigation by a judge or a QC or the police, and it is an invidious position to be put in, and it should never have arisen. And the public are rightly furious and would have him go on already. So at the moment, you know, there are some people in Wickham insisting that I'm a support Boris Johnson, but they are vastly outnumbered. And so, once again, you know, difficult decisions.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I suppose to respect your listeners, I give the true answer. The true answer is we're all only human. And to stand in the midst of such a maelstrom where you're trying to remove a prime minister is a great and terrible experience, and it just doesn't have to be me every time. It just doesn't. You know, I am a backbench member of parliament. I have one vote in a leadership confidence vote like I do in the House of Commons. And I am not under a duty to be the leader of every insurrection. And I don't especially enjoy the conflict. I've done it once before and really, honestly, at the moment, I'm looking to the cabinet for leadership. We're talking about alleged serious breaches of the ministerial code. possibly the law possibly the Nolan principles of public life and really there are some proper grown-ups who are supposed to be leaders of our country in the cabinet I would quite like them to rise to this moment you know I am a humble backbencher I don't have any power in these matters apart from my one vote”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I'm very clear that if he's broken the law or lied at the dispatch box, then he must go, and so I would then act myself to that end. But I would just say, as I said before, I would much prefer that Boris Johnson was a roaring success, but that is not where we currently are. But one thing I would say, I'm not going to organise against Boris Johnson. My heart wouldn't be in it. And having been down that road once before, I really don't want to go down it again. I won't be organising against him, though.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Being pursued, hounded out of office, I think, by probably by a former disgruntled employee, that creates an extraordinary set of circumstances, and here we are. So, you know, we're looking forward to Sue Gray's report. We'll take a judgment after that.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm very clear that I won't allow myself to substitute politics where law and ethics should be, so if the Prime Minister lied at the dispatch box, if the Prime Minister broke the law, if the Prime Minister positively acquiesced in the breaking of law, then he simply must go. I think if we'd reached a set of circumstances like this with a chief executive of a company or a major leader of a public institution subject to select committee scrutiny, I honestly don't think they'd be in post by now, but we're in an extraordinary set of circumstances with the Prime Minister and particularly with the Prime Minister.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's a sorry situation we're in. I'm appalled that we've reached this position. We didn't make Boris Johnson Prime Minister for his meticulous grasp of tedious rules, but this is appalling and the public are rightly furious. So at the moment, I'm afraid it does look like checkmate, but whether he can save himself, we'll see. Yeah, I feel a bit like we're all looking at the chessboard and you know how it goes. You check, check, check, check, mate. And then people are all looking at the board unless they're grandmasters and saying, well, is it over? And I think that's sort of where we are. It probably is checkmate and we're all waiting for Sue Gray's report at the moment.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nick, thank you very much indeed for having me on and giving me that terrifying introduction. I was very nervous on the first one we did, and I'm slightly worried about what you'll ask me this time, but the last podcast was a great success, so thank you for it, and thank you to everybody who's listened to it.”
2019-04-12 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Steve Baker One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source