Michael Heseltine on Suella, Enoch Powell and saving Liverpool
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 29 September 2023
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Michael Heseltine is a politician with a long political memory. He heard Neville Chamberlain declare war on Germany in 1939. He saw Suez unfold. He attended Churchill’s funeral.
He’s served Conservative prime minister after Conservative prime minister and became the man who eventually even brought down Margaret Thatcher. He never reached the highest office himself, but having seen so many who did up close, and witnessed so much of Britain’s political journey over the last century, there can be few who can offer more perspective, more wisdom about the state we are in and where we might yet go, than he.
In the latest of our extended political interviews, Lewis talks to Heseltine about his life, his journey, his passionate belief that we must re-enter the EU and how he worries that the current Home Secretary is echoing the rhetoric and division of Enoch Powell.
Editor: Tom Hughes
Senior Producer: Gabriel Radus
Producer: Laura FitzPatrick
Planning Producer: Alex Barnett
Social Media Editor: Georgia Foxwell
Video Producer: Will Gibson-Smith
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:08.9 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:12.7 | It is appalling, appalling that 70% of our young people want to stay in Europe |
| 0:19.0 | and they're being ignored by the 70% of old people |
| 0:23.6 | who want to leave. The self-interest of this country self-evidently depends our presence |
| 0:30.6 | at the heart of Europe. The Brexiteers who are driven by these obsessions of yesteryear, by the delusions of the |
| 0:40.3 | delusions of the role of a medium-sized economy and nation-state in tomorrow's world, |
| 0:47.3 | ignorant of the wishes of the generations yet to come. |
| 0:51.3 | We stood down from our position as one of the leading countries of our sort in the world. |
| 0:59.0 | We gave up power. |
| 1:00.6 | I can't understand that. |
| 1:02.6 | That is, of course, the unmistakable cadence, the richness of the voice of Lord Michael Heseltine. |
| 1:08.4 | Businessman, politician, cabinet minister, deputy prime minister and the John Major, |
| 1:13.1 | uneasy foe of Margaret Thatcher, unlikely friend of Liverpool in the north, the de facto standard bearer |
| 1:19.9 | of that ever-diminishing band, the Tory Europhiles. His has been a voice which has, in one way or another, |
| 1:26.1 | rang through the sound of our furious politics of the last half-century or longer. |
| 1:31.8 | Now in his 90th year, with his party once again, apparently in rapid decline, with a country once again approaching a political choice, |
| 1:40.5 | there could be no one better from whom to ask for a little wisdom, a little perspective. |
| 1:45.1 | There could have been king, the prime minister, who very nearly was, whose signature political belief has been consigned to history, but one he insists will rise again. |
| 1:54.9 | It's Lewis here. Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 2:00.6 | The newsagents. Well, Lord Heseltzer time, welcome. Thank you so much for coming on the newsagents. The news agents. |
| 2:02.2 | Well, Lord Heseltin, welcome. |
... |
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