Hasta la vista, baby,’ I bellowed at the Speaker at the end of my last session of Prime Minister’s Questions. To my surprise I found the benches behind me rising in a standing ovation.
It might have been almost tear-jerking, I thought, as I brushed past my smiling and clapping colleagues on the way out of the chamber – if so many of them had not been actively trying to remove me from office.
There is no point going over whatever I may think were the mistakes of my successors. Both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have very good qualities, and each was handed some bad luck.
Like many former PMs, I am afraid I have found it impossible to disengage emotionally, and sometimes I have found myself tearing my hair out at some of the decisions.
Like what? I hear you ask. I really didn’t want to go into this – but feel I have to for the sake of completeness. Why did we do so badly in 2024? It is surely pretty obvious. We junked the agenda on which we were elected, and turned our backs on many of the people who put us in power.
We ingeniously managed to alienate both sides of the coalition that gave us 14 million votes in 2019 (more than four million more than Starmer got in 2024), and a 44 per cent share of the vote.
Among other things it was madness to use a Tory conference in Manchester to announce the cancellation of HS2 to the north of the country, and the consequent scaling back of Northern Powerhouse Rail and much besides. Whatever the difficulties of HS2 (all UK infrastructure is hellish to build), the decision sent a message to communities across the North and the Midlands, that no, contrary to our promises, we were not that interested in levelling up.
It turned out that we weren’t determined, after all, to give them the same quality of transport infrastructure as the south-east; we weren’t interested in their commuter networks and their journey times; and we weren’t interested in the long-term growth of the whole country.
Did we really expect to cancel HS2 and go up in the polls? How many times can I say it: you don’t win an election unless you own the future, and it felt like we were cancelling the future.
For the same reason, it was bonkers to water down the planning bill, so that we went into the 2024 election with no big housing offer for young people – only a cowardly capitulation to the alleged prejudices of their Nimby grandparents.
We gave enormous prominence to the Rwanda policy (even though Rishi had actually been against it, as chancellor), but for reasons I simply don’t understand we called the election before it had been given a chance to work.
So we mightily cheesed off all those who were worried about our borders, and – in a massive unforced error – created a surge of votes for Reform (which was, in case I have failed to mention this point, hovering around zero when I was PM). At the same time we shot ourselves smartly in the other foot, by sneering at net zero and rowing back on environmental commitments I had made, helping to send another large group of Tory voters into the arms of the Lib Dems (who now control the whole of what was Tory Oxfordshire, which I once represented).
For whatever reason, we never mentioned any of the good things that had been done in the period 2019–2022, when I was PM. Brexit was taboo. The fastest vaccine roll-out in Europe was not mentioned. We were all but silent on Ukraine and Russia. The advantages and potential of constitutional independence – it was all but forgotten.
Instead, we had a few zany ideas such as making maths compulsory for all 18-year-olds, when we should have been focusing on basic numeracy at 11.
We were no longer talking to the people who elected us; we no longer seemed to share their ambitions; and we didn’t seem to be offering any hope or vision for the country.
That, frankly, was how we plummeted from the biggest victory in 40 years to the biggest Tory defeat since 1821.
So now I have at last got that off my chest, here is what we – or anyone interested in politics – should be doing.
1. FIX HOUSING: You can’t hope to appeal to the younger generation if you have no plan to help them buy a home. We built a lot of homes, more than Labour – just as I out-built both Ken Livingstone and Sadiq Khan when I was mayor of London.
But we should do more. We need to fix the planning system, and we need to use Brexit freedoms to address some of the mind-boggling delay and expense in getting one brick legally placed upon another.
2: FIX IMMIGRATION: Labour people like Starmer basically want to get back to free movement of EU nationals; in other words, a total surrender of control. The present Labour government have no plan whatsoever to deal with illegal arrivals. The Rwanda plan was always going to be difficult, always going to be contested, but it remains by far the best long-term deterrent to the cross-Channel gangs.
3. FIX SKILLS: We need a national campaign for proper literacy and numeracy at 11, and a thoroughgoing effort – which we attempted – to exalt practical skills and to integrate those qualifications into tertiary education. For decades now we have failed to invest in our human capital – with the result that British business has become addicted to migrant labour, pushing up the population and adding to the pressure on housing and services.
4. FIX THE NHS: With an ageing population, the costs of caring for the elderly are out of control. We must fix the interface between the NHS and social care, which is responsible for all manner of delay, misery and expense. We must strike a new bargain with the public.
The state will step in to help those facing catastrophic costs of dementia, but only IF people begin to insure themselves against the general cost of old age. We need to start that now.
5. FIX OUR INFRASTRUCTURE: We need to revive the vision for high-speed rail across the country, including HS2. We need a solution for London’s airports, and we need Crossrail 2. To be truly productive and creative and competitive you need to meet other people, and working from home is not enough.
6. FIX GOVERNMENT: The State is taking and spending far too much money. It is insane, after the massive Covid-driven expansion in the State, that Labour is determined to go further and tax and spend more, with endless above-inflation pay rises and no productivity gain. This will pre-empt private investment and choke the economy.
7. FIX THE TAX SYSTEM: It was one of my biggest regrets that we didn’t use Brexit to put a big ‘Invest Here’ sign over Britain, by cutting corporation tax or some other such incentive. Rishi and I had always intended to cut both inheritance tax and income tax at the end of the Parliament, once we had dealt with inflation; and we obviously need to get back, at the very least, to the rates under Tony Blair. If you can cut the cost of government, and you can, then you can certainly cut taxation.
8. FIX CLIMATE CHANGE: You can’t expect to win over Middle Britain if you seem to dismiss people’s concerns over the environment. Yes, of course there is a place for transitional fossil fuels, but we in Britain are world leaders in many green technologies and the net zero agenda is already driving the creation of many tens of thousands of good jobs.
Contrary to the belief of many of my Tory friends, there just aren’t enough votes in being anti-net zero. Look at the polls. Look at the election results.
9. FIX CAPITALISM: One of the reasons people voted for Brexit was that they felt the system wasn’t working for them. Quantitative easing was pushing up asset values for the very people who triggered the 2008 crisis, and yet most people saw no increase in their incomes.
The gap between boardroom and shopfloor pay has continued to grow. We can’t be indifferent to this – which is why we began with a record increase in the
Living Wage: the definition of levelling up.
And finally . . .
10. FIX THE NATIONAL OBSESSION WITH RUNNING OURSELVES DOWN: When the people of this country voted for Brexit, it was a fantastic statement of self-belief. They thought that their country was more than capable of self-government. They wanted to take back control.
They were right, in the sense that our new-found national autonomy is already delivering results. We are using Brexit freedoms to regulate differently, on everything from vaccines to wine production to slot allocation at airports. We have been able to cut VAT on everything from solar panels to tampons.
We have taken complete control of our fisheries and coastal waters, and we are able to promote agricultural policies that suit the needs of British farmers rather than central France.
We have become the No 1 global champion of free trade, with more free-trade agreements than any other independent country, and we are opening up markets across the world for UK goods, under agreements that would not have been possible before because our trade was run from Brussels.
We have completely exploded some of the more shameless lies that were peddled during the 2016 referendum campaign. There was no great post-Brexit spike in unemployment – quite the reverse. There was no collapse in exports; indeed, we are now the fourth-biggest exporter in the world, the second-biggest exporter of financial services, at £200 billion a year, and the third country in the world, after the US and China, to have a tech sector worth $1 trillion.
Oh – I almost forgot to mention: as the great red bus of truth foretold, we have taken back £15 billion a year to spend on our own priorities, in this country, rather than handing it over to Brussels to be spaffed up le mur.
I don’t want to be unnecessarily provocative, but I might as well say it here: Brexit is never going to be overturned.
Whatever the polls may say now, you have to imagine that the British people could be persuaded to vote to pay £15 billion a year (and rising) for the privilege of abandoning control of their laws and their borders – and scrapping the Pound Sterling in favour of the euro, since membership of the monetary union is a condition of joining the EU.
Why would they? What is the case, when we have already grown faster, since leaving the transition period, than France and Germany and Italy?
Amigos, it ain’t gonna happen.
We are unleashed, and we will never be leashed again. After the Brexit vote, Henry Kissinger was asked how Britain should now conduct itself on the world stage. ‘Supreme self-confidence,’ he replied, and he was right.
No one can seriously doubt this country’s systemic and habitual faults and weaknesses.
But I wish that sometimes (without abandoning our gift for self-deprecation) we could remember our strengths, because they are colossal; and they would be even more colossal for being manifest, as they should and I hope will be, in every part of the UK. Which is why it will be the job of the next Tory government to unite, to stop the feuds, to rebuild the great coalition of 2019 – and get back to levelling up.
As for whether I will ever stand in the Commons again, to call the speaker ‘baby’ or anything else, I have no idea.
I used to claim that my chances of becoming PM were about the same as my being reincarnated as an olive or decapitated by a Frisbee. The longer I spend away from Westminster, the stronger my belief that you should only get involved if you really think you can be useful.
When I stood against Ken Livingstone to be mayor of London, his officials combed my back articles for evidence that I was, as they claimed, the most Right-wing, racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic candidate ever to stand for high office in Britain.
In one televised debate he tried to undermine my assertion that I was – like so many millions of Londoners – the descendant of immigrants, by attacking the patriotism of my Turkish great-grandfather, Ali Kemal, of whom I am very proud.
I cornered Livingstone in the green room afterwards, got him in a Vulcan nerve pinch at the back of the neck. ‘You f***er,’ I said. ‘Don’t ever say anything like that again.’ He didn’t.
I won the election and became mayor. Arriving at City Hall to take up my position I could feel the dark force within: the force of Livingstone.
I was shown my office – Livingstone’s office – and again I caught that Vader-like whiff, the presence of the dark lord. He had been here only hours ago. The shredders were still hot from throbbing and panting all night as Ken and his team destroyed documents.
I opened his drinks cabinet and – my God – there they were, glinting in the gloom like a Pharaoh’s tomb, just as I had told the people of London: the taxpayer-funded bottles of Chateauneuf-du-Pape!
There were only about a dozen left, but enough to make the point.