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Tag: BORIS JOHNSON

  • Diary: Sir Anthony Seldon on on Liz Truss, AI and why the unions are in the wrong

    Diary: Sir Anthony Seldon on on Liz Truss, AI and why the unions are in the wrong

    Sir Anthony Seldon

    The short tenures of recent prime ministers is becoming as unmissable as it is noteworthy. If you look back we’ve had Gordon Brown (three years), David Cameron (six), Theresa May and Boris Johnson (again with three years apiece) and then Liz Truss, who lasted barely a month. But I would say all this has nothing to do with social media; it’s because they have no inkling how to be Prime Minister. The office itself isn’t impossible, it’s just the way they operate makes it seem so.

    I was asked recently if I’d write a book about the Truss administration or whether it would be too short; the person in question told me they thought it might be novella-length. I explained that the opposite is the case; in fact there’s so much to say I doubt it could be contained in a short book at all!

    When I think back on how I became a teacher, I remember how growing up I was struck by the thought that education had lost its enchantment. It had been stripped of joy, stripped of discovery and self-reflection. And obviously, that’s what lead to problems. When I was younger, I was often in trouble. I didn’t want to cause hurt; but I couldn’t be myself in school since it seemed to be trying to make me what I wasn’t. When advising pupils and students and parents about the big moments which come about: choices at GCSE, A-Levels, and work, I say to them that you must let the child decide and let them be driven by what they love not what you think they need.

    There’s been a lot of talk about Chat GPT recently. I began writing The Fourth Education Revolution in 2017 before it was a topic, and I still think AI has the potential to make the plight of the teacher far better if it’s harnessed early and in the right way. In many respects we still have a 19th century system where the teacher’s at the front of the class, students sit passively and everyone moves at the same pace at the same time of day. That means teacher workload gets worse with the effects we all see today. AI can change that and free up teachers for their role: to teach children how to live and be happy.

    I am sympathetic to teachers, but it’s wrong for the unions to be striking, because it harms young people. It’s not just that they miss out on their exams but it’s also showing young people that if you don’t like what you’ve got you’ve got to make innocent people suffer; that’s what young people are internalising. That said, the government is utterly at fault. If you have 10 education secretaries in 13 years, many of whom don’t understand schools and listen to the wrong people, it’s not very surprising that we have this situation. Usually it shows the contempt of prime ministers for education. The role is used as a berth to help solve a political problem of patronage by the PM of the day, and rarely given to anyone who might do something good with it.

     

    Amanda Spielman is highly intelligent, but Ofsted can’t continue in its current form as a judgmental external body. At the moment, it’s more than 20th century – it’s 19th century. But frankly it’s not a question of whether it will change, but of when. This isn’t a question of whether we have inspections or not, it’s about the nature of the those inspections. The process needs to be supportive and lead to improvement – it’s as simple as that.

     

    I’ve just finished my latest book on Boris Johnson and it makes me think back to founding the Institute of Contemporary British History with Peter Hennessy in 1986. It’s important you don’t abandon the recent past to partisan actors and partisan actors. You need to bring the skills of the academic historian to bear in analysing the past – and that’s more important than ever during a time of culture wars. What we need now is what we always need: understanding.

     

    Sir Anthony Seldon’s latest book Johnson at 10 is available from Biteback Publishing

  • Poll exclusive: Boris Johnson still enjoys strong support

    Despite being forced to resign, Boris Johnson still enjoys widespread grassroots support among Conservative Party members, a new survey finds. According to a poll conducted by Folkestone and Hythe Conservative Association on the 14th of July, and seen by Finito World, 49.4% of Grassroots Conservative Party Members would support him if he was on the ballot paper.

    Boris Johnson will leave office after the summer and has said he is leaving with his ‘head held high’. This assessment appears to be shared by Conservative affiliates. Here are the numbers in full:

    Boris Johnson: 49.4%

    Penny Mordaunt 24.4%

    Rishi Sunak 10.4%

    Liz Truss 6.7%

    Suella Braverman 3%

    Tom Tugendhat 4.3%

    Kemi Badenoch 1.8%

    The survey consisted of a data pool of 167 verified responses, and reveals fascinating trends, amounting to an intriguing snapshot of the crucial voters beyond the parliamentary party who will ultimately decide who is the next Prime Minister.

    Folkestone & Hythe Conservative Association Chairman, Stephen James, said: “Boris Johnson appears to still have wide support amongst my fellow members and some have even called for Boris Johnson to be added as a third name in the leadership contest. It is often said that the ‘Westminster Bubble’ isn’t a true reflection of the wider country, and this poll seems to support that premise.”

    Asked what the key issues are for his members, James added: “Brexit, Furlough, Vaccines, and Ukraine are all issues that Boris can be proud of, and I think many will lament his departure. It will be interesting to see if Boris Johnson will use this support to influence the leadership race or if like his hero, Sir Winston Churchill, he will make a comeback… Boris Act II.”

    However, the poll was also further good news for Penny Mordaunt, and further unsettling news for the other camps. In a poll without Boris, the results are as follows, with the former Defence Secretary out in front by an eye-popping margin:

    Penny Mordaunt 52.7%

    Rishi Sunak 13.9%

    Liz Truss 13.9%

    Suella Braverman 6.1%

    Tom Tugendhat 7.9%

    Kemi Badenoch 5.5%

    Finito World News Director Christopher Jackson said: “Much can happen still in this race, but this latest poll only confirms that all the momentum at the moment is with Penny Mordaunt. It’s clear that in a crowded field she has managed to cut through among Tory grassroots in a way that none of the other candidates has been able to do.”

     

    Penny Mordaunt MP

     

    The Member of Parliament for Folkestone & Hythe, Damian Collins MP added on Twitter: “Penny Mordaunt is a team player and a leader you can trust. She has a track record of service that will make her an outstanding Prime Minister #PM4PM.”

     

     

  • Waterfly on Liz Truss, Jeremy Clarkson and Boris Johnson

    Our round-up of the latest gossip in the education and work sectors

     

    Emily in Kensington

    Finito World’s own Emily Prescott has had an exciting few months, moving from her role at The Evening Standard, to become diary editor for The Mail on Sunday. At just 25 this is an impressive achievement. But this isn’t all. We also hear that she’s working on a book on the history of gossip. When she recently interviewed Michael Gove about diary journalism – Gove, who used to work as Diary editor at The Times – told Prescott that it was ‘a nice little apprenticeship.’

    But it can be much more than that. Indeed, for Prescott it’s been something of a baptism of fire. When Prescott published a piece about Jeremy Clarkson’s daughter Emily, and reported verbatim her quotes on Instagram about her ignorance of the Russia-Ukraine war, Prescott woke to find her Twitter had blown up after a fiery – and in Waterfly’s opinion, unnecessary – tweet by Clarkson himself calling her both a ‘shit journalist’ and ‘an idiot’. But Prescott’s good nature ensured that she didn’t reply, or even take it too hardly. “He’s just being protective of his daughter – as I’d be in his situation,” she says. Prescott adds with a smile: “I don’t think I’m either of those things, but at least I’ve never punched any of my colleagues.” Clarkson has 7.6 million followers on Twitter; Prescott, around 500. So from punching colleagues to punching down – there’s consistency there. 

    Spectating on Boris

    Talking of punching down, one person who doesn’t do that, according to The Spectator art critic Martin Gayford, is the Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Gayford witnessed Boris up close in his journalism days: “Boris was famous for going up to and over deadline, and certainly did make people quite cross although he probably knew by that stage that he was commanding enough readers to make people put up with it. Charles Moore certainly spiked one or two of his columns and said: ‘If he’s late, use something else’.”

    Gayford explains that he didn’t always have much directly to do with Boris when he was editor – except in one respect. “One thing I’d say about Boris is that he was unusually good at sending messages to lowly people such as those toiling on the factory floor of the arts pages when he was editor. You would get messages saying, “Boris liked that piece” and that sort of thing.” So does Gayford ever see something in Downing Street and think that’s a bit like what used to happen at The Spectator? “I’m not sure if you can compare running a country to running a little magazine in a three-storey building in Doughty Street,’ he says, chuckling. Yes, perhaps not.  

    King Richard

    Sometimes the hurly burly nature of British politics can be glimpsed in a single phone call. When Waterfly called Richard Harrington last year to ask to talk to him, he declined an interview: “You don’t want to talk to me – I’m just not interesting enough,” he said. “The person you really want to talk to is John Bercow.” Since that time, Harrington has become Minister for Refugees and Bercow has not only joined the Labour Party but been the subject of a report into alleged bullying when he was Speaker of the House of Commons. Who’s interesting now?

    An Ignob-el Mistake

    When we spoke with Gayford, we also asked him of his regrets as a journalist. He was decisive in his reply: “The worst thing is when you’re talking to someone interesting, or of historical importance, and you feel you need to contribute something to the conversation – and so you come in with your ten cents. Then you listen to the tape and wish you hadn’t interrupted. You’ve got to keep your mouth shut.”

    Waterfly would add you’ve got to be careful which day you call. Waterfly recalls phoning the Astronomer-Royal Lord Martin Rees last autumn, and found the kindly scientist in an uncharacteristically jittery mood. “I’m so sorry I just have to get off the line,” he said. When Waterfly did so, we went onto the BBC news website, and saw that that morning the Nobel Prize for Physics was being handed out. Rees had wanted us off the line, perhaps having thought we were Stockholm when we phoned. Oops.

    Goldsmiths aggrieved

    Waterfly has been in and out of the House of Lords these past few months, and in addition to receiving different appraisals of the food – Baroness Anne Jenkin holds a higher opinion of the canteen than does Baroness France d’Souza – Waterfly began to get a feel for the place. On one occasion, D’Souza passed Zac Goldsmith smoking a roll-up in the courtyard. “Ooh, I like your cigarette,” she said. “You must be the only one,” he replied, humorously but a little gloomily.

    Waterfly recalled catching up with Ben Goldsmith, who told us: “There are many professions which pay significantly more than an MP earns. I think it is a bit much for the public to expect people working in those professions to take a drastic pay cut in order to enter politics. Some may do it, many more  would not – and why should they?” And you can’t even smoke.

    An Artful Innovation

    Emily Prescott isn’t the only person in the Finito fraternity going places. Our business mentor Angelina Giovani has made an impressive step creating an innovation in the world of art provenance. “There are a lot of odd and funny requests one gets when working as an art researcher, that can be a dead giveaway as to whether someone is familiar with your line of work or not,” Giovani tells Waterfly.

    Two weeks into the first lockdown in London, an art collector rang Giovani to ask whether she could research his client’s 150 artwork collection, which he intended to sell. She tells Waterfly: “We certainly can, I responded: “What’s the time frame? “We’d like for it to be done this week.” I told him that this was like requesting the Pyramids be built in an afternoon.’

    But it was out of this exchange that the Collections Provenance Rating was born. The first of its kind – known as the CPR for short – assesses the state of documentation of a collection and offers recommendations based on the result.

    Giovani explains: “This allows collectors planning to sell, insure, appraise or use the collection as collateral and borrow money against its value, to speed up the process and have a new insight into possible problematic pieces. This does not eliminate the need for proper due diligence: on the contrary, it helps streamline and make the research process more time and cost-effective.” And that’s how they built the Pyramids.

    In Liz We Truss

    To the United and Cecil Club Dinner, an occasion which helps raise funding for marginal Conservative seats. The Guest of Honour was none other than the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who, after being barraged with questions about Putin, recalled her time as Secretary of State for International Trade. Once famous for her remarks about cheese, her attention has now turned to another dairy product. In that role, she found that she disapproved of the way in which yoghurt is always made in France, but not always packaged to let you know that. “What we need is for the English to manufacture yoghurt,” she said. “By the way,” she added, “I don’t like yoghurt.” In politics, as in life, it’s always important to cover your blind spots.

  • Opinion: Boris Johnson made the wrong decision on the nightlife industry

    Opinion: Boris Johnson made the wrong decision on the nightlife industry

    By Garrett Withington

    To those who had been following the dripfeed of information given to the public prior to Boris Johnson’s announcement on the 14th June, the delay to the lifting of restrictions – or ‘freedom day’ as it has become known – came as no surprise. The threat of a new Delta or ‘Indian’ variant plainly alarmed a prime minister who earlier in the month had been lambasted by Dominic Cummings for failing to lock down soon enough. 

    The leaks at least meant that some businesses were able to prepare for the inevitable and learn to operate at reduced capacity with social distancing measures in place for just four more weeks. But spare a thought for a sector which has been seldom discussed: the nightlife industry.

    In fact, many clubs haven’t opened since March 2020. It’s also the sector which has been worst hit by lockdown restrictions and curfews. Even more worryingly, as of July 1st, the government is expecting cash-strapped venues who have had no income for nearly a year and a half to begin contributing into the very furlough scheme which has so far kept the industry standing.

    It’s all extraordinarily frustrating for those in the sector, since the rules can appear inconsistent. For instance, certain parts of the nightlife sector, such as pubs, can carry on with no extra bother – other than the knowledge that it’s much better to stand with a pint than it is to sit with one. But clubs and venues who were making preparations for reopening found their efforts stymied at a mere week’s notice. It’s unacceptable to be thrown back into this state of paralysis: the extra four weeks clearly means more to the sector than the government realises.

    We must remember that the term ‘nightlife industry’ encompasses not just pubs and bars, but also nightclubs and live music events. The latter two have been the most heavily impacted. It’s worth noting that an All-Party Parliamentary Group for the night-time economy produced a report back in January on the impact of Covid-19 on UK nightlife. The report highlights not only the fragility of the nightlife industry in 2021 but also the wider economic contribution which the sector provides to the UK economy. 

    The figures are worrying. The nightlife industry supports 1.3 million jobs and contributes around £66 billion to the UK economy, meaning its collapse would also affect all those tertiary businesses which support the sector – and are themselves reliant on it. Worse still, 81 per cent of workers in the industry have expressed a desire to leave and find more economically stable work. With over half of nightclub staff being made redundant during the pandemic, it will be interesting to see how many return once furlough contributions have stopped.

    That’s not all. Grants given by the government have little impact on the overheads, and this has led to most businesses feeling that the support given is insufficient. Business rates may have frozen but rents have not and if your rents stretch into the tens, or even hundreds, of thousands, then a maximum grant of £9,000 will feel like a kick in the teeth. When nine out of 10 nightclubs have traded for six months or less during the pandemic, and when turnover has been just 20 per cent of the usual there’s only one solution – to open doors again.  

    That’s certainly easier said than done in the current climate. But as Liverpool’s big rave proved, big events can be managed so as to not be on a ‘super-spreader’ level. We also need to bear in mind the cultural importance our nightlife plays in our society. You could argue that since the decline of the Church, it has been the humble pub which has done the most for community spirit. Meanwhile, clubs and music festivals are a steadfast aspect of the cultural identity of youth in Britain, particularly for university students. We hear a lot today about the increase in mental health difficulties, and this is often a product of the social isolation which our nightlife is built to remove.

    Boris Johnson’s justification for extending lockdowns is based on the reasonable fear that rising rates would outpace the vaccination rate. Even so, with the continued low number of deaths and hospitalisations, as well as a huge uptake in the vaccine by over 18s, it’s still arguable that the decision to delay was the wrong one. The suspicion is that this was informed by a need to push back PR-wise after his supposedly cavalier approach to lifting the first two lockdowns.   

    With over half of nightclubs admitting to being in rent arrears back in January, that position surely must have deteriorated: an additional month will be devastating. Further, the sheer cost of running the nightlife industry is not something that can be matched one for one by government spending. In order to preserve what’s left of the nightlife industry, the government should be flexible in bringing the opening date forward if we continue to see successes as a result of the continued vaccination programme. That’s because with every week the nightlife industry remains closed, more doors will shut for good. 

    Garrett Withington is a Finito staff writer

  • Iain Dale: ‘I know what politicians don’t want to be asked’

    Iain Dale: ‘I know what politicians don’t want to be asked’

    The LBC presenter on the art of the interview and his complicated relationship with David Cameron

    If you appear in the media, everyone imagines that you must be a complete extrovert. 

    Of course, even in an interview there is a little bit of ham-acting involved, particularly if you’re in television. But most radio and TV presenters have a shy side to them. Perhaps shy people tend to be a little bit more empathetic.

    Shyness is more common than you might think. I knew somebody who was a conservative parliamentary candidate who would literally throw up before every speech. But I don’t get nervous. Having said that, I recently interviewed former FBI director James Comey, and had little time to prepare. Thankfully, my approach to interviews is normally not to do a lot of preparation because I like to think of them as conversations – and the more preparation you do, the more stilted it is. I never have a list of questions, for example. I try to listen to what the answer is. If you have a list of questions, the temptation is just to go through them one by one and ask them. Well that’s fine, but it’s not very rewarding.

    We are all human beings, and this is what sometimes people forget about people in the media – or more to the point, politicians. We all have the same human reactions as everybody else. If an interviewer starts asking really aggressive questions right from the start., it’s no surprise that the politician puts the shutters up and thinks, “Well if you’re going to be like that, then I’m not going to give you anything.” There has to be a degree of mutual respect. 

    Interviewing prime ministers is interesting. In 2003, I was asked to write an article about who will be the ten people at the top of politics in ten years’ time. I remember writing in that article that David Cameron hadn’t really made a mark on parliament. The week after the article was published I sat next to him at a dinner. When I raised it, he said, “Yes, I did see it. I asked my staff to leave the room and I put my feet up on the table, and I just sat there for five minutes thinking: “He’s right. What have I achieved in two years in Parliament?”’ That was a brilliant way of defusing a potentially awkward social situation. 

    Later, when I was running for parliament he drove up in his Skoda to campaign with me and we had a brilliant day together. And when he was prime minister, I did three interviews with him. I was poacher turned gamekeeper, and understood where he was coming from. This is one of the advantages of having been involved in politics, and then moving into journalism and broadcasting. As an interviewer, I have an advantage over people who haven’t been involved in politics: I know how they think, and what they don’t want to be asked. 

    Boris Johnson wrote the foreword to my latest book. He said yes immediately and then of course COVID happened. I got in touch in July 2020, and told him I’d understand if he couldn’t do it, and that there was no need to write 20 pages or anything like that! And it came on time. 

    But it was interesting to see the reaction. Some people on social media said,  “I wanted to buy this book but I’m not buying it because you’ve got Boris Johnson in it.” I thought: “If Jeremy Corbyn had won the election I would have asked him!” 

    It’s quite difficult to come to a judgement on a prime minister who’s still in office. Boris’ reputation in history will depend on how quickly the country gets back on its feet and how many people are actually out of a job. But most prime ministers are known for one thing in history. He wanted to be known as the Prime Minister who ‘got Brexit done’. He has got it done. But I suspect he’ll be known as the Covid Prime Minister.

    I used to find it very difficult to interview people that I know well. Now I just go in for the kill. Brandon Lewis and David Davis, who are my two closest friends in Parliament, say that they find me the most difficult interviewer. They think it’s because I’m overcompensating for the fact that everybody knows that. I don’t think it is. I just get more out of people by having a conversation with them. 

    Iain Dale’s latest book is The Prime Ministers, £25 from Hodder and Stoughton

    Photo credit: Steve Ullathorne