and the funeral has been held in uganda for the olympic athlete, rebecca cheptegei, who was set on fire and killed by a former boyfriend. those are the latest headlines. now on bbc news, political thinking with nick robinson. hello, welcome to political thinking. only one candidate to be the next leader of the opposition has held any of the great offices of state. my guest on political thinking — a conversation with rather newsy interrogation of — someone who shapes our political thinking, has, in fact had two of those jobs. james cleverly was foreign secretary and then home secretary.

he is the great survivor of the years of tory turmoil. appointed by borisjohnson, promoted by liz truss and kept on by rishi sunak. he's now in the final four candidates to become the next leader of the conservative party. all of them will make their case before conservative activists and members at the tory conference in a couple of weeks�* time. james cleverly, welcome to political thinking. cheers, nick. this the first time we've spoken since that election day? how does it feel to go from having one of those great offices of state and all that comes with it, the red boxes and the chauffeured cars and the security and all the rest? suddenly it's gone. so it's not that paraphernalia that you miss. it's the being able to do stuff. and particularly in the portfolios i've held, foreign secretary and home secretary, they're both very much in the news at the moment. the situation with ukraine, the decisions around the uk's

posture, how we further support the ukrainians in their self—defence. we've had the riots over the summer. we've still got the terrible situation with illegal migration. and in those areas where i've been intimately involved very, very recently, and watching the government mess up, like quite significantly, very, very quickly. and it's really frustrating. and you always knew you were going to lose, presumably once you entered that race. well, look... you have to say that you think you'll win when you're in front of the microphones, but you must have... so you need to be a particular type of stupid to completely disregard the opinion polls. and the opinion polls werejust not shifting. and, you know, we were getting some good news on a number of fronts. inflation was heading in the right direction, we were making the cuts to national insurance contributions, the economy

was growing, so we were getting the kind of things that normally impress the voters, and it was making no difference. now we're going to come to why you think the conservatives lost, and why you think you're the man to reverse that in a in a second. first, i've got a question about what you said six years ago... oh, here we go. ..when you were on political thinking. no, it's nothing to worry about, but you were just deputy chairman of the conservative party then. i asked you whether you wanted to be leader. now, most people in that chair go, oh, well, it's not for me and all that sort of stuff that politicians feel they have to say. you came straight out. why wouldn't you love that job? it's an amazing job, you said. here's the problem. the job you were talking about was prime minister, why on earth do you want to be leader of the opposition? because when you're in opposition, if you still aspire to serve the country, then you've got to do a really good in a really good job in opposition to get back into government. and, you know... you never dreamt you'd be this far behind in the polls in parliament. no. and if you believe in that

sense of duty, and we need to re—establish our credentials as being a political party driven by duty rather than personal ambition. but if you are driven by that sense of duty, then you've got to recognise that you have to do the hard yards in opposition if you want to get back into government. it's interesting choice of word and some of your language, i think, does sound as if it's rooted in your service. you went to sandhurst, you had to pull out because you were injured. but you've then been an army reservist. i think you'er staff officer now. you have a sense of duty, loyalty. perhaps that's why you were able to serve first borisjohnson, then liz truss, then rishi sunak. what do you think is the key to why you survived that turmoil? i think the reason i survived is i'm really good at myjob. no, genuinely. and i've spent a lot of my career, i've spent a lot of my career being a little

bit diffident, perhaps. you've stopped that now. well, yeah. i'm surrounded in my work by people that, um, you know, parade their accomplishments like, you know, like peacock feathers. and that's not a criticism. it's just an observation. and i've perhaps, through my career, been a little bit less a little bit less like that. um, and i'm also and i'm therefore conscious that sometimes i think i've been underestimated, as you say so i've had career advice about how i should and shouldn't do things about about, you know, my leadership campaign. i've had career advice from people that have never run a department, never held any of the great offices of state, and never won a general election, and i've done, you know, i've been chairman of the party when we got an 80 seat majority. borisjohnson in 2019.

helped boris get elected in 2008 and 2012. against expectations. yeah. um, been foreign secretary and home secretary. and one of the things i've said to people is that that can be explained in one of two ways. it's either a 16 year uninterrupted lucky streak or i'm actually really quite good at myjob. and frankly, as leader of the party, either will do. i think napoleon said, bring me lucky generals, so either i am uniquely lucky or i'm actually good at what i do. and i'm a bit fed up of pretending that i'm not good at myjob. well, there's another theory, which isn't necessarily in contradiction with the idea that you're good at yourjob, which is you're a nice guy, you're loyal, you believe in duty. in army terms, if you like, you're the sort of guy people want around the officer's mess, you make people smile, you're an optimist as well. but some people say he's not a general, though, is he? i mean, he's the he's the ideal officer you'd want to have supporting you, which is why they all did that.

but you wouldn't want him to lead you, would you? yeah, and as i say, i get quotes like that from people that have never held any of the great offices of state. i mean, and genuinely, i have... you understand why they say it. no, i don't know, i genuinely don't. i've outperformed everyone else on this leadership ticket. unless you want to contradict me on that. in what? in terms of notjust the jobs i've held, but what i've achieved in those jobs. so i've outperformed all the other runners and riders by a country mile. i've outperformed almost everyone else in my parliamentary intake. if you tippexed the word james cleverly off my political cv and slid it across the desk, you'd look at it and go, bloody hell! in some ways you are a symbol of modern britain. you're mixed race. your mum from sierra leone, who came over here as a nurse,

married a white british man. and you grew up a mixed race boy in south london, in lewisham in the 1970s, when that can't have been easy being mixed race at that time. i look at my kids now and their friends and colour and race is almost completely fallen out of their consciousness. it's just not a thing. when i was a kid, that was not the case. when i was growing up in lewisham, august 1977, the national front famously marched through lewisham from new cross down towards lewisham. i was living in brockley at the time, which is, you know, almost, almost on the route of the march. so the national front marching pretty much past the end of the road on which i lived, and that was the backdrop of my, of my childhood. one of the things i love about this country, and i think we underplay it, is that we have we have we have always been actually one of the most open and generous countries, i think, in the world when it comes to migration and integration.

and if you look back, you know, you can go back to what do you want to go back to? you want to go back to the huguenots, you want to go back to, you know, eastern european dues, you want to go back to the windrush generation, ——to go back to, you know, eastern european jews, you want to go back to the windrush generation, or my mum from west africa, or the ugandan asians or the hong kong chinese, or most recently, the ukrainian refugees. we've always been very, very accepting. i think one of the things that we need to understand now is about the integration piece. i think one of the things that we need to understand now is about the integration piece. we used to be really good at integration and we've dropped the ball on that. what did your mother advise you? the national front are marching not quite by the front door, but not far away. what did she tell you as a little boy about how to cope with that racism, how to fit in, if you like? um, i think you kind of learn this stuff by osmosis. you develop a bit of a sixth sense. um, and you learn, you know, you learn to at times, you know, not to make yourself a target, not to stand out too much.

like my dad's younger brother married my mum's best friend from sierra leone. so my cousins were mixed race. i had my english family in the uk, in south east london as well, some mum's... and my extended family. so i always had a very supportive network. but you, you just had a sixth sense. do you think that's why she was willing to give up so much to send you to a private school? because you live with your grandparents, didn't you, for a while? you shared a one bedroom flat, the two of you and you as the child. private school. you dreamt of going into the army. was that part of wanting to integrate into british society? uh, so don't...don't misread it. so you've got to understand my mum's point of view. she didn't feel she had to integrate because for her, this was coming home. as a child of empire? yeah. i mean, this is where her head of state lived. when mum came here, her head of state was her majesty the queen.

you know, the parliament that she looked towards was not the kind of, you know, colonial administration in freetown. but it was westminster where i am now, you know, where i now work as an mp. so for her, this wasn't about integration, this was home. and her attitude towards the country and its institutions and its rules came kind of hard coded when she arrived. and i think this is where the integration piece for her generation was was much easier. and this is where i think this is where... so for her, i mean you're right. she, she was very insistent that education was key. she was not happy with the state schools in the local area, which is why i, my parents started paying for my education whilst they were still living in my grandparents�* spare

bedroom in catford. um, and one of the reasons i'm an only child, because they couldn't afford two sets of school fees. she didn't live, i think to see you reach the top of politics. no, she never saw me get elected, unfortunately. would she be amazed at the idea that her boy, notjust her boy, but a boy, forgive me, who looks like, you know, could become foreign secretary? she would have been tigger—like, with excitement. i don't think she would have been surprised or amazed. mum's family in sierra leone, my african family were were, you know, senior high status people, you know, senior in the colonial civil service, senior in the sierra leonean military so reaching high office would not be something that was completely unusual. you were also asked by an australian paper, i think, whether britain had confronted its colonial past. do you remember your reply? it was pretty punchy. i think it would have been something along the lines of, you know, i am the foreign secretary of great britain and i am black.

i mean, it's not that we've confronted. i'm a by—product of it. it's because not despite, you know. and you went on to say that you thought in many ways britain was the best place in the world to be black. yeah. do you accept that when we turn now to this question of integration, plenty of people who are in inverted commas are not integrated in the way that your mother would say. it's not the best place in the world to be black at all. this is a tough place. so i'm not saying it's easy, i'm saying it's the best. and, you know, i've had this conversation with people and i said, well, can you tell me, tell me where better. if you are born as someone in a minority group of whatever type, contemporary britain, i would argue, is the best place in the world. um, there are, you know, i'm displaying this. there are more opportunities in british society than i think you would find in any

other contemporary society. i genuinely and i and i said this when i was foreign secretary, if you can credibly point to anywhere else in the world, then i'd be willing to listen to the argument. but i've thought about it, and i certainly can't. and yet, as you've said, there is an integration problem. it's been noted in official reports. arguably, it's stared us in the face during the summer riots this year. do you accept that, even though, and i'm sure you'll want to say, that was about thuggery in some cases, the far right, in some cases, about violence, underlying it was a nation, which is, to usejohn major's famous phrase, is not at ease with itself? well, i think one of the things that we have got to recognise is that there was definitely the perception that the rules were not being equally and dispassionately applied, and... two tier policing. yeah.

and when that phrase is utilised, a number of people, particularly on the left, get very, very, very agitated. but it's really funny, it strikes me there's a bit of a one way valve. because when when i say i grew up in, in south east london, in lewisham through the �*70s and �*80s, and when stephen lawrence was murdered, not that far, a few miles from where i lived, and the macpherson report came out, it didn't use the phrase two tier policing, but it basically said the metropolitan police and everyone went, well, this is self—evidently true, we need to do something about it. fast forward to now, and when people are saying a modern version of that which is, they perceive the police not to be acting even handedly, there's an absolute outrage. how dare you make such accusations of that kind? but the question is,

are the concerns right? if you use the word perception of two tier policing, the question is is there a two tier policing? it doesn't matter because... because in a policing by consent model, perception of neutrality and even handedness, and a dispassionate application of the law is absolutely key. now, the people who, if you like and want to make the distinction, were protestors, as against rioters who were trying to burn down asylum hostels, and were throwing bricks at the head of the police. the key thing they said they were worried about, if asked, was the boats coming across the the channel. now, if you'd stayed home secretary, if there had not been an early election, the first flights would have gone to rwanda. you were prepared, though, weren't you, for having another court block to those flights within days.

it wouldn't have lasted very long, would it, before you had another fight on your hands? so we knew that fight was coming, and we knew that it was the uk supreme court. so it was the british domestic courts that were that were causing the blockage. because they ruled against the rwanda scheme on your second day as home secretary. that's right. yeah, i had a tough first week at work. how did that feel? yeah. you've occasionally been reported to use lively language. is it fair to say in the home office that when you heard that you were...? i was frustrated. i was frustrated, yeah. so, but the point is, as i say, it's notjust about shouting into the void, it's about doing something, doing something about it. so we set about the the the logistics for getting those flights off to rwanda. we set about dealing with the supreme court's judgment, which is why we've got the legally binding treaty, which dealt with a number of the objections that they made,

and their broad point, which is that rwanda was inherently unsafe for asylum seekers, we were proving that wrong by example. if the court, albeit the supreme court of the united kingdom, had blocked, even temporarily, the first thing that people in your party would have said is, "right, we've got to leave the european convention on human rights." it wasn't that court that blocked it. but they would have said it, wouldn't they? they would have said it. but it wasn't. one of the reasons rishi sunak didn't want to wait for an election, because they were doing a huge, divisive row in which you and david cameron, he was the foreign secretary of the home secretary. if he'd said, we've got to leave the ecj, you would have quit the cabinet, wouldn't he? i'm not going to speculate on this kind of stuff because that wasn't where the problem was. but you would have. but that's not where the problem was. and i'm not going to do i'm not going to do hypotheticals. i know you haven't answered that... because the point is it wasn't the echr that was blocking the flights. it was the uk supreme court. and we don't get to quit that. so it's a moot point. the point was i was

going to win the battle. and again, i'm not in the business of losing fights. we get the personal case for cleverly being the next leader of the tory party. but some people say you tend to sell the tory party. to sell the tory party what it shouldn't be. you know, it shouldn't be grumpy. it shouldn't be ideological. you've said it shouldn't be divided. it's not much of a vision, though, is it? no, but you've got to listen to the other half of the sales pitch, because the sales pitch is that we have got to get back into the habit of being genuine advocates for a smaller and more efficient state, for lower taxes, for the fact you cannot tax and subsidise your way out of every problem, that we should be strong in defence and clearly strong in defence, that we should get back into the habit of being a real, notjust advocate but influencer on the on the world stage. to do that, you have to accept, though, that when you were in office and you were in office under borisjohnson and liz truss and rishi sunak, you have to admit what most voters appear to have concluded —

that the conservative party was a incompetent, be at times dishonest, and c routinely broke its electoral promises. well, we did not deliver on some of the key metrics that we set as yardsticks for our success. they see it more personally. they think the bloke who promoted you, who you worked with in city hall, they think he was a liar. was borisjohnson a liar? well, borisjohnson isn't running to be the leader of the conservative party. do you not have to make clear that sort of thing to move on? well, look, every single one of us have served under conservative prime ministers. and we have to justify the decisions that we took in office. i am very, very comfortable being measured against the decisions that i took when i was when i was at the foreign office. did liz truss crash the economy? because at the time you said the chancellor's mini budget, now notorious, was, quote, incredibly well thought through, but the queen's death meant the government couldn't explain their plans to the public. so we did know... so one of the things that i thought liz did wrong, and i think is really important that we do differently,

is she hadn't made the case for reducing the tax burden, she hadn't made the case for the things that we put forward. the problem was that liz dropped it into the market like a stone in a pond, and was surprised by the ripples that it created. we failed to make the case for the things that we put forward. we have got to make the case for a smaller state and lower taxes and lower overall government expenditure, because if we don't reduce the amount that we spend, we can't reduce the amount that we tax. it's a vision that is quite hard to argue for at a time when the nhs, something you have in recent years for reasons you really wouldn't want to, got to know incredibly well. but at a time when the nhs is described by the government officially as broken.

now your wife susie, has been battling with breast cancer while you were in some of the highest offices in the land. just begin with that. what was your experience? what was her experience of the health service? is broken the word you would use? in my experience, susie had a multiple types of breast cancer. i didn't know there were multiple types. she had multiple types of breast cancer. it was aggressive and it had progressed. and from the time she went to the gp, who said that he was worried that it might be breast cancer, to the point that she was on a treatment pathway, was quick and slick and efficient. just to deal with the question, you know people it was really good. just to deal with the question, you know people will be... yeah, sure. you know, they'll say he's a tory, he did it on the private sector. no, nhs completely exclusively. and lots of treatment. mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy therapy. that's right. now the thing that really, really struck me is my...

and i hope she won't mind me saying this publicly, but my wife's sister, in an act purely of solidarity, she had no reason to believe anything was untoward, purely as an act of solidarity, went to get herself checked out when susie was diagnosed, and she was also diagnosed with an early stage of breast cancer because she went to get checked out. she had less intrusive and enormously less expensive treatment because her breast cancer was caught so much earlier than susie's. and the thing that really struck me is that we focus our expenditure and attention on the wrong bit of the system with the with regard to the nhs. so if susie had been diagnosed earlier, the treatment would have been, uh, less invasive, less painful, uh, quicker, easier and enormously less expensive,

putting much, much less pressure on the nhs, much less pressure on her as an individual and us as a family. we should stress that your wife susie is not only alive, but fingers crossed... she's in a really good place. for her, for you, watching that video from kate, princess of wales, talking about her treatment, talking about her cancer journey and chemotherapy must have been quite a moment, i imagine. yeah, and it's... when you've been through it and i, you know i've, i've watched susie, i've not been through it, i've, i've, i've had a, you know, a ringside seat in what was susie's experience. but she said and i'm going to say it as someone who went through cancer is often harder for the other person. she said it of you, i've said it of my wife. it can be harder, in a weird way. nick, that's bollocks. sorry. it's her! she said it, "it was harderforjames." i know, and i've pulled her up on it and i'm

going to pull you up on it. i've seen what she went through, you know. i've seen the pain that she went through. i've seen all the secondary impacts of the chemo. the chemo is poison. it poisons the cancer cells most, but it poisons every other cell. i've seen her sobbing because sipping water was so painful. and, yeah, it was painful watching her go through that but this idea that somehow it was worse for me, no. no, no, no, no, no. james cleverly, thanks so much forjoining me on political thinking. cheers, nick. barack 0bama once told david cameron that in politics, people turn your greatest strength into your greatest wea kness. james cleverly thinks his strength is he gets on with people and he gets on with thejob. some, though, look at him and say, hold on, that makes you the symbol of everything that went wrong during those tory years. his challenge now is to convince his party that he can take them back into power.

thanks for watching political thinking. hello. in the forecast for sunday, we both have sunshine and some rain, but the rain isn't going to be particularly widespread. and with a bit of luck, most of us will have a fine, dry day. let's have a look at the satellite picture. here is the weather front sweeping towards us earlier on. that has brought the damp weather to parts of wales and northern england. and through the course of sunday, the weather front will drift a little bit further south and then eventually will rain itself out. so, through the early hours, the damp weather from northern wales, merseyside, parts of lancashire, yorkshire, to the north and to the south, the skies will be

generally clear. and our temperatures early on sunday morning in the range of 8—13 celsius. so here is the weather front, then, through the irish sea, northern wales, most of northern england. occasionally it will be wet. some of the bursts of rain could be at least for a time heavy, but i think as we go through the course of the afternoon that rain should eventually petered out. we will also have showers across scotland, and then for most of us it should be at the very least a bright day. really quite sunny in the south and the south—east, where we will have the highest temperatures. 20 celsius. here is that weather front as it moves southwards and also drift gently towards the east, it eventually rains itself out. the forecast for monday shows fine conditions across most of the uk. a large area of high pressure with light winds, feeling very pleasant in the sunshine. and i think widely temperatures are reach the high teens, probably exceed 20 celsius in one or two spots. so a beautiful start to the week for most of us. now, the high pressure is indeed going to stick around

for the next few days. it will anchor itself over the uk. we are right in the middle of it. and it is not in a hurry to budge. now, the very far north—west of the uk will be potentially clipped by weather fronts, so maybe thicker cloud here at times and some spots of rain. but the vast majority of us are in the centre of that high, so sunny conditions, light winds. look at these temperatures. whether you are an author south, it will be around the high teens or perhaps even in excess of 20 celsius. now, the high will change in shape and they will be changes in the wind direction, so there might be one or two showers sneaking in, particularly into southern parts of the uk. but overall, the message is looking dry, bright and really quite warm. goodbye.

live from london. this is bbc news. a prisonerfreed under the uk government's early release scheme is rearrested — accused of sexually assaulting a woman on the same day. new figures reveal which pensioners are likely to lose the most under changes to eligibility for winter fuel payments. central and eastern europe is under a major flood alert. romania is setting up camps for thousands forced from their homes. at least four people have died.

hello, i'm catherine byaruhanga. a man freed from prison on tuesday under the government's early—release scheme — which is aimed at easing overcrowding injails — is alleged to have sexually assaulted a woman later that day. he has been recalled to jail and is due in court next month. a spokesperson for the ministry ofjustice defended the scheme, saying it was necessary because it had — "inherited prisons in crisis and on the brink of collapse". simonjones reports. prisoners celebrate with friends as they're released from jail early. the government says its scheme is necessary to stop the collapse of the criminal justice system. but one man let out on tuesday from this prison in kent is already back behind bars. amari ward is accused of sexually assaulting a woman in sittingbourne on the day he was freed. he's alleged to have touched her without her consent. on tuesday, around 1,750 prisoners were released early

in england and wales.