or you do or not the logic of the of course is that the logic in that and i do wish you'd go and tell people of brussels alex with your powers of persuasion you would make a cracking good job i want you to pin michel barnier to the war and saying a best brogue whatever is the local dialect that is being an idiot because what he's doing is disadvantage ing the rest of europe who has a french goal was stirred by but generally speaking it opened them to the war very much as well as i remember friends goal is that this whole argument you live through as a parliamentarian that the mastic. debates as i did tearing the conservative government apart in the one nine hundred ninety s. do you see the same thing happening again with the reason is government you see the same extraordinary but on this and division over over you it's a strange world to be in i went to a lunch that very smart addressed not long ago a conservative lunch and i asked him which do you think was the worst outcome about

bracks it or gemma coburn as prime minister now for most tories it has to be jeremy corbyn as prime minister because as margaret made it quite clear we fight socialism we fight the whole economic can flossie offical regime and take up went on and on about bracks it and i thought to myself i think you lost the plot make sure you well it was his sense of history will we but to the norman conquest and his speeches that a german carbon premiership would be a passing phase whereas breaks that as he would think is full of well i think we're going to have to do is interview him and find out exactly what he appeared to say a light side of it. he comes from a very successful family father was a bus driver brought up four successful sons a texan doing

a lot like the way his approach being a home secretary were his some support through a lot of the deadwood and taken decisions very very quickly to things like wind rush and so. i like some of the next layer people and i think there have been treated terribly well by as well would for example who was a defenseman shipments of state level. when the vacancy came up for secretary of state for defense it should simply been promoted but that idea that williamson put himself in the job. he knows a man with a trench will knows less about defense than i did. a very important quality i'm in politics at the conservative party that has been very good at is kind of shrewd pragmatism as you look at the world as it is you know what your philosophy and your principles are and mention the more about freedom and responsibility and this fear of being controlled by the states who have the state might be and you think how

you're going to get the best prosperity for your people the most most reliable and sustainable future life i can't see a socialist government led by corbin be able to do that i can see a conservative government being able to do that probably not one run by jack bruce small but how would you leave the law in the tory party the slow what would your approach be to the the costumes i don't think anybody really wants to take over trying to negotiate with brussels not really what boris and a couple of the others are trying to do is stir it so that as and when she retires then they will be. well placed with the active membership of the conservative party have it with little to inherit the kingdom they may get a nasty surprise because the tories are no fools and people who've been members of the party for a long time like i have have seen leaders come and go. i think what we'd like is

someone as strong as margaret but perhaps principled as margaret. barr's doesn't cut it for me because this one thing it be pretty sure of and i think max hastings nailed him pretty well he's a man without principle is member of a party of one and he wants to be prime minister during christly was a very early day. conservative m.p. and in the one nine hundred ninety s. he once wrote that you hired this he put a brass mic a silver tongue and a golden pail know which of these attributes you best as a as a woman in politics about but as a compliment there i love it. breast neck was the first in the sense that i come from liverpool i'm scouser used to talk like that you know. was lucky enough to go to vary all fashion city. grammar school had been set up many

years century or so before and from there was over two and scholarship to oxford so i benefited from meritocracy and then you get to union you look around at all these people have these wonderful privileges and you think i'm smart as you are and you start to learn how to use the skills that they're great public schools have taught them how to speak in public how to write you know i went to the kind of school we had to do an essay three times a week but nonetheless to be able to write for a newspaper to be able to write a column to be able to write your own speeches and so on to different star and you start looking at them and learning how to do it. and those opportunities really then present themselves to to as an m.p. but they also enable you to get into that situation. to elevate shooter to health minister pretty quickly. for the reasons the said but also for of the reasons you didn't see which you were a talented politician and she left

a blister and you pursue a vigorous agenda as health minister and then of a goal of the in the egg scandal not the brass neck was essential to get through that but in the end we didn't your resignation but if and when you speak to people know if you saved me would we not cover you this is coming their exhaust or make some reference that very few political controversies have lasted of today or could i say first of all that being a health minister under margaret was. a wonderful experience because she was actually a radical prime minister if you could convince or something she would say go for it and she'd give the opportunities and the finance of the world will get things happening she would fire questions. you need to have the figures you have to have everything written on the inside of your forehead she didn't like it if you were shuffling the papers she would fire a question you had to have an answer it was wrong alex you could write her afterward and say well i said fifty five million but it's actually fifty six minutes should be fine with that but you couldn't say i don't know and remember

coming out of one of those meetings and kind of leaning in case the georgia woman or my fish was saying you're right minister as in i'm fine i'm fine i'm fine i'm just some third degree now i know what an egyptian mummy felt like as they drew out its brain through its nostrils with pincers she was like that you empty your head of everything and when the x. thing came up it was a bit of a surprise because she had been a scientist and she could have read the reports like i did and she could have been aware that we had an epidemic of food poisoning and it wasn't it wasn't normal funny stuff it was very nasty it quite variance between people in hospital every kidney dialysis machine in the country was in years and we were getting messages from the public health a barge service saying you've got a problem there's an epidemic and it's being traced to a new strain in x.

you know the public health minister what do you do we knew that you could have an affair affected laying hands which might produce occasional infected ect the problem was you couldn't tell they didn't smell or anything that didn't go off in the fridge but if you mix them into a cake mix. the cake to be fine and the cake mix put you in hospital we did our utmost to persuade the ministry of culture fisheries our food math to do something about math and it was full of our most. and civil servants who thought their job was to be the trade unionists for farmers and there's some bad practice going on and if you think about it alex that kind of attitude in math led to b.s.e. soon after which costs billions. in blair days it led to foot and mouth disease which also cost billions i mean sooner or later the scientists have to be

given some respect for in two thousand and one when the secret government report was eventually saw the light of day and said yes actually the war's endemic we're from production doesn't mean the majority of eggs but when the production systems are manila you would no longer than the in the commons then but was a a feeling of vindication it's something now that i feel quietly proud of i don't think i was wrong back in one nine hundred eighty eight thirty years ago. and i'm pleased that we now have really plain food it's now safe enough for nursing mothers people whose mere immune systems are compromised people on cancer treatment they can eat eggs they can eat them safely and they couldn't then and i'm pleased with that i watched. a video of a little off for the unit to bark there for your silver tongue was very much and eleven which would be a lovely speech humorous you you won over the the student body but you won them

over to an argument which you wouldn't expect to find much sympathy you were arguing that we're not all feminists know when it comes to feminism. a lot of modern feminism the stuff that i heard ram it was all about how we women were being held back because you men were stopping us and that look around and think damn i'm stopping me what's stopping us is being willing to try being willing to have a go having a look at the system and seeing how successful people succeed so in that sense nobody was holding me back and it wasn't a man on your set destroy the most market shared by just being better than those people and she used to say if if the prejudice against women means that we have to be better than the men it's fine and then she could go and say that's easy i don't believe in equality under the law. which is why i campaign for gay rights i am a believer in

a quality of opportunity which is why i want our schools is good as they possibly can be. but i'm not really believe in equality of outcome because the outcome in the end depends on how much hard work to basic talents how much ambition you have how much you're prepared to put yourself and i don't believe that we should level down things in such a way that those that work harder only get the same as those who don't work. so. i don't think that. israel is trying to. destroy. i don't think that they should be the cure. or also the cure of all to. be interesting to talk fortunately many in israel and in the united states are seem to paranoid about your all the bits of.

kind that if this guy like he acted. on that and that had to get that out all the time that would think of his image and add to the money at the one of my levy to get. to. did it come out they do it now and that is out that will my it is i'm going to him i am about and i think after i'm going to last and i don't i'm glad about how the now there are only starting somewhere but i don't get just a little. i've

been out of them miles out of town a lot of them out of a pool of. yeah without a doubt a lot of them and i could see that as i asked by the way to really. think that they did and they said i think so yeah. i did it i had the d. but even though that's an olympian film and all the young siad. and the. whole thing you know we need to go back to invite more foreign forces that's. something that's also the position of the gods that we can do without

cause in any case even if there is a number of contingency they will have to go back one day to the to their country. welcome back after the political cut and thrust of the brass neck and the soul of tunnel that we nurse told into a hugely successful writing career the golden pen she says she prefers writing fiction to enable have to tell the truth when she published the first the dish and the diaries in two thousand and three she caused one almighty stop by the feeling the truth about her relationship before the prime minister john major the first i asked her about her work as a constituency member of parliament for barbershop. so for all these years ago will look at me like. the twenty first constituency you went and said this is a mile of margaret thatcher but she's cool for europe this is a proponent of equality and gay rights which. but she's not

a feminist. what exactly are the jobs this young woman who is coming forward but one thing for the d.c.u. there's this kaleidoscope of attitudes when you get into a constituency as well you really realize very quickly that your your eighty thousand constituents are not clones of you so you can have to represent people why a variety of opinions and ideas and to be well advised to genuinely do what all politicians say they do but they don't just go in alone listen and so for the mining i was asked if i could go into the mine as well there and which was a club social club and just sit down and get to know it was obvious the pits were closing and people were saying to me we're digging dirt down there and it dangerous you were job was to get a summit else to do so that's when we were casting around for alternatives and up pops toyota why would tire to come to darbyshire they wanted to be within the e.u.

boundary because quite a lot of exclusions were cast coming in from outside they wanted to be in an area where nobody had ever made a car before because of the record of strikes in the car industry in britain they wanted two hundred fifty acres a clean flat land with all services laid on and we had a an old airfield while the members were realize home portal single market would be to the order do you know the problem alex is trying to get somebody like toyota before a vote stanley i'm saying this matters for us. and they didn't and the same is true for before the referendum on will or the reference before the referendum business kept its head down. partly i think because the bill sammon told them was going to be all right paul said it was going to be all right i mean really thought it was and so they had on hand it was going to skill that never trusted and never trust a politician even when they're in government nobody can ever predict the future

with blue to the but arsenic to do good stead in politics will flow to the soul of tongue put got you or some scrapes and the get your of some of those other that the golden pen you started operating through really really when you were still a member of parliament but there but for other stuff the lines are lightly idea of being able to put ideas into fiction because you can tell the truth and fiction you know if you're if you're writing a history or a biography or an autobiography you have to check with the libel lawyers and stuff gets taken out by a better to write about dead people well you're better to write a story now accel you try one of these days everybody does an early church or read a novel to be honest i thought i was going to lose my cigs and didn't hang on to a four thousand majority and sat down with my agent who said what are you going to do now i said what do you think i should do to actually write a biography of margaret thatcher something like that auntie said there are been

reading your short stories you're ready to write a novel what i write a novel about. well you know you tell us the stories about what the boys and westminster up to when their wives think they're in london and the whips think they're in the constituencies and i said rather snootily well some of us don't have wives some of her husband isn't that's your novel and i went to and i had charactes called a.b.c. d.n.a. and each of them had a crisis in his life if i remember right if four were m.p.'s and one wanted to be an m.p. or about thirty five thousand much one been right one oh you know the jimmy thought thing where the person that you've met arrives and says hello i'm here and you think oh no no that's a last place i need you one went home and find her husband in bed with the neighbor which actually happened to one of our parliamentary counter comics and i said five thousand words or a bit lively as you say and the agent kind of picked himself up from the phone said

my god i think we'll auction this. and it's sold quarter million copies and help really get me cracking on a new life annexing an afternoon six and parliament has vanished behind me how do you find the move to broadcast the radio to television that was it just the extension of politics or the require more discretion i found radio suited me hugely especially radio five who i am but for quite a lot because it's live the phone lines are always open if people don't agree they can call in you listen respectfully to what they say and then you explain why they may or may not be right that you very seldom have the whole thing to yourself but by golly it makes the brain work and you're brought up against people who know more about some aspect of the topic then you to t.v. is harder because of cameras everywhere. and what you look like matters and it it

shouldn't instinctively i think that the way you look is not something of which you have that much control especially get older but that's that doesn't affect how they do their job so i would rather be on radio than on t.v. most of the time on the other hand i mean you're you're so special i couldn't say no to you what. the problem is. you then the public should dial you for submission of your diaries of two thousand and three which cause a sensation because you reveal the field john major in a way to meet these point to sit at the people looking but know your support of fifteen years you're telling all but would you do the same thing again a few if you had your time again or do you think you were eight to say we that it's very hard to say we do the same again because hindsight can be. very useful that's

not available of time what haven't got me really annoyed was john had written a memoir published in one thousand nine hundred nine i think a i wasn't in it at all and b. it was all a whitewash about how it was everybody else's fault that the ninety two to ninety seven government or for the part and this just wasn't this wasn't true and i was particularly in sense because we've had all the stuff they part of conference and ninety four about back to basics and family values. anybody in leadership should be very wary of suggesting that we're all perfect members of parliament are human beings they have the same human failings as everybody else relationship between john major me wasn't wasn't a power play of any kind as one of equals but i felt that his view that it was it was always somebody else's fault. back to basics with him talking about family

values with him and of all people he should have known don't go there don't go there. by all means be anxious and worried about your colleagues if they're filling their expenses. we anxiously married about them if they're taking money for putting down parliament questions that's corrupt but their personal behavior should be none of your business and you know that more than anybody. john major the fans i think is a little sad that the mission of you from is is memoirs was was their list of who did it and secondly you saw the back to basics wasn't meant to be a bit past the hour what it was like you know going back to school leveling the free awesome and having toilets and water ways of oh you know it was our thing and here we are in the one nine hundred ninety s. we're moving towards a more open and more accepting society in so many ways blair latched onto it very very quickly. we should not be saying we have the virtue you should vote for us

because not the other people are going to look at us and say well let's just go back through the notebook and just check out how much virtue you really got and then case that's what we should be compared campaigning on campaigning on competence should be campaigning on how you run the country how you run the economy . john did not turn out to be the prime minister that we had expected when we encouraged him and promoted him and pushed him in one nine hundred ninety and he successfully won that election he turned out to be a very weak prime minister and anybody that lets the editor cut stuff out. it's weak writers well let me be absolutely fair because i'm not hostile at all what john was able to do and should have credit for was actually starting the whole process in northern ireland that slowly slowly got to store piece michael foot one so that they would steal the gone from boy wonder of the elder statesmen of the

intervening period whatsoever but in your elder status woman period you haven't lost any of your or your attitude life or your or your or all of the the silver tongue of the of the golden pencil who could think. cali's got to contribute politically or so as a mailing political on business or a style you would like to mark you'd like to leave in politics you've still got a speech of still good to me because of a book you've still got a rape wherever you are in life you can make a contribution to society unissued and you can make a living you can make something of way you aren't you can you can enjoy it so i now nearly seventy two my husband seventy seven these have three different bouts of cancer and where are lucky i'm blessed that he's still with us and still they are customers i married a very long time. and. what i would like to do now and what i do now is

sometimes be the voice of older people we have fifteen million retired people in this country most of whom are causing no trouble at all paying their way most taxpayers they have been savers they own their properties they've never been in trouble in their lives and they are enjoying life they are the volunteers who run the w.i. or the churches the political parties there are the people you find running community centers systems of our everything everything you can do you can have retired people what's the image of retired people. that we are running up beds in the n.h.s. that we are holding on to assets that young people want. a lot of that is simply not fair and i will stick up for older people people like myself and enjoy doing it. as it were beige as you can see and. we drive an electric car

and we have solar panels on the roof and i meant twitter and facebook and all the rest of it and i'm typical. so you speak for the plain people of it all well last time i tried doing something like this i was part of a little group that went to harangue at the head of b.b.c. one about how few positive images of older people there were on t.v. where are the seen as a joke or was in an aspect about annexing on a major phones me and says you're on strictly come dancing they're going to have moral people on it a bit of the secret of the term a life. is not just the set cause we place a lot this is a quicker scots gullit for loving cup so you put the whisky on the scots and the quick and then the rest is very very easy indeed thank you so much for bigelow is the welsh that's left with thank you very much indeed that nice. always best drink

you have to supply the whiskey we have it. it's hard to imagine decades after the war a nazi doctor was still active and rich in the nineteen seventies current all had as the chair of its board a man convicted of mass murder and slavery at auschwitz a german company granted to him developed from the demise of the drug that was promoted as completely safe even during pregnancy it turned out to have terrible side effects what has happened to my baby is anything paul you know she said is just cut short minix

a little mind victims i have to this day received no compensation they never apologized for the suffering that not only want the money i want the revenge. don't accept the slow drop of oil that starts right up to the last minute. it's. like. i don't best buy. me it. was somebody that i can now at some task never know what's happening and what they're doing with the vertica. and it's. the tibetans are.

both legitimate you must be thinking of that in the at you but i meticulous if you omit that than in the muslims at least clear when the. politicians to do something. they put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president or injury. or somehow want to be rich. that's it going to be press that's what the before three in the morning can't be good that i'm interested always in the water using our. first sip.

no look i don't i don't. believe it but that it was not in the. mood was not one. of residents including province in afghanistan protesting against the constant bombings and coalition and afghan forces. in the u.k. it's revealed that the terrorists who killed five people in last year's westminster bridge attack had been known to security services as a potential threat for over a decade before the atrocity.