The Rest Is Politics: Hancock’s humiliation and the end for Johnson

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Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Rest is Politics with me, Alistair Campbell.

And with me, Rory Stewart. And Alistair, I thought you were going to be sitting in a

nightclub in Soho, but you seem to be back at your home.

I'm back home. Yeah, the Soho studio was not tempting enough. I'm doing this from home.

And you are in Malawi and by the sounds of it with not very pleasant weather.

It's an unbelievable tropical thunderstorm. Although when I checked into this hotel, I

was told that I'm in the very bedroom in which your friend Tony Blair stays when he

comes to Malawi, which makes me feel very privileged. But it is an incredible tropical

thunderstorm. I mean, you might be able to hear at the back of the podcast, but the heavens

have opened and it is just crashing down. And I hope that doesn't interfere too much

with the internet. Now, you wanted to start us off on a number of things. Quick thing

though, firstly, which is we managed to sell out Harrogate, which was exciting, very, very

exciting. And although apologies to people who didn't get tickets, middle of May, many

apologies. Some people got on, I think, one minute after the ticket sales opened and couldn't

get tickets. But the good news is, I think that we're going to be doing some other things

in other parts of the country.

We will doubtless be doing that. And I think also, the other day, I was up in Scotland

at Stirling University, I was doing a lecture, the Andrew John Williamson Memorial lecture,

which you had done before. And so had other luminaries such as Joe Grimmond, remember Joe

Grimmond? Oh, Joe Grimmond, great liberal figure, yeah.

Yeah, Nicholas Sturgeon, Malcolm Rifkin, Charles Kennedy, George Robertson, Paddy Ashton, Edward

Heath, Geoffrey Howe. You and I are now on that illustrious list. But anyway, the point

I was going to make was it was chaired by Jim Nochte, the journalist and broadcaster.

I was sitting next to his wife, the writer, Eleanor Updale at the dinner. And she said

she has listened to every episode of our podcast, sometimes more than once. And she enjoys

them best when there is no gap. She loved the emergency podcast, and she doesn't like

it when we record early. And it's a few days before it comes out. So I think we should

tell her that because of your and my logistical issues through the week, we are doing this

today, Sunday. So sorry, Ellie, it will be a few days gap. But for that reason, we're

going to look at a few timeless things in the second half, including I know Rory, you

want to talk about global poverty. And I want to talk about Shamima Begum having watched

the BBC documentary this week.

Right. But what we can't avoid starting with is your favourite man, the former health secretary

and star of I'm a celebrity, Matt Hancock, who's WhatsApp messages totaling over 100,000

WhatsApp messages. Somebody tried to calculate how many WhatsApp messages that meant he'd

sent a day sent during the COVID crisis have now been leaked by his ghostwriter, Isabel

Oakshot to the Daily Telegraph. So what was your first sense of them?

My first sense of that was what on earth was he doing trusting Isabel Oakshot with his

telephone and all of his WhatsApp messages? Isabel Oakshot, just to remind people, she's

a journalist whose track record includes the going to jail of Christopher Hewne when he

was a minister in the coalition cabinet and his wife, Vicky Price, also going to jail.

And just to remind people about that very quickly. So Chris Hewne had been speeding

and got a penalty notice from a camera and persuaded his wife, Vicky Price, who was the

senior civil servant, to take the points for him so he wouldn't lose his licence. Isabel

Oakshot revealed the story, Hewne resigned and ended up going to jail for eight months.

And then, as you said, Vicky Price herself also ended up going to jail.

Yeah. And she revealed it by essentially being a friend of Vicky Price. She got close to

Vicky Price, got the story, away she goes. She also was Kim Darakman when he was ambassador,

UK ambassador in America. She did that big story about he saying rather rude things about

Donald Trump. And also, what was the other one she did with Michael Ashcroft? I don't

think I can repeat this one because I'm very sensitive.

So Kim Darak, who was our ambassador in Washington, she produced these emails that he'd written

about Trump. So he had to resign. And then she wrote a book with Michael Ashcroft about

David Cameron, which revealed that David Cameron, she claimed had sexually assaulted

a pig while at Oxford University. So as you say, Isabel Oakshot has got an enormous number

of scoops to her name, but including having effectively forced one cabinet minister to

go to jail and the UK ambassador in the United States to have to resign. And this was the

person to whom Matt Hancock handed over his WhatsApps with an even stranger thing, which

is that she said that she was going to write his whole book for free. And he would have

known also that she was an incredibly strong opponent of his lockdown policy and had been

criticizing it openly on Twitter for almost three years. So it's a very, very odd decision

for him to think that somebody's going to want to work with you for free and not take

any advantage at all, particularly when you knew or ought to have known something about

her views.

And her modus operandi. And I know we shouldn't necessarily judge people by who their bedtime

partners are, but the fact that she's also living with the Richard Tice, the head of

reform, the UKIP replacement. I mean, there are so many alarm bells there that if you've

got the slightest judgment, I just cannot see how he gets there. So when he comes out

and starts saying it's a terrible betrayal of trust, well, yeah, but kind of what did

you expect?

I must confess, Rory, I've not bought the Daily Telegraph for decades. I can't remember

the last time I was at the Daily Telegraph, but I have, you know, I'm afraid I have gone

out the last three or four days that I have put my buddy over the couch as a yes. And

it's because partly because I just, you know, yes, it's shocking and there's lots of new

stuff in there, but actually, it sort of just confirms what we know, Johnson's hopeless

on detail, doesn't really take anything too seriously. All of them just constantly in

this sea of never ending messaging about what the line is and who's saying what and who's

up and who's down. And it's all anybody who wants to think that this government is just

a kind of chaotic shit show, then the Isabel Oak Shot messages, WhatsApp messages definitely

shows it. But you know her a bit. I mean, I'll be honest, every dealing I've ever had

with her, I wouldn't trust her an inch, but you kind of know a bit better.

I do know her and I'm quite fond of her. She started reporting on Parliament pretty much

as I came down into Parliament in 2010. She'd been a correspondent in Edinburgh before,

so we had a Scottish connection. I've always found her actually personally dealing with

her partly because we have a kind of friendship has been quite responsible and relatively,

I think, honourable in if I say to her, this is something that I'd like you to keep in

confidence she does say. She obviously comes from a very, very different political spectrum

for me and I'm a remainder. She's a Brexiteer. I was calling for a very, very early lockdown.

She was against it, so we come from very different places, but I'm quite fond of her. But I

do think even someone like me who's a front of Isabel's would say that she's a very, very

tough and ruthless journalist when she wants to be. And I thought it was extraordinary

that Matt Hancock wants to do this.

What's the biggest confidence that she is in possession of that you told her, Rory?

Well, I think luckily you don't know because she's discreet.

Oh, well, we know she's not, don't we? One of the things I'm looking forward to though

is for us to begin to see a little bit more if we can of these WhatsApp messages going

back to February. And it's a total treasure trove for a future historian because if you

want to get a sense of the personalities of the key people in Boris Johnson's Downing

Street, there's nothing like it. You can see their weird tones of voice. You can see their

rivalries. They slag off Gavin Williamson's haircut and where he goes on holiday. They

make jokes at the expense of Dominic Cummings. Cummings then makes jokes at the expense

of Hancock. In fact, the wonderful thing that we haven't quite yet got, and I think he claims

that he's deleted them, hasn't he, is Boris Johnson's own complete store of WhatsApp messages

in which I'm sure he's saying opposite things to everybody. I'm sure he's saying to Hancock

that Cummings is a whatever and saying the reverse in the other direction. So I'm sorry

that we haven't quite got all of Boris Johnson's WhatsApp messages, but what a court it is.

And horrifying for somebody like me who was brought up in a more traditional civil service

to see how the decision-making is happening because the decision-making ought to be happening

around formal cabinet tables. There should be a morning meeting every morning on COVID

where the prime minister, the health secretary, and the key scientific advisors are going

through the evidence, the daily facts, and the decisions and it should be properly minuted

and followed up instead of which what you've got. In August, so this is six months into

the COVID disaster, Boris Johnson picking up a copy of the Financial Times saying to

everyone, oh, I just read in the Financial Times that actually the mortality rate is

only 0.04% and the response is an incredible waste of time. Simon Case, who's the cabinet

secretary, meant to be running the entire government, then wastes his time, presumably

leaving meetings to do it, to send little sort of creepy messages flattering the prime

minister and trying gently to point out that he's wrong. Chief scientific advisor has to

come in, the chief medical advisor comes in, the chief of staff comes in, back and forth,

back and forth, back and forth, basically pointing out that the prime minister six months

into COVID still doesn't know the difference between 0.04% and 4%. In other words, he's

a factor of 100 times off.

To be fair to Dominic Cummings, he does point out the utter innumeracy of the then prime

minister. There is the old flash of humour coming through this thing. I actually think

that Hancock has the best line in the whole 100,000 messages of those we've seen so far

when he talks about Cummings and says, his insight is as bad as his eyesight. I think

that was moderately funny. But I think that what I find incredible is that it's not just

that there's the sort of informality and the, as you say, the kind of sicker fancy of some

of the officials and the sort of never ending kind of worry about how things are seen and

the sense of crisis and chaos and panic. Also, they ought to at least have part of their

mind thinking, anything I say or write or do in the middle of a crisis like this, at

some point, maybe required to be put out there for public scrutiny and public examination.

You just get the sense of them not being very serious. The more I look at this, though,

the happier I am that Tony Blair never had a mobile phone. That was one of the best things

we ever did was just to understand there's no such thing as a safe phone call. There's

no such thing as a safe message. So just, you know, rely on proper systems.

Well, my goodness. And also the sense that these are all men and it's a very kind of

matey, testosterone driven conversation where they're very kind of, they're sort of showing

off. They're like kids showing off. They're sort of insulting about teachers, insulting

about police officers, insulting about colleagues.

The exchanges between Gavin Williamson, who's then the education secretary and Hancock on

the teachers were just awful. A bunch of asses, you know, why don't they ever want to work?

It's sort of complete contempt for everybody else. And in the batch that's out today, Hancock

complaining about, is it Jeremy Farrow, the scientist? And, you know, this guy can't be

we sack him. Can't we get him off the radio? Why does he keep pontificating? It's all

this sort of, I don't know, it's just chest beating and it's, it's awful. It's awful.

And I think that what it shows you have the contrast between, if you go back to the blogs

and the articles I was writing at the time that they were doing these daily press conferences,

and I kept saying, you know, this is an absolute shambles and they don't know how to communicate

and there's no sense of strategy. And of course, most of the media were giving them

benefit of the doubt, partly because they're a Tory government, we've got a biased Tory

media, but also because, you know, people felt what they're in a crisis, give them the benefit

of the doubt. I think what this stuff does is just show they don't deserve any benefit

of the doubt whatsoever. This was an absolute shambles. And the egos, honestly, you've got

this whole thing. So you've got the middle of a pandemic. And Matt Hancock has this

long discussion about whether he should get himself photographed in the surf with his

shirt off. And another one about, you know, when he's sort of jumping a fence, he's like,

fuck, I look good. I mean, just grow up.

It's very weird, isn't it? I'm going to be very interested if they get round to publishing

the WhatsApps from February and early March in 2020, because that was the really critical

time. That's when COVID first arrived in Britain. And do you remember it had hit Italy two weeks

before it hit Britain? So there was every reason for the government to be acting and

they were very, very slow to act. And I think we know now that that's because Boris Johnson

instinctively wanted in his words to take it on the chin. And that's when they were

playing around with ideas like herd immunity and whether you could just let it go through

the population before they really took on board. I think that the impact that that would

have not just on the elderly, but on the NHS. And it was an amazing revelation for me because

I was very, very early out at the end of February saying that we should do an immediate lockdown

and try to get ahead of the game before it before it hit us.

And I was so struck. And for some reason, the WhatsApp messages and text messages on

my phone from Matt Hancock seem to disappear. But I've recorded some of them and they, you're

absolutely right. They show somebody who is incredibly vulnerable and thin skinned criticism.

And I found as you know, at that stage, I wasn't any longer in the cabinet. I wasn't

even a member of parliament anymore. But the amount of anxiety they put into trying to

fight against me, they tried to rubbish my suggestion that we should wear masks, for example.

And I ended up in a weird world where when they should have been concentrating on managing

the pandemic, I had the cabinet secretary calling me late on a Sunday evening. I had Chris Witte

spending an hour on the phone with me. I had Matt Hancock sending message after message.

And I imagine the same probably was true for Jeremy Farah and probably Piers Morgan and

probably anybody else that they were worried was interrupting the narrative they were trying

to get across.

Well, actually Piers Morgan, his name pops up a few times in these messages, including

when he gets COVID. And there's this discussion, an advisor saying to Hancock, send him a nice

message and, you know, be the big guy in this debate. I mean, it's just the whole thing

is pathetic. And you know, the other thing I think is interesting about this is that,

as you said, the telegraph has a very anti lockdown agenda is a below shot. The journalist

has a very anti lockdown agenda. But actually, I think as a result of that, they are deliberately

missing some of the or downplaying some of the far bigger stories and scandals that are

in here.

I think, for example, the fact that Hancock saying that, you know, he and Soonak are obviously

at odds the whole time during this period, but him saying that Soonak's eat out to help

out strategy is causing a real spike in the places where it's been happening. But we're

keeping it out of the media. I think that's a bit of a scandal. And then there's the other

thing where he says that, you know, he calls it Soonak's eat out to get the virus out and

about strategy. I mean, again, just a sort of glib throwaway line, which I think if you're

in a sort of setting of black humor, which you sometimes get in a crisis, fair enough,

you'll get a bit of that. But the sense you get of this, these exchanges is that's the

sort of manner of these people all the time.

I mean, there's two problems. There's the lack of seriousness from Boris Johnson and

his immediate gang around him, sorry, by which I mean the politicians, that the sort of political

culture lacking seriousness, a kind of trivializing superficial political culture. And then there's

a story of how the British government itself does and doesn't react to crisis and how much

certainly in February and March, it's struggling to get onto a crisis footing. There's some

brilliant actually, if somebody wants to read it, we'll put it in the newsletter this week,

but there's a fantastic sort of slightly tongue in cheek, but quite darkly funny analysis

by the ex head of MI5, the security service, or sorry, maybe he's the head of the head

of GCHQ. Anyway, one of our great spy chiefs has written an analysis of how crisis handling

goes wrong in Britain, taking COVID as his launching pad. And he looks at things you

can see in those WhatsApp messages, classic psychological problems, group think, optimism

bias, reluctance to take responsibility, hoping the whole problem is going to go away, all

of that. I mean, I think as a treasure trove for historians, I think this WhatsApp stuff

is incredible because it's as though somebody has almost put a bug into number 10, it's

I've never seen anything like it really on a British equivalent to the Watergate tapes.

But it's all driven that all of those characteristics that you outlined there, they're driven by

Johnson's personality. If you have somebody at the top who's fundamentally unserious,

that it means that the serious people like Chris Witte, like Patrick Valance, who seemed

to me to be trying to deal with this in a serious grown up way, but who are ultimately,

as you say, beholden to their political masters and probably a bit careful about how they

express themselves. But it means that they are struggling all the time. They're essentially

always trying to catch up because they're being driven by political considerations.

And we should probably talk a little bit about Keir Starmer and hiring Sue Gray. But I'll

tell you one thing, if I was Keir Starmer and serious about running a serious government,

if I win the election, I wouldn't have Simon Case anywhere near the damn place. I mean,

he comes out of this really badly.

Let's just touch on that briefly, because I know you want to go on to Boris Johnson,

misleading parliament over parties. But the other big news at the beginning of the week

is that Sue Gray, who was a very, very senior civil servant, led on a lot of the government

ethics appointments, was actually somebody who David Cameron and George Oswarn were very

complimentary about. Theresa May was very complimentary about. She was a really, Sue Gray was a very

central figure in the civil service when I was a minister. And of course, was behind

the Sue Gray report, which was this report that exposed Boris Johnson's partying and

was actually directly contributed towards his resignation, has now announced that she's

going to become Keir Starmer's chief of staff. And there has been a lot of back and forth

on that. And I'd be interested in one thing, actually, before we get on to the rights wrongs

of it. One of the things that struck me about it is that it was quite poorly timed from

Labour's point of view, because it was announced at exactly the moment that this report on

Boris Johnson misleading parliament over parties came out, which allowed the Tories

to say, oh, well, you know, this shows if Sue Gray is joining Labour, that the whole thing

was the Labour stitch up. And even if that was a completely unfair claim, it absorbed

quite a lot of media time and attention for a couple of days. Would it not have been better

for them to hold back that announcement for another week?

Oh, I don't think they, as it were announced it, I think it was something that just sort

of spilled out because enough people knew about it. And obviously, because it was true,

they couldn't deny it. So I don't think this was as it were. I don't think this is when

they announced it at all. I don't think that was the plan. So I don't know the background

to any discussions that Keir has had with Sue Gray. I happen to think it's a very, very

smart appointment. Because I think Sue, she's somebody I've known for a long, long time.

She's very, very smart. She's incredibly hardworking. She knows how the machine works. She is actually,

I think, somebody of really deep integrity. I really believe that. When she was in charge

of the report, and bear in mind, Roy, the only reason she was doing that investigation,

I think she was doing it very reluctantly. I don't think she saw it as fair to her, actually,

that she was put in the position. But it was because Simon Case had to recuse himself because

he was originally going to be the one doing the investigation, had to recuse himself after

admitting that he'd been at one of these lockdown parties of which there were clearly

many. I can absolutely guarantee Sue Gray wouldn't have been any of them, because I

just think she would have known the difference between right and wrong. But my point is that

when she was in charge of that process, because I do know her quite well, I was endlessly

trying to sort of find out what she was up to, who she was interviewing, who she wasn't,

how bad it was going to be, whether it was the end for Johnson, et cetera. But even with

me, that she knows pretty well, and I've worked with very closely all the time when I was

in Downey Street, not a peep, that she's just very, very professional, diligent, hardworking.

But I think I wonder if one of the reasons why she's decided, ultimately, she is going

to try and help Keir Starmer, is because she just reached the end of her tether in terms

of dealing with the sort of governance that we've been seeing in these WhatsApp messages

and the sort of governance that we're seeing with Johnson. She was having to try to be,

Jeremy Haywood having gone, because he was sadly had died, Simon Case, I think, without

really not having the respect of the civil service, massive amount of pressure put on

Sue. And I think she's probably just decided, look, Keir Starmer looks to me like he might

be a serious Prime Minister, and I can hopefully help him.

I sympathize with all of that. And I think anyone would be so revolted and dismayed by

working for Boris Johnson's government. I do think, though, that it's tricky.

The timing is awful. There's no doubt about that.

And a very senior civil servant, and civil servants are really supposed to be apolitical.

And I'm surprised. I think she could have wasted and she could almost have been expected

to be made the Jeremy Haywood by Keir Starmer when he came in, rather than joining him in

a political capacity.

Yeah, but I do think it's, if you remember, when we were in opposition, one of the reasons

that Tony Blair hired Jonathan Powell as his Chief of Staff is because he had that direct

experience of government. And I think actually that, look, I agree, I think it should be

a terrific Cabinet Secretary. But you do need people as well who are not focused on the

campaign, but who are actually focused on thinking about the transition to government.

Jonathan Powell didn't really get that sucked into the campaign. He was focused on policy

and on government, on changes that we wanted to make as soon as we got in.

So I think, I think once this blows over, I'm really hoping that Sue doesn't take

fright at all the attention she's getting, because I know she hates being the centre

of attention and she'd load that one. Every Tory MP and minister saying, we have to wait

for Sue Gray, wait for Sue Gray. It's very funny as well, Rory. I don't know if you've

seen any of the clips of Boris Johnson's main fan club members, Jacob Rees-Mogg and

Nadine Dorries, who have been sort of, you know, slagging her off and she's this and

she's that and what have you. And lots of people have been putting together on social

media the clips when they were waiting for Sue Gray, when she was a woman of impeccable

integrity and nobody should ever doubt her credentials as a proper civil servant. So

I'm afraid what we're seeing is that the Johnson lot just has ever tried to have their cake

and eat it.

I'm loving your Jacob Rees-Mogg imitation. I never heard that before. That's particularly,

it's very, very good. Yeah. No, that was really good. I was very impressed by that. Listen,

very quickly, before we go to the break, tell us a bit about what the Privileges Committee

has done on Boris Johnson and Party H. Should we care about it? Is there anything new? What's

the story there?

Well, I think, I think what's interesting about it is that because Harriet Harman's

chairing it, Chris Bryant recused himself because he's such a very loud critic of Boris

Johnson has been for a long time. Harriet Harman's chairing it, but it's Tory dominated,

four Tory MPs, two Labour, I think one SNP. But what's interesting to me is that they've

set out really where they are in the process ahead of interviewing Boris Johnson, I think

on March the 20th. And what it goes through the whole process is a pretty damning report

for Johnson. The fact that people like Bernard Jenkins has put his name to it, I think is

quite revealing.

And we're back to our friend Mr. WhatsApp or Mrs. WhatsApp. Lots of WhatsApp messages

that they've seen of Johnson's staff basically really struggling to see how they can defend

what has happened. There's one that says, you know, this blows a gaping hole in the

Prime Minister's defence. They've listed a whole list of incidents and moments where

quotes he may have misled Parliament, which is sort of polite code for lied to Parliament,

which is the kind of, you know, end of the road for him, if they conclude with that.

So I think it strikes me that's where they're going. Johnson is clearly with these ridiculously

being paid for by the taxpayer, these expensive lawyers he's got. He is clearly going to

say that unless somebody specifically said to him, and they have the evidence of that,

which of course they won't have because it all seems to have been verbal and WhatsApp,

you know, this is a breach of the law. This is a breach of the guidelines. But the pictures,

the new pictures that have been exposed, you just have to look at them to see that he's

breaking the guidelines. So I think he's done for, I think he's finished and the sooner

he's out of our lives, the better.

Oh, very good. Well, that's a very encouraging note on which to go to our break.

Welcome back to the Restless Politics with me, Roy Stewart.

And me, Alistair Campbell.

And Alistair is being incredibly patient. I'm seeing more of Alistair that the father,

the patient father than I am, that the famous figure that inspired a whole series of comedies

in the 1990s, because he's putting up with the fact that I'm speaking from Malawi at

the moment where there's a massive tropical thunderstorm going on that keeps knocking

out our internet. But that brings me to something that I did want to talk about, which is global

poverty. Malawi is one of the very, very poorest countries in the world. And it's a country

where despite $16 billion worth of international development spend on this country in the last

15 years, the percentage of people in extreme poverty has barely moved at all. And in some

parts of Africa, Liberia, for example, the number of people in extreme poverty is actually

greater than it was a few years ago, percentage of people. And across Africa as a whole, we've

gone from 170 million people living in extreme poverty in 1980 to 470 million people living

in extreme poverty today. And by extreme poverty, we mean people living below the World Bank

poverty line of $2.15 a day. And in many cases, a long, long way below that. I mean,

I came across a woman and the Rwanda Burundi bought her recently on a trip who the only

cash she was getting was $3 a month to live on. The rest of it was just basically begging

scraps from her neighbors and trying to e-cat a living from a tiny scrapper ground in front

of her house looking after three grandchildren. Now, the reason I'm talking about that isn't

though just that I'm in Malawi, it's that I wanted to talk a little bit about why we

don't talk more about global poverty. And I wanted to just refer that back, of course,

to the great moment of live aid and the moment where that big movement to make poverty history

really started. And maybe even since you're the musical one of this duo, bring in some

of your memories of that event.

Well, I'd love to do that. As you know, I love music and love to talk about music. But just

on them, before we get into that, and we were talking briefly there about the whole, our

government's mismanagement of the pandemic, I was reading the other day that the estimation

is that people in extreme poverty has risen, the number has risen by 70 million as a result

of the pandemic.

It's just horrifying because it's that the economies of many of the poorest countries

were dependent on tourism and that collapsed. But there's other things too. It's that people

are not just to become more poor, but they couldn't get into hospitals and died in large

numbers. And it's also very sadly, many countries, one of them in Uganda, for example, is one

of many countries where effectively the schools were basically closed for two years.

So some of the very poorest people in the world who struggle to get education anyway

have lost two years of education in the last three years. And the impacts on this are going

to be seen, you know, these are long-term impacts to remove from hundreds of millions

of people, two years of their education is a very, very serious long-term impact.

Yeah. I'm going to direct anybody who's interested in extreme poverty to what I consider to be

one of the best websites in the world. And I discovered, give directly is actually mentioned

on it, but the website is ourworldendata.org. I don't know if you're aware of that one.

Yeah.

And you can put any country in the world and I actually because you told me you were going

to be in Malawi, I put Malawi in and the figures are incredible. The percentage of people living

on less than a dollar a day, 23%, less than $2.15 a day, 70%, less than $3.65, 89%, less

than $6.85, 97%, less than $10 a day, 99.11%, less than $20 a day, 99.91%. So you're talking

about if we talk about inequality between nations as opposed to within nations, the

UK figure, the figure for UK on less than $20 a day is 9.96. You look at somewhere like

India, 95% of the people living in India are living on less than $30 a day. And there's

some wonderful, I really do recommend people have a look at this. They've got some incredible

graphics and it's a guy called, you may know this guy, Matt Rosa, who's a German guy, but

he's at Oxford University, who's put this, been partly responsible for putting this thing

together. It's got some of the most extraordinary graphics where you can literally go country

by country around the world to see comparable stats on extreme poverty. And it's terrifying

because you keep saying Africa is where the really bad stuff is and this absolutely brings

that home.

It is, it is. And the big story for people who don't follow this day to day is that there

was incredible progress, particularly in China, where 700 or 800 million people have been

taken out of extreme poverty since 1980. Huge progress in India. And also in Bangladesh,

I mean, when I was born, Bangladesh was referred to openly as the basket case. It was people

thought that Bangladesh was never going to be able to get off its feet and actually Bangladesh

is well on its way to becoming a middle income country and has made huge progress in reducing

poverty. Countries like Morocco, huge progress too. But in sub-Saharan Africa, the situation

is very, very bleak across that whole region. Almost half the population, well, 40% of

the population is still in extreme poverty. And we're talking here about, you mentioned

in Imolaoui that about 70% of people are under $2.15 a day. $2.15 is what the World

Bank calculates. You really need to meet the most basic basics in your life. Put a bit

of food on the table, have some basic shelter, get the most minimal access to education and

health, and 70% of people are not meeting that level here. So I'm keen, you very kindly

offer to come with me to Imolaoui. And I'd love to bring you here because one of the

reasons I'm so excited about GiveDirectly and the cash movement is that giving people a

transfer of cash to get them on their feet is probably the most cost effective, transformatory

thing. It's extraordinary. And we talk about cash, but it's not really cash. It's what

you do with the cash. It's the way that it transforms suddenly. The kind of house you're

living in, your kid's ability to go to school, the food you can put on the table, your ability

to invest in a small business and be better off in 12 or 15 years time from a one-time

transfer.

The other thing that our world and data does, they have a, as well as having lots of kind

of interactive maps and lots and lots and lots of data and more data than you can kind

of handle, but it's very, very well presented. But they also have some deep dive essays.

It's in one of those that I saw there was a reference to Max Rosa supporting your charity

GiveDirectly. But he also makes the big point that ultimately, we do have to help these

economies grow. We can't just, it's not just about charity, this we have to help these

economies grow.

So just quickly on that one, I mean, I think it's probably about three things. I think

it's about governments and corruption, having a governing culture that's really dedicated

to development. It's about the right kind of investments in public infrastructure, roads,

bridges, dams, schools, hospitals. But it's also about including the extreme poor in that

story because some of these countries have had economic growth without really bringing

the extreme poor with them. And that I think is where NGOs and cash supporters probably

most powerful where international development support can be most powerful is getting the

extreme poor into that growth.

So live aid.

Yeah, live aid. Tell us about that.

Well, I covered live aid for the Daily Mirror. July the 13th, 1985. So I would have been

what, 28? That was a year. I was probably drinking a lot because it was a year ahead

of my kind of massive breakdown. I don't know if journalists do this anymore because they're

also sort of digital. But when Fiona and I were young journalists, we have these hundreds

of these dozens of these cuttings books and I dug them out. So I don't know if we've got

the cameras off, but I'm looking now at the Daily Mirror souvenir issue. We did a whole

wrap around. We even got rid of the sports pages, a whole wrap around. It just says the

world rocked with love. There's a picture of Mick Jagger and Tina Turner performing.

A picture of a young woman at Wembley and a young woman at Philadelphia because I don't

know if you remember, there were two live aids started at midday at Wembley in front

of 72,000 people. And then a few hours later, the concert then opened at JFK Stadium in

Philadelphia and that went until four in the morning our time. And you had most of the

big names in rock music. It was actually Boy George's idea, initially. Bob Geldof had

put together that amazing Do They Know It's Christmas got loads of stars together and Boy

George was performing at Wembley Arena at Christmas time in 1984. And there were a few

other stars there and he got a few of them up on stage. And they kind of did the song

and then he phoned Bob Geldof and said, Listen, why don't you do this? And Bob Geldof, who

I've had a lot of dealings with in lots of different different guys is once he gets

an idea, he just goes for it. You know, I can't pretend to that I've got many actual

memories of it. But the ones that I do have, I remember status quo kicking off with rocking

all over the world. I remember Paul McCartney having trouble with his microphone. I think

he was one of the few who had real sort of tech issues. I remember that, you know, he

had Queen. Queen's set, by the way, was voted the best ever live performance in 2005. Years

later, it was considered the best ever live performance. Elton John sang with with George

Michael. Bob Geldof sang his famous song, you know, don't like Mondays. Queen, I do

remember Queen, they were absolutely incredible. Phil Collins did both venues. He played at

Wembley. He then got a helicopter to Heathrow. He got on Concorde, landed and got another

helicopter to Philadelphia. And he picked up Sher. Sher was on the plane. And she didn't

know it was happening. And she took her down and she performed as well. So Phil Collins

performed at both. They reckon it raised about 150 million in the immediate aftermath. But

I think the big point, as you say, it absolutely put development on the map. And the other

guy we should give a big shout out when we talk about Live Aid is the BBC journalist

Michael Burke, because it was his report in Ethiopia that set this whole ball rolling.

And you know, you talk about events and reports that can change the world, I would argue that

Michael Burke's report changed the world. And I think Live Aid did as well.

It's amazing, isn't it? And I think credit also to Bono, who's been a huge guiding force

in the whole drive on this for 30 years now.

Bono performed at Wembley. But at that stage, he wasn't the kind of mega star that he is

now. And he wasn't, nor was he the mega figure in the development world that he is now. So

Live Aid, again, I think was a really big moment for him.

Yeah, it's, I mean, the sad thing is though, that poverty, which was the central issue

in the 80s, and was a central issue when you and Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were getting

ready for the for the big G8 summit, 2005 Glen Eagles, which was all about debt relief

and poverty. And there was a big commission on Africa that was set up. And do you remember

the Sustainable Development Goals, which put Sustainable Development Goal number one

of the United Nations is about ending extreme poverty. But that has faded out of sight.

And for somebody like me, who's working on this, it's very frustrating. And it's partly

that there are other very serious crises that we're facing. So climate change, of course,

which, but of course, as I keep trying to point out to people, you can't think about

climate change separate from poverty. It's tempting to because a lot of the solutions

to carbon emissions are not in poor countries, because the poorest countries aren't the big

emitters. That's why a lot of the money from the UN is actually being invested in China

and Indonesia and more middle income countries. But the people who suffer from it are the

extreme poor and climate change is going to add hundreds of millions more people in extreme

poverty around the world. And yet the sad thing is it's so often when I talk to people

now around the world, they say, Oh, I'm not really interested in poverty anymore. I'm

more interested in climate or I'm more interested in artificial intelligence or I'm more interested

in global health. And I think it's partly that there's a sort of sense of despair. We've

got to restore people's hope. We've got to restore their confidence that it can be tackled.

And that's why I'm a real believer in some of the things which are now happening across

Africa where we are beginning to demonstrate that we can end extreme poverty in our lifetime.

Now, the other thing I'd point to on this Max Rosa's website, this our world and data

is that there is a lot of progress on there. And there's a lot of good news and they do

some really interesting case studies over time of how change is made. But look, in the

end, this is why political leadership is so important. You know, you mentioned Tony and

Gordon, when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were in office, this issue really, really mattered.

And that meant that they took it to other governments as well. And so you need the big

countries with political leaders who say, we are going to do this stuff. And that's

why you and I both we bang on probably too much about how much we despise Boris Johnson.

But one of the reasons is, you know, getting rid of DFID and giving up on the 0.7% of GDP

on international aid and development for purely political reasons without any regard to the

long term consequence. I just think it's immoral. So I think that you're right that it's gone

backwards, but and you're right that it's partly because we've got all these other challenges.

So that's why you do need political leaders to step up. And, you know, hopefully, we press

to Kirstam and we press David Lamy, hopefully a new Labour government, if we get one, we'll

actually take this issue more seriously.

Yeah, on that also, I think there's also something which is to really be blunt with

the conscience of the left and say, if you care deeply about inequality in Britain, and

I think the progressive movement does care deeply about inequality in Britain, your

care, your compassion should not stop at your national borders, you should care deeply deeply

about people in extreme poverty all around the world and not see that as a sort of separate

issue.

We talked recently to Bernie Sanders, and he was raging about the billionaire class

and said, there's no reason for anybody to be so wealthy as a musk or a Murdoch or a

Bezos, whoever it might be. We've just been there talking about the millions and billions

of people who are living on incomes that you and I and most people that we know would find

unimaginable. And yet we're living alongside or in the same country in the same part of

the world as people who could do so much. I mean, to be fair to Bill Gates, I think

he does do a lot with his money, but the wealthy of the world could do so much. But ultimately,

I think it takes governments to have the guts to say, look, we actually need to start having

a much more progressive tax system. We have to start understanding we have responsibilities

to each other. And that includes countries that are poorer than ours. Otherwise, we just

kind of go round and round and round in circles.

Well, one of the odd things about billionaires, and I do speak to quite a lot of them when

I'm trying to fundraise for poverty in Africa, is the number of people who say that they've

signed up for this giving pledge. So they signed up to give away the vast majority of

their money during their lives, but they're not doing it. They haven't started doing it.

They keep putting it off. And they're generating, as you can imagine, if you're worth $10 billion,

you're generating just an interest payments every year, the most colossal sum of money.

And yet, they are often saying that the reason they're not spending is they claim that there's

nothing out there valuable which can absorb their money. And that's where I think...

So they buy Premier League football clubs instead.

Exactly. That actually, in a very straightforward sense, if you can't think of anything else

to do with your money, $500, given to somebody in extreme poverty, can transform their lives.

And if you're worth billions, you can do that many, many thousands of times over.

The Live Aid model, by the way, Roy, was ahead of its time because they thought to give directly.

There was lots of people trying to say that lots of it was siphoned off by the Mengistu

regime in Ethiopia. But actually, Brian Bader, who was our ambassador for a long period out

there, he actually said that the evidence of that was pretty flimsy. So what was great

about Live Aid was the combination of the fundraising, very important, but much bigger,

I think, was the political message, and also the fact that it was one of the greatest musical

events of all time. It was also at the time, the biggest and most complicated outside broadcast

that anybody ever tried. And the other, there's a list, there's quite a funny list of the

notable absentees, the ones who either couldn't get involved and want to get involved and

now regretted it. But Bruce Springsteen, for example, wasn't there. Boy George, even though

he played such a role in getting off the ground, he didn't think he was big enough,

which I think is really, really sad. Annie Lennox, Cliff Richard. But the four tops were

there, Roy. And I'm sure, like me, you're a massive four tops fan.

Well, let's now move on. But one of the things, when we get Bob Geldof on the podcast to talk

to him, I'd love to explore a little bit more his claim that this all finished in 2005 with

his Live 8 conference and why he thinks that actually the age of rock and roll has ended,

the world has changed and why he thinks it's not possible to do that kind of thing again

in the same way and have the same impact. But I suspect you wanted to tell us a little

bit about Shamima Begum and this BBC documentary that you've been watching. But make sure that

you remind readers who Shamima Begum is before you tell us about the BBC documentary.

Well, I reckon most of our listeners will have heard of Shamima Begum. If you haven't

seen the BBC documentary by a guy called Josh Baker, I strongly recommend it.

Just before you tell us about documentary, Shamima Begum was a 15 year old in Bethnal

Green who went off to join ISIS and she arrived on the Syria-Rahk border. She married an ISIS

fighter. She travelled with two other girls from Bethnal Green and she was then found after

the defeat of ISIS by a Times journalist called Anthony Lloyd who interviewed her in a refugee

camp in Syria or an ISIS detention camp in Syria. And she then had her British citizenship

stripped off her by the then Home Secretary, Saadja Javed. And there has then been a series

of court cases. The Court of Appeal said that she should get a citizenship back and then

the Supreme Court decided that the Home Secretary had acted lawfully. She shouldn't get a citizenship

back. And another thing called SIAC, which is a secret tribunal that looks at terrorists

and security cases, has also confirmed that decision. Anyway, you then watched the documentary

over to you.

That was a very, very good explanation, far better than I would have done. The final bit

to add to that in terms of the process of her case is just this week, Jonathan Hall,

who is the QC, the independent reviewer on terrorism legislation. He said that he thinks

she should be brought back. Apparently 400 people have come back. There has been no successful

attack by what is called a returner. And he also makes the point that women are far less

likely to commit acts of terrorism.

Now what I saw in the documentary, and it's a really interesting piece of film because

it's very largely based on interviews with her by this guy, Josh Baker, but also with

a lot of people involved in the story. It tells the story in a really kind of quite

compelling way. Lots of CCTV footage of her departure, interviews with people that were

involved at the time. Some politicians involved. Tim Louton is very, very critical of her

and thinks that the government's made the right decision. Interviews with her husband,

who's in jail. But the story of her, so she leaves at age 15, as you say, part of that

Bangladeshi community in Bethnal Green growing up in Britain with a very different sort of

background in terms of her family culture. Not clear really how the radicalization begins,

but she gets there. She marries within 10 days. She has three children, all of whom

die. There is a very kind of, it's not entirely clear what she actually does for ISIS. Her

argument would be that, for example, she's accused of making suicide bomb vests. She

denies that completely. She says she was most of the time just kept at home because she

became a kind of ISIS bride. Her husband was jailed at one point. He was out as a fighter.

He's Dutch, but a convert to Islam. The witnesses at war that I found the most compelling, apart

from her, it's an extraordinary interview. And when I say compelling, I mean, it's just

you can't take your eyes off her in terms of the way she speaks. She reminded me, well,

she brought to mind people that I've seen in different parts of periods of my life,

people who've been trained to resist interrogation. She's got a very, very clear way of speaking

and you find yourself one minute thinking, oh, I really believe this woman in the next

minute you think I'm being manipulated. It's like a kind of, you get drawn into trying

to make these judgments. But Anthony Lloyd, the journalist you mentioned, I found him

very, very convincing. And I think he reached the conclusion that ultimately, this isn't

just a story about her joining ISIS. It's a story of what her life was like in Britain.

It's a story of them, what she got up to. But she is actually British, and that she

ought to be brought back. And she ought to face British justice. She's obviously admitted

that she joined a terrorist organization. She's denied doing some of the things that

she's been accused of. But I think that for Sadja Javid, to say that she should essentially

spend the rest of her life stateless, the British government argued that she has Bangladeshi

status as well, but the Bangladeshi say she doesn't. So, you know, she's stateless. And

I just think she should be brought back. And if she's a risk, if she'd obviously go to

jail because she's admitted joining a terrorist organization. But I just think that the way

she's just left there now to rot, I think is wrong.

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? I mean, I remember it all very, very strongly

because I was in government at the time. And I mean, firstly, that whole ISIS phenomenon

was beyond imagining. I mean, suddenly out of nowhere, you remember in June 2014, a few

ISIS fighters, a few hundred people in pickups defeated three divisions of the Iraqi army.

So tens of thousands of men captured Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, and created

a new state between Syria and Iraq. This enormous territory ruled in the most horrifying way.

And what I remember thinking at the time was just how diverse these people were who were

going to join ISIS. There were poor people from Yemen and Morocco. There were middle-class

people from Cardiff. There were people from Denmark. There were people from France. I mean,

it was the most incredible collection of people. And it was unbelievably cruel and horrible.

You'll remember the rape and the murder of the Yazidi minorities. You'll remember them

beheadings, beheadings, the flinging of people who were gay out of buildings. And the sense

of these incredibly unpleasant young men and women, many of them European, who were living

out a kind of video game lifestyle charging up and down on these large pickup trucks with

heavy machine guns and sending weird messages on social media. A lot of this was driven

by the way they portrayed themselves on social media. They developed their own music systems.

I mean, it was a completely bizarre phenomenon of which Shamima Begum was clearly a central

part. She was very attracted by a lot of this. She's on record saying she didn't regret

the bombing in Manchester. And into the middle of this comes this other fascinating character

who somebody should be writing much more about. Who's my friend Anthony Lloyd, who I've seen

all over the world. I knew him in Afghanistan. I knew him in Iraq. I was with him in Libya.

He's an ex-British soldier and he is an incredibly courageous committed journalist. But he's

also struggled with mental health issues. He takes risks like I cannot believe. I mean,

I saw him in Libya, go down streets on the front lines where no other journalist would

go. His whole car being shot up by bullets, barely making it out alive. I mean, he's an

extraordinary figure. And we're very lucky that Anthony's still with us the way that

he's lived his life over the last few years.

Well, his interview is a very significant, I think, compelling and important part of

the program. You sort of see him. He tells a story about how he found her, the conversations

that he had. He's kept the tapes of those conversations and they play some of those

tapes. But he reaches that conclusion that ultimately she went there as a child and she

is British. And lots of people may not want to like to confront that truth. But how she

got radicalized and the mistakes that were made, some of them they go into some of the

sort of mistakes in terms of what happened at the school because one of her school friends

had gone ahead and then letters were sent to these girls and the letters were sent to

the girls but of course they didn't get through to the parents and there was no sort of follow

up on that. There's all sorts of threads to this. But it's one of those films that I sat

and watched and at the end of it, I kind of didn't quite know what I thought. But that's

why I found Anthony Lloyd's interview. Ultimately, I think I thought what he ended up thinking

which is that she clearly got involved in something she's never got involved in. She

had a horrible time when she was there. I mean, basically she got married with this guy,

this Dutch guy who was really creepy and she married him, had three children. They're all

born. They all went to full birth and they were born as children but then they died including

one of them. Three days, was born three days after Anthony Lloyd found her and so it's

a horrible story on so many levels and I just think that when you hear him talking about

it, he, as you say, a proper journalist who's really gone into it in depth and really thought

about it as opposed to the people who make all the noise, the ones that Sadja Javid was

probably listening to and Javid, there's an interview where he basically says, look,

if you knew what I knew, you wouldn't even think about allowing her back. Well, if that's

the case, share it with the public.

Well, I mean, I think we're coming to an end but I mean, I think this is where, if we want

to touch this again, where this special tribunal, the SIAC tribunal comes in because they hear

secret information which can't be released and they, of course, confirm Sadja Javid's

decision. But anyway, thank you and I will make sure when I get back to somewhere where

I can watch the BBC. It's very frustrating being abroad. You can't watch these BBC shows.

I look forward to watching it very much indeed and look forward to talking soon.

I'll see you soon.

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