The News Agents: Rishi Sunak’s Great British Train Robbery

This is a global player original podcast.

Michael Shanks, Scottish Labour Party, 17,840 people.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I declare that Michael Shanks is elected to serve in the United Kingdom Parliament

as a member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West constituency.

CHEERING

The sound you're hearing there is the cheer, the din of revival,

of what looked like an old political corpse given new life.

Since 2015, when the SNP delivered a body blow to the Labour Party

in becoming the party of Scotland,

sweeping away all of its old fortresses across the central belt,

the sort of seats in which the Labour Party was quite literally born.

Labour has lived the daily humiliation of being little more

than irrelevance in Scottish politics.

The SNP, aside from a brief wobble in the 2017 general election,

have looked invincible.

They spoke not only for independence,

but almost a whole of the social democratic left,

the poll star of Scottish politics.

After the Rutherglen and Hamilton West result last night,

they have started, once again, to look vulnerable.

It could make the task of a Labour majority government all the easier.

We're going to be discussing that on today's show.

What it means for Scotland, the Union and the general election.

But before we do, there's something else.

Sometimes in journalism, in the media, in the Westminster Hot House,

there is a tendency to just move from one thing to the other,

to not internalise what has just passed to miss the real story.

This week, Rishi Sunak tore up a £45 billion project

that had enjoyed cross-party support for 15 years.

It was supposed to transform our economic geography,

a staple of our national strategic direction for that time.

And just like that, with the stroke of a pen, it was gone.

For the arbitrary timetable of a conference speech.

In the days since, we've seen what it's been replaced with, unravel.

You could argue it's the biggest government failure of the last 15 years,

if not longer.

So here's a question, the £45 billion question.

Why aren't we angrier about HS2?

It's Lewis here. Welcome to the newsagents.

Let's just look again at this issue of HS2.

We all know it needs cross-party agreement

to make this important infrastructure scheme go ahead.

And what a pathetic spectacle we've seen this week.

One minute there for it, then there against it,

and the leader of the opposition, too weak to make a decision.

So today, Mr Speaker,

the Cabinet has given high-speed reign.

We are going to get this done.

Phase 2 alone is a £21 billion investment,

and will support at least 60,000 jobs.

It's the most important investment in the North for a century.

The reality is that HS2 is a vital investment.

It's essential capacity,

and it will change the economic geography of the country.

HS2 was a very rare thing.

It was a policy which had sustained

not just across five Prime Ministers, Labour and Tory,

through all the volatility of these Conservative years

where Prime Ministers and endless transport secretaries

have veered from idea to idea, from philosophy to philosophy.

All of them brought into it because they could see what it might do.

Yet there's been something very strange about the way HS2

has done it.

Yet there's been something very strange about the way HS2

has been talked about and covered this week,

since the cancellation of the Northern leg

by Rishi Sunak in his conference speech.

It's almost like it were the weather,

something beyond our control,

beyond the government's control in terms of its costs.

And sure, there were things which have added

to its spiralling costs, like inflation.

But this isn't a natural phenomenon.

It's a human project.

It's had human failings.

And the particular set of humans ultimately in charge

has been this government.

If it's failed, it's because they've failed.

And here's what should worry us.

What the problem is with just saying,

oh well, that's that, and moving on.

Without learning from these mistakes,

this could all happen again,

whenever we try and build anything again.

HS2 has been plagued by poor management,

by the absurdities of the planning system,

of the occasional tyranny of the constituency link system,

which incentivises MPs to think only of the narrow and local,

rather than the broad and national.

None of that is going to change.

And no one is proposing that it changes.

And there's something else too,

which I have to say has been bugging me.

Listen to the way the Prime Minister announced the change this week.

HS2 is the ultimate example of the old consensus.

And so I am ending this long-running saga.

I am cancelling the rest of the HS2 project.

The Prime Minister tried to suggest that this massive shift

in the future of our national life and future infrastructure

was an example of a kind of new politics.

But in fact, as we've seen in the last 48 hours,

what he did was an example of the old politics,

of a politician thinking about the headline.

It was classic Westminster.

The thing which was the new politics

was the cross-party consensus of HS2 itself,

lasting for as long as it did.

And another way in which this was classic old politics,

classic Westminster,

is the way that it's unraveled.

It's almost been like a budget.

Let's go through some of the detail in terms of

what the Prime Minister said would replace HS2,

what the money would be spent on instead.

So for example, the Northern Echo reported this week

how documents published on Wednesday

had said that the Leemside Line in Northumberland would be reopened.

But then, mysteriously,

all reference to the line

appeared to have been removed by Thursday

in an apparent U-turn.

Transport Minister Richard Holden said on Thursday

the government was, in fact, only committed

to looking into Leemside.

Then there was confusion over announcements

that suggested the government was promising

to extend the Manchester Metro link to Manchester Airport,

a route that was, in fact,

completed nine years ago.

The Department for Transport then had to clarify

the line would just be extended to a second terminal,

though there were still questions as to why anyone would need

or want it to do so when the airport buildings

are already virtually next to each other.

Then if we think about what the whole set of announcements

was called, the Prime Minister hailed it as this.

Our new network north.

This is the right way to drive growth

and spread opportunity across our country

to level up.

With our new network north,

you will be able to get from Manchester

to the new station in Bradford in 30 minutes.

Sheffield in 42 minutes.

And to Hull in 84 minutes

on a fully electrified line.

APPLAUSE

Network north, he said.

But as we could see from the documents

in the hours and days after,

it's not a network and a lot of it isn't even

in the north or midlands.

Indeed, Henry Murison, the Chief Executive

of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership,

said the decision to scrap the Leemside Line promise

made the whole network north scheme

a fairytale and accused the government

of misleading the public.

And what about the one thing which made it look

like it wouldn't be a total embarrassment

that the line would link to central London?

A reminder of what the Prime Minister said.

Given how far along construction is,

we will complete the line from Birmingham to Houston.

While officials have since admitted,

since the conference speech,

that none of the private investment required

for the Houston section has in fact been secured,

so we could still be in a position

where we've invested tens of billions in a line

which extends from Birmingham to west London only,

a line no one asked for,

a monument to British decline if ever there were one.

And by the way, go through the small print.

Some of the infrastructure projects on the list are in Scotland.

The Westminster government doesn't even have

the executive authority to make these projects happen.

It can just send the money to the Scottish government

and hope for the best.

As I say, an example of the old politics.

A date in search of an announcement,

a speech in need of a theme,

and Whitehall having to scramble around

trying to make the best of it.

Kath Haddon from the Institute for Government,

like many Whitehall observers, has been in some despair.

It really frustrates me.

I mean, it's true that we do need new politics,

and some of the stuff that he's talking about,

particularly around long-term decision-making,

is a big problem.

There's too much chopping and changing of policies,

there's too much chopping and changing of ministers,

and that's been particularly true in the last six years,

because we have seen four different Prime Ministers

and so much change within our governments

and therefore of the policies that they're pursuing.

But I don't think that the way in which he's gone about this decision

kind of shows full understanding

of what the problems are behind that

and frustrates the public that he is doing something differently.

You could have gone a different way.

It's not the same sort of political opportunity

to launch a major review of the HS2 second leg

and go through some proper analysis

and involve the public in that conversation and so forth.

That stuff all takes time and is frustrating,

and if you're wanting to come out

with an eye-catching conference announcement,

then of course you want to keep it to a small number of people.

But the way in which it's announced just kind of reinforces this idea

that politicians just chop and change policies all the time,

and for the public it just means that things that are promised

don't get delivered.

So he's not really managed to show us

that he's going to do things differently

if that is what is vexing him and what he wants to change.

This also true, isn't it?

I mean, you could see some of that

in terms of what happened immediately afterwards, right?

When it became clear that that long list

that the Prime Minister announced of all the things

that he would be spending the money,

so-called from HS2 on instead of the actual project,

it turned out that some of it had already been done.

It turned out some of it had already been committed to.

It turned out some of it didn't even exist.

And then when we saw the map,

you could see that it wasn't really a kind of integrated strategic plan,

a long-term plan.

It was lots of little things just sort of cobbled together.

So in a way, wasn't that exactly opposite

of what the Prime Minister was talking about?

It was actually classic Westminster, wasn't it?

It is, and it's exasperating, to be honest.

I mean, we all know that politicians do this.

They re-announce things and pretend that they're new,

or they announce things that are sort of already in train.

But I mean, anyone who understands government

knows how these things end up working out.

There will have been some work done in the run-up to this.

We saw officials arriving with documents talking about HS2.

We know, therefore, that conversations have been going on

for at least a few weeks.

But at some point, it just ends up going into this bunker of number 10,

and you end up with a document like the one they produced for Network North,

which just smacks of something

that has been cobbled together at the last minute.

And as soon as it hits reality, and the department,

the people who are actually experts on it,

who have been working on it for some years,

start to point out all the problems of all of this.

I mean, you know, everyone from the outside

who knows that, you know, a tram already exists here,

or this project has been going on since 2010,

everyone was able to spot that so soon,

and it just ends up looking shambolic.

And if what you wanted to do was show

that you want to govern differently,

that isn't the best way to convey it,

certainly to the people that are then trying to implement it for you,

let alone to the public.

Yes, I think the way in which this decision was made,

and it's the problem of doing something like this at conference,

because you can't have the officials around you.

You are ending up with special advisors in a hotel room

at the conference venue

who are pulling together something at the last minute,

and it's not a good way to do a major infrastructure decision.

What do you think in terms of kind of how this has been covered,

and in terms of what it says, the HS2 cancellation

and the fact that the cost had overrun so much

about British governance itself,

in the sense that I've been struck the way

that we've been talking about this this week.

It's almost as if it's been like the weather.

It's like, oh, well, this thing has just overrun,

and cost has come really expensive,

but of course there are reasons for that.

Some of it is beyond the government's control, inflation and so on,

but some of it is because of the way we do infrastructure in this country.

And isn't the danger that, frankly,

if we just sort of move on very, very quickly from this,

that actually, whether it's a small infrastructure project

or if the British state ever tries to do

a big infrastructure project again,

this will happen all over again.

Yeah, I honestly do think we need a proper look

at how infrastructure in particular,

but major projects more generally are going,

because, you know, Sunak, again,

was kind of pushing against his predecessors,

but one of the things that the Cameron government introduced

was a greater focus on major projects.

We have the Major Projects Authority,

we have the Infrastructure Commission,

and they've now been operating for some years.

There's a good argument to be made

that we've upskilled a lot of civil servants,

and perhaps some aspects of how we do major projects have improved.

And maybe there are a lot of other projects out there

that we can show that, you know,

do suggest that the UK is capable of doing this,

and HS2 is a particular outlier,

but we really need to understand that.

There is a particularly unique project.

It is one that has been beset by a lot of political disruptions.

You know, huge interest from all sorts of constituency MPs about that,

but that's the nature of doing big infrastructure projects

through parliamentary democracy.

You've got to be able to balance the business case

with then what the public think about it.

So, yeah, I do think we need to make sure

that we're interrogating HS2 properly

and what happened, what went wrong,

but we don't just need to see it as just this government.

It is a problem of how churning politicians

affects major projects about how,

as I say, parliamentary democracy

and the concerns rightly that people will have

about how this affects their particular constituency,

how that affects major projects.

So, it's much bigger than just this decision,

but I think we know you're a more rational look at it

and not just a sort of knee-jerk reaction

just based on the current circumstances.

More broadly, what we've done in scrapping HS2

is exchange a strategy, whatever its flaws, however expensive,

to create growth through essentially linking and making whole

the three big conurbations, the economic zones of England,

into one, into instead what we've had endless amounts of

over the years, Whitehall throwing pots of money

at little projects that have no particular coherence to them at all.

It isn't strategic, but it is political.

Better to give something for Tory MPs to put on their leaflets

than something which might benefit a future government

and future voters decades hence.

And the worry is, without learning any of the lessons of HS2,

now the bandwagon is already just moving on,

half of these will end up in the Maya as well.

That is all a choice Sunak has made and that is fine.

That's politics, that's his prerogative,

but it seems a bit rich to dress it up as something new,

let alone something for the long term.

Sometimes you just have to see beyond the spin.

Now, we'll be back with analysis on the sensational

Scottish by-election just after this.

This is The News Agents.

They blew the doors off.

It was an incredible swing, an incredible result.

I think vindication of the positive campaign,

vindication of the change that we brought about in the Labour Party,

people wanting to come out and vote for a changed Labour Party.

We accept that victory humbly

and I just want to say thank you to everybody who did vote Labour

for the faith and trust they put in us

and we will repay that faith and trust

with the change that I know they desperately want to see.

Keir Starmer is a very happy man this weekend.

He has every reason to be.

The Labour Party has scored another by-election win

and this one is personal for the Labour Party.

Right smack bang in the middle of Labour's old heartlands

in the central belt of Scotland.

The rather Glen and Hamilton West by-election constituency

just outside Glasgow has produced the best by-election result

for Labour in Scotland in history.

They didn't just win, they smashed it.

A swing of over 20% from the SNP.

Now, this was fought in auspicious circumstances.

The previous SNP MP Margaret Ferrier had lost her seat

after she had been found egregiously breaking lockdown rules

by taking the train to London

and having just tested positive for COVID-19.

It's come in the wake of the Sturgeon resignation

but even so, this was beyond Labour's expectations.

It has dared the party on the eve of its conference to dream

that the 40 or so seats it lost to the SNP in 2015

could be back within its grasp.

That it can denue the SNP of one of its most powerful arguments

to Scottish voters.

That Labour doesn't have a hope in seat after seat

and if you don't like the Tories,

that they're the only show in town.

The SNP, First Minister Hamza Youssef

and of course the Union.

At times like this, we turn to our old friend,

Scottish political journalist and writer Alan Little.

Alan, it was a remarkable result, wasn't it?

Labour now doubled their MPs obviously for a very low base.

Is Labour back in Scotland?

Oh, definitely.

It's very hard to read it any other way.

What's very interesting about this

is that it defied even the opinion polls.

Understated Labour's performance

and it seems to suggest that a lot of SNP natural voters

didn't turn up, they didn't vote

and that reflects a deep malaise

within the SNP supporting communities

and within the party itself.

This is a party that is now bitterly divided against itself,

is not inspiring confidence

in the prospects of independence anytime soon

and they've paid the electoral price for it

and it does seem like one of those pivotal moments

when the electoral allegiances realign.

It's been a remarkable transformation

in such a short period of time, hasn't it?

Because if you go back just to say

the Adrian Shotz by-election,

part of Scotland which is not entirely dissimilar to rather Glenn,

the SNP held their own

and there was only a modest Labour revival

and yet in the space of a year,

Labour are adding what, getting a 20% swing.

Yeah, that's partly down I think to Anna Sarwar

who's clearly a much more impressive leader

than anybody who's led Scottish Labour for a long time

and is really cutting through to the public

and his partnership with Kiestarma seems very solid as well

so that's clearly had a breakthrough with the public

but it's also about this parolous state

of the Scottish National Party

since Nicola Sturgeon stepped down.

Hamza use of clearly lacks Nicola Sturgeon's electoral appeal,

this will certainly raise questions

about the long-term viability of his leadership

but it is a by-election, we have to remember that as well

and even Labour members are not saying

that this will necessarily translate into a similar swing

at a general election

but it does seem that there will be a fairly large number

of Scottish Labour MPs on Kiestarma's benches

after the next election

but the interesting thing about them is

for the first time we will have Labour MPs in Scotland

whose future electability will depend upon them

being able to appeal to pro-independence supporters

because although support for the SNP appears to have collapsed for now

support for independence itself has not

it's still sitting around the 50% mark somewhere

3 or 4 points shy of the 50% mark

so half the country still supports independence

why not necessarily being prepared to vote for the SNP

at the general election or in by-election

so I think the challenge for Labour will be to find a way

of engaging with the independence project,

the independence aspiration

that is not simply contemptuous dismissal

of what they call narrow nationalism

because they will need to find a way to speak to

pro-independence supporters who are lending them their votes

in order to eject an unpopular conservative government from power

and it's also true to say isn't it that the Scottish Labour Party

is feeling more comfortable in emphasising

it's more left-wing social democratic credentials

than perhaps the party is doing south of the border under Stammer

yeah it's interesting that the Labour candidate

the victorious Labour candidate

distanced himself from some of Kiestarma's policy

saying that that was appropriate in a devolved state

but Labour's problem in Scotland remains what it always has been

in order to appeal to electors in England

especially middle class and middle English electors

Kiestarma is tacking to the right

he's reoccupying the centre ground

and that enables the SNP and this is what they're doing this morning

to characterise Labour as shadowing the Tory party

as promising to uphold unpopular Tory policies

well it didn't work yesterday in Rutherglen

to try to outflank Labour on the left

and it remains to be seen whether that SNP tactic will work

at a general election

but in the short term and perhaps a short to medium term

a revival for Scottish Labour in any significant way

can only bolster the union can't it

in the sense that one of the SNP's most powerful weapons

in recent years has been

its ability to essentially say, particularly in Westminster

that they speak virtually for the whole of Scotland

when they had 56 out of 59 seats

they seemed to essentially epitomise

the whole of Scottish political opinion

and that carried such legitimacy and such weight

if Scottish Labour can return with 20, 30 seats

perhaps more they won't be able to do that anymore

No and they never did speak for the whole of Scotland

because they never won a majority of the popular vote

and a clear majority still remained

in most opinion polls in favour of the union

but you're absolutely right

in the short term, short to medium term

of course this result and a Labour return in Scotland

will strengthen the union

but the independence question in the longer term

will not go away and this is highly speculative

but I'll do it anyway

if you look ahead if there's a Labour government

after the next general election

look ahead to the period when the shine comes off

that Labour government

as it inevitably will in the course of time

where the Scottish voters return then

will they go to the Conservatives?

I very much doubt it

the Conservatives haven't won an election in Scotland

since the mid-1950s

so the independence project is asleep for now

nobody expects an independence referendum

any time soon, not even in the SNP

and there are interesting voices in the SNP now

saying let's take our foot off the gas

let's bide our time

let's try to work constructively

with an incoming Keir Starmer government

to reform the whole of the UK

along the terms that Gordon Brown has been arguing for

build up state capacity in Scotland

so that in the future

in the longer term

maybe 10 or 15 years from now

we will be in a better position

to make the independence case

and by which time

age demographics will have played a part

in shifting the ground towards independence

so that's the kind of thinking that's going on

under the surface now in the SNP

and that adds to the general perception

that the independence project

has gone away for now

there's no prospect of independence anytime soon

so I think that's the context within which

many pro-independence voters

are turning out and putting their faith in the Labour Party

Alan, thanks so much

fascinating, thank you

Cheers, Liz

Well the same politics you need skill and you do

but what you need most is luck

Keir Starmer is proving to be a very lucky general

his opponents falling in every direction

Right, as I say

we are packing our bags at newsagents HQ

for another conference heading to Liverpool for Labour

and when we come back

we will be talking to one of their stalwarts

and the latest in our extended political interview series

the MP, Dawn Butler

about where Labour is

where the country is on race

and multiculturalism

and our own political journey

and why it involves a lime green suit

stay with us

This is The Newsagents

Well we're joined on the newsagents now

by someone who is a politician

but isn't afraid to stand out

by our own estimation

to tell you how it is to speak in her own voice

she's also repeatedly made history

only the third black woman elected to parliament

as late as 2005

losing her seat in Brent's central in 2010

to return in 2015

in the last days of Gordon Brown's government

she became the first elected black woman ever

in 2009 to speak from the dispatch box

of the House of Commons as a minister

having been the first black female whip

since then she served on Jeremy Corbyn's front bench

run for deputy leader of the party in 2020

and most recently found fame of course

for telling Boris Johnson to his face

that he was a liar in the commons

and then got thrown out of the commons herself

for a day

I suppose yeah let's just start with that

I mean it was quite the moment

that was back in 2021 wasn't it

what led you to decide to do that?

Thanks for that introduction by the way

It was quite an update

It was building up you know

like every week I was watching

it was the demise of our democracy

ultimately this was the prime minister

standing up every week at the dispatch box

not just talking about PMQs

I'm talking about other times as well

and he would just blatantly say whatever

came to the top of his head

whether it was true or not

and then he'd get away with it

and even when I came back to Parliament

and I would raise points of order

and I would say the prime minister said

X when really it's Y

can he come back and correct the record

as the ministerial code says he should

and obviously the speaker cannot

insist that a minister comes back

to the house to correct the record

and so I did everything I could

and I just thought sod it

I'm done with this

because I'm part of that system

like if I've always been taught

if you know better do better

and just to explain to people

the reason you got thrown out

is because in the House of Commons

you are not allowed to call another member alive

that is one of the rules

so you have to come up with

sort of ingenious ways

let's just listen to it

just to remind people

the prime minister said we have severed

the link between infection

and serious disease and death

not only is this not true

Madam Deputy Speaker

but it is dangerous

and it's dangerous to lie in the pandemic

and I'm disappointed

that the prime minister

has not come to the House

to correct the record

and to correct the fact

that he has lied to this House

and the country

over and over again

I'm sure that the member

will reflect on her words

just saying perhaps correct the record

Madam Deputy Speaker

what would you rather

a weakened leg or a severed leg

you know at the end of the day

the prime minister has lied

to this House time and time again

and it's funny that we get in trouble

in this place for calling out the lie

rather than the person lying

order order order

order

can you please

please reflect on your words

and withdraw your remarks

Madam Deputy Speaker

I've reflected on my words

and somebody needs to tell the truth

in this House that the prime minister has lied

under the power given me by standing order

number 43

I order the member to withdraw immediately

from the House

for the remainder of the day sitting

it makes me smile

because I can also hear

there's a lot of heckling

and she's a disgrace

she needs to have got the Tory MPs

she's a disgrace

she needs to withdraw

you know and I was actually quite nervous

right because

you knew what you were going to do

I knew what I was going to do

and I didn't expect

the more the Deputy Speaker

asked me to withdraw

the stronger I got in my response

because like well actually no

I am right

and I'm not going to withdraw this

normally when that happens

MPs do withdraw it right

they say something and then they go

out of deference to you

Mr Speaker or Madam Speaker or whatever

I withdraw it but you didn't

no

because it had gone too far

like that week

Tory MPs try to influence

a judge's decision

on one of their fellow MPs

that was charged with sexual assault

and they try to influence the judge

and they got fined

like a day

wage out of parliament

I thought this is ridiculous

this is all topsy-turvy

and we're talking about

our democracy

it's not the playground

of the rich and the privileged

it's a democracy

that affects all of us in society

because your sort of basic point was to say

it's okay for him to lie

but it's not okay for me to say

that he's lying

how ridiculous is that right

and two years later

he was found guilty

by the privileges committee

in parliament of lying

so if he hadn't resigned

he would have then

been forced to leave parliament

for lying

so it took two years

and that was a really slow grind

of our political system

we all thought that to happen

but ultimately

I was right he was lying

and if our democracy

cannot call out lies

we are in deep, deep

trouble because

we are filled with fake news right now

they estimate

that by next year

80% of the content

that you see on social media

will be AI generated

so we have to have something

to that is truthful

and of course Boris Johnson has always maintained

that he hadn't lied but as you say

the privileges committee made their verdict

two years later and in that sense

you can say that you were vindicated

because they ended up agreeing with you

what was the reaction to at the time though

not just we heard from Tory MPs

but from your own side

it was interesting because

I did it for my own conscience

I didn't expect it to go viral

but I've written about it in my book

It's a beautiful life

and

I was kind of abandoned

by the party

and I was really quite a shock to me

because I thought everybody

can see that

Boris Johnson is a liar

and because I was brave enough

to call it out and take the punishment

I thought that would kind of be

appreciated

you said they abandoned you

in what way did they abandon you

in silence

there was no

I had actually had a few Tory MPs

sort of say

well done, like on the quiet

they were fed up of what was happening

within their party and I think you see that

you've just come back from

Tory conference

I think you will see that there's

a few Tory members

who are just like I don't like what's happening

in my party and I want it to stop

and there's a few MPs like that

but yeah I didn't have any

communication

and the sort of story or the theme

of not being believed is actually

something that comes up quite a bit in your book

which I want to talk about but you're probably

just given this is what we try and do with this section

of the show go back to the beginning

and talk a little bit about before you even went into politics

what was it

in your early life that made you think you might want to go into politics

growing up was it political

you grew up in East London was it very political

it wasn't political in

the

parliamentary sense of the word

but it was political

in terms of how we

interacted how we lived our lives

I think my first political lesson

from my dad

was when thatcher the milk

snatcher when we weren't

giving milk anymore

at school and I was over the moon

because I hated that milk

you could have become a Tory

it was disgusting I was like

chuffed and

my dad was like that's not the point

that milk could have been the only

kind of milk that other kids could have

your parents run a bakery didn't they

butler's bakery

lovely ring right

and so that was kind of my

first sort of political lesson but it wasn't really

political-political I mean I joined the Labour Party

in my teens

because my parents had said that it was the Labour Party

that made them feel welcome

but I didn't see Parliament

as a kind of place because it was sort of full

of really sort of dry old white men

really

and that kind of was my back

what was it like

going into Parliament

I kind of thought when I did it

so when I was elected I thought

great I'm an MP

I'm elected let's go in there

and do what I need to do

and represent my constituents

and be the voice of young people

which is what I promised in my maiden speech

and I naively

thought

that Parliament although there was this huge

difference between me

and like a lot of MP

and you felt that

yeah but I still thought fundamentally

we're all kind of there for the right reasons

and I wasn't expecting

to face some of the stuff

that I faced

when I was there like I wasn't expecting

that I had to cope with

racism and sexism

and all of that

what sort of thing did you encounter

well like I talk about

the time when I got into the lift

and

some MP said this lift isn't really for cleaners

assumed I was a cleaner

and I had to say look there's nothing wrong

with being a cleaner

but I'm not a cleaner I'm a member of Parliament

and they were just staring at me

and I'm just thinking there was

two black MPs right

Diane Abbott and myself

they would always call me Diane

they would call you Diane

completely different

both black women but completely different

different ages different height different everything

and I was just thinking this is mad

this is ridiculous I had to put up with that

on top of

doing the job of being an MP

did you think I don't want to do this

or I can't bear being here or did it anger you

what did it make you think

first of all which might sound strange to some people

some people will understand this

I set with myself

for not thinking that I was going to face that

being only two black women

in a white dominated space

it was quite naive of me

to think that I'm not going to suffer

any racism or discrimination

just because I'm in the mother

of all parliaments right when I look back

of it it was quite naive

but you're always constantly

fighting so you know I talk about

the David Heathcote Amory

situation

what happened though

I was taking my team out for lunch

because it was one of their birthdays

and you know they used to call my team the united colours

of Benetton you know I had like

a Muslim person working for me had a hijab

and I had all different people working for me

and he physically stopped me

from walking

onto the terrace to

sit down and he's like where do you think

you're going and I said we're going to have our lunch

and he's like who are you

oh who are you

you know then he was like this place is going to

reckon ruin they're letting anyone in nowadays

and if you read what he's

like he's exact words what he said

afterwards is like

she took advance they always

feel that it was really

because he has claimed sins in regards to that hasn't he

he said that he just didn't recognise you

so he was just trying to stop

what is it it's not his job to recognise me

do you understand

what makes him think that he needs to

recognise me I didn't recognise him

let's be honest probably if I had been walking onto it

would he have stopped you because

he didn't recognise you probably not

if he thought that I wasn't I didn't belong there

he could have gone and got the people

whose job it is to recognise us like the doorkeepers

or the police so it's like what

made him think that he had the right

to do that before we move on

since we've been talking about being you were

the one of the only two women a black woman

MPs and Diane but was another

since we mentioned her what do you make of how

she's being treated by the Labour Party at the moment

I think it needs to be resolved

quickly she's not currently in the

she's not currently got the whip back

I think it needs to be resolved

I think that

Diane was the first elected black female MP

and I actually think it would be quite fitting if

she ends up in the lords

because we need to have more MPs in the lords

if we're ever going to abolish it the more

the Tories pile on

you know their supporters

we need to counterbalance that

that's my view do you think she's being treated badly

I think that

as a Labour Party

we should have a system

that is transparent

and

efficient and as

speedy as possible it should be fair

I mean I was a trade union official

I'm very much in favour

of fair systems and I think

having something drag on for too long

is not healthy

one of the big themes of our debate in a

society at the moment is this idea around structural racism

and as you know that there are people

particularly in the Conservative Party

often people colour themselves

when it's coming about in the arc or so Ella Braverman

and she's soon like herself

very much reject that

principle and reject that idea

and they say that it reduces people

it reduces people to the colour of their skin

from your book you disagree

and you've written about for example

saying that there's a certain group of white men

who constantly try and put me in my place

who constantly try to push me back and say

further they don't want the system to change

because the system works for them

the way it should

do you think that that is getting

any better at all and could you

talk a little bit about why you think

the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary

and others are wrong when they reject

the idea of structural racism, systemic racism

okay that's like

a huge couple of questions

so I think probably

almost everybody

everybody listening to this podcast

will know somebody

who's in a managerial position

who shouldn't be there

and you think how on earth did they get there

you know I call them accidental managers

you know the ones that get there

not by merit but metroxy

the people that get there that shouldn't be there

that are not really

equipped to be there

but they make it there they're well connected

and everybody

most people I speak to have a story

or something they know even people that they've trained

that have then been promoted

over them and

that is problematic and that is

structural and that is where

like recruits like

and you have this perpetual circle where you don't

see the value in what

other people bring to the table

because you don't recognise it

and so in that respect

it's not

kind of getting better but what is

changing is that we're having conversations

around it so we're talking about it

and we're kind of exposing it

a little more and making it

sort of clearer to what's happening

so I feel

that's

like the quick answer to it

in regards

to the likes

of the Tory party

the

United Nations have said if you take for example

their report that they produced that showed

that there was no

structural racism or institutional racism

the United Nations have said

that you know that report is

essentially nonsense

and have said that what they're trying to do

is they are trying to normalise

white supremacy. This was the report that came

out which effectively the government produced

which debunked the idea of

structural racism.

And so the thing is this, there are always going

to be people

who will use

the system to their own

advantage and will say

things that will help them

but not help the cause.

How do you explain though that

do you think the Labour Party ought to be a bit

embarrassed sometimes that it has been

less successful in promoting

people of colour to the very top jobs

and when you look at the Tory cabinet now

in terms of, I mean there was a point when

trust came in that it was

the two, the four, they weren't there very long

admittedly, but the four big

jobs were all either women or people of colour

Sunak's there, Braverman's there

I mean do you think that the Labour Party

why do you think they're better at

at the very least getting people to the top

maybe not having more ethnic minority MPs

and so on overall, but they're more comfortable

in getting people to the top.

But that's not the point I should say

at the moment, so the point is this

and I talk about this in my book, if you've got

two women

one has suffered domestic

abuse and is battered

and bruised and is talking about

domestic violence and the other one

has never had any problems

in a relationship and the one

that's never had any problems says that

domestic abuse doesn't exist

why would you believe

the woman that says domestic abuse doesn't exist

over the woman

that's battered and bruised and says that

domestic violence is a problem.

So you think that people like Sunak and others

haven't experienced it themselves

but they don't recognise that it does exist

nonetheless, but they've partly

because of their class or whatever it is.

The point is it suits

them to elevate

that notion

right, but that doesn't solve the problem

so if we want to solve the problem

of racism we've got to deal with it

we want to solve the problem of

domestic violence or domestic abuse

where a woman is killed

every three days

we have to talk about it

and resolve it, you can't just say

because somebody said it doesn't exist

and say okay, cool, that's fine

because it's not true.

There's been a whole debate at the Conservative Party conference this week

about

in a weird way between

Sunak and his own home secretary

Sunak has said that we should

laud the British model of multiculturalism

that it's been a success story

So while the Brahmin in her speech warned

about this hurricane that was coming

and that she warned

that the model has basically failed

and these two quite different positions

they're not, but they are. And what do you think?

A, when you hear the language, but also when you hear that

debate, what do you think? Who's right?

You know what, it's all a game

to them. I think this is what we've got

to kind of appreciate right now

Right now you're in the

dying throes

of the end of

failure of 13 years

of the Tory government, right? This government

is dying and so

what they're trying to do

is they're trying to create headlines, right?

And Soella's trying to create

headlines because

she wants to be seen as the

successor to Sunak

Right? And so is Badenok

So they're all on this battle

ground trying to be

as

offensive as they possibly can be

They're trying to appeal to

a certain group of

people. The same thing is happening

in America. But what I say about this is

like I, in a way, it's like a futile

discussion to get into

because let them back it out

themselves. That's their game. They're playing a game

but my real concern

is

they're making things

less safe for all of us

Right? You start

whipping up this

hate speech

and getting people angry

and riled about things

They won't be able to control

what happens. These rebel razors

you know, when you do that

you won't be able to control that

and they're making the country less safe.

So it is up to us

not to engage

in hate speech

but to talk about the

success of our country

to talk about what works

to be inclusive

To have inclusive language

I do think she's guilty

of hate speech

and I think we have to have

inclusive language

and it's not about

tolerating people

it's about accepting people

That's how you make a better society

and ultimately

we should all want to have a better

society. Are you happy with

the way everything's going in the Labour Party?

Labour Party conference next week

still very far ahead in the polls

I think Keir Starmer's doing a good job. Are you happy?

Well, who would not be happy with

being ahead in the polls?

There's always a brown loafer about something

even the Labour Party can manage to make that into a

disaster.

If we weren't ahead in the polls

and we got this

I was trying to think of a word that doesn't

include swearing

Please swear you can do it

Honestly, John Soap and Emily Maitley swear enough

in the studio at dawn so you can do it.

You could have told me that in the beginning

I've been holding a lot of it back

but you know, they're a shower shy at this government

and so we should be ahead in the polls

and we should feel

that we can be bolder.

You know, I feel that as a Labour Party

we've got to appeal

to the public. We've got to say to them

look, vote for us

and this is the difference we will make

in government.

This is the difference that we will make to the

country. This is the difference

that we will make to your lives.

You will have a better

standard of living

under a Labour Government.

Everybody is kind of included

and there's nothing wrong with that.

There's nothing wrong with giving people hope

and I feel we need to do more of that.

I know you're a good friend with Sadiq

so you're going to want him to win next year

but at some point you'd like to be Mayor of London.

Yes. Yes, I would.

Although Sadiq has told us

I think he'd like to do ten terms or something

so I mean that might...

That would throw a spanner in the works

I'd have to kind of lock him up or something

like lock him away but

if he wants to do ten terms

I will support him and obviously

my ambition will change.

You were diagnosed with breast cancer

has that changed your politics

and how you think about politics?

Has it changed my politics?

Not really but I suppose it's changed

in a way

cancer has changed me

not kind of changed my politics, changed me a bit

because I thought I was dying

so when you think you're dying

you just...

kind of perspective on life

and maybe in a way

it's made me a bit more fearless

I don't know

I wouldn't have written the book

if I hadn't gone through my cancer journey

because that was my down time

and in that down time I had to do something

because my mind was just racing

but I was very ill

so I couldn't walk

and so that was my down time

so I wouldn't have done the book without...

And you call it a purpose for life

that purpose

to sort of drive you on

where do you think that comes from?

Again, in terms of driving politics

because it would be so easy, politics is a tough life

I know a lot of people listening to this

like I'm not much sympathy for politicians

but it's a tough old life

what drives you in terms of the purpose

and in terms of staying in politics?

What do you want to achieve still?

I think it is change

it kind of says like

kumbayarish

but I really want

society to be better

I want everyone to like

be invested in

having a better world

you know, I feel that

my purpose is to make sure

that those people coming behind me

especially sort of

black women don't have to go through

what I went through

so I've knocked down those barriers

that won't be rebuilt for them

so I want to make sure that that happens

so that in a way is my purpose

and legacy

and to change things like to make sure that our democracy

is solid

I mean, you know

what Boris Johnson did do

really effectively is show up

all of the gaps

and the creeks in our democracy

the fact that our democracy cannot sustain

somebody who lies

and has no care for the rules

so that means we've got a strength in the rules

of democracy

so that, as I feel, is my job to do that

Well Dawn, I better let you go

because of course you've got to prepare for Jamaican night

your famous Jamaican night party

on Sunday night at conference

of course I'm coming

of course I am

and my favourite party of the conference every year

I love that, thank you so much

and it's great because it's just a people powered party

I'm going to bring my own lime coloured suit

I love it, I love it, I'm going to hold you to that

I'm going to hold you to that

Come on now, Dawn, thanks so much for coming in

Cheers

Right, that is it from us for this week

remember you can catch up on all our shows

from the week on Global Player

and send us story tips and feedback

to newsagents.global.com

John, Emily and I are off to get a ferry across the Mersey

for Labour Party Conference and en route

we're going to do a big shop at ASDA

to buy as many steaks as possible before the meat tax comes in

on newsagents Gabriel Radis, Laura Fitzpatrick

Georgia Foxwell, Will Gibson-Smith

Alex Barnett and Rory Simon, our editor

is Tom Hughes, it's presented by John Sopel

Emily Matles and me, Lewis Goodall

will see you in Liverpool on Monday

have a lovely weekend

The newsagents with Emily Matles

John Sopel and Lewis Goodall

This has been a Global Player

original podcast and a Persephoneka production

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