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00:00Donald Trump is not a normal US president.
00:02It's not just an outsider in terms of the way he presents himself, but he's also being
00:06an outsider in his own system.
00:08Just after the US elections, we got hustled into then Prime Minister Boris Johnson's office.
00:13We sat round that table and we were just discussing this completely unprecedented situation.
00:19We're sort of in that kind of not quite realising how bad the crisis is point still.
00:24It's real and it's here and it's going to have profound consequences.
00:27A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again.
00:32Those were the terrifying words of Donald Trump which echoed round the world this week.
00:36He posted them on his own social media site, Truth Social, as tensions with Iran reached
00:40boiling point.
00:41But then, after 12 tense hours, a ceasefire was announced.
00:45So this week, as Trump's threats reach their most shocking level yet, we discuss how the
00:50UK government navigates the US president.
00:53Why our system simply isn't set up to deal with someone like this, and what the government
00:57can do with this two-week grace period to prepare for what comes next.
01:01I'm Helen McNamara, the former Deputy Cabinet Secretary.
01:04And I'm Cleo Watson, a former Special Advisor to Theresa May and Boris Johnson.
01:08And this is In The Room.
01:12Welcome or welcome back.
01:14It's episode eight of In The Room.
01:17If you've been enjoying the show, please click follow on your podcast player and you can follow
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01:24You can also follow us on Instagram at intheroom.pod.
01:29Do follow, like, subscribe, leave your comments.
01:32We love reading them.
01:33Let's just recap what's happened this week.
01:34So on Tuesday morning after the Easter weekend, Donald Trump made a really alarming threat
01:40on Truth Social that unless the Straits of Hormuz, which is the vital shipping lane to all
01:45the oil comes through, was reopened, that he would destroy the entire civilisation of Iran.
01:50And then just 90 minutes before the deadline that he had set by which this was going to
01:55happen, we had news that there was in fact going to be a ceasefire, although, you know,
02:00perhaps not the ceasefire, the whole ceasefire that we were hoping for.
02:03But effectively, we've got a two week period now, which gives the US and Iran time to negotiate
02:10and buying some time, hopefully, for there to be a permanent settlement and end to this
02:14conflict.
02:15Yes.
02:15And you're quite right there about saying it's not quite the ceasefire we were hoping for,
02:20because by Wednesday night, Iran accused Israel and the US of breaking the terms of the
02:26ceasefire by continuing to attack Lebanon. And actually, Iran is still blocking oil tankers
02:33and moving through the Straits of Hormuz. So no one really even quite knows what the agreement
02:37was. It's not being made public. And we're waiting with bated breath, really, to see what
02:42happens next.
02:42Yeah. And what happens next in terms of our country? So right now, as we record, Keir Starmer
02:47is apparently with British troops. So he's gone from his holiday in Spain to do a visit.
02:54He's saying all the kind of right things about wanting the conflict to be resolved. It's
02:59very hard to read from the outside what's going on. I think it's also very hard to read
03:04from the inside what's going on. The unique thing about this situation and dealing with
03:08Donald Trump is none of the norms apply.
03:10It's also not clear that Trump has got all the support he needs, even in his own backyard.
03:15There are lots of reporting speculation about divisions within the Republican Party and whether
03:20he really can carry the US through the extent to what he wants to do. So in response to
03:25the ceasefire, oil prices dipped overnight on Tuesdays, you might expect. Although, as
03:29the ceasefire is looking a bit more fragile, they are climbing back up again.
03:33Yeah, I mean, they're still higher than before the war.
03:35A lot higher. So just for example, you know, if you're a farmer, you're paying 100% more
03:40for your diesel than you were. So it's a doubling of price from them before the conflict started.
03:44Yeah. So prepare to have that passed on into your shopping basket, everybody. Well, in
03:49this episode, we're going to tell you why it's so difficult for our system to work with
03:53someone like Donald Trump. And we're going to ask if there's anything the UK can do to
03:58navigate him at his most volatile and unpredictable. Can we always deploy the king? I just don't
04:03know.
04:04Send for the king.
04:05Send for the king. And of course, what will be happening behind the scenes on the UK government
04:09side in the next two weeks and how they can prepare the country for what's coming next.
04:17I do want to take you on a little trip back down memory lane to November 2020, because
04:22this is one of my strongest memories of us being in the room together. And when we were
04:26dealing with, let's call it a Trump sized problem. And this was just after.
04:32Oh, just after the US elections.
04:34Exactly. Just after the US elections. And he was making some pretty strong statements as
04:39he likes to do.
04:40So this is when he had lost to Joe Biden.
04:43He'd lost to Joe Biden. He was saying, you know, in normal elections in the US, the losing
04:49candidate calls and congratulates the winner and they concede and they go off and build
04:55a presidential library. Donald Trump did not do that. He said, I concede nothing. The election
05:00was rigged. It was stolen. He had unfinished business. And so we got hustled into then Prime
05:08Minister Boris Johnson's office. We sat around that table and you and I were there. Obviously,
05:14Boris Johnson was there. We had the national security advisor, John Bew, who was the special
05:18advisor on foreign affairs. And on loudspeaker was Dame Karen Pierce, who was our then ambassador
05:25to the US. And we were just discussing this completely unprecedented situation where it looked like the sitting
05:33president, the outgoing president, the outgoing president was refusing to do the usual sort
05:37of handover, the transfer of power, which ended up, as people might remember, with the Capitol Hill riots on the
05:456th of January 2021.
05:48And Karen Pierce was, you know, slightly agog about what to do. Do we speak to Mike Pence, who was
05:53the then vice president?
05:55That's what was interesting, wasn't it? So I should confess, I had forgotten this. I had forgotten. I've forgotten so
06:02much.
06:02And most of that is really helpful for me because I don't have it worrying.
06:05And recollections may differ.
06:06Recollections may differ, but actually, no, you're absolutely right. And I think that there were two or three things that
06:10I think are relevant from that.
06:12First was that absolutely, I mean, unprecedented is an overused word these days, but it really was unprecedented that he
06:19was just behaving in a way that was entirely outside of the rules and norms.
06:24And in from the kind of UK side, if you think about the reaction of the diplomatic and security and
06:30foreign office guys were sort of few, that guy's gone and normal service will be resumed.
06:37And the way to make this OK, even if he's still behaving, is to go straight for the system and
06:42system to system.
06:43So you're completely right. We're trying to get Mike Pence to make him be sensible, all of the kind of
06:46effort to try to kind of put arms around it because you don't want somebody.
06:50You actually don't want the biggest democracy in the world for someone to be not abiding by democratic and social
06:56norms.
06:57Yes. And it was incredibly awkward for Boris Johnson personally, because this is someone you've built up a relationship with
07:02now and you've been working with.
07:04And you're actually going to have to work with them for another 50 days or so because they're still the
07:08sitting president.
07:09But he also needs to ring Joe Biden and say congratulations and start building bridges with him as well.
07:15So it is this it was it was this really fascinating and quite awful situation, but mainly because I thought
07:22seeing how our own mandarins and diplomats responded, because they are used to people adhering to certain customs and behaviours.
07:31And suddenly they had someone who basically said, you know, in this in this game of musical chairs, I'm refusing
07:38to budge.
07:38And one of the things that is so striking about what is happening now is that what we're seeing play
07:43out before our eyes is Donald Trump is not a normal US president.
07:47I mean, nobody really needs to be told by me that we all know that.
07:51But however, his actions, particularly in this last period, it's really clear that he's not just an outsider in terms
07:58of the way he presents himself, but he's also being an outsider in his own system.
08:03Right. He's like really not just practicing madman. It's not madman theory.
08:07It's kind of madman practice what he's doing in terms of his, I want to say international diplomacy, but I'm
08:13not sure diplomacy is in fact the right the right word.
08:17Yes. And one of the things I thought was so striking was I remember looking around the room and seeing
08:23these very experienced Whitehall diplomats.
08:26It just didn't compute what was going on.
08:27We were working out, you know, this is just to remind everybody, this is coming hot off the heels of
08:32trying to deal with COVID when Donald Trump was telling people to do things like inject bleach into their bloodstream.
08:38Not advised.
08:39It was not an easy time to both be on the kind of foreign stage with him, but actually dealing
08:46with some of the domestic stuff he was saying too.
08:48But there was this sigh of relief and then he was back and here he is and he's making these
08:56kinds of very hyperbolic statements again.
09:00And it's very tempting to just see him as an exception, as I think we definitely did back in, I
09:04think back to 2020, that was certainly our mindset.
09:06And very tempting to see this is just like one person, an isolated thing.
09:11But there's a there's a fighting chance that this is actually just the new politics and new world order.
09:16And there's all sorts of things in this in this what is playing out now, which is really different and
09:21challenging and will be incredibly challenging for the UK government and for Europe and for the kind of really, you
09:28know,
09:28the old fashioned traditional world order to cope with because this is not normal.
09:33It doesn't follow the rules of the game.
09:35He really doesn't do the things that are predictable and normal.
09:38The other thing that's interesting about Donald Trump is he appears to operate outside of even his own system, actually.
09:43So it's not just that he's kind of maverick and difficult and causes, you know, all sorts of questions and
09:49how do people engage them outside.
09:50That's going on in the US as well.
09:52So there's an extraordinary story this week by some New York Times journalists, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan,
09:57where they have a really, really compelling in the room story about how the decision was made to bomb Iran
10:05and engage in this conflict.
10:07And it's very clear from that that actually, you know, the brains of the operation is Israel.
10:12It's Israel that are calling the shots.
10:14It was Israel that managed to carve themselves out of this ceasefire and carry on bombing Lebanon.
10:19And that Donald Trump is operating as a maverick outsider, even within his own camp.
10:23So you've seen, and it's been commented, like lots of people, including his vice president, J.D. Vance,
10:29who has said consistently that America needs to stop getting involved with these international wars.
10:34And he says that speaking as a former serving Marine, very, very strong on that.
10:38And yet Donald Trump is like out there saying he's going to destroy a whole civilization.
10:43We'll get into some interesting stories, I'm sure, in the next few weeks about Donald Trump and Netanyahu's relationship with
10:51each other.
10:51But I do want to just go back another little step to just how our system works versus America's, particularly
11:00at the moment.
11:00We do have this sort of honorable chap system.
11:03We have customs.
11:05We have diplomatic relations.
11:06We do have a way of doing things.
11:08We have, you know, many, many world leaders have gone to Oxford or Cambridge and studied PPE.
11:14And people have an understanding between each other on sort of how to communicate.
11:19Obviously, Donald Trump stands way outside that.
11:22But even just our political systems, regardless of who's in the White House, do have quite an interesting conflict.
11:30So William Hague has this wonderful story from when he was foreign secretary and Hillary Clinton was secretary of state
11:37in Obama's cabinet.
11:39And I can't remember if they were at a G20 or NATO summit, but he had to leave a day
11:45early.
11:45And she said, you know, William, where are you going?
11:48And he said, I'm working on my Hillary.
11:51And he said, well, I've got to go back to my constituency in Yorkshire because I've got a surgery tomorrow.
11:58I've got a constituency day.
11:59And, you know, there are all kinds of decisions to be made about, you know, whether planning for houses should
12:05go ahead or someone's walls fallen down or these are people's problems.
12:08And she found it absolutely astonishing and kind of charming that here he was discussing, you know, whether they should
12:15do action in Syria.
12:17And he was he was heading back to Yorkshire to be with the people.
12:22I love that about our world.
12:23It's great.
12:24It's very grounding for politicians.
12:25But you're right.
12:26One of the things that used to really entertain me when I was inside Downing Street or the cabinet office
12:31was that you think that there's no language barrier between relationships between the US and the UK.
12:38Because, of course, there isn't because, you know, we all speak English.
12:40And actually, some of the more kind of the more obvious misunderstandings are because the words mean very different things
12:49and tonality is really important.
12:51I'm a big fan of quite.
12:52Quite.
12:53Quite is it absolutely.
12:54If the Americans will say that was quite good and they mean that was really very nice and we mean
12:59that was quite awful.
13:03Yes.
13:04You do have more.
13:04There's more translation than is needed.
13:06Do you think that's why Trump uses capitals?
13:08Because he just he wants to be very, very clear.
13:11Quite possibly.
13:11Thank you for your attention to this matter.
13:14But I think the other thing that is going on here is there's the you know, you do feel a
13:18bit of sympathy for those people inside government who are used to and grown up entirely within a very constrained
13:25rules based system.
13:26That is our politicians, our senior civil servants, our military, all of they all come from or a part of
13:32the same system where everybody has played by the rules.
13:34And they've been socialized in that.
13:36So do you have to kind of come to, you know, the age of whatever it is, late 40s, early
13:4050s.
13:41What did we say?
13:42That's 63.
13:43And still playing footy and looking great.
13:45Good man.
13:47So, you know, you are used to everything being done in a certain way.
13:50And this combobulation and the shock of the fact that actually this guy is not playing by any of those
13:55rules.
13:56We've got some really interesting kind of jostling and shaking up in the world order here.
14:00So Pakistan has emerged as the ceasefire broker.
14:04I mean, I would say there was a tiny bit of old fashioned diplomacy in that apparently where the Pakistan
14:09prime minister put a tweet out saying like kind of basically, please, can you please can we have a ceasefire
14:15or something slightly more elegant than that?
14:16I suspect actually that had all been pre-agreed with the U.S.
14:20So my little old fashioned establishment heart was a bit pleased by that.
14:23So that is how it's supposed to be that you draft something together and you pretend it's totally independent.
14:28So there's maybe threads of the old order still coming in here.
14:31But Pakistan is the peace peace breaker.
14:34You had you had that on their bingo card for 2026.
14:38Yes, I certainly didn't.
14:38Quite. And actually, you mentioned there how so much of this is about how Donald Trump likes to communicate.
14:45But Keir Starmer, he's in the Middle East at the moment.
14:47He'll be coming back soon.
14:48And no doubt he'll be having a phone call with Donald Trump.
14:51And it might be useful for us to just lay out a little bit about how you prepare, how you
14:57prepare for a conversation like that.
14:58Because there is actually, you know, a whole team of people who are excellent at their jobs, who are used
15:03to preparing prime ministers for phone calls with foreign leaders.
15:06They know their brief really well.
15:08They go in and they have a conversation with the prime minister beforehand and say, this is what we'd like
15:12to discuss.
15:13They bring in, you know, they bring in talking points to try and land because it's really important to have
15:18these conversations.
15:19You know, we must reopen the straightforward moves, for example.
15:23And then the conversation happens.
15:26And in a normal world, the two teams will then get together and they will decide a sort of shared
15:32statement.
15:33The prime minister and the president discussed, you know, the enjoying relationship between the US and the UK and so
15:38on.
15:39But that's a bit difficult now because Trump will quite happily just take to truth social and in all caps,
15:45just do his own summary of how we think it went.
15:49We've gone beyond a system to system world is I think what we're really seeing now is that, you know,
15:54the very good and hardworking officials on both sides of the Atlantic can talk to each other and pre-brief
15:59and agree and coordinate all they like.
16:01It's not going to make any difference to what Donald Trump actually does or says.
16:04That's true.
16:05But also in the same way that, you know, we talk about government by WhatsApp domestically, world leaders are texting
16:12each other and WhatsAppping each other.
16:14And, you know, they have their own interpersonal relationships.
16:17They go to these summits.
16:18They spend time together.
16:19So some of what can be controlled by diplomats is sort of out of the picture.
16:24Well, this is also, we've kind of skipped over it.
16:26This was Donald Trump communicating via a media outlet he owns and creates it.
16:30So it's not, he's not, you know, it's via truth social, which is his own, his own thing.
16:36I mean, that is like, if you asked us 10 years ago to sit here and be like, oh, of
16:40course the American president is communicating on a media channel that he owns himself entirely.
16:44It's beyond dystopian.
16:46Yeah, it's full James Bond villain, isn't it?
16:49Well, there's not enough cats for my liking.
16:51Or did you, although did you see that some of the more breathtaking things that Donald Trump said, and, you
16:56know, some of this is deeply sobering and horrible.
16:58He said from the White House balcony, standing next to the Easter Bunny, who, I mean, the pictures are genuinely
17:05extraordinary, but it's like you can't really face manage if you're in a Easter Bunny costume.
17:10So you're just looking really super smiley in your Easter Bunny costume, trying to work out whether to nod or
17:15look a bit quizzical when the man next to you is talking about, you know, bombing a civilization into kingdom
17:21come.
17:21So I don't know if you'd noticed that we'd also had a really odd thing this week where in Keir
17:26Starmer's press conference, he didn't name the US president.
17:30He just referred to what he'd been saying as noise, which is, even by the standards of linguistic, you know,
17:36unusual statements, I think referring to the US president's utterances as noise is quite unusual for a prime minister.
17:43I think the noise could be one of the plighter nicknames for Donald Trump around Whitehall just now.
17:47Well, we did. Do you remember we said when Keir Starmer was being picked on by Donald Trump a couple
17:51of weeks ago, we said that the thing that would help us is if Donald Trump found somebody else to
17:56pick on.
17:57I don't think we didn't mean Iran in that particular instance, but I don't know if you saw that actually
18:02maybe a week or a week and a half later, he turned his eye towards Emmanuel Macron.
18:07He did. And actually, it was slightly worse than that. He brought in Macron's wife, Brigitte Macron, and implied she'd
18:15hit him in the head getting off a plane.
18:17You know, he went on Macron on that. And he had a, the French president had a very elegant response
18:22to this, which is essentially, I won't dignify this kind of thing with an answer.
18:26But I also thought perhaps Trump might have met his match with Brigitte Macron because she sues back.
18:32Yeah. And it's really, it's extraordinary to watch actually the contortions that world leaders are putting themselves through.
18:39And not just world leaders, but we should also say business leaders too, that there is a whole kind of
18:43the chilling effect of not wanting to end up the wrong side of what Donald Trump thinks of you.
18:50I mean, the vengeance is deep and hard. So if you'd like to do business in America, if you'd like
18:55to do this, if you'd like to do whatever, it's really risky to say anything critical.
18:59I think it'd be good next if we turn to the next two weeks. We have this two-week ceasefire,
19:04we hope. And what we really want to do is talk about what is going to happen next.
19:10How can the government prepare and use the next two weeks to prepare the country for what may be coming
19:15next, whether that is indeed going to be further hostilities,
19:18or whether it's just how we'd manage domestically with rising oil prices and what that means for everybody. Because exactly
19:26as you say, it's very, very tough times ahead. And there are things the government can do about it.
19:33So Helen, I'd like you to imagine if you would, that you were back in your old job. Sorry about
19:41that. So instead of just sitting at home, tracking the price of crude, you're back in the cabinet office, and
19:48you are in charge of the secretariat, and you're looking at the next two weeks, what would your list of
19:53priorities be for how to keep the government on track and what to prepare for?
19:57I think the first thing is, you've got to stay on top of what is happening, actually happening in the
20:02Gulf, but not get too distracted by it. It's very easy for inside government. And this goes for ministers, civil
20:09servants, MP, everybody, to just spend their entire time glued to their phone, finding out what's happening. And then assuming
20:15that talking about what's happening is a proxy for doing anything at all. And it's much easier to sit around
20:20and speculate and talk about the personalities involved and what might happen, and then think that that's the work.
20:26And although that is important, it's important. And you know, the National Security Secretariat and the foreign policy people need
20:32to be entirely on top of all of the colour and the corridor conversations and what's happening. And it's called
20:38lots of other things, but it's basically gossip, right? They need to be totally on top of that. But it
20:42can't become the whole game. Yeah, okay, thinking back into, you know, the secretariats, which are the bit of the
20:48cabinet office that effectively coordinates the rest of government.
20:51So you've got the foreign office and diplomacy one, you have the civil contingencies one, and then you have domestic
20:57and economic policy. I would hope that what they will be doing, and I'm sure with Antonio Romeo as cabinet
21:03secretary, this is what they will be doing, is just making sure they have the world's best map of what
21:08does an oil crisis mean.
21:10So what does an oil crisis mean for every single bit of domestic policy? What are the industries that are
21:15going to be most effective? Who are the people who are going to be most affected?
21:19Where are the places that are going to be most affected? And then have a really sensible way of putting
21:24back to ministers, what are the choices that you want to make, especially now?
21:28And I know we keep going on about this, like it's a small thing, but actually the weather and the
21:32season really helps us out here.
21:35Like what can we be doing over the summer that will really make the oil crisis of next winter more
21:42manageable?
21:42I think the other thing that I'd be, as well as a gigantic mapping exercise, obviously the civil contingencies people,
21:49they need to be much more focused on readiness and preparedness.
21:54And actually, if things do get worse, if we see more conflict, if there are, you know, those are the
21:59people that need to be ready for the ready.
22:01The plan for the plan is very important there.
22:04All the reporting is very fixated on the kind of price of a barrel of crude oil, but we have
22:09got an oil supply problem and we're in that now.
22:14Some of this, ironically, is we are helped out by geography.
22:17So because it takes quite a long time for a boat to get from the Straits of Hormuz to Northern
22:22Europe, we actually are still benefiting from oil that left the Middle East before February the 28th.
22:29So that's still coming through. So we are actually, we're sort of in that kind of not quite realising how
22:34bad the crisis is point still.
22:37And there's other parts of the world where they've already started with fuel rationing.
22:40They've already started with all of these. It's real and it's here and it's going to have profound consequences.
22:46Oil shocks go across the whole economy as we've talked about.
22:48The oil crisis isn't just about oil. It's about everything.
22:52I would hope and expect that what the government are doing is really thinking through and we are much better
22:58at mapping these things than we used to be.
23:00So if I think back to thinking about power supply and oil crises and contingency planning during the coalition government,
23:08we actually had a really kind of pretty poor map of supply chains and what industries were dependent on.
23:14And the consequences of having to prepare for a no deal Brexit and then COVID means that actually, luckily, our
23:20government is much more skilled and well versed in what, in how things work.
23:25And I would hope that as well as obviously thinking about all of the diplomatic efforts, there's some real thought
23:31going into where are the problems going to come and how do you intervene early so that you, if you've
23:37got a fuel rich or an energy dependent industry,
23:41what's the help that you're putting in now, particularly during the summer, for example, that means it's going to be
23:46easy and things aren't going to disappear because it's so, it's such a truism.
23:50But if you intervene early, it costs a lot less, whereas if you're left intervening at the end, it's really
23:55expensive.
23:57And the other thing that I would say is that, and this might be, you know, sound a bit too
24:01Second World War-ish to modern ears, but we are going to aviation.
24:06The price of flying is already more expensive.
24:11There's a very, very fuel price dependent industry.
24:14It's unlikely that people are going to be able to afford air travel in quite the same way that they
24:19were.
24:19However, one of the things that the government might want to think about is, OK, so if people aren't going
24:25to be able to go abroad on holiday this year,
24:28like they couldn't in 2020 or 2021, what can you do to make the experience of going on holiday to
24:34our beautiful coastline actually really nice?
24:36Because, OK, we've got some amazingly like luxe bits of coastline, but lots of poverty in this country is in
24:43coastal communities.
24:44And how are they poor because they're poor?
24:47So there isn't the industry, there isn't the business rates, there isn't the council tax, which gives the council money
24:51to keep it all clean and sparkly, to make it a really nice, you know, make the environment nicer.
24:56It's a very cheap thing to do, to like clean up our coastal towns, very nice thing to do.
25:01Yeah, I was really reminded when you talked about no deal Brexit planning for exactly this period, because do you
25:08remember there was the dashboard for no Brexit deal planning,
25:13which it did cover everything it covered, you know, transport, what was going on in different ports, energy, exactly as
25:20you say, what would happen with immigration and education and pretty much anything you can think of that would be
25:27touched by a potential no deal Brexit.
25:29And all these teams would meet and there was this really quite impressive dashboard built, which would flash amber, either
25:38stay in green or go amber or go red, depending on, you know, how far off the mark the team
25:43were from the deadline.
25:44And I think it is useful sometimes to have something like a two week ceasefire, it does focus the mind
25:52for a while, like it does at least make people feel slightly in that white heat moment, because there's a
25:57deadline at the end, rather than something being spun out for a while.
26:00And I just hope that there is this kind of contingency planning, this kind of dashboard feeling of if this
26:07doesn't get sorted in time, this thing that is currently green but turning amber, it's going to have massive knock
26:12on effects by November for these things that will then be read.
26:17And then it's very hard to be ready in time, let alone to then solve a crisis already happened.
26:22You're absolutely right, you've got to act early.
26:24And the no deal Brexit is also relevant, I think, in terms of how the government, what the government's posture
26:29and stances to some of this decision making.
26:32So this was the no deal planning was for if we left the European Union in the kind of shock,
26:37effectively, without any kind of trade deal and the impact that that would have.
26:41And one of the things that when Boris Johnson became prime minister, the entirely authored by Dominic Cummings was this
26:47kind of a madman strategy, she says.
26:51He loves those.
26:51He loves those. But it was a kind of, and it was impactful. And I think even his critics would
26:57say that it was impactful, that he was very clear that the UK government position had to be soddy, we
27:04will leave without a deal, even if it costs us, we're going to do that.
27:08And one of my reflections is that, you know, Keir Starmer's government has been criticised for being too technocratic.
27:13They're all kind of much of a muchness. They're very on the one hand, on the other hand, they're rational,
27:18that he's taking decisions on evidence.
27:20I'm making sorry, he's taking decisions on the basis of evidence.
27:23Lame.
27:25But, you know, there is a thing where, actually, that is not amenable to the world in which we are
27:30operating in.
27:32And, you know, heaven forfend, I'm not advocating for Dominic Cummings to be brought back into Downing Street.
27:38I don't think he thanked me for that.
27:40But there is a thing about, actually, who is there in these meetings that thinks differently, that is prepared to
27:46be really challenging, that actually is part of this new world?
27:50It feels like, to some degree, some of us, and I put myself both sides of the line, probably, are
27:56kind of clinging on to this old world order in the hope that some things are going to go back
27:59to normal.
28:00And they're not going to go back to normal.
28:03So you do think about how can you, if you're Keir Starmer or Antonio Romeo, how do you have people
28:09in the room with you who are going to bring a bit of that crazy, who are more likely to
28:14think in a maverick way, who are more likely to be challenging, who might be, you know, slightly painful and
28:19difficult to work with?
28:20I think that's true.
28:21And Cummings himself tried to do it in January 2020.
28:26He put out an advertisement.
28:28Oh, his misfits are weirdos.
28:29His misfits are weirdos, Helen, to get people who think, I think a large corporate business would call it creatively,
28:35the creative thinkers.
28:37And he did try and inject some of this different thinking.
28:41And I think it is relevant because otherwise you can have half of Whitehall looking at true social the whole
28:46time,
28:47looking at Donald Trump's capitalised truths and think, what does this mean?
28:53Not least because so much of it is so aggressive and then he rose back and softens anyway.
28:58And it's just so hard to predict on what matters is going to be consistent and what is going to
29:03be inconsistent.
29:04And you're right.
29:06We talk about having diverse people in the rooms.
29:09You know, I spoke earlier about how many world leaders and indeed Whitehall Mandarins have an Oxbridge education, quite possibly
29:16in PPE.
29:17And actually having other people in the room who can come in and think a little bit differently and are
29:25perhaps,
29:26I mean, it's hard to say that they'll be versed in anything, well versed in anything Donald Trump would say,
29:30but can have a different interpretation, which isn't just, well, this is obviously just mad.
29:36Entirely.
29:37And actually, I mean, the Misfits and Weirdos recruitment exercise, one of my early,
29:43well, it wasn't even an early encounter with Dom.
29:46We were quite well practised at this point.
29:47And I was just, I would say, he just did it over Christmas.
29:50And mainly I was like, could you have told me beforehand, maybe?
29:55Because then I could have helped make this slightly less painful, including for me.
29:59Thank you very much, Dom.
30:00But actually, that exercise brought in some great people who literally, during the COVID crisis,
30:07we would be in a much worse place as a country were it not for them.
30:10So I am all for, like, you can't have people who are just going to come in and disrupt and
30:14cause,
30:15not naming any names, just cause a massive amount of trouble and not be very helpful.
30:19But you should have ways of thinking differently, operating differently, like be prepared to be brave,
30:24and really try to internalise this point that this is the world that we are in now.
30:30So the world order is changing really rapidly.
30:33And we talked about Pakistan as a peacebreaker.
30:36Some countries are way ahead of the curve.
30:38So why does China have so many electric vehicles?
30:41It's not because they just love electricity.
30:43It's because they don't want to be dependent on oil.
30:45Like, it is, how do you get into the kind of fundamentals of how you protect yourselves as a country
30:50and what your national interests are?
30:52And you can't just be slightly sad that it's not how it used to be,
30:56or a bit upset that there was this process by which we used to all sit in meetings together
31:00and agree things in a well-minded way, and that doesn't seem to happen anymore.
31:03Yeah.
31:03We have to be much more assertive of our own national interest.
31:06So it does feel all very international just at the moment, Helen,
31:10particularly because of this two-week ceasefire.
31:12It feels like everything hangs off that.
31:13And as you've described, there's lots of work to do domestically
31:17in terms of how the government can prepare for what comes next.
31:20But there's also what's going on now.
31:21MPs are currently on recess, but they're about to come back to Parliament.
31:24That will pick up.
31:25Junior doctors are on strike.
31:27And, of course, the local elections, which I love banging on about, are coming.
31:32They're coming for us, whether we like it or not.
31:34So there is plenty for Keir Starmer to be thinking about.
31:37And it just feels like all the worlds are colliding in a sort of kaleidoscope just now.
31:43Where it's not totally clear what his way forward is.
31:47And all he can do, really, is make a plan, act on it as soon as possible.
31:53And, as usual, bring in a psycho.
31:55Who knew we'd be back to that?
31:57But we love it.
31:58Every week is our same advice.
31:59Keep inviting psychos in.
32:01Thank you for listening to today's episode.
32:03Remember to follow the show on your podcast player.
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32:13This podcast is part of the Independent Podcast Network and produced in association with Next Chapter Studios.
32:19The executive producers this week are Olivia Foster, Carrie Rose and Al Brown.
32:24And the producers are Dean Webster and Sam Durham.
32:27And a special mention to our content queen, Maya Anoushka, and our video editor, Vali Raza.
32:32All caps.
32:33Thanks for listening.
32:34And we'll see you next week.
32:36Thank you for your attention to this matter.
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