What Does Jeremy Think?

TALKING POLITICS

Catherine Carr

News, News & Politics

4.7 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2021

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week we talk to Suzanne Heywood about her memoir of her late husband, Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood - the man who helped to run Britain for more than two decades, working with four different prime ministers. From Black Wednesday to Brexit, from the Blair/Brown battles to the surprising successes of the Coalition, Jeremy Heywood had a unique position at the heart of British politics. We discuss what he did, what he learned and what he wished had turned out differently.

Talking Points:

The book starts with the ERM crisis.

This was the start of a story that arguably runs through Brexit.
Jeremy told David Cameron that he would need to address immigration with Europe, but he knew that this would be difficult.

Blair had a huge parliamentary majority; this meant he could do many of the things that Jeremy wanted to see done.

Jeremy was positive about how much had been achieved, particularly in public services.
Progress was more difficult under Brown. The financial crisis created enormous strain.
Jeremy and Gordon Brown worked very closely together on the financial crisis.

During political transitions, all the ‘in-flight’ initiatives pause. Any one of them may or may not land as you previously expected.

As a civil servant, you also have to be able to switch your personal loyalties.
The change in style between governments can be significant. New administrations come in with a new language, a new tone.
Civil servants have to keep the show on the road, and also adapt.

At what point do civil servants have to swallow their personal objections and get on with things?

Ministers represent the electorate; civil servants support ministers in delivering on their promises.
Civil servants can push and make certain arguments, but once a decision is made, they have to move forward with implementation.

Jeremy’s real genius was in relationships.

He inspired people; they wanted to do their best for him.

Mentioned in this Episode:

What Does Jeremy Think? Suzanne Heywood

Further Learning:

And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello my name is David Ronsman and this is Talking Politics. Today, Helen and I are
0:13.0	talking to Suzanne Hayward about her late husband Jeremy Hayward, the man who effectively
0:18.6	ran Britain for two decades. Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership with the London
0:27.1	Reviewer Books, a literary magazine full of politics and a political magazine full of
0:32.4	literature. Listeners can subscribe at a special rate of just one pound an issue by using
0:39.5	URL lrb.me slash talk. That's lrb.me slash talk.
0:46.5	Jeremy Hayward was cabinet secretary from 2012, the most senior person in the British civil
0:59.1	service. He also became head of the civil service, which means he ran the rest of it too.
1:04.1	But he had an extraordinarily close relationship with four prime ministers, Tony Blair, Gordon
1:09.3	Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May. And Suzanne Hayward has written a book with the collaboration
1:15.6	of her husband who died tragically young in 2018. He was just 56 at the height of his
1:21.0	powers. And together, they wrote an account of what he had seen and learned at the very
1:27.0	heart of British politics all the way from black Wednesday through to Brexit. See, then
1:33.9	the book covers extraordinary range of events in recent British politics and Jeremy work
1:39.7	closely with four prime ministers and will come onto these prime ministers. But you start
1:44.2	with the ERM crisis in 1992 when he was working with them for Norman LeMont. Was that a
1:52.0	formative event for him? I mean, did that shape? Do you think how he thought about these
1:57.5	crises in future? When I first wrote the book, I started at the beginning, as it were,
2:04.0	like mini-bargherty start. But then when I stood back and looked at the overall story, I
2:09.8	realised and he agreed that actually that was the first really formative event. And I
2:15.1	think as people read the book, they will see that a lot of things that he learnt in that
2:20.0	crisis, he then reused later on. So he learned how important it is to try to get decisions
	...

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