YouSaid · the spoken record

William Hague

lines on the record: 43
first: 2022-08-03
most recent: 2022-08-03
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

“The quality of life for people. And that ought to inspire people to really concentrate on these things, to go into these careers. And we ought to be able to align our universities and our education system with making that exciting for people.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Vast subject. I think you have to point to the breakthroughs. Something people can understand is, again, on the medical side. If you look at artificial intelligence, I think the biggest thing happening in the world alongside climate change today is the rise of artificial intelligence. And there are great dangers in that. Weapons controlled by artificial intelligence in the future. But the upside potential, the antibiotic, the new antibiotics that can be discovered by the comprehensive understanding of proteins that AI is now generating that would have taken decades otherwise means that we are in for the greatest leaps forward in medicine in the next decade that we've ever seen in the whole history of human civilization. So, you know, think of that prize and what difference it will make.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Never underestimate our own ingenuity. And that's where innovation and making the most of that is the one bright spot in this pretty gloomy world at the moment.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And to really show people that is worthwhile. They do have to say, we will have to make sacrifices. But there's a reason for that. They have to prepare people for difficult times. But then you do have to show, you've got to show how we can get through that. And actually, the one thing to cling on to in the wave of pessimism of which Rory is part and which can easily be justified is human ingenuity is extraordinary. You know, think of the pandemic we've just been through and how rapidly vaccines were produced and totally astonishing things. And then billions of people vaccinated. And what a situation we would have been in if that hadn't been scientifically and administratively possible.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no. You have to say, well, things are bad. And actually, I do think to half agree with you. Political leaders do need to say how bad things are going to be, you know, how tough it's going to be to support Ukraine over the coming winter.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, you've got, you can't stand for election to lead a major country unless you have some optimism in it. So Rory, let me advise you that if you come to that situation, you're definitely going to have to say we can get through these problems. We can do it together. Britain can succeed”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he might well think. And that is where everybody, even though his real friends have to disabuse him of that because no one can say it worked out very well, to be hounded from office by your own party, not over policy, but over the conduct of government is something unprecedented in our country in modern times. And his friends have to say, look, that's the honest truth of what's happened. And Boris has a great gift for writing a passion for nature, a love of history. Think what a great life he could have if he just said, what's a hell with all of that politics? I'm going to do the other things that I enjoy. And he would be far less irritating to his successors. They have to try and steer him down that path, probably impossible. So they're probably doomed to have... Him causing mayhem on a regular basis.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, well, the main one that you work for. And that's going to be true, particularly of this performance point, because the Boris performance, the show is going to have to go on, right? And that is going to mean writing things and saying things. And secondly, they have to just not entertain the idea that he can come back, you know, that he should be an influential figure in the party again. I was really saying, like Theresa May when she refused to applaud Boris when he left the last PMQs. We stand out of respect for the office, but we don't applaud anymore. Just don't encourage him. And the whole party has to do that.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, I was alerting them in the column to the fact this is going to be a problem of whoever wins. Even for Liz Truss, who was loyal to Boris, I was pointing out that there aren't any prime ministers in history who've been enthusiastic about their successor.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, okay, let's take that, although many of those are very good, of course, and many states things like the ones I went to. But you also have, it's very hard to keep education up with the modern world when you think how dramatically now technology is changing and how amazingly we could revolutionize educational techniques tailored to the individual child, the individual learner, but that would mean completely reinventing the model of how you do classroom education. That's so hard that you can get it wrong. Unions would be against it, various educational experts would say it was wrong. It's a huge bureaucracy to turn around. You can see how this is very difficult, but it's the failure to tackle one or two really crucial fundamental building blocks of a more productive and society.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's very difficult because you have a lot of vested interest. You have teaching unions, for instance, who don't necessarily like radical change.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In this country, lots of governments have focused on that. Tony Blair did with Alistair. But we haven't really cracked that and it's very difficult for political. That is the key to leveling up.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think I agree with you on your criticism of politics as a performance. I suppose Trump is the ultimate case in this. But Boris Johnson had tendencies of this as well. It's a show that must go on. And that you constantly have to feed the audience with the controversy or the amusement. And that's what the focus on rather than delivery. When you think how everybody changed in the Trump administration every six months. And we've had some of that here. Again, I've been making the point this week. We've had full science ministers in three years. Well, you know, you can't deliver if you do that. So there is that. But of course, there's something else, isn't there? When you're quite right about how we've had all these think tanks and we all say what should be done. But we just haven't managed between governments to really tackle some deep-seated thing, such as education.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, maybe but it's also making government get down to nitty gritty detail I've written in my column of the Times this week about how we become a science superpower, you know, which is the slogan. But it won't be a reality unless you really get down to lots of nitty gritty about having the lab technicians, about having the best regulations in the world on artificial intelligence and other things about making the visas for scientists as affordable as in other countries. They have to really get down and master the detail in order to make a success of Brexit. And I think that's what hasn't happened yet.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. And now, so I've stayed the same. The whole political spectrum has gone past me so that I'm now a kind of in the soggy center of politics and the sort of left-wing end of the Conservative Party. Because I haven't changed. Everything's gone past me. And I think that I don't think it's going very well. I think we've lost some trade. I think we've lost quite a lot of business investment. Here I am with that Keir Starmer speech of a few weeks ago. There's no going back on it. And the question is how to make the best of it. And the surprising thing so far is we haven't done better at making the best of it.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But on the basis of my one successful slogan when I won the European elections against you guys was in Europe but not run by Europe. And that was always my position in a nutshell.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it's going very well. I was a Eurosceptic. As you know, at the time we were sparring, I was sort of Eurosceptic end of politics.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think the, well, probably not. I don't know, but probably the people of Britain would have voted against the Lisbon Treaty. That would have complicated our relations with the EU. They would have thought of some diluted treaty to pass instead. But we would then have exerted our influence within the EU. And the question of a referendum to leave or stay would never have become. So strong. So, I think it was cutting people out.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the signing up to uncontrolled immigration earlier than necessary from the new EU states ultimately created the irresistible demand on the Conservative Party to have a referendum on EU membership. If we'd had one on the Lisbon Treaty, we would never have had Brexit in the end.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I did. Yes, I was part of that assessment. Several of us are part of that assessment because I think there was a major problem in the Conservative Party as well as the rise of UKIP. I think if you think of the 2015 election, I spent much of that election in these conservative UKIP battlegrounds down the Kent coast and the East Coast of the country generally. And the Conservatives would have lost quite a few of those seats without the referendum commitment. So then they would have had a minority government with a strong UKIP contingent in Parliament. We would have ended up having a referendum. I mean, I think here I have a sort of bone to pick with, well, with either you or Tony Blair or Gordon Brown, I think the failure to have a referendum on what became the Lisbon Treaty”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And in 2014, I said, right, that's nine. So now I want to go. In one year's time, I'll do leave for the House of Commons on the way out because I want to get back to all these other things that I was doing. And not people sometimes find it hard to believe that a politician isn't just so obsessed with politics that they never want to do anything else. Some are like Glasdon or Ken Clark. Who will always carry on? But I'm not like that. I think politics is one fascinating thing in life. But it's not the only thing in life.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When Alistair had routed me successfully in that election, I discovered it wasn't the be all and end all in politics. I really loved writing books, writing newspaper columns, being back in the business world a bit, having some free time. I really enjoyed it. So when David Cameron became the leader of the Conservative Party, I thought, right, well, now we've got a sensible leader. I will offer to come back. But for 10 years, and I told him in 2005, I will give you 10 years.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, several things here. One is that very few people get out of politics and they're on their own timing on their own terms. And I always wanted to do that. But that means you have to go before almost anybody wants you to go. Secondly, I think there is some limit to how long you can do the same portfolio. And I became shadow foreign secretary back in 2005, so I had nearly five years in opposition doing the foreign policy. And then foreign secretary for slightly more than four years. So I was more than nine years into that of relentless travel. And you think, well, I'm going to lose my edge before too long. So I think there is that. The other thing we're on an entirely personal basis is when I quit as leader of the opposition.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Big a problem, which is we are heading for a confrontation with China over time. And so now we have to work out how both sides avert that.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yet now I think now, here I have to explain. I left as Foreign Secretary in 2014, and this sort of golden age with China was proclaimed after that. And actually there were a couple of sort of breaks in the coalition government being applied to total enthusiasm for China. One was me and one was Nick Clegg, actually. Nick Clegg, more on human rights grounds, and me on balance of power in Asia Pacific. I spent a lot of time as Foreign Secretary on Relations with Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, etc., Vietnam, building up our relations with the rest of the Asia-Pacific. I do think then that the government got too carried away with the China Golden Age. So I accept all of those criticisms, actually. But now, you know, now... The situation is actually much clearer, and we have a much”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On why we're trying to improve relations with Russia, well, it's not in the interest of the Western world strategically for Russia and China to be teamed up together and to have them in the same corner. And so obviously it's better on that great chessboard of geopolitics if you can separate them. Now, due to circumstances beyond our control, they are now driven together or they've come together themselves. But it was at least right to try to detach Russia from that trajectory.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I agree with that too. Of course, being friendly and trying a strategic partnership with the country does not mean you should make yourself dependent on them. And the first time I met Putin with David Cameron in the Kremlin 2011, almost the entire meeting was him trying to sell us gas. He wanted to build a pipeline to Britain. And it's understandable from his point of view. This is when the Germans were agreeing to Nord Stream 2. So I'm not in the same school all the way as Angela Merkel are here. And he had this all worked out. It was going to come down the Baltic somehow under Denmark and across the North Sea. It could draw it out. And we didn't even have to confer or look at our notes as this is not a good idea. We do want to improve relations with Russia at that point, but we were not going to make ourselves dependent on Putin's gas. So actually, we were approaching it. And the way you were just describing.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Marxist-Leninist party, control, direction, it's subjugating human rights in Hong Kong. It's building up a much bigger nuclear force. But we couldn't have assumed that 10 years ago, could we? We had to hope it was going in a direction of just like the Soviet Union, it would go in a more liberal direction, it would go politically a Gorbachev sort of direction. So we had to hope that and a lot has turned on Xi Jinping's own decisions here.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think it is possible to make a defense because just because we can look back and see what has happened doesn't mean that it was inevitable and that we could have known that this was what was going to happen. You know, history does often turn to a much greater degree, I think, than people realize outside government on the decisions of powerful individuals. Of course, there are great social and economic and demographic forces driving the world, but individuals make extraordinary decisions and turning points in history. And that's particularly true where somebody gets in sole charge of a country. So China, we can now see is going in a direction we don't like that isn't great for our interests, that isn't good for globalization, it's going in a more”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unhappy, you know, inequality growing, and then a global financial crisis and immigration taking off. And so what else were we going to offer people? And I think those of us in the sort of more in the center of center-right or center-left of politics didn't then have the compelling new thing that we were going on to. Whereas Jeremy Corbyn or Donald Trump or Nigel Farage have had some compelling new things. I wouldn't be too bleak about this, though, because notice in Britain how the main political parties have come much closer back together again. You know, their economic policies aren't that far apart. The Labour Party, you know, you had Keir Starmer on recently, wants to make a success of Brexit now. So they're actually starting to converge again, aren't they? The main political parties.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes, absolutely. We had Gordon Brown to rely on. And so the difference as well, when I listened to Tony Blair, now actually his and my views are quite similar. Both parties have changed dramatically in that time. Now, why is that? Well, again, I'm not going to harp on all the time about social media, but the means of communication have changed. That's partly facilitated populism. But then there's also been this certain emptiness, hasn't there in liberal democracy of, well, now we've done everything. You know, we've won the Cold War and we had a growing economy and we had globalization arrived at the turn of the century. So everything that we'd always wanted had happened. And yet there were still a lot of people.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yes, it is a striking change how similar we were. Of course, one of my problems against Tony Blair was now when you see it in historical perspective, we didn't disagree over that much, really. You know, it was a terrible time to be an opposition leader. I could have done with some really big disagreement. But, you know, really I was going to have taxes fractionally lower than Tony Blair and he was going to have spending a tiny bit higher. And I was against joining the euro and he wasn't going to join it anyway.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's since it's unenforceable, maybe not technically, but it's not right. It's completely against the spirit of it, which is that you go to exercise your own judgment, even if you take a party whip in a house of lords. So, no, I would strongly disapprove of anything like that, but I disapprove anyway of adding dozens more peers. This needs to have any chance of working properly. It needs to be a smaller house”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I wouldn't approve of that at all. I don't approve of adding any more lords to the law. By the way, I'm doing my bit by I've taken leave of absence from the House of Lords. This is because I'm so busy with the things I do in business and charity and writing worlds. But I don't approve of adding more at the moment to what is too big a house. But I particularly wouldn't approve of this sort of, I don't know whether it's true, but yeah, there is this rumored kind of contract where we won't vote against the party if you make us a lord. It's totally unenforceable, by the way, because when you get into the House of Lord, you're there for life and you can do what you want.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. No, well, exactly. So it's back to the same point. But I think it's incumbent upon broadcasters to try to bring that back because then, okay, not many people want to watch that. To those who do it as a far more searching scrutiny. Then you get in a lot of today's media, or even then a Hustings with the Party Faithful.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it's also, remember, often the way the politicians succeed is through those same social media channels, you know, as we in recent elections, it's really winning that war on the social media and the Facebook and so on that counts for much more. Than having some triumph in a televised debate quite a long time, let alone in Parliament. So I think social media has changed a lot of this, but we have to get back to the big... You know, the long discussion. I really wish the network channels on television would go back to having the extensive interview. Even in my day, sound really old now, I used to sit on on the record with John Humphries on a Sunday lunchtime for like fifty minutes of an interview. And party leaders don't have to subject themselves to that.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I completely agree. And this is why actually these days debate in the House of Lords for all the criticism I get is often of a higher quality than in the House of Commons because you can make a difference to the outcome. The members, a large proportion of members don't assume they're going to have to vote for their party, which is the case in the House of Commons. I think the House of Commons still has its moments, though. You were there, Rory, when I wasn't in the Brexit, those endless votes and maneuvers about Brexit through Theresa May's premiership. And there the House of Commons did recover some of its role. And you didn't always know what the outcome of a vote was going to be. So it's more in the time of big majority governments that withers away, I think.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, no, it's a huge change because remember back in the days of Disraeli or Pitt, my hero, the budget, you know, they'd present the budget for four or five hours in the House of Commons, but that was it. If you didn't hear it then, you didn't get to know what was in the budget, right? This was the explanation of it. It wasn't all repeated on some television news afterwards. And I think it's the proliferation of other news outlets. And then in particular, the rise of social media, which has reduced things to, you know, as in Twitter to the 140 characters, the 280 characters. And we need to get debate back to the longer form discussion, which is actually where you guys commit. This is where podcasts now come in. This is why I've agreed to subject myself to your scrutiny or teasing or whatever.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it's televising the House of Commons that change. I was there at the end of it not being televised. Oh, I know. Oh, people in the United States are even now if I get into a taxi in New York, though you are talking about that. Know David Cameron laughs about how somebody said in America, I love your show, which is Prime Minister's quest Can you imagine an American president subjecting themselves to this in Congress every week? They wouldn't have a chance, actually, recent presidents. But sorry, I'm off Rory's point.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that was one of the reasons actually that at least on the floor of the House of Commons we could still beat up the other side.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do we make them laugh at themselves and their own leader? So that's why I used to come up, I used to give a lot of work to these spontaneous one line. If it was having such problems with the job of London mayor, why didn't you just split the job and have Frank Dobson as his day mayor and Ken Livingston as his nightmare? And the Labour Party would Tony Blair would laugh. But as you were saying, Alice, it didn't do me any good in the long term. The general election was no different. However, think what it would have been like if I hadn't beaten. Doing that. I did at least in these days of leadership votes of no confidence, leadership challenges and so on, I did get through that four years with the Conservative Party. Solidly behind me. They didn't know what was going to happen to them, but they did stick with me.”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, I think that was quite effective. I take my hat off as in so many ways. I think that was pretty effective as a tactic because we did, you know, I used to have in mind the late John Smith. One of the labor leaders I've most admired in my life was John Smith, who when he was leader of the opposition, used to make us laugh at ourselves on the Conservative side. You know, he wants to like a neighbor's sketch about Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson in number 10-11. And we were all cracking up on the conservative side, even though we weren't meant to. And I always had him in mind when I was opposite. Tony Blair, how do I make the Labour Party with all this strength, with these four hundred MPs?”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, thank you for that. That's an interesting hello, Rory. Hello, Alistair. Great pleasure to join you. It felt pretty good when I was at the dispatch box against it because then, as you know, that was the one time, really, that I felt I was on equal terms with him, or was in my own environment, maybe on more than equal terms, because I had nothing else going for me at all, as Alistair will very well recall. And indeed, you were making it your business to make sure I never got anything going for me at all. So whenever I stepped outside the House of Commons, it was pretty hopeless. But there was this one occasion once a week I could raise morale on my own side and do what I enjoy doing anyway, and I could sense that Tony Blair, he didn't enjoy it, really, the cut and thrust of the House of Commons. He was a brilliant operator at so many things, but he didn't really...”
2022-08-03 · The Rest Is Politics · 36. William Hague on Boris Johnson, Blair, and Brexit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source