Not Ready For Government - Should We Train Politicians?

[00:00:00] The Why Curve, Phil Dobbie and Roger Herring There's a new government coming. On July the 6th, barring a political earthquake, there's going to be a new Labour Cabinet and most of them have never been in office before.

[00:00:12] Men and women who've never run anything will now find themselves in charge of departments with billion pound budgets. There'll be a very steep and long learning curve. But is that good for Britain? Is it any way to run the world's sixth largest economy?

[00:00:26] Or should MPs be trained for government long before they step into power? The question is, of course, if you were to train them, what would you train them on? I mean, you can train them.

[00:00:37] And I think they do get a basic training done there about just the processes involved in that. Well, they don't really. Yeah, I mean, you get trained for being in parliament, but it's not the same as running a department. That's administration. It's a whole other thing.

[00:00:51] And I think that's a massive difference. Obviously, they have civil servants. But the fact is that on day one, you're sitting in a big office with a massive budget. Maybe you've got your policies all sorted out.

[00:01:02] But in terms of actually running something on that scale, they've got no experience at all. Well, because that's what Yes Minister showed us, which wasn't a comedy, was it? It was a documentary. You're showing your age now. That was a long time ago.

[00:01:12] But it was for those who haven't seen it. It was about the civil service basically running government. I mean, they were controlling the MPs. And I guess if you've got MPs who are inexperienced, that is what's going to happen. Then you start to...

[00:01:24] There's a question mark around democracy then. Well, there is. I mean, that is the way the system is always basically always run. That is, it's the civil servants who kind of get things done.

[00:01:32] But you hear a lot of people say, oh, it's the civil service that's blocking stuff. When we want to change things, they won't let us. I mean, unless you've got someone like Michael Gove who's just stood down as an MP.

[00:01:44] I mean, he's been in government in one form or another for about 15 years. And that, you know, you can argue about his abilities. But the fact is he was someone who knew which buttons to press and what levers.

[00:01:55] Well, he was a better MP than he was a stand up comedian. But that's not saying a great deal, which was his early career. But he's my MP for a while. So I'm going to suspend judgment on that one. But anyway.

[00:02:05] But look, I mean, these are going to be a massive change, isn't it? Because 650 MPs, we know 128 of them are not going to be standing again. So 20 percent are going on even before we have the election. And it looks like, you know, if we believe the electoral calculus,

[00:02:18] Labour is going to gain 262 seats, the Lib Dems are going to gain 55. So even if you know, it's all be out of date by the time we're broadcasting. Well, a couple of days time, we're doing this couple of days in advance. But it's still that's 317.

[00:02:32] And then all those who are Tury who are returned, but they're new. You know, the seats return, but the new MP. So you're looking at half the house in effect could well be new MPs, which is quite staking. I wonder if that's ever happened.

[00:02:45] A lot of them, of course, are not going to get into any form of office. They're not actually going to, you know, may be in charge of anything particularly. But there will be a chunk who will when you got all the junior ministers

[00:02:54] and the various people who assist. I mean, you got to be talking about a payroll, as they say, of around 100, at least. Yeah, well, let's pick up on this decision making powers. Yeah, exactly. Well, let's say I pick up on this with Sir

[00:03:05] Jeff Mulgan, his professor of collective intelligent public policy and social innovation at University College London. He was formerly a director of policy under Tony Blair. Well, Jeff, let's first of all look at this whole idea of experience, because that's that's really at the crux of this.

[00:03:19] You've got a bunch of people coming into power, we assume, on July the 6th who are driving the fifth, who don't actually have experience in government. They don't know how to run things. Some of them may be, I suppose, have been in business or whatever,

[00:03:33] but they don't know that process. How big a problem is that for government? Well, I think it's very strange in much of the world that politics and running government is seen as one of the roles which doesn't need much training or education.

[00:03:47] We assume you've got to become a doctor or an engineer or even a business leader. You need some specialist preparation. You need to find out about what counts as good practice, what the methods are, the knowledge. But as you say, if you're a politician, you may,

[00:04:04] for one day to the next, go from essentially having run nothing more than your household budget to being responsible for many billions of pounds and tens of thousands of employees. And I think that's a slightly crazy way of doing things. And there are many alternatives.

[00:04:21] Maybe we'll come on to them around the world where there is some more systematic training for for politicians. I think it's becoming more of a problem because the complexity of the things which politicians have to deal with is increasing. Problems like pandemics or climate change, complex

[00:04:39] science, like artificial intelligence and the idea you can just sort of busk your way through, improvise, probably doesn't serve the public very well. And yet we wonder whether lots of MPs are doing that. I mean, there's there's two basic requirements, aren't there, to be an MP?

[00:04:53] You've got to be a British citizen. And the second one is you've got to be alive. Apart from that, you know, that's that's that's, you know, what other job in the world would have such lack standards. But then maybe that's fine because, you know, you're there to represent,

[00:05:07] you know, your electorate. But then again, that skill set to win means that you can lobby well doesn't necessarily mean you can govern well, does it? Yeah. And I think this applies at every level. So it's as much an issue for local councillors

[00:05:21] and running a local government or big cities, mayors, as it is for MPs and ministers. Many years ago, I proposed that MPs in standing for election should put out a sort of almost a job description of how they intended to do the job, what their relevant skills were

[00:05:42] and how they would do it and how they should be held to account. Like a CV. And that's a CV. And at that point, actually, only one politician agreed to do that, who was Paddy Ashdown, then running the Liberal Democrats. It didn't catch on that idea.

[00:05:57] And it matters much less for 650 or so MPs than it does for ministers responsible for things like industrial policy or welfare or foreign policy, where there is a lot of specialist knowledge needed to do the job well.

[00:06:11] And they can be picked from from the herd at any point, can't they? That's the thing. You know, you have a shuffle and suddenly someone becomes junior minister for something who may have never been anywhere near that before because it happens to fit the numbers at the time.

[00:06:23] But you'd hope, wouldn't you, that whoever was making that decision, that the prime minister would be basing it on their experience, that he would at least be looking at the CV and saying, well, OK, you've got experience in this area. Although you look at a lot of that.

[00:06:35] That's not what it looks like in the recent past. I mean, you know, one of our ministers didn't know what came or went out of Dover, as I recall. I mean, there's clearly, you know, that doesn't work in practice, does it, Jeff?

[00:06:45] Yeah. And it's not that hard to solve. I don't think it's I mean, in the British system, it's assumed that from on your first day in the job as a minister, you stand up in parliament and have to answer very detailed questions

[00:06:57] are held to account for everything that's been done by your predecessors. I think we could do things in a more professional way. And I mean, the country in the world which does this most seriously is actually China, which sends its ministers,

[00:07:11] its governors of provinces, its mayors on intensive training courses, residential courses of, you know, a couple of weeks a year where they learn about technology or law or geopolitics. Even the president actually has to do some training each year. Not that much, but supposedly a couple of days

[00:07:32] to make sure he's on top of what's happening in the world. And maybe that reflects a culture which takes education more seriously than. It may also reflect the fact that it's not a democracy. I was going to say, what are they getting trained on?

[00:07:43] Are they getting trained on how to do stuff or are they being trained on how to think? That's the that's the worry, isn't it? I mean, it's a complicated curriculum. I've taught in many of their colleges for ministers and governors.

[00:07:55] Much of it is fairly practical stuff, I say about science and technology, the sort of things they wouldn't have learned in their everyday career. In the last few years, they've reintroduced Marxism. Lenin is into the curriculum as the party has become a little much more more authoritarian again.

[00:08:15] But I think the idea that there should be at least some light training in the nature of the world therein should be obvious. And some other countries like Australia recently created an academy for politicians, which both the main part is there

[00:08:29] ascending their high flyers to before they become ministers. So they again are up to speed with the way the modern world works. But we've never done that, have we? I mean, have we even thought about it or planned it?

[00:08:41] I mean, we've got groups like the Institute for Government, for example, might be an obvious way forward. There was briefly a training program for junior ministers in the early years of the Blair government, which they seem to appreciate quite a bit, but it didn't survive.

[00:08:55] And, you know, most recent ministers have thought they could improvise their way through and they didn't think this was a priority. And I think we've seen some of the results with incredibly high turnover of ministers and actually pretty poor performance by ministers over the last decade or so.

[00:09:15] So I hope there'll be a shift and this will just become one of the things we talk about and it becomes obvious that these are jobs which need a little bit of a little bit of preparation.

[00:09:24] Well, there's sort of almost three levels on that in terms of training for MPs. One is, you know, just the basic stuff about how the house works and, you know, what happens when the bell goes, how you fill in your expense report, obviously very important.

[00:09:36] And I'm sure all that sort of stuff happens. Then there's, you know, the question about just the broader education. You know, how well can you actually dissect reports of which they have to read a lot of them if they do indeed read them? Do they understand numbers?

[00:09:49] It's sort of like a basic numeracy and literacy almost. And that capability for analytical thinking. And then the third tier is, yes, if you are going to find yourself in charge of defence, for example, what do you really need to know before you can do that job?

[00:10:04] And those top two, we're not doing either of them, are we? Yeah. So the first one, I think there is reasonable provision by parliament provides training for new MPs, places like the Institute for Government do provide a bit of training on how private

[00:10:18] offices work, how the everyday machinery of government works. But it's not that that that deeper training, which you were alluding to, understanding how to reason, understanding what the right questions to ask are. This became very obvious in the Covid inquiry

[00:10:34] when it was clear our then prime minister just didn't know how to interpret the kind of scientific evidence or the epidemiology or the statistics which were were coming to him and really floundered pretty badly. His successor clearly didn't know how to ask the right questions

[00:10:51] about economics and finance, which led to the disasters of October 2022. And as you say, I think if you're becoming the minister responsible for hugely complex new fields, maybe it's the NHS or it's the Ministry of Defence or the Home Office,

[00:11:09] you know, ideally you would have a crash course in in the key issues, the strategic dilemmas, what other countries are doing, what you need to know before you dive into making decisions. But Jeff, let me make the obvious point. How do you do that in a non-political way?

[00:11:25] That's the problem. Yeah, because that's that's the problem. It's all going to come over as if it's, you know, pushing in a particular direction. You know, these are supposed to be ordinary people of the people who've been elected. You're going to impose some might say dogma on them.

[00:11:38] I don't understand that at all. No, I mean, I think I think there's a there's a legitimate desire to have politicians who reflect the public not to have an overly professional political class, which becomes more and more detached from the public.

[00:11:53] And to some extent, we've got the worst of both worlds. We do in some ways have a more professionalized political class who spend their whole life in SW1 in Westminster. But we've had that without the training to allow them to be actually effective as professionals.

[00:12:08] A little trick I used to sometimes do with politicians, though also with some business leaders, was to ask them to if they could give a three or five minute talk to a secondary school on how the Internet worked. They would usually be spending hours each day,

[00:12:22] as we are at this very moment, on the Internet. But it turned out almost none had any clue how it worked. So it's perhaps not surprising they really struggled to know how to regulate or govern the Internet or how to handle misinformation or problems with with childhood.

[00:12:41] And that is a kind of specialist knowledge. Doesn't need to be a PhD, but it does need to be maybe a day or so being told how this incredibly important technology works so they could make better decisions about it.

[00:12:54] And I think that's compatible with a parliament, a political system, which is much more open to people from very diverse backgrounds. But before they make decisions, they need to have a little bit of education to ensure they make good decisions. And that's probably the dogma.

[00:13:09] Is it a little education or is it a lot of education? Because so you talk about the Internet there and I got involved. I was reporting on the Internet in Australia for a long time. And it got, you know, because the government was putting in place

[00:13:21] a very large Internet project, it became in a lot of it was around competition policy. And, you know, it was not it was a combination of technology, business, economics. You had to really understand all the issues. You had to dig quite deep into all of those areas.

[00:13:36] So there's a depth of knowledge that's required. I'm just wondering whether, you know, that can be realistically taught before you enter into a into a new portfolio, I guess. And the point the point on that, Jeff, as well, is that you have people

[00:13:49] there who do have that deep knowledge. They're civil servants. That's what they're for. That's how the system works. They're the experts. Aren't we kind of perhaps doing something that doesn't need doing? But then they've got an ingrained way of thinking.

[00:14:00] So, I mean, if you're if they're teaching you. So we will get back to you in a second. Don't worry about when we're talking about finance, for example. I mean, you could say, well, OK, we need to teach people financial literacy.

[00:14:11] And if we do that, you know, maybe it's taught by somebody like the Institute for Fiscal Studies, but they've got a particular way of thinking and that you wouldn't be challenging the orthodoxy if you if you had that ingrained sort of training system

[00:14:24] that just gets passed on from year to year from one MP to another. So I'm a great believer in the scientific method. And the my most recent book was about science and politics, which is increasingly showing the limits of politicians

[00:14:40] understanding of the frontiers of science, or even everyday science. The slogan of the Royal Society founded in Britain nearly 400 years ago was Nullius Inverber, which means don't believe anyone's word for anything. The scientific method is based on skepticism, critical thinking, looking for evidence, always trying to triangulate.

[00:15:02] And in a way, that's that's a key skill we should want in our politicians that, yes, they may be told by the Institute for Fiscal Studies a particular view of how government works. And some of those things are facts and some of those may be opinions.

[00:15:15] And it's right that they should look for alternatives and be able to ask the right skeptical questions. But that's that's really how education in any field should work, that you learn the facts, you learn the theories

[00:15:29] and you learn the right questions to ask to get to the bottom of an issue rather than following an orthodoxy or a dogma. But the point about the put about the civil servants, though, is key, isn't it? Because that is traditionally the people who've been doing this.

[00:15:42] They're the ones who economically literate in the treasury, at least we hope so. But also, you know, they they understand the workings of government. They are the ones who need to be the repository of this knowledge

[00:15:52] Do we actually need to train politicians if we have effective civil servants? Well, we need both. I mean, I've been a civil servant and I'm now on the committee, the Policy Profession Committee, which is about the training of civil servants.

[00:16:04] I think there are still quite a few changes needed in civil service training really to bring it up to speed. Often civil servants have backgrounds in law and economics, which is fine, but doesn't help very much of your dealing with issues like pandemics or quantum computing.

[00:16:22] And so on. So there's a bit of modernization of the civil service skills. But is the idea that they can be the only repositories of knowledge and the politicians can be gifted amateurs who doesn't just do what the civil servants tell them.

[00:16:36] That's not very plausible, because ultimately it will be the politicians who have to be accountable for the difficult decisions they take about trying out maybe some radical new economic policy or the regulation of artificial intelligence, a very live topic all over the world.

[00:16:53] That's that's something they have to have some understanding of, and they need to be able to ask the right questions of the civil servants when they propose to them an analysis, a white paper, possible legislation and go back to the Internet.

[00:17:08] I mean, government only really seriously engaged with the Internet about 20 years after it became part of daily life. It was only in the middle of the last decade that the government started developing Internet legislation. And it became clear that there was a real dearth of knowledge

[00:17:26] and expertise within the civil service, as well as within the politicians, which is one of the reasons why that legislation had such a difficult ride. So this this independent thinking that you talk about where, you know, we this critical thinking, which is all great.

[00:17:40] But of course, you know, can you think too critically and too independently when you're a member of a political party? And that's where I just wonder whether actually having inexperienced MPs who don't question too much, they're just a number for the for the whip

[00:17:53] to bully, which Roy Stewart wrote about in Politics on the Edge. Is that you know, are they happy with that situation? Almost like it's great to have a few dumbed down MPs because they'll they'll do like they're told. Yeah, they're sheep, basically.

[00:18:07] Well, I think this is a very interesting question for all the parties. How much what kind of discipline do you need? And there's obviously a very strong pressure to keep MPs on message, disciplined, not asking too many questions, not creating problems.

[00:18:25] And yet the great political parties which really thrive over time are the ones which are able to contain arguments within them and which have, you know, creative, often difficult, sometimes, you know, heretical thinkers who allow them to explore new ideas.

[00:18:43] A party which really is absolutely uniform and never whispers a doubt about anything is bound to stagnate and to fail to to adapt. And this was for many years a great strength of the Tory parties. It did actually have quite a lot of, you know, difference within it

[00:19:00] and arguments, you know, within cabinet, within the party. Some of those were pretty public labour in its in its in its sort of glory days, 13, the 40s or the 60s or the 2000s again, had a lot of independent

[00:19:16] thinkers in its midst, as well as, you know, strong pressures for discipline, especially in election times. So I think it's key for parties that they don't overshoot on the discipline conformity side, because that may work in the short run and stop you getting difficult stories in the press.

[00:19:34] But in the long run, it destroys your capacity to evolve and adapt. Do you think that's what's happened? Because I, you know, I think of MPs today and I'm trying to think who are those independent thinkers? Have we lost them all?

[00:19:45] And is that because MPs have basically been telling everyone to toe the line and they're playing it safe because of the the sound grab? And that's why people don't trust politicians anymore, because they don't actually say anything.

[00:19:56] And one could say, Jeff, that you were in the Tony Blair Downing Street at one point where and Tony Blair was notorious. You know, get making sure people were on message. I mean, was that a deliberate thing of what we're talking about, really, of reining people in?

[00:20:11] Well, there was certainly of strong pressure for discipline and the Labour Party in the 90s and 2000s, partly in reaction to the party having been so bit so divided and very visibly divided in a previous era. But I think it's interesting to think about a character

[00:20:29] like Frank Field, who died a few months ago, who was a Labour MP for many decades, was a minister under under Blair and was very much a free thinker. He disagreed with lots of things his party advocated,

[00:20:44] but he and others like him were part of what enabled the party collectively to think. And I do worry a bit that there aren't that many equivalents in in current parliamentary party. I think there may be some new ones coming in this election.

[00:20:59] There's some very bright, very creative thinkers who I suspect won't be pure, won't be sheep, will be able to do some thinking. But this is where there's a clash between the communications people in any party who do want everyone to toe the line,

[00:21:15] want absolute uniformity and the longer term interests of the institution, which has to find some way to explore, to think to and to argue and to debate. And in the long run, that's a strength, not a weakness.

[00:21:30] Yeah. And, Geoff, I mean, going back to what you're saying about Tony Blair, I mean, Tony Blair was in a way the ultimate gifted amateur when he came into Downing Street. I mean, very few people in the entire party have been in government

[00:21:39] because of all the length of time that the Conservatives have been in power. I mean, this is a sort of parallel now. But how prepared was Tony Blair for government at that point? Well, I think he himself would say he hadn't really run anything large.

[00:21:55] He was very, very able, very quick to learn. But he didn't really have a feel for big organizations and systems and structures. I think he thought if you just pulled a few levers, there would be a kind of Rolls Royce machine, which would achieve results fairly quickly.

[00:22:11] By his second term, he had a much deeper understanding of how government works in reality. But he learned on the job. And obviously it would have been better if there could have been some way of speeding up the process.

[00:22:23] So he learned off the job before coming into power. But no one was offering that at the time. Do you worry about Grant Schaap's learning defense on the job? I mean, not because of him, but just because it's the sort of area where you go,

[00:22:39] well, this is the sort of thing where you want someone inexperienced to come in. And it is partially, isn't it? It's understanding the technology, it's understanding the geopolitics. But it's also managing such a large budget and such a large number of people as well. You can't learn.

[00:22:53] A lot of entrenched interests as well. But, you know, you have to navigate around that and you can't learn that on the job, can you? But I'm wondering what sort of training you could have to go into it. It sounds like you have to have years of training

[00:23:02] to actually go into a position. And then you start to become an expert, not a politician. I mean, most jobs take, you know, a good year to really know how to do them well, which is one of the reasons why it's so important

[00:23:12] that ministers don't chop and change too fast. I mean, the Blair tried to keep his main ministers in post for three or four years. And that, to my mind, is a sensible thing for any prime minister to do, because you will be essentially incompetent

[00:23:27] for most of your your first year. I think a little bit of training is better than no training. And I think we have a deep cultural problem in the UK, which has got worse in the last few years, which is essentially a bias towards talking overdoing in politics.

[00:23:46] And obviously, a lot of politics does involve talking. Grant Schapps, who you mentioned in a way, has always been the minister for the Today program or the media. He's moved from job to job because he's fairly fluent and articulate.

[00:24:01] It is not clear he's very good at doing anything or fixing anything or making any decisions. And I think that reflects a bias in our culture, which also led to the rise of journalists in power. Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and others who were good at crafting words,

[00:24:18] but not necessarily very good at the rather boring, the plumbing, the machinery of government. And it worries me that this is deeply entrenched in our system. It's partly because the media are not very interested in the how of government as opposed to the what.

[00:24:33] They find it a bit dull and it's not something which they have much background in. Nigel Farage, I think, is an extreme version of that, who's a fantastically articulate talker. But my God, you wouldn't want him, you know,

[00:24:47] fixing your plumbing or your roof or actually making any decisions with real, real consequence. And I think Britain has always done best when it's actually given a lot of respect to the doers, the practical people, the engineers, the scientists,

[00:25:01] the people in business who actually are willing to get stuck into the practical side of things. The technocrats is what you're saying. Not always the most charismatic though, are they? I'm a little bit disturbed by the, you know,

[00:25:12] you're saying that the first year, you know, normally you're quite incompetent. That means that we've got so many people coming in. We've got a new government that's not been in power for so long. So many new MPs that are going to have to form

[00:25:24] new positions in the ministry that we are we just going to have a year of incompetent government on that basis? Well, the last few years, I think the average turn in a lifespan of ministers has been months rather than years.

[00:25:35] So this has been a terrible pattern in the last 10 years of essentially a systematically incompetent government for this reason. There's bound to be a bit of that when a new administration takes power. But my hope is that Keir Starmer leaves his people in post long enough

[00:25:54] so that they can actually become competent at their jobs. And I hope too he might introduce a little bit of training for them as well. So they don't learn through mistakes. Let's talk about that. I mean, we've we've kind of got to the, you know,

[00:26:06] the desirability of this training, but in practical terms, what would it be? Would it be something legislated that all MPs have to undergo a certain period of training in various things? Or would he just be trying to hope that the parties get down to it?

[00:26:20] I mean, isn't a great gain from them for them, particularly apart from competence, I suppose. I mean, how would you actually make it happen? It's a terrible comment. If you think competence isn't really much the gain for parties, but

[00:26:33] not in their view, perhaps they do want to do good for their for their country. If they're patriotic at all, they should care about this. Look, my hope is that a new government will anyway recreate some kind of national school of government. There used to be one.

[00:26:49] It was dismantled by Francis Maud a decade ago. Pretty much every other country has some kind of institution which ensures there is training for civil servants and local government. And that will need to be rebuilt, whatever happens.

[00:27:06] And my hope is that institution can also offer some light touch. Courses to members of parliament, to junior ministers. They often don't have much time and to up and coming politicians in the main parties. It can't be intensive.

[00:27:23] You know, they have they have busy diaries, but to just acclimatise them to the big issues which are happening in the world, the changing shape of of security and geopolitics, technology and science, understanding data and statistics, all these sort of things.

[00:27:41] Then they don't need to, as I say, be experts. They don't need to be PhDs, but they need enough knowledge that they can think intelligently and ask the right questions of experts and civil servants. But there are a lot of briefing notes produced.

[00:27:55] And obviously, there's a lot of inquiries as well. There's a great deal, you know, on key issues. There's a lot produced if those MPs are prepared to sit down and read it. I just wonder whether they do or not.

[00:28:04] So some would say we don't need to school as such because you've already got the homework. It's just there. Are they doing their homework? Well, again, this is something I think we as a country have got badly wrong. We're wonderful at doing huge inquiries after problems

[00:28:21] have arisen, the post office horizon inquiry, which I think gave evidence to the covid inquiry. These go on for years. They involve a huge amount of effort and and reams and reams of written material, most of which is then ignored.

[00:28:37] And I actually argued before the covid inquiry started, why don't we think of this as a learning exercise? The whole of our society has been through this extreme, this great trauma of the pandemic. It's affected every school, every hospital, every locality.

[00:28:52] Could we think of an inquiry as a way for each of those institutions to learn about what it did right, what it did wrong, what it would do differently in the future, instead of which we went for this very old fashioned model of an inquiry

[00:29:04] run by a judge in London with endless evidence, but no attention to the implementation of the findings and the conclusions. And I would just love to see a shift, a bit of that time energy resource into improving our learning systems, our education rather than these post hoc

[00:29:26] inquiries, which then report six years after the events they're commenting on. And by that time, everyone's moved on and almost no one reads documents. That's the only thing we're running short of time, but that's an interesting case

[00:29:38] study because I know, you know, before covid a few years before, the emphasis of government spending on research was that we should be putting money into medical research that can quickly be commercialised, which on one level makes sense. But for a pandemic where it can't be quickly commercialised

[00:29:54] because you've got to wait for the pandemic to happen. That was a that was a bad decision. Now, that that sort of went almost unchallenged at the time, I guess, because it was a ministerial decision. It wasn't something that was blown open to parliament.

[00:30:05] But also, you know, was the opportunity for decisions like that to be questioned in our parliamentary system? Is the system wrong that we can't challenge decisions which might be monumental decisions that take a wrong turn? Well, I mean, most most health research is not directed by politicians.

[00:30:21] We have an arm's length principle for most researchers that's actually guided by by scientists themselves. So I don't quite recognise what you describe there. And in the US, a huge amount of public money went into the

[00:30:35] into the MRNA approach, which actually did pay off hugely during the pandemic. I think there was another aspect to Covid, which is very relevant to this discussion, which is how governments prepare for risks and problems. And I actually oversaw the overhaul of the UK government

[00:30:54] risk management systems in the early 2000s, when we had a series of crises like over, you know, whether it be mad cow disease and fuel strikes and so on. And we tried to put in place a much more systematic approach

[00:31:08] to spotting potential risks, but also getting the key decision makers, which includes civil service and politicians to do simulations. Now, pandemics were top of the list of risks back then. And for many years, there was a lot done

[00:31:24] to prepare people for thinking through how they might respond to a pandemic. Unfortunately, that pretty much fell apart in the middle of the last decade, which meant that when the pandemic hit, weren't those muscles as it were ready to go into action.

[00:31:40] Which suggests, Jeff, I mean, you know, on the base, I mean, you've been worked closely with politicians, particularly on the Labour side, but in the end, you know, whatever slip service is paid to this kind of thing we've been talking about, it probably isn't going to happen.

[00:31:52] Those kind of lessons about what we need to make sure our politicians know and deal with isn't going to sink in. I mean, I don't know. You've got contacts with the potentially incoming Labour administration. Do you think there is any appetite to make us just more than gifted

[00:32:05] amateurs when it comes to politics? Well, I hope so. And I think we need to talk about it. It's more likely to happen if it becomes a general point. And I think in relation to risk, many governments do realise that it's worth thinking about what might go wrong

[00:32:21] two, four, six years into the future and preparing for it. Some of the other governments around the world are very good at this sort of work. Singapore is probably the outstanding example. Very, very paranoid about things which might go wrong.

[00:32:35] And they do again, stimulation exercises, scenarios to think through financial crashes or ecological problems or terrorist attacks. And I think actually Keir Starmer's probably quite well attuned to thinking like that. I suspect if he wins a big majority,

[00:32:53] you'll expect to be in power for quite a long time. If you only expected to be in power for a year or two, then obviously it doesn't make much sense to invest in this stuff. But if you expect to be still around in seven or eight years,

[00:33:04] then it's worth really investing heavily in capability, spotting risks and in the skills of your team so they really can deliver competent results. And I think the question for that is aptitude. Ah well. And that gets back to that gets back to your question about,

[00:33:20] you know, maybe presenting your CV when you're standing. Because I do wonder sometimes when MPs lie, is it because they're malevolent? Are they being chances or is it actually because they can't tell the difference between a lie and truth? Because, you know, it's all just got too complicated.

[00:33:35] Well, the world is quite complicated. And part of the, you know, the job of modern politician is to have a bit of humility and be willing to say, I don't know, be willing to ask, you know, the right questions of the right people to help them out.

[00:33:51] And many politicians are good at that. I mean, Tony, I've worked with quite a few prime ministers around the world of right and left. And the best ones were the ones who were completely comfortable saying, I don't know the answer to this.

[00:34:06] Let's go back to first principles. Let's work it out. I mean, for example, Angela Merkel, you know, in Germany used to run these big sessions where she would bring in dozens of experts and just talk to them and ask them questions and educate her herself.

[00:34:21] The current prime minister of Greece is rather good at this. Mitsotakis, the just left one in Portugal, Costa, who was a phenomenally smart guy. The first time I ever met him, you know, he recorded all the conversations

[00:34:35] because he said he he kept recordings of things so he could listen and learn. You know, this kind of mindset is is is not uncommon around the world, but it is the mindset of a politician who realizes their job is incredibly difficult

[00:34:50] and they have to be constantly open to learning and thinking and discovering new things if they're going to do the job well. Jeff, stop thinking about the sound ground. Indeed, indeed. A bit of humility, a bit of education, I think,

[00:35:01] is that the theme that seems to come through on this. Jeff, thanks for taking us through that. It'd be interesting to see if Keir Starmer does pick up on any of this. Let's hope so. Thanks, Jeff. Thank you very much.

[00:35:12] So don't think about who's going to be the oldest MP, actually. It looks like it looks like Barry Sheerman might be the oldest. He's the Labour MP for Huddersfield. I think Harriet Harmon is stepping down. Yeah. And who else?

[00:35:24] I think there's a jury MP who's who is the oldest one at the moment, but he's like father of the house. Oh, Peter Bottomley. Sorry. Yeah. Who's likely to lose? He's for it'll be a very different House of Commons, that's for sure.

[00:35:37] And I think a lot of these people exactly as we said, they're going to be pretty inexperienced, but we don't know anything for sure still as to what the outcome is going to be. I'm going to go out and I'm going to make a claim.

[00:35:48] I think Labour are going to win this. You're really taking out there on the tightrope, I'd say. But anyway, let's see. In a couple of years, I suspect here's another one. Rishi Suno will be living in America. I mean, I don't know. You're really missed a prediction.

[00:36:07] Yeah. Mystic Dobby, I think is what I have to call you. What have we learned? I guess that's the question. That's the thing. Because next time we're going to be a week, just a week before the election. Thank God.

[00:36:16] And I think it's a good moment to stand back and say, with all that's been going on, what do we know? What do we think we know about the outcome and the consequences? Because I mean, it's one of the most extraordinary elections,

[00:36:25] I think, in terms of impact that I've seen in my lifetime. I mean, the amount of change is so huge potentially, including the potential downfall of one of the big parties. I just wonder whether has this been an election where,

[00:36:36] I mean, just thinking, you know, where we're going to be in a week's time, we're all going to be so bored with the election by then. And so is this sort of a we have ever had an election

[00:36:45] where there's such a big change, likely to be such a big change in power, in the power base, but also so much antipathy towards politicians and to politics. What has it done for us? Has it disillusioned us all?

[00:36:57] Well, that we can dive into that we can dive into as well. We won't bore you. We'll re-energize you just a week before the election. And we'll talk about all that next week. We'll re-energize you with a promise that will all be over soon. We promise.

[00:37:09] That's next week on the YKF. Me and Roger, good to have you today. We'll catch you again next week. Thanks for listening. The Y. Curve.