The News Agents: How Johnson's government pressured the Premier League into the Saudi takeover

This is a Global Player Original Podcast.

Back in the big time, the Champions League will return to St James's Park.

Yeah, well done Newcastle United in the Champions League at the elite of European football at the

top table. Just two years after the club was taken over by Saudi Arabia, I say that advisedly,

it was the Saudi sovereign wealth fund that bought the club and it has transformed Newcastle

United Football Club. But this is not an episode about football. It's about money, it's about

influence and it's about whether our government under Boris Johnson was straight with the public

in his dealings with Saudi Arabia and why he was so keen for the deal to go through. Welcome

to the newsagents. The newsagents. It's John. It's Emily. And when Newcastle United was bought

by Saudi Arabia, there was something rather spectacular. Watching the scenes of fans descending

on St James's Park on a Saturday afternoon in August, September, wearing their black and white

striped shirts and wearing kafir scarves wrapped around their heads to celebrate the fact that

the Saudis had taken over the club. It was a new dawn for Newcastle United. But now as they

celebrate getting into the Champions League, the questions have started to emerge and investigations

that are fascinating about what influence the British government played and maybe was forced

to play to get that deal over the line with the Premier League. This is much more than just about

football. We're going to take you to an investigation by the Athletic and in particular by one journalist

Adam Crafton who has revealed that the British government and this was at the time Boris Johnson's

government considered any failure of Saudi to take over Newcastle United to be an immediate risk to

the United Kingdom's relationship with Saudi. If you cast your mind back, it was always assumed

that Boris Johnson was going very carefully with Saudi Arabia because we had had some really

egregious human rights abuses. We had had the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, an investigative

journalist who was awkward to the Saudi regime being killed in Turkey in an embassy. We had had

multiple egregious examples of human rights abuses, gay rights abuses, women's rights abuses

in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and it was always assumed that Boris Johnson would be pretty hands

off with this deal but the revelations by Adam suggest otherwise. Yeah and just to dwell a

little bit longer without being too gruesome or sort of prurient about it, the details of what

happened with Jamal Khashoggi were really profound on global public opinion and on geopolitics

because he wasn't just killed, he was chopped up into little pieces and taken out in a sort of

little bits of bags and buried in the Istanbul countryside and then there was a CIA report,

I was in Washington at the time, which pointed the finger very much at MBS, Mohammed bin Salman,

the new crown prince over whom there was so much hope for a kind of more reforming Saudi Arabia

to emerge and it led to a period where Saudi Arabia was on the naughty step diplomatically

in world politics and people were trying to shun contact with the Saudis because of it

but behind the scenes the influence of Saudi had not diminished one little bit.

And Adam went to the foreign office to demand to see some of the correspondence that had taken

place and he did it through a Freedom of Information Act and what he discovered was

an email in June of 2020 so coming up to three years ago which had a draft note from Eddie

Lister, he was the chief strategic advisor to Boris Johnson and it was about impressing the

interests of the government as the Premier League who get a say in this finalize its

consideration of the takeover. In other words, just to translate that bluntly, the Premier League

have to sign this off and Eddie Lister on behalf of Boris Johnson wanted the Premier League to be

in no doubt how important this deal was to the government. Just to put this into a bit of historical

context, there have been many occasions in the past when Saudi Arabia have flexed their muscles

and the British government have recoiled as a result and I go back to 2007. There was then,

under the Blair government, a serious fraud office investigation into this massive multi-billion

pound arms deal involving Saudi Arabia and BAE systems and Tony Blair overrode the SFO and said

stop the investigation right now, it must go no further. I remember that and I was working on

Newsnight on that night and it broke very late in the evening and we were pretty horrified by that

decision and I still think it's pretty horrifying to say actually, you know, business has to override

all human rights but the difference I think here is he made no bones about the fact he was doing it

because the British economy was more important and there will be plenty of people who listen to

this and think yeah, you know what, I don't really care about human rights abuses, I want my football

team to do well and I don't mind the Saudis coming in. The difference is that that was not made

clear, in fact the opposite, it was deeply hushed up until a freedom of information request was

put in to explain what had been said. Well joining us now is Adam Crofton who I think it's fair to say

is our favourite investigative sports journalist on the news agents, you will have heard him before

particularly over the Qatar World Cup and Adam has been looking at the takeover of Newcastle

by this Saudi Arabian consortium and the piece you've written Adam really points to something

pretty unsavory with the role that the government, the then government, Boris Johnson's government,

was playing in making it happen. Adam, what have you found out? This has basically all come about

for us via freedom of information requests of the British government in relation to emails between

the Foreign Office and the Saudi, the British Embassy in Saudi Arabia. This was in 2020 so the

Newcastle takeover by the Saudi Public Investment Fund which is essentially the sovereign wealth

fund of Saudi Arabia, they have 80% of the club, that was completed in late 2021 but it was a really

sort of drawn out process where initially it looked like it wasn't going to happen

for all sorts of reasons and these emails appear to show, well I mean they do state these emails

between the Foreign Office say that the Newcastle takeover was judged to be the immediate threat,

the immediate risk to the relationship between Britain and Saudi Arabia which is a pretty

extraordinary thing for a football takeover to be considered at that time and even more so when

you consider that one of the big points that the Premier League has always made is that the Saudi

state is not controlling Newcastle football club because they say that the Public Investment Fund

has given assurances to say that it is separate from the state. That is extraordinary isn't it? So

if it didn't matter and Saudi were being hands off and not running the club then why does it matter

so much to the British government that it succeeds? Well quite exactly and I think that's the key

point of it and you asked why did it matter so much? I think what these emails did show was just

how important this was deemed to be to the British economy at the time because if you go back and

this might be asking everyone to go a very long way back to 2018 when Theresa May was the Prime

Minister. Theresa May and Mohammed bin Salman struck this huge investment package between it was kind

of called the British Saudi Arabian Strategic Council and it was worth around 65 billion in

mutual trade and what these emails show which hadn't been shown before was that the Public

Investment Fund itself who obviously then became the owners of Newcastle United had pledged 30

billion US dollars worth of direct investment into Britain over the next decade so from 2018 to

2028. Now what we also know is that there were these reports in the Daily Mail around the time

where everything was going wrong for Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings had left where it was said

that Mohammed bin Salman the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia had been texting Boris Johnson basically

asking basically asking for a little bit of help to get this takeover over the line and

saying that there could be economic consequences for Britain if this takeover didn't go through

and what these emails now show is that there was 30 billion US dollars on the line so some people

would say well maybe the Foreign Office and the government were kind of doing doing the right thing

in some ways in the sense of protecting that investment coming into the country but you have

to pit that against the fact both the Premier League and the government and Boris Johnson himself

during the parliamentary question and answer session have always denied that the government

had enrolled in the takeover. So Adam just talk us through the other parties involved you mentioned

the Premier League because this deal also needed their sign off. Yeah and this is where it becomes

sort of even more complicated because when people talk about Saudi Arabia people talk about this term

sports washing or they talk about the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi or the treatment of LGBT people

or women in Saudi Arabia that was all absolutely irrelevant to why this takeover wasn't happening.

The reason this takeover wasn't happening is because the only regulatory block at the time

that the Premier League would be able to impose however distasteful any of what I just said

maybe was whether the Saudi government at the time was involved in piracy of the Premier League

and this all goes back to the sort of the the gulf tensions between Qatar and Saudi Arabia

between kind of 2017 and 2021 when Qatar became the subjects were blockade by its

neighbors and Saudi were at the heart of that and the Qataris have this big sports broadcaster

called being sport and they had the rights they were the rights holders for the Premier League

in the region and all of a sudden this channel sprang up in Saudi Arabia and around the world

really and particularly in the gulf called be out cue and it looked a lot like being sport

and the Qataris were convinced the Saudis were behind it the World Trade Organization

never sort of said strongly that the Saudis were behind it but they certainly said

the Saudis weren't doing enough to challenge it and that was what the roadblock was in terms

of this takeover being able to happen because you can't take over a Premier League club

if you are possibly pirating the content just to sort of jump to the point where

the Premier League approved this Saudi led PIF led takeover because they said that they'd received

legally binding assurances that the Saudi state would not have control of the club now we know

the PIF the public investment fund is chaired by Saudis crown prince right what our listeners will

understand now is the tentacles between the state and by the state we mean both the royal family

and the politicians and the money and the club now are absolutely interwoven there is no room to

say that's the football part and that's the you know investment part is there not really I mean

the difficult thing is the Premier League has never opened up a new castle have never opened

up about what these legally binding assurances mean under Premier League regulations that there

are no rules to say that a state cannot in effect shadow director football club so

actually there's nothing from a regulatory point of view however sort of you can talk forever about

the moral debate the ethical debate about it so it of course it requires a little bit of a

suspension of what's straight in front of you right you look at the composition of the board of

PIF you see the chair you see the Saudi crown prince you see government ministers you see the

chair of Saudi Aramco the state-owned oil company Yassir al-Mayan is the chairman of Newcastle United

he was on the pitch last night as the team finished in the Champions League opening up his blazer and

it was like a black and white blazer I mean it's in many ways it's incredible does any of it matter

do we care who owns our football club whether it's an american billionaire who comes in and

buys Chelsea whether my club is someone who sort of lives off on a yacht somewhere in the Caribbean

whatever does it matter that it's the Saudis who bought it all are we seeing countries taking over

football clubs just like the UAE is Manchester City Saudi Arabia is Newcastle United and if the

Qatar is a successful Manchester United becomes Qatar it is kind of a matter isn't it for each

and every football fan you know I spoke to a Manchester United fan a couple of months ago

and this is this is someone who is a pretty smart intelligent guy he's worked around government

and he just said to me well to me football is like my escape on a Saturday and all I want is

Manchester United to win a game and have the best players and I could not care less about the rest of

it other people will take a completely different view they'll take the view that by having states

back a club it kind of creates this competitive imbalance in relation I suppose to this story

it all kind of goes back to how straight Boris Johnson was being with people at certain times

again in terms of telling parliament at that time that there isn't there was no role for the

British government in this but at the same time you know these emails showed draft notes from

Sir Eddie Lister who was his chief strategic advisor saying that he needed to have a inverted

common senior interlocutor to impress the interests of the government onto the Premier League

as they finalised the takeover. Adam what I love about your journalism is that when we heard that

Newcastle United had got through to the Champions League last night little did we think we could

discuss Boris Johnson's honesty as part of that story and yet we are. We are and I think the other

question Adam I suppose is why Saudi for example wants to be involved in an English Premier League

club and presumably it's because there is some political leverage that we can't be saying yes

we love Saudi Arabia when it comes to football but we're actually going to take a really strong

line with them on other issues on Khashoggi as you were mentioning on arms deals on Yemen I mean

isn't that the point that it stops the British government from having the teeth on other questions

if they're sewn into the fabric of British cultural life. Yeah I think that's a fair point I think

we're also seeing I mean you can see this in the States to a certain extent particularly in the

tech industry at the moment the Saudis are sort of slowly but surely being welcomed back in Saudi

funds are becoming more and more I suppose palatable after obviously everyone's kind of went off them

for a couple of years after the Khashoggi incident to put it to put it mildly and I think we have

to be careful sometimes around because I think sometimes we look at all these different Gulf

states and we just sort of say they're all in it for the same reasons it's all about soft power and

or it's all about sports washing and cleansing an image I think there's different things going on

so I think you know Qatar for example as I said has been the subject of this blockade by its neighbors

and had been very very concerned that it's not always hard countries speaking up for it when it

needed it particularly during that blockade and particularly when Trump was the president of

the United States and one of their views is well if if we take over Manchester United and

they've already got Paris Sandra Mann then maybe that people will be more inclined to take note

if Qatar's in a bit of trouble at the same time I think the Saudi strategy is maybe more double

prong to a certain extent because you do have this huge conflict in Saudi Arabia around a real

opening up of society and the economy on a kind of sports and entertainment level I would say

you know clearly there are plenty of women gay people in Saudi Arabia who would say that is not

happening anywhere fast or dynamically enough but in terms of rights and freedoms and also anyone

who criticizes MBS has a very different response that I think there are these kind of you know

live music which would have been unheard of 15 years ago in Saudi Arabia you have

driving driving right women driving so that's one aspect of it and then the other aspect of it is

Saudi Arabia in the past couple of years became a pariah state for some people and what better way

of cleansing that image around Khashoggi than having a part of the country in Newcastle that

certainly I think perceives itself to have been neglected for quite a long time by what they would

consider to be London-centric British governments to have all this investment going in to be proud

of their football team after Mike Ashley had been the owner previously and all of a sudden you

have people who are pretty sympathetic and not just sympathetic but kind of cheerleading to a

certain extent for the Saudis and it's uncomfortable but you can also understand I suppose the football

fans who just go there on a Saturday all of a sudden after years of being really quite mediocre

are going into the Champions League and they're kind of thrilled about it. Absolutely fascinating

Adam thank you so much for explaining that because I think it's such a fascinating story

to listen to thank you so much. Oh no thank you for having me. Take care, bye.

I guess it's not just Saudi Arabia it's not just Newcastle we know that plenty of Middle Eastern

countries are now investing in not just the English Premier League but also in Paris Saint-Germain

and further afield as well but if you take Manchester City who's owned by Abu Dhabi you

take this bid now for Manchester United as Adam was talking about which could be the Qataris

you take Saudi Arabia Newcastle you can't quite work out whether you're talking about

football or nation-states at this point and I also think it tells us something very important

about the role Saudi wants to play in world diplomacy now yes they want sports washing

yes they want to be part of the British cultural heritage English football all the rest of it

but if you look at what they're doing closer to home as well they have been the ones that are now

trying to lead the pack to get for example Bashar al-Assad of Syria back into the fold I mean

they've been at war with him in the civil war for 10 years they were arming the rebels trying to

overthrow him and now suddenly they've decided actually you know we want to be the diplomats

we want to be the people bring them around the table Saudi wants I think a much bigger role

in global affairs right now not China not India not America but not that far behind look you look

at the most egregious moment in American history since Pearl Harbor 9 11 and the involvement of

kind of various Saudi nationals in that plot and George W. Bush still felt a need to tread

incredibly carefully in so far as Saudi Arabia is concerned that was then and it was the biggest

geopolitical issue and it was the biggest threat so Saudi Arabia's power and influence is really

extensive and it I mean maybe that goes without saying but even down to a British government

seemingly wanting to strong arm the Premier League to say you've got to let you've got to

let the Saudis you've got to let them buy Newcastle United you can't stop them that is how far that

influence spreads and that is how Saudi Arabia is presenting itself with this soft power as well

as hard power to the world quiz question for you oh go which country in the world has the greatest

oil reserves you see I was going to say with the the greatest sovereign wealth fund is Norway

the greatest oil reserves you're probably going to tell me it's Venezuela

I am going to tell you it's Venezuela you're meant to say Saudi but it is in fact Venezuela

but I suppose that is not insignificant because if Venezuela is now completely out of the global

mix nobody's trading with Venezuela they're not getting the oil at the ground now nobody's able

to use that economy to their advantage then there's even more pressure right and we're

not talking to Russia there's no gas there what happened as soon as the invasion of Ukraine

happened Boris Johnson took himself off to Saudi because suddenly your enemy's enemy is your mate

again yeah and that is why I've went on two trips to Saudi Arabia once with Obama and once with

Trump and you go out of your way to try and be on good terms with them and Lewis will be here in a

minute and we'll be talking suella amongst other things speedy sue speedy sue

this is the news agents

welcome back and Lewis is here dog tooth good all yeah dog tooth's coming in later

I mean he's wearing a very smart slightly spivvy dog tooth

very smart and spivvy talk about giving with one hand and taking away for the other that was pure

mateless yeah that was mateless yeah my ego continues to grow week after week working with you

dear I'll tell you what you decide we'll put the clip up you decide anyway I'm all I'm all up to date

with football you don't know anything about football that's that's what you wanted to talk to me about

no we don't want to talk to you about football but I've I've learned all about it no we're

going to talk to you about suella brotherman oh go give us your one football fact that you'd

like to get off your chest my one football fact my one football fact is we've only ever won the

world cup under a Labour government in this country that doesn't count I'm going to give you a really

good one Lewis Goodall yeah it was in 2006 the protests outside the Thai parliament as an in

Thailand yes we're all done with protesters in blue and white light blue and white why

because the then prime minister owned Manchester City or had a connection to

Manchester City taxing cinema had a connection very good this is why you want me on the pub

quiz it's why I want you on the pub cars yeah well the jury's still out particularly with this suit

anyway we want to talk about suella yeah I mean I don't think she's in the clear

no she's not in the clear and there is I think a feeling that

it feels like a death by a thousand cuts with her at the moment the independent have just

published a story which again in and of itself is not necessarily the biggest story but it is

just another example of perhaps her not being quite as rigorous as she ought to be with the rules

in this case that she did not declare a connection of previous employment with the Rwandan government

at some point before she became a minister her special advisers her team saying that she

didn't need to because it's a charitable thing rather than an employment thing other people

disagree but anyway the point is is that it is just another example of how quite frankly someone

is clearly out together I mean the one thing we can see is that there is a series of stories being

leaked from either within the home office or within government there is a target on her back

hang on hang on this could be murder on the oratory express where it is not just one person

who's out to get her it's collective endeavour well I was going to say if you look at the stuff

coming out from the Labour Party whether it's the vet cooper or whether it's Angela Rayner saying

when are our basic questions going to be answered and you look at what's happening I think inside

or around cabinet as well you wonder if they're not all on the same side I mean they all want to

see the back of Suella now don't they well yesterday we had on the podcast a former minister who was

kind of expressing the view without ever saying Suella but it was clear that that's who he was

talking about about the you know mislead she meant people should exactly people must exactly

I spoke last night to someone who's in the cabinet who was saying that as he understands it not only

did she approach civil servants when she didn't get the answer she wanted she got her special

advisers to approach civil servants that he thought it was a breach of the ministerial code

but wasn't convinced that Rishi would force her to walk the plank but the suggestion was that if

she did walk the plank he didn't believe that there were that many Suella supporters who would

rally to her side and he also said look if you look at the local council election results the idea

that the reason we did so badly and lost so many votes to liberal democrats and greens was because

we weren't right wing enough is just fanciful nonsense yeah look I think there is quite a

lot of kind of fever talk at the moment about the prospects of Braverman walking out and then

leading some sort of revolt against you know we shouldn't forget that Braverman got only just

north of 30 35 votes when she stood for leadership from MPs right she is not a deeply popular figure

amongst MPs yes she's becoming the standard bearer of the right but even within the right of the party

there are those who have you know big question marks about her electability her likability which

according to all the polls is sub zero substantially below sub zero and that she is an abrasive

character she is a character who doesn't necessarily have an enormous legion of fans within the

parliamentary party she has some she has some support but in the main I mean we saw it kind of

epitomized by Buckland yesterday most MPs the MPs who still intend to stay in parliament we could

talk about that but the MPs who intend to stay in parliament the general feeling is at the moment

that Liz Sunak or bust and everything else that goes alongside it people who are you know sounding

off sort of making noises about the sort of post-election period are deeply unhelpful I do

think it's interesting to watch Rishi Sunak's moves because once again he's worked out a formula for

this whether Zahawi the firing of Nadim Zahawi the firing of Dominic Raab he does it all by the

book nobody could ever accuse him of being knee jerk or sort of Johnsonian in his sort of randomness

he gets the report he gets the ethics advisor he makes sure it's quick he'll sit on it a day

and then he'll decide what to do and I'm not really sure that as we said yesterday there

was anything in the original offence that would ever lead Rishi Sunak to get rid of his home

secretary so I think you have to assume that if it does lead to that he has been emboldened by

something and I wonder whether he's emboldened not least by the new set of polls that we've seen

today which is that he's doing all right actually as a leader as a personality he's doing okay

against Kier Starmer they're pretty much neck and neck but the parties are not so is he now

realizing as Theresa May did so many years ago he has to detoxify part of the party if he wants

a tool to be in the running for the next one one of the interesting indicators when you get polling

is the headline figure of what percentage of voters would say they'll vote conservative what

percentage say they'll vote Labour what percentage Liberal Democrat but then you've got favourability

ratings of the leaders and favourability is also a very good guide to how people are going to vote

on on favourability Rishi Sunak is doing way better than the Conservative Party and polling

pretty neck and neck with Kier Starmer yeah although the same point there's this polling

out from Ipsos today the one thing that is clear from that is that however good or bad Sunak's

polling is and it's definitely better than the Conservative Party is he is probably the best

asset that they have nonetheless the number of people who think or the number of the electorate

who think it is time for a change eight out of ten now thinking that it's time for a change the

Labour Party's polling whilst not being brilliant there are some question marks going through the

polling about whether or not they are ready for government but nonetheless the hostility to the

Labour Party which was sky high in 2019 has declined substantially and they are receiving

that hearing so I think if you put all that together with Starmer with the Tory party ratings

through the floor Labour's all right Starmer and Sunak about Nip and Tuck about who would

be the best Prime Minister you've got to say you'd prefer to be the Labour Party in that situation

because all other things being equal if it's a change election at our 2010

that is only for momentum for the Labour Party and we'll be back in a moment

welcome back and we should talk about Dominic Robb who has just announced he's stepping down

at the next election he's sitting on a pretty marginal seat of 2730 I think the Lib Dems think

that they can take that as an easy scalp but that's not why he's stepping down he's doing it because

he's become concerned for his family of course I've never heard that so what I want to spend more

time with my family he made it up yeah it's a new one yeah he is I mean Robb of course now is not

the only one and this is another sort of indicator about which way the winds are blowing right I

think Robb was the 37th or 38th there was another one even last night the MP for Ludlow for Lib Dunne

and what is notable about this is that you're seeing it from all wings of the party look I mean

there are always MPs who stand down every election usually you know they've had enough they're sort

of getting to retirement age sometimes if they're a bit younger they think they might have a sort

of second bite of another career but the numbers of the Conservatives at this stage deciding to

stand down the fact that it is from all wings of the party from left to right and from all

intakes as well I mean normally you would expect yeah people who maybe were first elected in 2001

2005 they've done 20 years between standing down but we're seeing people who were elected in 2019

decide to stand down and we're at the point now where the Labour Party has now selected the bulk

of their candidates for the next election Conservative party are nowhere near that so they're

going to really struggle to try and find credible candidates if they people think it's going to be

a washout they are not going to want to spend the next day 12 months to 18 months pounding the pavements

for in a seat like Esha for example Dominic Robsi when you just think what on earth is the

point the Lib Dems are going to take this with a 5000 majority or even more the other thing to add

into the mix as well which is crystallising some MPs minds is the boundary review so the boundary

review we're finally having a change in the boundaries and lots of this means you know this is done

by the electoral commission to account for population shifts and constituencies they've

abolished some constituencies they've combined others basically MPs find their constituency

potentially disappear from under their feet and that means that sometimes they have to apply for

whole new seats and go up against their parliamentary colleagues the party will normally try and

accommodate that but if you combine the fact that Tories are still not really looking at the recovery

the boundary commission as well and the general kind of pace of politics at the moment you pull

all that together and you see scores of Conservative MPs stand down before the next election I think

there's something else as well is which is that they don't know what direction the Conservative

party will go in after this so if they're in opposition they don't know whether it's a sort of

rishy centre-right party or if it is and I know we've talked about as well and not having the

numbers but if it does kind of veer off to something which looks more like a UKIP party or you've got

now the national Conservatives now you've got the grassroots Conservatives now you've got the new

Conservatives you're kind of stuck there right as an MP thinking well do I just kind of keep my head

down and do my constituency surgeries and all the rest of it not really knowing the shape or the form

or the feel that this party would have in opposition after 14 years well she might I mean she might not

have the numbers now but you could absolutely see a situation if the next election is a wipe out for

the Tory party what tends to happen then if say if the Conservative party is reduced to you know

200 seats or fewer than that what tends to happen is the MPs with the safest seats by definition

remain they tend to be not always but they tend to be the most ideologically extreme we saw this

with a Conservative party after 1997 you can absolutely see a credible path to someone like

Braverman getting into the final two of a Conservative party leadership race in an election in a

parliamentary Conservative party which has been reduced to a rump it becomes much easier for them

to do so and if you look at the sort of it does come from all wings of the party but if you look

at some of the MPs who are standing down people like Sajid Javed you know these people who are in

the more sort of moderate wing of the party the question then has to become who becomes a standard

bearer for that wing of the party after that election and you know it really isn't clear to see so I

think you know Braverman short-term political prospects quite poor I would say medium to long

term prospects potentially quite good it's interesting isn't it that on the podcast in the past week we've

had Matt Hancock on Robert Buckland on both making very similar arguments saying why is no one standing

up for the centre right in Conservative politics why is all the running being made by the noisier

right-wing fringe which is probably better organised and has probably got funding and

is making a lot of the running in this which I think is probably even more disconcerting

for the people you're talking about who have decided you know what I've had fun here on the

green leather benches but there's a life outside Westminster well I think what's extraordinary

really is you can see someone like Sajid Javed or Rob the acceleration of entire political careers

which has taken place now or the fact that there is now condensed into so many fewer years you

know years gone by you would see cabinet ministers and MPs you know they'd stay in the house for

decades and their career would take you know they'd spend years just working up to be a junior

shadow or junior minister and then eventually get into the cabinet and it was a sort of

culmination sometimes for decades long journey now it can happen in almost no time whatsoever it can

go from genesis to triumph to downfall in a matter of months or years and so then you're seeing

people like that just think there's no way back or at least there's no way back that I want to see

and in a way just sort of illustrating that Sky News calculated this but they said that the first

or dozen or so conservatives to quit their average age was 49 and you compare that to labour that's

69 so that's just a sort of a little indicator of where the political winds are blowing and the

fact that so many conservative MPs are thinking look we've had our run this has been 13 14 years

we're looking at least five years in the opposition everyone knows being in opposition is no fun

it's awful and all you have is doing the hard yards of potentially getting to the next election

and who knows where we'll be right then so they're just thinking you know if you're in your late 40s

or in your 50s late 50s you can still have a sort of second win in a career and so that's what

that's the calculation so many of them are making we will be back tomorrow with mateless me and Spivey

Goodall Spivey Goodall honestly can I just say you're wearing that you're as Emily has already

pointed out your socks are the same as my suit so if I'm Spivey what are you I think socks are

allowed to be Spivey suits less so bye bye this has been a global player original podcast and a

Persephoneka production

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.