← Political Thinking with Nick Robinson
Political Thinking with Nick Robinson
From Sky boss to Number 10: Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith
00:39:57
Griffith on why government sometimes has to say 'no' and why Murdoch was the "best boss".
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- [00:00]
Nick Robinson
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- [00:34]
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- [01:07]
Nick Robinson
hello and welcome to Political Thinking. This was the week when the impact of the war in the Middle east really came home. Higher energy bills, higher prices at the pumps and in the shops, higher interest rates than looked likely just a few weeks ago. My guest on Political Thinking is the Shadow Business secretary, Andrew Griffith. Once the youngest chief financial officer of any major British company, he made many millions of pounds when that company, the media giant sky, was sold to a US firm. He became a Conservative MP as an ally of Boris Johnson. He also became director of the number 10 policy unit. He believes that the only way out of our economic woes is to learn from business and to slash the regulations which hold them back. He's even posed with a chainsaw to make his point. Andrew Griffith, welcome to Political Thinking.
- [02:07]
Andrew Griffith
Thank you, Nick.
- [02:08]
Nick Robinson
I know you've come here fresh from speaking to a business group. You nodded along at that introduction. Do you feel we're at a moment when businesses, households are beginning to say, wow, this war's about to hit us?
- [02:20]
Andrew Griffith
Yeah, I do think that is the motion that people have this week. I mean, look, they felt fragile for a while, in fairness, and I don't want to say everything was about 5 July 2024, but clearly that has made things from a business perspective quite a lot worse. They've had their pockets picked on, things like national insurance. They do feel there's more red tape when they try and hire people.
- [02:42]
Nick Robinson
For those who don't memorize the date of a general election, 5 July is is of course the general election. How much is the war now making people because of that list of reasons I gave in the introduction. Nervy. And how nervy are you?
- [02:56]
Andrew Griffith
Well, it's making that cacophony of different headwinds for business even louder, Nick. So it is, you know, it's again, all of those things. It's your energy, it's. Can you get hold of raw materials? And of course, raw materials themselves have a lot of embedded energy costs within them. How do I feel? Look, I'm fearful of the economy. You know, we have for a while because been running on fumes. You know, the government's not balancing the books. It hasn't balanced the books for actually a very long time in government and we've all been living as an economy slightly beyond our means. So you throw any extra shocks into that. It happened with COVID it happened with Ukraine, it's happening again now. That's just not good for ordinary folks sitting at home, you know, thinking, am I going to get better off over the next year?
- [03:39]
Nick Robinson
Does this feel to you like a moment comparable with COVID comparable with the invasion of Ukraine, when government has to do big things to intervene to protect households, to protect businesses?
- [03:51]
Andrew Griffith
Well, we'll see. I try not to shoot from the hip. It's relatively early days, so I think it's right that the government are switched on. I think things like announcing today they wouldn't be proceeding with increasing the duty on fuel, putting up the price of petrol would be a sensible thing for them to do. Not an overreaction. Feels more like Ukraine. Covid was the complete unknown. I don't think anyone had ever lived through that before. Now this. This is perhaps more like echoes of Ukraine. That of itself was clearly very difficult because suddenly everyone discovered just how much energy cost is and it's crept up and up and it's not been helped by a policy environment.
- [04:29]
Nick Robinson
This is also a week in which the Prime Minister's tried to turn attention on your leader's decision making and said, really, you know, I, Keir Starmer, I got it right. I was cautious, I was careful. She, to use your phrase, did shoot from the hip and say that Britain should have been part of this war. Looking back, do you regret the position the Conservatives took?
- [04:51]
Andrew Griffith
No, and I don't actually accept that construction. I think that a decisive moment of action was being taken by our very closest allies. Requests for our support in that using their bases to support that action that they took was appropriate. I think the Conservatives been very clear they would have made a different decision. People can agree with it or not, but on that particular point have been a different decision. Had Kemi been in government.
- [05:19]
Nick Robinson
You tweeted, you see, on the day that the US and Israel attacked Iran, and you clipped up Keir Starmer saying that the UK had played no role in the attacks. And you wrote, why? No backbone. Again, you saying there was no backbone. By choosing to say we do not wish to be part of America's war, we don't want to be part of Israel's war.
- [05:45]
Andrew Griffith
No, I think people are putting constructions on that, if I may. The US asked to use their bases, some of them hosted, on sovereign UK territory. That is a fundamental part of our closest ally. Anyone who's been in government understands the flow of intelligence both ways, the assets that each other put to try and create the more peaceful world. And I fundamentally think that was wrong. And leader of the Opposition thinks that was wrong.
- [06:15]
Nick Robinson
Then you were saying, the Prime Minister's a weed. He's pathetic. We should be part of this war is what you Conservatives were saying. We should be fully a part of it. And you're running away from it now, surely, because it's not very popular. That's not what most people think.
- [06:27]
Andrew Griffith
Not running away from anything, Nick. Absolutely. Stand by the fact that when our US closest ally, a partner in our nuclear deterrent, in the five eyes, in many of the exquisite military and intelligent assets that we have when they ask for our support, we should not be found wanting. And I hope that the reciprocal would also be true. Because our safety, the safety of people listening at home depends on that US umbrella, on their commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. That's kept peace in Europe for a very significant period of time.
- [07:01]
Nick Robinson
Help our allies. People hear that, they'll get that. But Kemi Banyar also, and I interviewed her about it, said, you can't always wait for people to attack you. Meaning, in other words, you have to act first. She said, keir Starmer's too scared to make foreign interventions. You guys were up for it. The Conservatives said, we want this war and the public don't want it.
- [07:22]
Andrew Griffith
Look, I don't think that's right. I really don't think that's right. Do you proactively go after and try and take out threats? The sort of threats where we've seen shaheeds flown at UK military bases on the soil of Cyprus, our ally, in that respect. Absolutely. No ifs, no buts. That's completely different from a broader question about war aims, about our contribution to it. I think like many of us and the people that I speak to in my constituency, we feel a bit embarrassed about the lackadaisical contribution of our military assets? Yes, there's been some. That is not to criticise any of our armed forces, the people who serve and put themselves in harm's way. I think we feel a little bit embarrassed about the level of commitment that our government has shown in this very difficult time.
- [08:14]
Nick Robinson
Now, you've been talking to business because you're the Shadow Business Secretary, but there's another reason too. You came into politics late, ish, almost 50, and you've been a very successful businessman. You made an awful lot of money when you were working as Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer at Sky. Is politics poorer for the fact there are not that many people with proper business experience?
- [08:39]
Andrew Griffith
Yeah, I do think so. I mean, I don't think everybody in politics should have a business background. It's not business. It's a lot harder than business. Politics, you know, is people trying to do very difficult things. They're trade offs, you don't have as much data, they're not single point decisions. It's harder to rally and establish a team and get people working together. But I do think that business is a huge part of our economy. If I look at the law that I think is passed in Parliament the most, it's the law of unintended consequences and that often has deleterious outcomes on businesses. The smallest businesses in particular, the ones that don't have, you know, like I did, they don't have lots of legal departments and HR departments and people to deal with all of that. So they're just sitting there on, on a Sunday afternoon trying to do their VAT return, trying to do their shift for the following week, trying to order the stock. That's where so many things that happen in Whitehall end up. You know, the rubber meets the road. And so I do think it would be a much better world. And if anyone's listening and wants to join me, please come on in. If you have more people with business experience in politics.
- [09:43]
Nick Robinson
So unintended consequences, in other words, you mean, whatever your politics, it turns out that politicians tend to think, let's answer the call to do something. Let's not think of the downsides of doing something correct.
- [09:58]
Andrew Griffith
I think the political class, if you like to broaden the point, sort of slightly world class at spotting the political risks. You know, they might get into trouble on the Today program, you know, they might be seen not to act too quickly. When I was in number 10, you know, not for very long, but when I was in number 10 as business advisor, you know, you saw things like Bury Football Club you know, went bankrupt, you know, bad, incompetent, maladministration, whatever. But of course the whole clamor goes up. Something must be done. And as a result, today, we've now got a very, very successful global industry. The Premier League now has a new regulator. People are coming up and saying, we've got a Minister for Sport, we're going to have diversity targets on, you know, no. I mean, sometimes the answer is yes. You know, there is failure in a system. In that case, Bury was anyway rescued, a new team came in, it's now getting back to good performance on the pitch. Sometimes the best answer, Nick, is not to do anything. And that needs a certain level of perhaps understanding, maybe from the business world, needs a certain level of resilience and fortitude to say not. The answer to not everything is always just pass another law.
- [11:06]
Nick Robinson
What's so interesting about that example, and we're going to go on and talk about your time working with Boris Johnson a little bit later on, is it was Boris Johnson that did it. I mean, this is not a Labour Party decision. It was Boris Johnson that brought in the football regulator, at least promised it, and it was then pursued by the Labour government. And he did it precisely because there was an outcry, if you remember, not just about the collapse of clubs like Bury, but also the European Super League where fans said, we want our clubs protected, we want our league protected. We think there's something important about football, not just as a commercial product, but as something in the community. Why do even Conservatives get it wrong? Is there something in the kind of water of Westminster that mean even Conservatives make those mistakes?
- [11:53]
Andrew Griffith
I think first of all, we've changed our position. So under Kemi, we oppose that eventual act to establish a statutory regulator. Secondly, there were regulations, there were self regulations, if you like, a voluntary code, but they were football administrators. But look, I think I've only been in, I was only in that Parliament, Nick, from 2019 to 2024. And I think there was something about that partly to do with COVID and the expectation of people that the state had all of the answers, partly due to the dynamics of bringing in a big coalition. You know, it was the biggest ever at that point, you know, Conservative Party, you know, representing very different backgrounds.
- [12:32]
Nick Robinson
Yes. You don't mean a coalition with a capital C like Dems, you mean it in other words, a wide coalition of support. So you had people lobbying for more state action, higher taxes, higher spending, higher
- [12:43]
Andrew Griffith
regulation, often accompanying the Prime Minister after BMQs, you'd go behind the Speaker's chair. He's got a big office in Parliament behind the Speaker's Chair before they retreat to number 10. And all too often, many of my Conservative colleagues, again, perfectly respectable, but they would say, look, we want action on X and that's the transmission mechanism. It's not an unhealthy thing in a democracy, but sometimes you also need that fortitude, resilience, and to understand the second order consequences of always thinking the state has the answer. Right. I want the state as a servant, not master. And we keep inviting it into these domains, we keep establishing new regulators, we tie ourselves up in more and more red tape and we convince ourselves that nothing can ever fail. But the flip side is, there's never any risk and if you can't take risk, you cannot grow an economy. It is why I'm a bit passionate about this desire to reduce red tape, reduce the size of regulators and pare back the sort of lawfare system we have, that every decision always gets second guessed.
- [13:48]
Nick Robinson
You're self consciously echoing Margaret Thatcher, aren't you? In your maiden speech, the first speech that anyone gives as a Member of Parliament, you quoted her first manifesto when she became Prime Minister.
- [13:59]
Andrew Griffith
Yeah, and that was. I hadn't remembered that, Nick. But I'll tell you what you quoted, no DNA, you said, embarrass me.
- [14:06]
Nick Robinson
Now, the policy of this government, that was her government, should be to restore incentives so that hard work pays, success is rewarded and genuine new jobs are created in an expanding economy. But you think the lessons of all, what, almost 50 years ago still apply today?
- [14:21]
Andrew Griffith
I do. And look, I think we've lost a lot of that. I mean, my life story, in some ways, with a great deal of luck and fortitude, was what you'd call the British dream. I went to my local comprehensive school. I came from humble backgrounds. I was the first in my family to go to university at a time when, if you went to university, there was a premium for being a graduate. I joined an accounting firm six years after the Big bang, when jobs were abundant, the City of London was growing very fast.
- [14:53]
Nick Robinson
I feel I need to say, for people of a certain age, the big bang was the deregulation of the City of London back in, what, 1986, I think it was. Yeah.
- [15:00]
Andrew Griffith
You're making me sound so old.
- [15:01]
Nick Robinson
Yeah, well, no, I remember it candidly. It was when I left university suddenly. That was the moment that the brightest and the best often were attracted into jobs in the City of London, which had not been the case before.
- [15:12]
Andrew Griffith
Correct. And in parallel, you know, you'd got Mrs. Thatcher leading the country. There'd been a period of economic malaise. I hadn't caught most of that, but I was born in the 70s. And then with things like the Falklands, which I grew up listening to those dispatches on the BBC radio from Brian Hanrahan on the Falklands, she restore pride in our country. Now, I guess I'm looking, you know, when I look at governments of any flavor, I'm looking for their ability to do that, to give young people the sort of chances I had in life. When I bought. Saved up to buy my first flat, I remember taking sandwiches to work. Cause I couldn't afford to buy sandwiches. You know, watching the petrol pump clock tick up 4 pound 99 before, you know, you pull the nozzle out. Before it was £5. But got on the housing ladder because at that time they were building on Brownfield land in Wandsworth in London. We were building 16,000 homes a year, which was a ladder of opportunity. I want that back for our country.
- [16:07]
Nick Robinson
Now, by my calculation, you were 11 during the Falklands War. Were you quite a political child? Were you growing up in a house where your dad, John, I know, was a manager in an IT company and your mum, Jenna, I mean, were they talking about politics over the table? And if not, why were you so political? And why a Thatcherite?
- [16:26]
Andrew Griffith
I was interested in current affairs. I don't think it was completely aberrant. Aged 11, to be, you know, in a war, to be quite, quite dominant. And I was interested in current affairs. I used to watch BBC Question Time, you know, and then, you know, that was what made me, I suppose, a conservative. You form your views over time, they become maybe a bit more rigid, but that was certainly the impulse. If you say, why did you become a Conservative, Andrew? I. I think it was that moment in time where you saw that leadership mattered. You could change the trajectory of your country and that would open up opportunity for all.
- [17:01]
Nick Robinson
And you go to university at a pretty political time, mid-80s, in a pretty political place, Nottinghamshire, where the great battles of the miners strike. We were talking about them with James Graham on this podcast, the Writer only the other day. They still dominated the thinking at the time, didn't they?
- [17:19]
Andrew Griffith
They did. It was Nottingham. So I chose my university to get a sort of. Not as far away from home as possible, but, you know, to strike out and get some independence from where I grew up in South London, and you could still feel the scars, you know, it was the home of the UDM and the National Union of Mine Workers, two different unions. That had conflicting views. It was a post industrial town. Lace making was Nottingham's heritage, but it was also reinventing itself as a university city. And again, you know, I don't remember everything but know we used to have people like Kenneth Clark and Kenneth Baker and Norman Fowler, I think, just lived down the road. So, you know, that, that was a time when conserv. Conservatives or politicians came on campus and you had big, you know, public meetings. Tony Ben as well. It was ecumenical. Yeah.
- [18:06]
Nick Robinson
And did you think then, I want to be them, I want to be an mp, I want to be a minister. Because in, in reality, if your company, if sky hadn't been bought, you might still be working in business.
- [18:17]
Andrew Griffith
Oh, happy days. Those would be. I loved business. I had a charmed life there for 20 years. Look, it was my first, it was my first exposure, it was my first. No, I don't regret it, if I'm honest. I don't regret it. I had 20 years, you know, working with fantastic people changing or being part of a change in the broadcasting landscape. Now that's been eclipsed and things have moved on again as technology does. You know, working with Rupert Murdoch, who, whatever you think of him, you know, was one of the business, you know, brains of a generation, you know, a real risk taker. The best boss I ever had, you know, created real psychological safety to take risks, but with a great degree of personal accountability. I mean, you knew, you knew you had to deliver or change course accordingly.
- [19:03]
Nick Robinson
The best boss. That's interesting. So, yes, he encouraged you to take risks. You're saying he protected you too? Was it because he, he was a bold thinker. Is that what excited you about Rupert Murdoch?
- [19:15]
Andrew Griffith
Yeah, you know, challenge, challenging incumbents is always exciting. You know, when you're young, at the beginning of your career and growth is exciting and it was a company that was growing, you know, there were sort of limitless possibilities. I don't say protected me. I think, you know, you had this, you had this environment in which if you went to, you know, iron colleagues sitting on the board, if we'd go with, with a plan to launch a new product or enter a new market, the answer never came back. Oh, we don't think that's, you know, that's too risky. The answer always came back. Couldn't you go twice as fast and, you know, are you sure it couldn't be a bigger opportunity? And that's quite innovating in business.
- [19:52]
Nick Robinson
Most people's idea of Rupert Murdoch is that character in succession, the TV drama,
- [19:58]
Andrew Griffith
how like that is he I'll let the. I'll let the authors of Succession answer that or we'll all get into legal trouble. But look, it's a very. It's a very talented family, very competitive. Scary. I work with James, his son. Well, I'm not part of the family. I mean, I didn't find it scary. Nick, I'm a fan. You know, we worked in the television side of it. I know there's some issues with the newspapers and no one would take away from any of that, but I worked in Sky. It was also a public company, which gave us our own separate governance at a time when, you know, it's always a bit bumpy on the stock market. But in those days, again, you felt that the stock exchange had your back as well.
- [20:41]
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Nick Robinson
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Andrew Griffith
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- [21:02]
Nick Robinson
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- [21:05]
Andrew Griffith
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- [21:10]
Nick Robinson
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- [21:51]
Andrew Griffith
I mean, I have Catholic guilt. I don't feel that comfortable talking about that. That is a fact, as I say. I mean, I lived the British dream. I mean, there were opportunities to get on the housing ladder, to get a good job. I worked hard for that. I spent 20 years.
- [22:08]
Nick Robinson
Okay, I don't want to embarrass you with the amount of money, but you've
- [22:11]
Andrew Griffith
got one of the reasons why. Yeah, and. And I pay tax every year, to be clear. But one of the reasons, I think. Look, one of the reasons why I'm doing this and, and there are easier forms of public service, believe me. But one of the reasons why I'm doing this is. Is that site. Catholic sense of putting something back. I. I had a very lucky journey. Yes. You know, I made some money that's allowed me to come back and I hope, I hope make a contribution to our country and give other people an opportunity.
- [22:38]
Nick Robinson
Well, because you're already in your late 40s, I think, when you made all that money and you must have had friends who've made that much money at that time. And what do they do? They buy a yacht, they travel the globe, they buy houses abroad, they live in the sunshine. What are you saying that you were never tempted to do any of that?
- [22:55]
Andrew Griffith
Oh, you're making it sound very tempting now. No, no, I mean, I had, I had that, you know, that sense of slightly Catholic, you know, guilt. You should try and. You should try and put back now. There are easier, there are easy ways of, easier ways of doing that.
- [23:08]
Nick Robinson
Forgive me, Catholic guilt is not purely a religious thing. I mean, it's a cultural thing, but. Yes, that's what you mean. I mean, it's not that this is a religious sense.
- [23:16]
Andrew Griffith
No, look, I grew up in, I grew up in an ordinary part of southeast London. I don't have expensive tastes. I don't have all of those things that you talked about. That sounds quite nice, but I chose my path, aged 48, to come and do this. I think that politics is a noble profession. I don't think that everybody in it is always noble and we attract. I was always shocked. I mean, I'm naive. I did not grow up in this world. I would find out late at night, the same as everybody else, that such and such colleague had done such and such thing of any different party and be appalled. I mean, it's not that that does not happen in the BBC or in the working environment, but I think it happens a lot lower an incident than it does in Westminster.
- [24:02]
Nick Robinson
What is that? Because people speculate about that, don't they? Is it that politics attracts risk takers, personal risk takers, as against the risk taker you want, which is entrepreneurial?
- [24:12]
Andrew Griffith
I think that's probably right. And there's a certain amount of put people that seek to put themselves out there. Right. I mean, we, we, we haven't done this before. I'm not super confident about talking about myself. I'm much more excited about talking about cutting red tape or having a simpler tax system or, or unleashing what we're going to do of the economy.
- [24:30]
Nick Robinson
We're going to do that.
- [24:31]
Andrew Griffith
But first of all, I don't regret, I don't regret doing it. Yeah, you know, I, you know, there's all sorts of things you live and learn, but I do think this is still a good way of making a contribution. You need people, you know, in society who will put themselves forward, whether they've come from military leadership, whether they've been farmers of the land, successful people in business. And I would love to think there is somebody listening to this who thinks, yeah, you know, I could do it too.
- [24:57]
Nick Robinson
You don't like this personal risk taking? What on earth attracted you to Boris Johnson? I mean, Boris Johnson, older, Tony, personal risk taker was known before he got the job. And as it happens, high tax, high spend, high regulation, Conservative. What made Andrew Griffith support Boris Johnson, which he did. You lent your rather expensive Westminster House to him for his leadership campaign?
- [25:21]
Andrew Griffith
Well, he used it for some meetings before coming into government. Look, I deplored the malaise that the government had been in. I'm not blaming her. But under Theresa May, I mean, I would sit there with other people from business, you know, with sky or BBC News, you know, on silent on the screen watching yet another sort of failed attempt to lead us out of the morass of Brexit, whatever. And I thought, we do need some fresh leadership in this country. Remember Boris, as mayor of London, outward looking positive, a positive vision for this country. Much the same in his leadership campaign to take over the Conservatives and someone who actually did unite the Conservative Party at that moment, he did get Brexit done and lead us out of that particular morass and then went on to win a very successful election. So, look, I mean, to one degree or another, I'm being completely honest. All of the different political leaders I have served loyally because I am a team player, because that's what you learn in business have, to one degree or another, failed or let me down, as it were. But, you know, he's undoubtedly a good and strong communicator.
- [26:30]
Nick Robinson
What's interesting, though, is that the Conservative Party now, and you're at the forefront of this, want to say, cut the size of the state in the way that Mrs. Thatcher did. And as I said in the introduction, we've seen you on social media videos with your chainsaw, like President Milei of Argentina, a man who boasted about the amount of regulation, the number of government jobs he was getting rid of. But Boris Johnson did the opposite of all of that. I made the state bigger, he spent more, he taxed more, he made the welfare state bigger, he massively increased immigration, too. Was it because he didn't believe the things you believed? Or do we go back to what you said a few minutes ago, which is there's something in the system of politics that makes people defer default to, if you like, a bigger state.
- [27:20]
Andrew Griffith
Look, if. If I try and unpack and I won't, I won't be able to do so perfectly or have perfect hindsight vision like all of us. I think there was something in that 2019 parliament. I think Covid in particular. I mean, there were, you know, clearly there were different strains before I even got there. There were still people had sitting at other ends of the Tea Room when I went in as an MP because of the positions they had taken on Brexit. But that predated me. I was a post Brexit, if you like, politician. But that Covid, that situation around Covid, we as new MPs, locked out of Parliament, unable to do our job of scrutiny, at the mercy of people putting in more and more money and thinking that that was the answer. I think that drove a certain, you know, not quite madness, but it drove a certain character. And then, you know, that was not a united team. Right. I think anyone looking back in that period who was involved would say, well, that was great. You know, there was a great team in number 10. They were all united, all pulling in one direction. And then the much larger parliamentary party on whom any Prime Minister serves, they were all pulling in the same direction, too. I don't think anyone would say with fairness that that was the case. So, coming from business, I would say a lot of it was about. It was about the leadership and how you lead people, but also people have to want to be led.
- [28:39]
Nick Robinson
Yeah. And you don't think they. They did at that time. Now, I've mentioned this, Jave Melee. People are skeptical when they hear politicians say they're going to cut red tape, they're going to cut regulation, precisely for the reason we've just discussed, because so recently Conservative governments have done the opposite. How do you deal with that skepticism that makes people think, well, he'll say it in opposition. He'll do the opposite if he's in government.
- [29:04]
Andrew Griffith
Well, look, first of all, I think that is fair, right? I mean, as you say, I'm just over 50 and all of the different politicians and all of the different parties always say they're going to cut red tape. So I don't think it's saying it. I don't think it's even believing at the moment you say it that matters. I think it's an actual plan. Secondly, you have to honestly litigate the risk. So the best job I did in government was City Minister, and that was responsible for a huge part of the economy. We had a plan for Reform. And as part of that, you did have to say, well, we need to take more risk. The 2008 financial regulatory settlement, you remember 2008, when the financial crisis came, the regulators and probably Parliament all said, well, this can never happen again. And I think the pendulum swung too far in the other direction and we've got a sclerotic economy and people can't get the money for their business idea and things like that. So you've got to litigate that upfront. Nick. What you can't do is, I think, go into office not having told your candidates, not having got your MPs to sign up to it, not having got a plan, and then say, well, we said we were going to cut red tape. How about doing that now? You've got to have a plan in advance.
- [30:10]
Nick Robinson
You mean you've got to be empowered with your own supporters, but with voters, too, to say, we told you that if a football club closed, we're not going to do something about it. We told you that if you're worried about this or that, we politicians don't think it's our job to do it.
- [30:26]
Andrew Griffith
Yeah. And if you think. Look, if you think about one of the biggest challenges for young people today, getting on the housing ladder, you have to reset the dial. You can't be in a position where there are so many people in the system who are all empowered to say no. And in many ways, they're incentives. You know, my favorite phrase, which isn't always used in politics, is, you know, Charlie Munger, who was Warren Buffett, the world's big investor, very successful, his phrase was, you know, show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome. Now, if we stuff ourselves up with regulators, with red tape, with a legal system where people are only really incentivized to say no, because they've got quite a nice life and a civil service pension and job security, but if they ever say yes, they might get that, you know, their head chopped off. Then we'll get the system that we've got. And I passionately believe the best days of our country are ahead of us. But I want to help and play in my way, supporting Kemi and colleagues, cutting through that thicket so we can unleash the power of business, problem solving, power of business.
- [31:23]
Nick Robinson
Now, an example of that is Kemi Badenoch. You, the shadow energy and climate change minister, have all said, we've got to deal with this net zero problem. The costs are far too high on government. But again, people are going to be a bit baffled. Boris Johnson who you served in government was actually praised by the woman who negotiated the Paris climate change accords. Christina Figueres said he was absolutely critical to making world government sign up. So if you had a change of mind, or did you always think it?
- [31:54]
Andrew Griffith
I think a lot of the facts have changed, actually, Nick. There was a thought moment in time, probably around then, that the whole world might move together and that would render some of the difficulties that we have saddled our own businesses and households with in a rather different context. If we weren't exporting jobs to China, who is building factories and powering their grid with more coal power.
- [32:17]
Nick Robinson
You know what I'm going to remind you of, don't you?
- [32:19]
Andrew Griffith
Well, let me, let me.
- [32:20]
Nick Robinson
You were the net zero business champion. That was your job. You were in charge of net zero
- [32:24]
Andrew Griffith
for Boris Johnson and that was all about voluntary endeavour by businesses, which I fully stand behind him. If businesses themselves and some do want to take action, set themselves targets, often because their own suppliers or their supply chain or the people that they serve want to do that, that's absolutely fine. I was not in the business of passing laws and mandating things, quite the opposite. I was trying to champion the idea that businesses themselves take action, partly because that's my philosophical belief, that it's much better to do things on a voluntary basis, collaboratively. But the world has changed.
- [32:57]
Nick Robinson
Some of those business groups will tell you, won't they, the big ones? We need a target for adopting electric vehicles to invest the money in building electric vehicles. We need a target for renewable energy in order to invest the money, the billions and billions of pounds that's. That's necessary a little bit both ways. Again, you're saying I'm not in favor of net zero now, but I was sort of in favor of voluntary net zero then.
- [33:20]
Andrew Griffith
Well, look, I think you can be in favour of voluntary activity every single day of the week. That is a good way to recover, run an economy, try and work with people rather than tell them what to do. I'm not someone who believes in mandates or bans. You try and work with the grain of human nature. But to your bigger point, notwithstanding all of that, the world has changed very significantly. Others did not follow our lead, right? The UK sometimes leads, but in this case the big competitors did not follow India, China, the places that our jobs are being exported to. Secondly, the cost of energy itself, post in particular Ukraine, has increased very significantly and then this government has made it, I would argue, incalculably worse, with its attitude towards things like the hydrocarbons under Our feet. Even in opposition to the own climate change committee's belief that we will continue to depend on those hydrocarbons for a very long period of time.
- [34:12]
Nick Robinson
One other thing I must ask you about. In your past, Liz Truss, you were a Treasury minister. Did you know she was making a huge mistake in that budget, which has probably gone down as the most notorious budget in post war Britain.
- [34:26]
Andrew Griffith
Look, I mean, I don't know if you know a lady called Lucy Rigby. Lucy Rigby is today the City Minister. I was the City Minister. You don't actually have any input into the budget? I, I was proposing a set of financial service reforms.
- [34:39]
Nick Robinson
You would have been a minister. On the day that quasi quatting was unveiling those changes, was there a bit of you, you're an accountant, thought, how can you have all these tax cuts without announcing some spending cuts?
- [34:49]
Andrew Griffith
Well, the big one, and it's worth, it's not rewriting history, it's worth just clarifying. The big one was the energy support package. That was the big potatoes. In terms of the number. The actual tax cuts were relatively modest. Right. So that was a big issue. I did raise eyebrows about that. I'm not saying publicly, I'm not trying to rewrite it with hindsight, but like when someone said we're going to pay everybody's electricity people bill for nearly two years as a small state Conservative, like, okay, that's quite bold. I was also the minister that identified the bank of England to the LDI risk because I was sitting at home on a Sunday.
- [35:25]
Nick Robinson
This was the pension.
- [35:26]
Andrew Griffith
The pension. So the fact that all of our
- [35:28]
Nick Robinson
pensions in the market, which caused the
- [35:31]
Andrew Griffith
huge difficulty for all of the wonderful financial regulation that we'd had, it was actually, it was Nigel Wilson and Amanda Blanc, the leads of some of the biggest pension pots in the country, who phone me up because I happen to know them from my business life and say, hey guys, we've got a bit of a problem here.
- [35:50]
Nick Robinson
The reason I'm asking you about these things, not to embarrass you, it's because you must have amongst your friends as much as anybody else, people who say, okay, this Conservative's telling me they spent too much, they borrowed too much, they taxed too much, they. The welfare state was too big and net zero was a bit of a mistake. Nigel Faris believed all those things throughout that period. Why they might say to you, should we just back reform? Who didn't make any of those mistakes?
- [36:19]
Andrew Griffith
Look, people have choices at elections. To be clear, Nick, the job of work that I My shadow Cabinet colleagues and Kemi have is to rebuild the Conservative Party to be a credible force. I think, particularly on the economy. I think we can be that on the economy. More of us have that background in business, not just myself. Across the shadow front bench, people do trust us on the economy. The polls are saying that and they increasingly recognize that the government has gone too far. They're doing damage, their policies.
- [36:50]
Nick Robinson
And you're really answering the point about reform, I mean.
- [36:52]
Andrew Griffith
Well,
- [36:54]
Nick Robinson
I'll just say. Appropriate for me to say. Aren't you light when you have an argument with people who used to be in your own party, many of them Robert Jenricks. Who? Ella Bravman, Danny Kruger and others. Two bald men fighting over a comb. I mean, you actually think the same thing as them. What are you having an argument with them for?
- [37:12]
Andrew Griffith
Look, the thing that you could. I don't worry an awful lot about the wider politics, Nick. The thing that we can control is can we, the Conservative Party, be the best version of ourselves and the electorate have a choice? But can we be united as I believe we are? We. We're working well as a shadow Cabinet team. We're not dismembering our leader at every opportunity as happened previously. Now, that will take time.
- [37:34]
Nick Robinson
Right?
- [37:34]
Andrew Griffith
I mean, we can say now we've had a good 18 months, let's see how that extends. I think Kemi will lead us into the next election, at which point we will be able to say to the electorate, we've got somebody who we have all united around. Can we bring in a new generation of Conservative candidates? Hopefully some from business experience, other walks of life. Perhaps some people from a new generation who can articulate their own form of conservatism. And then can we put together plans? I don't think people should vote for any party without looking at the plans. What are the trade offs? Are we going to be honest, are we going to tell people, as we have consistently, about the two child benefit cap? When my wife and I decided how many children we were going to have, there wasn't the opportunity of going to my employer and saying, well, actually we've had a third or fourth child. Can I have a pay rise? That's just not how the world works. Yeah, I'm sorry. And we've been very honest about it.
- [38:24]
Nick Robinson
I'm not clear what the difference is with reform, but we'll come back to another time and maybe closer to an election. There was one intriguing fact about Andrew Griffith when I was reading into you.
- [38:32]
Andrew Griffith
Oh, dear, oh dear. I thought he's a very. He's a very.
- [38:35]
Nick Robinson
He told me quite a lot.
- [38:37]
Andrew Griffith
Yeah.
- [38:37]
Nick Robinson
Is it true that you don't have a chair in your office?
- [38:41]
Andrew Griffith
I do stand up at my desk. Yes. Yes. So. So I think that's because you got
- [38:45]
Nick Robinson
a bad back or is that.
- [38:46]
Andrew Griffith
No. What's that about? I think it's quite. I've got quite high nervous energy, Nick. And at the end of the day, if you've been sitting down, this energy has to go somewhere. If you're standing up at your desk, you know, hopefully I don't have a bad back in the future, but your nervous energy dissipates as well. So that's the logic.
- [39:04]
Nick Robinson
We have to get you out of that chair so that you can go and stand up at Kebbi Badenok's Shadow Cabinet meeting, which starts. Oh, you've got about 10 minutes to
- [39:13]
Andrew Griffith
get 10 minutes to sprint over there. Have I?
- [39:15]
Nick Robinson
Andrew Griffith, thank you very much for joining me on Political Thinking.
- [39:17]
Andrew Griffith
Thank you.
- [39:23]
Nick Robinson
The history of successful business leaders moving to politics is not always a happy one. They can forget that the people who work in politics are volunteers. They have a vote pretty much every day in whether they're willing to go along with their management. And I'm often reminded of a story that the late, great Cecil Parkinson, Conservative Party chairman under Margaret Thatcher and later had a role under William Haig's leadership, used to tell he had to work with Archie Norman, one of the most successful retailers this country has ever seen, who was brought into the Conservative Party as chief executive. He said when he got exasperated with the latest businesslike suggestion of Archie Norman, he said, look, Archie, just because I've run the Conservative Party doesn't mean I know how to run a BLEEP supermarket. He wasn't very impressed. Andrew Griffith is trying to persuade his party, the country, to think in a more business like way and to prove that you can be successful in politics as well as in business. Thanks for listening to Political Thinking. The producers were Daniel Kramer and Flora Murray. The editor was Giles Edwards. If you want to get every episode of Political Thinking, you can subscribe. Just hit the button on BBC Sounds or wherever you listen to your podcasts and each week's episode will pop up as soon as they're published, including next week, our last of the series with a certain leader of the Green Party. Zach Polanski will join me. And you can also get Amal Rajan's podcast Radical on BBC Sounds. This week, he speaks to the pollster James Canagasorium about why people feel powerless, what it means for Britain and why agency could be the next big idea in politics. To listen Search for radical with amal Rajan on BBC Sounds.
- [41:26]
Andrew Griffith
Hi, we're the Van Tulleken, the identical twin Dr. Van Tullikan's Chris and Zand in what's up Docs. We're diving into the messy, complicated world of health and well being.
- [41:35]
Nick Robinson
We are living in the middle of what I would call a therapeutic revolution.
- [41:39]
Andrew Griffith
But it can sometimes be hard to know what's really best for us. Do I need to take a testosterone supplement? How can I fix my creaky knees? Why do I get hangry?
- [41:48]
Nick Robinson
Is organic food actually better for me?
- [41:50]
Andrew Griffith
We are going to be your guides through the confusion. We'll talk to to experts in the
- [41:54]
Nick Robinson
field and argue about what we've learned and share what we've learned and maybe disagree a fair bit too.
- [41:59]
Andrew Griffith
No we won't.
- [42:00]
Nick Robinson
What's up docs from BBC Radio 4.
- [42:02]
Andrew Griffith
Listen now on BBC Sounds.
- [42:08]
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