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[00:00:00] Intro: You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm.

[00:00:17] Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters Whipping Yarns, our series peering into the hidden world of Westminster's whips. I'm Ruth Fox.

[00:00:25] Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark Darcy. Our guest in this edition was one of the key players in Parliament's Brexit wars. Steve Baker spent years pushing his party and Prime Minister into holding a Brexit referendum and then more years ensuring a hard British exit from the EU.

[00:00:39] Ruth Fox: We talked to him about how he ringmastered a series of rebellions against successive party leaders without any of the powers of patronage and punishment available to government whips.

[00:00:50] Mark D'Arcy: He became known as 'Rebel Commander' and the 'Hard Man' of Brexit. I began by asking him if he regretted those nicknames.

[00:00:58] Steve Baker: I sort of regard them with a degree of intense regret and also, I'm afraid, a degree of satisfaction, but they don't give me any actual pleasure. It would have been far better if none of it had been necessary. If only Prime Ministers had chosen to do what I asked them in the first place.

[00:01:15] Mark D'Arcy: Well, you did your best to leverage them into doing it.

[00:01:18] Steve Baker: I'm afraid so.

[00:01:19] Mark D'Arcy: How did you land that role? Was it a conscious choice? Did everybody just at some meeting turn around and look at you?

[00:01:25] Steve Baker: Douglas Carswell. Douglas Carswell.

[00:01:27] We were in Room R organising the rebellion of 81 when we decided that we would have a referendum vote using the new backbench business procedures and there was going to be a votable motion and it was a three way referendum. And we knew that come the day that we didn't want a three way question, but, um, we put it down as a three way question.

[00:01:47] I'm desperately trying to remember the name of the colleague who did it. David Nuttall? David Nuttall. Of course, it was David Nuttall. I just haven't seen him for years. So it was David's lead, and David, uh, made the speech, moved the motion, and we had people who wanted to remain in the European Union who just wanted this settled, voting with us.

[00:02:06] But Douglas Carswell, somehow nominated me to be the whip instead of him. And, um, that is, I'm afraid, how it began. And Douglas gave me advice on how it should be done. And I can still see in my mind's eye now, me standing at the entrance to the 'aye' lobby with David Cameron stalking past glaring at me. And it was an uncomfortable moment, but I'd decided by then that I was going to vote to uphold democracy come what may. And this, if I may, just a slight diversion. My first ever meeting with a whip was Patrick McLoughlin. He called me in within a couple of weeks of arriving in Parliament because he didn't know me. No one knew me. I got elected to Parliament within two and a half years of deciding to try. So, um, he got me in and I was so nervous. This was very, very early, like 2010, because I thought, how on earth does he know I'm planning to rebel later? This is like magic, it's like telepathy, on an EU issue, my first rebellion. And of course he didn't know, did he? He just happened to call me in for a chat. And we had a lovely chat, me sitting there, absolutely, you can imagine, headmaster study nerves. And he said, the thing we do really care about, Steve, is loyalty. Always vote with the government. And I said, well - he's got his bullwhip on the wall, of course, behind - I said, well, about that Chief... later on, I shall be voting in rebellion against European integration on whatever the issue was.

[00:03:23] He absolutely exploded. And I remember what I said. I said, I feel extremely strongly about this. This is about fundamentally the institutions of power under which we live and whether they are under democratic control. And if you were standing at the exit from the lobby with a machine gun, I'd still vote that way because others greater than me have paid a higher price than this to uphold the principle that power must be under democratic control.

[00:03:47] Mark D'Arcy: And how did you react to that?

[00:03:49] Steve Baker: I think he got the point.

[00:03:52] Mark D'Arcy: Did you feel your card had been marked?

[00:03:54] Steve Baker: Oh gosh, of course it had. But, I mean, I never It's one of the things about democracy. I mean, Ruth particularly, you know, we've been through so much stuff on the secondary legislation and some people do really care how power is exercised and it's democratic control and they care that MPs do their job of scrutinising things and so forth.

[00:04:15] But this is what I've never understood in this journey. Is that so many people, at least 48 percent of the public, don't care about the democratic deficit of the European Union. Even in the European Union's own lights it exists and they, and people don't care. And I'm afraid I really do care that people can vote peacefully to remove a government they disapprove of, even if that means I lose my seat, as has happened.

[00:04:38] But I really think that that is the most fundamental question in politics. Can you remove those who govern you peacefully at the ballot box? Karl Popper said something about it, you know, two forms of government, the kind you can remove peacefully at the ballot box and the other kind, the former I call democracy and the other tyranny. And Karl Popper was of course a left liberal. He probably would have approved of the EU, but nevertheless, the EU has a democratic deficit. And it was assembled by positively trampling over the rights of electorates who rejected the constitution for Europe and also rejected the Lisbon Treaty. I mean, the constitution of France was changed to avoid a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

[00:05:18] And the Irish voted twice, and at this point I was going through the roof. What on earth do these people think they're doing? I thought we lived in a democracy and one of the great shocks for me in the intervening period through all this whipping, and this I think is important context for your listeners, I've just never understood how other people didn't get it.

[00:05:35] Um, I've been called an absolutist, but I'm not an absolutist. It's just democracy means you can get rid of people peacefully, and if you can't, it's not a democracy. And I've softened my willingness to understand the other person's point of view. But I remain as determined as ever that democracy must mean you can remove people peacefully, and the Commission can't be removed at the ballot box, and that's wrong.

[00:05:58] Ruth Fox: Steve, after you, uh, were called in by Patrick McLoughlin, were there any ramifications after that? I mean, we hear these stories about how whips threaten, and they - not necessarily, uh, overtly - but possibly you might not get, you know, as much support for your constituency, or you suddenly, you know, supports withheld from the Party or whatever it may be. Did you experience any of that?

[00:06:22] Steve Baker: Not personally. Not personally for a very good reason. But I shall tell you a story about that in a moment. The reason that I didn't receive much of it is that Douglas had given me some very good advice. He said, once you've really decided you're going to rebel, that is it.

[00:06:37] Do not ever back down. If you've seriously decided, never back down because once the whips know you're back down they'll always apply more and more force until you do. I mean metaphorical force. So once you've really decided you're rebelling that is it and so I always took the approach that no, I have decided. That's partly why I said the point to him about the 'if you were standing with a machine gun'.

[00:06:59] You know, don't bother me, because if you are an immovable object, they will not try to apply a resistible force. The colleagues who have a difficulty are the ones who are willing to be movable. And as soon as you're willing to be movable, the whips will keep finding ways. To illustrate this, I remember very early on, there was, of all things, a vote on the infected blood scandal. Very early on in 2010. Looking back now, it makes the particular whip's conduct especially disgraceful, and I hope he hears this because I remember who it was. He was walking along with a new MP, a young woman, very well motivated, like myself, we're all fresh in, trying to do our best. And the conversation was something like this, "but I've promised my constituents that I would vote for this motion on infected blood to get them compensation'. "Yeah, but the thing is, that's not the government's policy, and we really do need you to take one for the team and vote with the government." "Yeah, but the thing is, I promised them and got elected on that basis." "Yeah, but it'd be a shame, wouldn't it, if the Prime Minister noticed that you were rebelling, because you've come to his attention, he thinks you're doing a good job, and you know, you might be going somewhere. It'd be a pity to put that at risk." "Yeah, but I promised them, and it's infected blood, and they're suffering terribly." And you can imagine that it went up and up. It was "Yeah, but the party put a lot of resources into your marginal seat and it would be a pity if we didn't do that anymore." That's sort of where it ended up, at which point I turned off down the corridor and it was really, really whiffy because none of it was illegal. It was all just politics but it was, you're going somewhere but you won't be. You might get promoted. You won't be.

[00:08:31] Mark D'Arcy: And do you remember what this person then did?

[00:08:33] Steve Baker: To her credit, she voted as she promised her constituents, which is the right thing to do. But the truth is, and there's a long history of this tension. Burke's speech to the electors of Bristol is especially well known. But the other one is an essay called A Politician in Sight of Haven, not Heaven, but Haven, which people will find in the online Library of Liberty, which is a brilliant dialogue on the tensions politicians face from the Victorian era. And we always will face a tension between what our constituents say they want, and of course only a tiny minority of constituents express a view at any given moment, what you yourself think is best, and what the party is telling you you're to do, and the choice you make in those moments very much defines who you are.

[00:09:17] Mark D'Arcy: Now, if it's uncomfortable being a rebel, it's even more uncomfortable being a rebel whip, a rebel leader, a rebel commander, whatever phrase you want to use. Did you find yourself being targeted? Did you find a bit of pressure being applied? Did that role attract unwelcome attention?

[00:09:34] Steve Baker: Well, yes, it did. I mean, they will definitely do unpleasant things to you if they can, again, within the bounds of law. But my practice, I'm afraid, was always to up the ante. And they just very rapidly learned that it wasn't a good idea. So, once game was on, I mean, look, I hate being like this. It's the Bismarckian thing.

[00:09:54] With a gentleman, a gentleman and a half. But with a pirate, a pirate and a half. And once you've decided we're on pirate territory now, if they're going to be pirates, you're going to be a pirate and a half. So my practice was always that if they tried to apply pressure to me, I just found something terrible to do to them that they didn't like.

[00:10:10] Like go out into the media and get myself doorstepped by Beth Rigby, as it was, on one occasion, and say, well, yes, we do risk a Corn Laws style split in the Tory party. This might be the end of the Conservative Party as a governing force. Yes, you're right. It might be the end. We might be replaced by another party because the Conservative Party really might be torn in two and unable to be a coherent force for government. You can imagine.

[00:10:33] And then when they complain again, you find something worse. Yes, well, I'm afraid it really does look like now the Conservative Party is going to come to an end over this matter. I hope we can avoid that, but you just have to find ways to do that. Find another way to get 50 or 100 MPs signing a letter saying that we're going to tear the Tory Party in two.

[00:10:49] And that's partly why it was so awful, but. I'm afraid it was a matter of getting the job done and Prime Ministers wanted to stay in the EU and that wasn't acceptable so we had to force the issue. And I'm afraid people at this point will be enraged to hear me say that but it's fundamentally a matter of democracy, and for some of us it's a matter of democracy over which others have laid down their lives and we weren't willing to give in over a vote in the House of Commons.

[00:11:11] Ruth Fox: In terms of your leverage, you know, whips for the government have patronage, they have things that they can dish out, as you say jobs, they can influence what support the party provides and so on. You're acting in a very different position, whipping informally the Brexiteers. What sort of tools and approach would you use to whip your rebels?

[00:11:33] Steve Baker: Giving them what they want. The first thing is, I never really regarded myself as a whip. Famously, Marc Francois and I, at the height of the difficulties, called our team the Buddies. We said something at one point in the press, like we in the ERG do not whip colleagues, we extend the hand of friendship in a systematic way. Um, and that this is the thing, it's that there was never any point Steve Baker known as a rebel, and although, you know, I was never a scattergun rebel, I just was led very acute rebellions. But there was never any point thinking I had something to offer people other than success. What people who worked with me wanted was to leave the European Union properly.

[00:12:12] Now even somebody like Lee Rowley, who never travelled with me generally as a Eurosceptic and wasn't there in other rebellions, he was one of the so called Spartans, who was there at the bitter end, when it really, really counted - lots of people weren't - but you know, Lee was there because he had decided what was right.

[00:12:29] And that was generally the single most important tool, is I was organising leading colleagues where they wanted to go. That is the kind of leadership which the party needs. I've just sub-stacked about it. It causes immense pain to me to watch colleagues making such a balls up of leadership. Leadership is not about earning authority during an election campaign, which you can then subsequently impose on the recalcitrant. Authority in the modern era, and indeed just in human relations generally, needs to be earned afresh every single day. And you earn it afresh every single day by giving people what they want. Which is, in MP's case, influence, influence towards the kind of policies that they want. And although I was known as an organiser, if I say so myself, what I was doing was applying the lessons of 30 years of leadership, to basically give colleagues what they wanted, and take them where they wanted to go as a team.

[00:13:21] That's why I was a success. not because I had things to offer them. I mean, anyone changing their view of what is really right, you know, they're planning to break the party whip on which they were elected to do what they think is right, and then they change their mind because they're offered a job. They can be a PPS and hand out the handout questions in the lobbies.

[00:13:41] That is disgraceful. I can say that now. I don't want anything from them people who did that, or even to be honest, people who said, yeah, all right, I'll prefer having a new bypass to this issue. If somebody had ever said to me - and they didn't, I only got it secondhand - if they'd said to me, "you can have a new hospital in Wycombe or you can vote to leave the European Union."

[00:14:04] What I would have said to them is, "I'll tell you what I'm going to do, I'm going to vote that we leave the European Union, and I'm going to give as many interviews as the media will take, explaining what you've just said to me, that you are willing to put at risk the health care of thousands of people in my constituency to get me to vote against my best understanding of their democratic rights." That's what I would have said. And do you think they would have done it again? No. Do you think I would have got the hospital and voted in rebellion? Yes. And what happens is colleagues are too weak to put themselves on the line to do what they know to be right and force the government to do what they know to be right.

[00:14:38] Mark D'Arcy: Of course your leverage expanded massively after the 2017 election when the government didn't have a majority and could face defeat with far fewer people rebelling than had been the case before. So you had suddenly an enormous amount of influence. But at the same time, you had the threat that if the whole thing collapsed, if Theresa May's government had fallen, the Prime Minister might well be Jeremy Corbyn, who's an anathema to lots of Conservative MPs.

[00:15:05] So there's a huge and really painful dilemma in there. You had Theresa May's government doing things you didn't like, but the alternative was not necessarily someone from your group, but possibly Jeremy Corbyn if the whole Conservative Party disintegrated.

[00:15:20] Steve Baker: Absolutely, Mark. And I remember saying to a colleague, it might have been Jacob, we might have been in a group.

[00:15:25] Mark D'Arcy: Jacob Rees-Mogg

[00:15:26] Steve Baker: I remember saying, this has just turned from a high wire act to a high wire act over an alligator pit. Because if we get this wrong, it is a catastrophe for our country that we will never reverse. Now, it is notable that Theresa May made me a Brexit minister very shortly after the election.

[00:15:43] Some people said that that election was supposed to be the ERG killer. Now, I think that's overstating it. I think she had several reasons. But she was supposed to get a gigantic majority in which we would have had no leverage. And I think she possibly had got fed up with us. I remember putting Suella up to argue we must leave the Customs Union and single market, and that was quite an effective job.

[00:16:03] But she made me a Brexit Minister, and one of my prouder achievements is that I got the EU Withdrawal Act through the House of Commons in minority, in a working state. And frankly, Mark, just as you say, it was very difficult, because we didn't have a majority. But I've got it done. And I'm proud that we got it done.

[00:16:19] We suffered a single defeat, and I'm sure Dominic Raab won't mind me saying he was responsible for that particular clause. But, um, we got that most controversial and constitutionally significant bill through Parliament in minority. And I did that alongside all the work I was doing on preparation for exit under any circumstances.

[00:16:37] But, of course I then resign in 2018, but we've still got the same arithmetic. And at that point, yes, everything you say is bang on. We, the risks were extremely high. But because Jeremy Corbyn was willing to put the Labour Party in the lobby against the government, it meant that the ERG steering group, because I never worked on this on my own, I was working very closely with Marc Francois, who's more of a traditional whip compared to my use of technology, and I was working very closely with the steering group of the ERG, which I'd set up to manufacture authority and provide boundaries and hold me to account, that good stuff. So what the ERG steering group decided, on a vote, would be what happened. And it was a grave responsibility indeed, yes.

[00:17:20] Mark D'Arcy: How closely did you find yourself working with the Labour Party on this? You mentioned Jeremy Corbyn was willing to lead the Labour Party into the lobbies against the government on a load of issues.

[00:17:29] Was he doing that because he agreed with you, or was he doing that because he saw this as a way of prizing the Conservative Party apart, and the whole thing falling down and him becoming Prime Minister in a majority Labour government?

[00:17:39] Steve Baker: Well, although I'm on good terms, well, good terms, I'm perfectly capable of having a civilised word with Jeremy Corbyn in the queue for coffee in the morning, and indeed Keir Starmer, Jeremy Corbyn and I never sat down and discussed these matters. So I think, um, everybody involved was more comfortable that a non MP colleague of mine spoke to a non MP person in a position of responsibility in Jeremy Corbyn's office to arrange these matters.

[00:18:03] But Jeremy Corbyn is, of course, a Eurosceptic, and the person we were speaking to in his office was a Eurosceptic. And, um, between us, we managed to ensure that the right things happened. I imagine within the Labour Party, there were very, very few true believing Eurosceptics. McDonnell and Corbyn would have been two of them. And I imagine that the Labour Party managed to keep its coherence against Theresa May's deal on the basis you just set out that it would destroy the Conservative Party.

[00:18:29] Mark D'Arcy: How close did the Conservative Party come to that? How close were you to falling off that high wire into that alligator pit? Because sometimes it looked awfully, awfully close.

[00:18:38] Steve Baker: Yeah, it did, but it partly looked awfully close because I was making it look close in order to cause the government pain. And one day I'll get round, I mean I thought about writing a manual on how to start a revolution, but um, I won't say the books that I rely on, but I'm afraid I have to accept that although I don't much like conflict, I am a warrior.

[00:18:54] If I've got to have a battle, we are going to have a proper battle. And the reason it looked terribly bad is because I made it look terribly bad. Sometimes colleagues got a bit uncomfortable with that, but that's why I used to send some humorous WhatsApp messages to keep their morale up, like famously the one that leaked about the great escape quote about "it's the duty of every officer to resist and try and escape and if they can't cause the maximum difficulty to those holding them captive", whatever the quote was.

[00:19:19] But that leaked and I was lampooned for it, but it didn't matter because it kept morale high and kept the team together and allowed me to further deepen the problems for the government so that they were nervous. Always bring trouble to your opponents. You know, you've got to be steady and settled yourself.

[00:19:33] If, if your opponents want to fight, cause them problems. Do things to undermine their confidence and coherence. was doing.

[00:19:40] Ruth Fox: Can I just go back, Steve, you said a little earlier that Marc Francois in the ERG, he was more of a sort of traditional whip compared to yourself in terms of your use of technology.

[00:19:49] Can you just tell us, explain to listeners a little bit about that, what do you mean between what you were doing versus what, what Marc was doing?

[00:19:56] Steve Baker: All of us would use conversations. We would go and find Ruth and say, "Ruth, this is what's coming up. This is what we think we need to do. This is why we think we need, what do you think?"

[00:20:06] Listen, hear you out, take time, just like knocking on doors. You might very quickly say, "yeah, with your Steve, no problem. You're right, no problem, don't waste your time, I'll be voting with you". You might have lots of views, you might have lots of concerns, we try to allay them and all the rest of it and do it conversationally.

[00:20:20] That requires a lot of time and it requires a number of people, all of whom are willing to put the time in. It requires you to keep lots of spreadsheets and it requires you to allocate spreadsheets to individuals. I used to do the spreadsheets but you know, I was doing them to Mark's specification, that's fine. But we've all been around this loop, we all know how to do this. But you know, Mark would do it very skillfully, on a very, very direct human basis. But the time it takes to do it is very slow, because you've got to meet, hand out names, discuss every name, go out and meet all those people. And everybody might have a dozen people they've got to run into, phone, arrange a coffee with. Then you've got to regroup, compare all the names and tot it all up.

[00:21:03] Whereas I would send a WhatsApp broadcast which says, "Warning, division expected at 1500, question is blah, we're asking you to please vote in rebellion against the government, please reply "Y" if you're with us." And I'd send messages like that and then my phone would fill up with "Y"s. Then I just needed to run down and see who hadn't replied "Y" and ring them up. And the result was I could get a whipping job done, I don't know, in an hour.

[00:21:27] I once sat, one of the landmark moments, was Charles Walker and I, prior to the referendum, when it was Conservatives for Britain and too few were on WhatsApp. So we were using text messages. And um, I sat with Charles Walker and he wanted an amendment relating to politically exposed persons to go into the Finance Bill. And you know, you do not rebel on the Finance Bill. We were sat there in the tea room, and I said, "right, Charles, if I press the button on this bulk SMS, you're going to change the government's policy because that amendment will go through. Is that what you, you sure that's what you want?' Yes. And I pressed the button and within seconds, the "Y"s started pouring in and we'd had 50 odds in a few minutes. I said, well, that's it, you can go and tell George Osborne that he'll lose the vote. And George just accepted the amendment. We did it again and subsequently on a Queen's Speech amendment. Again, you don't amend the Queen's Speech. These are confidence issues, but we forced an issue on the Queen's Speech as well in the same way.

[00:22:25] Mark D'Arcy: Backtracking to a bit of ancient history here, in many ways the first sort of pebble in the subsequent avalanche was a vote to amend the Queen's Speech that came in the middle of the Cameron years, and that had been kind of prefaced by various sort of Backbench Business Committee debates and things like that, and the institutional changes that were made in 2010 to create the Backbench Business Committee possibly were crucial to creating the kind of climate that made the Brexit group possible. So things like the Backbench Business Committee and the sheer street smarts of the group of Brexit oriented Conservative backbenchers who got themselves on its first incarnation.

[00:23:03] Steve Baker: There is absolutely no doubt that this would not have happened without David Nuttall, Douglas Carswell, Mark Reckless, Christopher Chope of all people, all the trouble he's created, and others who met in Room R and use the Backbench Business Committee. Now I actually left that group. I was privileged to get into it. It never leaked. It was the tightest group ever, I'm sure. And I was invited into it and that was a privilege, but I left it because subsequently after the rebellion of 81, some of them just wanted to create trouble for the government. And I wasn't in there to just create trouble for the government. I was there to get out of the European Union. But yeah, they were extremely skilled at using the Backbench Business Committee and your listeners may or may not know that the government controls the business of the House of Commons. That's one of the rules. I'm all in favor of that. But the Backbench Business Committee undoubtedly has massively widened the ability of parliamentarians to give voice to the issues which their constituents care about, which they care about, which the government may not wish to have aired. If it were not for the Backbench Business Committee, we'd have had to table amendments to legislation, and that would have required being within the rules of the House of Commons, um, effectively means you're quite tightly constrained. So the Backbench Business Committee undoubtedly did create these opportunities, yeah.

[00:24:15] Mark D'Arcy: The other thing I wanted to do is just a little bit of a historical backtrack, because even before that era, the coalition era, um, basically the issue of, Europe has been a fissure within the Conservative Party right back to when Harold Macmillan sent Edward Heath off to try and negotiate Britain's membership 60 odd years ago.

[00:24:35] Why is that? Why is this something that is so fundamental within the Conservative Party that a party whose secret weapon was always supposed to be unity can be absolutely riven by splits over it?

[00:24:46] Steve Baker: People apparently hold these constitutional questions extremely dear. I mean, I'm a former Northern Ireland Office minister, and Northern Ireland is a sorry lesson in what happens when constitutional issues get out of hand.

[00:24:57] I mean, it started with people being abused, even persecuted, for their being a Catholic in Northern Ireland. But, um, the constitutional issue there is held above all others, so it's not unique to the Conservative Party. What I would put it down to is a centuries long transformation in the dominant political ideology.

[00:25:17] the, kind of, the Overton window, as they put it. If you look at a chart of the growth of the state, which I frequently parade around, prior to the First World War, the dominant centre ground political ideology was classical liberalism. The state spent about 15 percent of GDP and the rest was the private sector.

[00:25:32] We then had two wars of transformation in the 20th century. terms used by a reformed Trotskyite called James Burnham, who wrote a book called the managerial revolution. And there's loads of great literature around the period of the two world wars, as classical liberal scholars try to work out what's going on. Road to Serfdom is the most famous. But what happened in the period of those two world wars was a transition from classical liberalism to social democracy and the whole of our lifetimes on this call and all your listeners, we've lived in an era of social democracy where state spending has been about and beyond the practical limits of taxation, which is why we've had chronic deficits and currency debasement. And it's a subject on which I've just written a long essay and a book and a documentary and lots of speeches. That system is now failing. The reason that it's the Conservative Party in particular has been riven, I believe, is because the Conservative Party became the repository of the remnant of classical liberals like me. People who believe in individual liberty and not the state. The vast majority of people involved in politics and public policy today are effectively social democrats by whatever name. They believe in state power. They believe in managing other people's lives. They believe in interventionism. That system of society is even now failing.

[00:26:42] We can't afford it and it doesn't work very well. And painfully, not only in the UK, but also in France, we're facing up to the reality that we can't afford all the government we have and how this is extremely dangerous because it was dangerous in the past, it will be dangerous now. Not least it's dangerous to, for example, pensioners, because in the next 20 years, we're going to default on the welfare state's obligations to wage related spending. And that means pensions and health care for people who have no other means of support. And I feel very passionately about it as someone from a working class background. But this is why there's been a split in the Tory party. Because the classical liberals in the Liberal party got squeezed out into the Conservative and then if you're a classical liberal like me you've got no other home.

[00:27:25] And um, there are two objections one can have. Two classes of objections to the European Union. One is the nationalist objection, with which I have no patience. I am not a nationalist. I'm for the brotherhood of sisterhood of mankind. My objection is that I don't like power out of control. I don't really care where my government is so long as it doesn't do anything.

[00:27:45] The proper purpose of democracy ought to be to remove governments who want to do things. "No, you're trying to do something, be gone." Stop doing things. You can do defense, you can do criminal justice, but for example, go back a hundred years, what on earth do you think you're doing destroying the friendly societies? They're working well, they're developing, be patient. The friendly societies provide health and welfare, which is affordable, which works, which holds doctors to account to the needs of patients. Don't interfere with them, be gone. But unfortunately, people like me didn't win the argument, and the result is we've got a welfare state we can't afford that doesn't work very well, and is failing, and will fail.

[00:28:20] So, that's why, to me, it's been riven, because the classical liberals are in the Tory party, along with a bunch of conservatives, which is inevitable. But I am not a Conservative, I'm a classical liberal, but I've got nowhere else to go.

[00:28:31] Mark D'Arcy: You spend a career almost sort of dancing on that divide. Can the party be held together between those two factions?

[00:28:38] Steve Baker: Yeah, because they've got no choice. I mean, Reform is incoherent. You look at their fiscal plans. They were ridiculous, which the Institute for Fiscal Studies called out. But Reform is just a populist objection to some of the failures of the Conservative Party. And they're completely legitimate condemnations of the Tory Party. But Reform can't offer a platform for government and they never will because they're not capable of coming up with a coherent fiscal plan. And even if they were to eventually successfully replace the Conservative Party, it will take at least a generation. Suppose they doubled the number of MPs they have at every general election for the foreseeable future. How many general elections will it take before they can form a government? I'll leave that to the listener to work out. Let's put it this way, the Government Actuaries Department says the National Insurance Fund will be exhausted in 2043-44 which gives us 20 years to avoid the massive default of the welfare state, as a guide essay question. But will Reform be capable of governing the country and solving that problem in time to avoid the problem occurring? The answer is very clearly no. And so there's only one political party that's got to pull itself together and save us all from the default of the welfare state. Because of course what will happen as things get increasingly difficult over the coming years is that Chancellors will not allow the welfare state to default. They'll do what Rishi Sunak of all people, a fiscal Conservative, what he did during COVID. They'll find increasingly aggressive ways of enabling the Bank of England to buy the bonds they need to issue. And we'll end up massively debasing the currency. And the Bank for International Settlements warned this would happen in a paper issued in 2010. It's all easily foreseeable. But I'm afraid we're going to have a massive currency crisis precisely because there's too few of us left who are classical liberals to win the argument. Whether or not the Tory Party can be held together is not really the first order question. The first order question is, can our political system solve the problems it's created over a hundred years?

[00:30:31] Personally, I've come to the conclusion that it cannot. And we will therefore see the destruction of fiat money across the developed welfare states within our lifetimes. I've been making this argument for 14 years and nobody's really taken any notice, and that's one of the reasons I think it will happen, because the political economy and the public choice of it mitigates against solving the problem. But someone will have to come after me and do a better job than I have done at forcing the state to face up to the real world.

[00:30:59] Ruth Fox: Can I ask a very practical question, Steve? You're still dancing on this divide about what the future direction of the party is, and if you were still in Parliament and on the back benches, and you're looking at a much reduced Conservative parliamentary party, and trying to provide opposition and trying to air these issues. If the new leader came along and said, Steve, I want you to be, uh, shadow leader of the House of Commons, I want you to help us construct, uh, good, strong opposition to this government because they've got all these sorts of problems and we need to get back into government in five years. Knowing how Parliament works and the media works and so on, what would you suggest?

[00:31:36] Steve Baker: This is going to be a long programme. If I was still in Parliament, I would have run to be leader of the Conservative Party and I have good reasons to think I would have got into the last two. And I would have been on the ballot paper and instead of voting for Kemi this morning, I would have voted for myself.

[00:31:52] Um, I might not have got into the last two, but I've got good reasons I don't wish to divulge to think that the support I would have garnered would have got me into the last two. I'd like to think if I'd been in Parliament that I wouldn't have been asking the leader what I should do. I would have just been doing it.

[00:32:06] I set out on my substack routinely what needs to be done, and I hope you won't mind me advertising it.

[00:32:11] Ruth Fox: No, we'll put it in the show notes. I will link to it in the show notes.

[00:32:15] Steve Baker: But what needs to be done is somebody's got to have a vision that is consistent with a hopeful future whilst being capable of addressing the existential financial crisis which is undoubtedly before us.

[00:32:25] Before we can do any of that, of course, we've got to earn the right to be heard, because we turned into a circus act of replacing prime ministers. Of course, they do get it, these guys. Liz gets it, that's why she was in such a hurry to change the supertanker, but you can't shift the supertanker by flying in at Mach 2 like Superman, and punching the side, you just sink it. And that's what Liz did, but Liz knows this is a problem. I've had this conversation about the fiscal future we face with Rishi, in front of about 30 MPs, and he said, well, yes, Steve, you're right. He said a bit more than that, but he said I was right, and the mood was absolutely leaden. But that's when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, he told me I was right about the fiscal future we face. And then an MP broke the tension by saying, "yeah, but of course we can't do anything about it at this election." And everybody moved back onto the usual comforting bromides. But this is why we've got an existential fiscal problem coming down the road. Because it's never a good time. But don't allow yourselves, listeners, to think that Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss and any other person who's been Chancellor of the Exchequer or Chief Secretary, don't allow yourself to think they don't know that this is our future. They do know, and they don't do anything about it. Why don't they do anything about it? Because they think you won't vote for it. Well, what do you want? Do you want a default of the welfare state in our lifetimes when people like me need it? In fact, all of us on this call, we're going to need the welfare state just as it falls over. Really hard. Well, what do you want? Do you want to avoid that or not? If you want to avoid that, you need to join the Conservative Party and tell your parliamentary candidates and MPs I want you to solve this problem so that the welfare state exists when I need it, please. That means cuts now, lower taxes and growth.

[00:33:57] Mark D'Arcy: So if you were given the chance, would you go back? Would you re enter the House of Commons?

[00:34:01] Steve Baker: It would take the most.. what would I do, honestly, after everything I've done? As you've explored, I have sat in the House of Commons with a broadcast list on my WhatsApp, on my phone, of up to 130 Members of Parliament and usually we would plan in advance what we were going to do but sometimes votes came up. And it just fell to me to decide because I'd be sitting in the House of Commons and the government changed what it was doing and I just think well we better rebel then. And on the strength of me just sending a WhatsApp message, I was frankly so trusted by my colleagues that I could put dozens, at the height of it all, I could put dozens - I think once I put 70 MPs - in the rebel lobby by sending a single WhatsApp message. Wow. What a power that is. No one should ever wield that power.

[00:34:43] For that power to be wielded, it should be wielded by Prime Ministers supported by the cabinet, the civil service, and duly considered over a long period. It's not unlawful, but no one should be put in that position, and that's why it cost me my mental health. I don't want to seem boastful, but the problem is anyone can pick up Tim Shipman's chronicles of Brexit and see how often I appear. So I say it knowing that it's not boastful or it's a reflection of history. I have just wielded more power more often than most members of the cabinet. What is the point of me going back? Now one might say because it's a noble cause to represent 75, 000 in Parliament. And you know what? It is, and we're very lucky anyone's willing to do it.

[00:35:20] But I have done it for 14 years. And I know it's extremely unrewarding, because you represent 75,000 people, two thirds of whom didn't vote for you, didn't want you to be MP anyway. And of the third who did want you to be MP, it was probably quite reluctant. And they're mostly actively very disinterested in what you're doing. And when they're not, they're extremely demanding, if not ferociously angry. Then you ask me, do I want to go back? No, thank you. Wash your mouth out.

[00:35:49] Mark D'Arcy: Well, Steve Baker, thanks very much indeed for that. That's been a great conversation. Absolutely fascinating insight into what's been going on.

[00:35:56] Steve Baker: Yeah, we're very, very lucky anyone's willing to be a Member of Parliament.

[00:35:59] If anybody understands what it is, they'll think they're very lucky that anyone's willing to do it. It's an awful experience.

[00:36:06] Mark D'Arcy: Well, thanks for joining us and telling us all about it.

[00:36:08] Steve Baker: All right, you're most welcome.

[00:36:09] Ruth Fox: Cheers, Steve.

[00:36:13] Well, Mark, crikey. Phew. There's an awful lot to unpack there. Not least Steve's comments about the toll it took on him.

[00:36:21] Mark D'Arcy: Yes, he does talk about how he ran into a bit of a mental health crisis, and you actually had a ringside seat for that.

[00:36:28] Ruth Fox: Yes, well, Steve very kindly agreed to join our Delegated Legislation Review advisory panel alongside Dame Angela Eagle and Kirsty Blackman for Labour and the SNP. So it was a cross party body and there were other experts involved. And Steve we had as the keynote speaker at our launch event. And I'm pretty sure from what he said, he's talked about having a mental health breakdown - he's been very open about it - in late 2021 at an event where he was the keynote speaker and he managed to get through this event, um, but he was in a bad place, a bad position. I'm pretty sure it was our launch event. Uh, and I would not have known, I sat next, you know, near him, next to him, had a lot of dealings with him during the course of that event. I had no idea. But I'm pretty sure from what he said that it, that it was then.

[00:37:17] Mark D'Arcy: But it's a clear indication of quite the strain that politics puts on people in the long term. I mean, initially you maybe think you're breezing through, but a toll is taken. But that was an extraordinary interview in all sorts of different ways.

[00:37:29] I mean, one of the things that really comes across is that what makes Steve Baker different to an awful lot of other people you meet in politics, is that he was attached to a cause that was frankly more important to him than his party. And that made him a very difficult person for the government whips to manage and made him, you know, basically an extreme handful for any kind of party manager to deal with.

[00:37:50] Ruth Fox: Yeah. And Steve, you know, let's be honest, Steve is not everybody's cup of tea. And there are an awful lot of people who, you know, were opposed to Brexit, who sort of regard him as the devil incarnate almost. But my experience of dealing with him through the Delegated Legislation Review was he was very, very impressive in person to deal with.

[00:38:09] I would say from the meetings I had with him, he probably had a more strategic, tunneled vision focus than any MP I've dealt with in my sort of 20 odd years in and around Westminster. Right from the outset, he had a strategic view about what the Review needed to look at and how it needed to operate, how it needed to engage with the parties. He was clear about what he thought the priorities were. He was very clear about what he could personally deliver and not deliver, how much time he'd got, what he would endeavor to do for us, to work with us on the review. And he was very clear about the commitments he'd make and he delivered on every one of them.

[00:38:48] You know, he would get us meetings with ministers, junior ministers, cabinet ministers to have sort of, you know, off the record private discussions about some of the really sort of techie procedural stuff about delegated legislation and how, as a minister, they approach it so that we could understand it from the government perspective as well as the parliamentary perspective.

[00:39:08] As I say, he's one of the most impressive MPs I've dealt with personally and that is reflected in his tunnel vision focus on delivering Brexit.

[00:39:15] Mark D'Arcy: The only MP I can think of who is comparable on the tunnel vision front, the focus front, is probably his Brexiteer colleague, Douglas Carswell. And unlike Douglas, Steve Baker seems to be resisting the allure of Reform and Nigel Farage, and seems to be pretty committed to remaining with the Conservative Party, even if he doesn't seem to have much ambition to come back as an MP now.

[00:39:36] Ruth Fox: No, and I think that's, in a sense, it's one of the sadnesses, isn't it? Somebody who's, who's done those years in Parliament. He doesn't seem to have, you know, a sort of look back on his time as an MP with great sort of personal affection, the toll it took and seems fairly clear at the moment that he wouldn't want to return.

[00:39:53] Mark D'Arcy: Well, the golden rule of MPs is I think you've really, really got to want to be there. Yeah. And with that, Ruth, that's all we've got in this current run of Whipping Yarns. We'll be back with more interviews in due course. But for now, goodbye.

[00:40:04] Ruth Fox: Bye.

[00:40:11] Well, that's all from us for this week's episode of Parliament Matters. Please hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app to get the next episode as soon as it lands.

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[00:40:29] Ruth Fox: Mark, tell us more about the algorithm.

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[00:40:38] Ruth Fox: Well, before we go, a quick reminder also that you can send us your questions on all things Parliament by visiting hansardsociety.org.uk/PMUQ.

[00:40:47] Mark D'Arcy: We'll be discussing them in future episodes, including our special Urgent Questions editions dedicated to what you want to know about Parliament.

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[00:41:03] Intro: Parliament Matters is produced by the Hansard Society and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. For more information visit hansardsociety.org.uk/pm or find us on social media @HansardSociety.