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June 10, 2020 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:14:47
Dame Helena Morrissey
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Welcome to the Delling Poll with me James Delling Poll.
And before I introduce this week's incredibly exciting special guest that I'm really looking forward to talking to, I just wanted to say Do please remember, if you enjoy this podcast, and you jolly well will, because all my podcasts are bloody great, and this one's going to be no exception, please support me on Patreon.
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Hard sell over.
Here is this week's special guest, Helena Morrissey.
Helena.
Hello James.
Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you.
You know, because I'm, I don't know what it is about me, but I hardly ever have Girls or women on my on my podcast and I'm always being told off for saying things like using girls instead of women and I the last in fact the last female podcast guest I had actually slapped me across the face which I thought was jolly unfair I think you know maybe it's that women feel the need to kind of tell me off because I'm a bad boy but I genuinely am excited to have you on the podcast you
are a Well, you always crop up in the newspapers as one of those sort of superwomen, don't you?
You've got about 20 children and you've got a high-powered career in the city.
Slight exaggeration.
So I have nine children and two grandchildren these days, actually.
And yes, I've always worked in the city.
And actually, I should say, I don't mind being called girl.
I wrote a book, A Good Time to Be a Girl.
And there's my shameless plug.
And quite a few people said they objected to the word girl in the title.
And obviously, I didn't mean anything Condescending or, you know, patronising by it.
I meant it in the context of, you know, girls are future women and a lot of people are called girls, you know, don't mind it at all, I think.
So I don't object to that.
So no metaphorical slap from me.
No, that's good.
Do you know, I think that's, I think I had an inkling of this in my previous encounter.
Well, I think I've met you once and I follow you on Twitter.
And I think that's one of the reasons I'm so glad to have you on the show, because actually, If I were a girl of whatever age, I know I would be perfectly okay with being a girl because that's the kind of person I am.
And I almost think it's a litmus test of, there are sort of women who divide, particularly in this world where gender or the sexes have been weaponised in service of a political cause.
That women, I think, have been encouraged to take offence at stuff that really, really doesn't matter.
There are so many more important issues in the world than whether or not somebody calls you a girl.
And I think that actually people who are offended by that are very, very silly.
So that you've already got brownie points from me.
So well done.
Thank you.
Tell me about your fund that you manage in the city.
I mean, it's worth it.
So these days I'm no longer CEO of Newton Investor Management, which is where we did look after £50 billion when I was there.
At the moment I stepped down from that a couple of years ago, three years ago, and since then I've worked at Legal& General where I was trying to encourage more people to invest, not just women.
And I did launch a fund that was Investing more in companies that did more around gender equality but these days I'm a non-exec director.
I'm at St.
James Place, the wealth management firm and I'm enjoying that and I'm doing a few other things.
I'm writing another book.
I'm doing podcasts with my husband about the importance of family life and the reset moment from lockdown and doing what's called a portfolio of things.
You are actually the dream guest to talk about issues arising out of the lockdown, which is you're equipped to tell me about the financial aspects of it and what it's going to do to our economy, but also what it's doing to things like children's education and stuff like that, which is just crazy, isn't it?
And given your public profile, You could easily have been one of those people that kind of support the boring government line and sort of argue for the lockdown, but actually you haven't done that.
You've been quite critical, I think, of the damage that's being done.
Is it fair to call you a lockdown sceptic?
Yeah, I think, and I listened to your podcast with Dr John Lease and agree with lots that he had said, I think that we all understand that at the start of it all, no one really knew how How impactful the virus was going to be on life and probably had quite a lot of sympathy with the government deciding that they couldn't take the risks.
But I think, you know, and as Dr Lee said, you know, we've had a lot of new evidence and we've got to weigh up the impact on people who are vulnerable to the virus with people whose livelihoods and whose futures are being, you know, really held to ransom, really, by what's going on.
So I think at the moment, I mean, I definitely think The government needs to be much more transparent, I suppose, about the decision-making process.
And at this stage, I mean, I've got a year six child.
My youngest is 11.
So she's gone back to school earlier this week.
And it's kind of weird even for those children.
They're put in these awful bubbles, they're called.
And I think that's creating a real atmosphere of fear amongst children at a time in their lives when really they should not be fearful.
And then, of course, we've got, you know, I've got university-age children whose job prospects are looking, you know, Pretty difficult at this stage.
And then, of course, there's swathes of the economy, including people who are very, you know, poor to start with, don't have a lot to start with, whose jobs are at risk.
And it's going to be massive economic destruction, I'm afraid.
So I'm somebody who sympathise with the idea of having maybe, you know, a lockdown to start with.
Now it's perhaps not shown to save lives or not clear that it has.
And the evidence is mounting that there are other risks to worry about.
Then we should review it.
And more quickly than is being done at present.
I'm totally with you.
I think it's a perfectly reasonable position that one shouldn't judge the government on decisions made when there was much less information than there is now.
Perhaps at the time it seemed like this was, well, this is particularly Given there was a possibility, I think, which has now become increasingly likely, that this was a bioengineered virus to a degree.
This is what Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, has said, that it was engineered in a lab.
So it's a bioweapon.
So you can see why people like Boris and Gove might have panicked and thought, right, you know, this could be Armageddon.
But since then, we've had, what, 10 weeks to discover loads and loads of stuff about this virus, and it clearly is not It's no worse than bad seasonal flu or even just seasonal flu.
So, I think we should be starting to get angry, shouldn't we, now?
When you hear, for example, Dominic Cummings pushing for a quarantine.
I mean, a two-week quarantine for travellers and returning tourists.
I mean, does that make any sense to you?
It does not.
And that's, I think, You know, this point of transparency.
I think if, you know, most people in this country are very interested in the reasons why things are being done and I think perhaps there's been an embarrassment if government's got things wrong or a sense that you can't admit mistakes but actually at this stage I think people would be much more sympathetic to the idea and much more trusting if we've shown the information,
have more discretion, you know, have control to a larger degree over our own decisions Clearly the virus is very disastrous for certain people, older people, people with underlying conditions and so forth.
So I don't think it's fair to say it's just the same as seasonal flu perhaps, but certainly for a lot of young people and a lot of people, we're not so young James, you and I, but we're kind of fit and healthy and we should be able to get on with our lives really.
And the quarantine at this stage, the idea of after all of this You know, lockdown that people have gone through now or in a week's time imposing some sort of quarantine after foreign travel.
It just doesn't make any sense to anybody.
And obviously it's the opposite of what most countries are doing, which is to open up.
And we wanted to be, you know, global Britain.
And I just, I do suspect that the government, I mean, obviously a lot of ministers, including the prime minister, have had coronavirus.
And I suspect, you know, he obviously had it very badly.
And that might be influencing But I also do think they're struggling to sort of reel back from, you know, just this idea that they may have overreacted to start with.
But I think that's wrong.
I think people would be just completely understanding and say, okay, you did what you did to the best of your ability with the information you had then.
Now we've got new information, so we need a new policy.
Businesses are run like that.
I mean, if you stick your head in the sand and say, well, we've always done it this way.
We gave you our strategy two years ago and we're going to stick to it.
You would go out of business.
You have to Adapt to reality, to developments and move on.
It's interesting you make that point because one of my beefs as a kind of classical liberal, for want of a better phrase, is that time and again what we see is that the private sector is much more responsive than the public sector.
The public sector is high bound, sclerotic, Look at the responses to this coronavirus crisis.
Who's emerged really well?
The supermarkets, for example.
The supermarkets are not controlled by the government.
This is the free market in action.
They competed against each other.
It was healthy.
Whereas look at Public Health England, absolutely disastrous.
It tried to keep things like PPE equipment and the testing process away from the private sector.
And look what happened.
No PPE equipment virtually, no testing.
I exaggerate, but it's been pretty disastrous for the public sector.
And yet, here we have a government which seems not to have learnt this lesson.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's one exception to your correct, you know, account of things in terms of private sector kind of getting on with it often and then the public sector lagging and having this sclerotic sort of processes and bureaucracy has been the army.
I mean I think the army has done extremely well through this and shown what can happen.
I mean obviously Nightingale Hospital is sort of empty but it was built in you know days not years and so it is it isn't foregone conclusion that things don't happen if they're in the public sector but certainly I mean one of the lessons learned has to be much clearer line of sight between you know the decisions taken and then the people implementing it which you have to have in Business as I say otherwise you know you go out of business.
Businesses aren't perfect obviously and you know mistakes get made a lot of the time but there is this accountability because you know you won't be able to employ people you will lose your customers and you will ultimately go under.
So there is this skin in the game you know it's expression that's often used in fund management you're a better fund manager if you have skin in the game if your own money is put in the funds that you're managing and I think there needs to be a bit more of that in some way in the public sector and I would like to see in lots of areas a sort of more of a partnership between public and private sector because I think private sector can really help and hopefully that might be one of the things that emerges from this.
I'm always saying stuff about business and how it works and stuff but I've never been in business so it's just hearsay on my part.
But you have actually experienced business, so you can tell me whether what I've been saying all along is true, that in the private sector you are much more likely to get fired when you make a major cock-up, whereas in the public sector you tend to be moved sideways or moved to a different department but actually not demoted.
Is that true?
Yeah I think I mean if you are talking about a company sort of under contract and making a huge error then you know it's you're going to get fired from it you know or you're not going to get renewed and you know it's the marketplace it's and then obviously as an individual as well if you're no good at your job you're not going to get paid to do it and people are going to get rid of you so it's harsh and I have seen You know, the worst sort of cases where people get entirely greedy and profit's the only thing.
And I do temper my enthusiasm for free markets with, you know, you need to have some sense of community as well, which you might take issue with, James.
I know some of your views.
But I think, you know, left to its own devices and run unchecked, you get real greed and you get short-termism that actually just enriches a few people and doesn't really help the country.
Or the company.
So that is a downside.
But it is true that you've got this accountability point and you will lose your job or your contract if you're no good.
To be fair, Helena, I have a fairly cynical view of the financial sector.
I think that people are grotesquely overpaid for actually doing not much more than work long hours and shift money around rather than say widgets.
I think that the financial sector has in the past and probably is still conducive to tremendous malpractice.
For example, my father-in-law died recently and like a lot of elderly couples a few years ago, he entered into this scheme whereby you give the ownership of your house to a company and they give you They give you a sort of a percentage of the house's value and then when the house is sold you discover that they own pretty much all the house even though they've only given you a tiny amount
a few years back.
I haven't expressed it very well but I was thinking whichever person it was who devised this system to go around to old people thinking oh I can unlock part of my nest egg and you know enjoy a nice retirement not realizing that they've been More or less raped by the financial sector.
I mean, what happened is disgusting.
Or I think, for example, of collateralized debt obligations.
You know, sort of moving around toxic debt.
These were products designed by people who thought about nothing but enriching themselves.
They didn't think about the greater good.
So I don't have a kind of sentimental atrocity.
Nonetheless, I do think that, you know, It's a vital sector of our economy.
Am I being fair in what I've said?
I think you're being completely fair.
I think, unfortunately, the financial industry is littered with countless examples where people have taken what might have been a good idea in theory.
I mean, in theory, allowing people to have some of the equity in their house as cash to live on in their old age is a great idea, but it gets taken advantage of.
And so people don't know when to stop.
And shareholders have a responsibility there as well because they often push companies to take more risk, to take more shortcuts, to be more profits oriented, less thinking about the customers and so forth.
So I think you're completely fair on that.
And it's not the only example.
Obviously, we're just hearing again, you know, the poor people who invested in Neil Woodford's funds, you know, they're likely to get their last payment.
Yes, I do.
Okay, I've touched a note there.
Neil Woodford was the golden boy, wasn't he?
Now, it must have been, and he was always being touted as, you know, well, I mean, I once had a fund manager who sort of mentioned in a sort of quite Flattering way, the Neil Woodford fund.
He said, obviously, past performance is no guarantee of blah, blah, blah.
Nevertheless, it was clear that Neil Woodford was everyone's favourite fund.
I remember the time, and it really wasn't so long ago, when Neil Woodford was just, he was like the surefire way of getting fantastic return on your investments.
And I put a small amount in.
I think I must have lost about five grand investing in this.
Yeah, it's still five grand that you could have invested in I don't know, Tesla or something.
I mean, how is it that people like Neil Woodford can get away with this?
Because the financial sector is so heavily regulated, you would have thought that a spin, which is what I think he pretty clearly was, is, can get away with this stuff.
I mean, he's still sitting pretty while his investors have lost loans.
How can that be legal?
Well, I completely get your outrage, James, and I think it's been such a sorry tale, and obviously he hasn't necessarily got away with it, because I'm sure there will be ongoing recriminations, but I think, unfortunately, the regulators are often one step behind.
The people who are really clever, and Woodford obviously is really clever, but he sort of went around the rules.
He didn't break the rules, but he created mechanisms to get around the rules.
That happens so often.
I mean, if you look at the history of all of the disasters in the financial sector, it's always because there's been nice sort of rules there for the good people to abide by, but then the people who are really kind of one step ahead just, you know, think they're cleverer than the regulator and they go and it lasts for a certain amount of time and then disaster strikes.
And it's very sad.
I think that one of the problems is that It's really been, and this is something that also applies I think with things like lockdown and so forth, it's really hard for people to admit mistakes and to say actually we haven't you know regulated correctly here you know this has all been a disaster.
People tend to move very slowly to change systems and policies and ways of overseeing things because nobody kind of ever wants to say oh we got it wrong and yet I think You know, we would avoid so much heartache and difficulty for people if we said, okay, fail, but fail quickly.
Admit it.
Fess up.
We won't have a blame culture.
We will then make things better.
But we don't.
We tend to move like a sort of tanker, you know, really moving very slowly to change things.
So I understand your anger.
And I must admit, I mean, I was CEO of Newton at the time when he set up, when Neil Woodford set up, and we lost money to his new fund.
People were saying, oh, this is going to be the best thing ever.
And it was because he was so-called star manager.
We ran, and the company, as far as I'm aware, still has this team approach, but it's very unsexy.
You know, it sounds very boring.
There's this kind of team, more than one person.
You know, it requires different brains to kind of come up with the ideas.
It's not just all some god that can, you know, be master of the universe.
And, you know, that's unfortunate.
We are a bit susceptible to that as human beings, the glamour of the star.
And when it comes to money, that can cost us very dearly, I'm afraid.
Yes.
You see, I'm now really torn here because there's two different aspects of you that I find really, really interesting right now.
One is the kind of the fellow lockdown sceptic who can rant with me about how bloody annoying the government's policy is.
But the other one is your experience in the financial sector and I really want to pick your brain a bit on that because am I not right in thinking that the fund you managed was an income fund so you were presumably providing helping people sort of retire and then live on the income is that?
So not really no because I was a bond fund manager I looked after Global Bond and Fund, sorry, Global Bond and Currencies.
But I haven't run money for a long time because then I became CEO of the company and then I became managing sort of a business that was looking after You know, people's savings.
So, to be honest, the closest I got to that was I would get a lot of letters from people personally addressed to me because we had a big income fund at Newton and it was one of the very popular ones.
It was one worth, you know, billions and I would get people who actually come to the offices to ask me about the dividend payments on it because they were living off the dividends.
So to be honest, it was a really important thing that I would go down and meet them.
I didn't invite them to come in, they just turned up and people would say, oh no, don't go down, we'll send somebody.
And I said, no, they've taken the trouble, they might have come in from a long way into the city.
And it was always hard to sort of sometimes reassure them or to give them what they wanted, but I could at least see how important it was And so often the financial industry carries on as if it's nothing to do with real people's lives and real people's money and their livelihoods, their homes, their children's education.
And, you know, it's something that I'm afraid has made me feel...
I mean, I do a lot these days on trying to improve things in the financial industry.
It sometimes feels a bit of a thankless task, I must admit.
You know, it also does good for the country.
There's a lot of tax receipts and so forth, but it would be so much better if it actually put people first.
It was much more the services, part of financial services, and less like it's us and then...
I think this is one of the reasons, and I might get into trouble saying this, but anyway, this is one of the reasons why the city was so anti-Brexit as well.
I think a lot of people in the city were very pro-Brexit behind closed doors, but they didn't say that because it would have been a short-term You know, pain on profit.
So I was a bit lonely in the city.
I was the only person, really.
Apart from a few hedge fund managers who were very wealthy and could afford to not have anyone talk to them.
But anyway, I feel very sad.
Yeah, yeah.
And a few others.
I mean, Howard Shaw.
But these people are very, very wealthy and they don't really need anybody else's approval or whatever.
I did, perhaps naively, try to create a debate and a discussion about the way, you know, what kind of world we live in and who we want to be, whether we want to be attached to the EU or whether we should, you know, go our own way.
And I still firmly, I mean, everything that's happened since, I think, you know, the only way to be is pro-Brexit.
But unfortunately, just we never had that discussion.
And sadly, I know that a lot of people were more sympathetic to it, but just felt in the short term it would be a lot...
Very detrimental to the city.
Well, first of all, congrats on having been on the right side of the argument with Brexit and being on the right side of the argument this time, because there's actually not that many people who are like that.
A lot of Brexiteers, for example, are now kind of what I call Covid bedwetters.
Their authoritarian streak seems to lead them towards yearning for bigger government.
But that's by the by.
Isn't it kind of ironic?
Isn't it ironic as Your favourite singer, I'm sure Alanis Morissette would say.
Why would that be my favourite singer?
She's very miserable, but anyway.
I'm optimistic.
I'm full of contradictions.
No, isn't it ironic?
Do you remember the predictions that were made during Project Fear?
500,000 jobs and now 500,000 deaths.
Well, there's that.
Yes, there's that handy round number.
But also, do you remember the sort of the economic, the predictions of the economic damage that was, the hit to GDP that was going to be taken as a result of Brexit?
Can you remember what it was?
Well, there were all sorts of numbers.
I mean, some people said it was going to be up to 10.
Some people said it was minus 2.
You know, there was a lot of, but I did sit next to once one of the guys in the Treasury who had to come up with the, well, was Was credited, so to speak, with the number that households were going to be worse off.
Was it something like £4,063.22 or something?
It was a very precise number.
I probably got it completely wrong.
And I said to him, well, how did you come up with that precise number?
And he said, well, actually, it wasn't a precise number.
I said, it could be here, down a low level.
It could be here, a high level.
And the Prime Minister and the Chancellor added the two numbers together and divided them by two.
So, you know, there's a lot of...
Things that are said that are not really, you know, we don't know answers.
I did philosophy at university.
Best to admit it when we don't know.
When something is a guess, it's not that it's a bad thing if you have to make a best efforts guess.
But we shouldn't have false science.
We shouldn't have false precision.
And we should think as we're going through, as I said earlier.
It's the most important thing in life, as far as I can see, and in business and in politics, is to keep thinking as you go through, as you learn.
Yeah, so I agree with that.
The point I was moving on to was, okay, suppose they were saying their worst case scenario was that we were going to take a 10% hit to GDP. Well, only in our dreams now will we get a hit as little as 10% to GDP. I mean, what's it actually going to mean for the economy?
Just spell it out for me that we've been in lockdown far too long.
We're not seeing signs that it's going to end anytime soon, even now.
Can you spell out what the damage is?
What's going to happen?
I mean at the moment I think that we are looking at Armageddon if we don't have major policy intervention and obviously they're doing what they can and we can come on to whether that's the right things in a moment but I think you know obviously in the States you've got 40 million Americans unemployed since this all started and we've suppressed our unemployment figure with the furlough scheme but we could get up to the you know 20% or so We know that a quarter of people are on furlough at present and so that's just on average.
Within that we know that minority groups, women, young people are going to be much worse than that.
Predictions have been as much as 20-30% off GDP and obviously within that whole sectors, hospitality and entertainment, Airlines, if they have all the quarantine thing, car manufacturing, in so many sectors, there's just very little light at the end of any tunnel at present.
And I think it's one of those things where you can't really, what you can't do is extrapolate the past.
So the numbers have to be fast and loose at the moment.
You just can't say, well, last time we were here, this is what happened, because we've never, ever knowingly ground the economy to a screeching halt.
and then kept it like that and then of course we don't know which is one thing I do think the Swedes thought about right at the beginning they thought how can we make this sustainable you know lockdown isn't something that we can do forever even if at one end of the spectrum people that we wouldn't agree with but people say we can't sort of freely associate with each other until we've got a vaccine I mean you know who knows if we're ever get a vaccine so if we put that at one end of the spectrum and then people say well just carry them out your business now It's very hard to envisage
how we lift lockdown in a way that is you know ongoing positive for the economy that gradually encourages people and that's partly because the fear of God has been put into people.
People are very very frightened about the disease and that's I think one of the biggest challenges that we have as a country that we've successfully engineered this fear Even if it was the wrong thing to do.
And now people are too afraid.
And you have to not be afraid if you're going to create, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, if you're going to live life to the full, consume, go out to restaurants, go to churches, you know.
So we've got a real problem about unlocking that fear factor now and churning that into hope.
Yeah so okay so you're saying that it's not just the wretched government's fault or whether it is for initially generating that panic but now it's as much the public's fault for being so frit they won't go back to the schools they won't go back to the restaurants and stuff so it's a kind of self-fulfilling economic disaster.
At the moment I mean I do think when I've I mean my year six child that I mentioned who's gone back to school and has to sit in this classroom with with 12 Little girls and they have to sit a certain amount of distance apart and they're not allowed to go out at break and they can't see their friends and chat to their friends.
I mean, it's not really a way you want your children to sort of live, really.
But quite interestingly, at the school gates, and I've dropped off most days this week, you know, the parents are just freely chatting and not sort of keeping this distance.
And, you know, these are all people who are, you know, Probably quite well-educated, you know, thoughtful about it.
They seem to be just saying, well, if they're going back to school, you know, we can chat.
And so grateful to see each other.
So I feel it won't take that much necessarily, but it does require a change in policy and it requires, I think, a change in guidance.
This two metres is completely unworkable.
I tried to go to the post office the other day just to post a return.
You can only order things online, obviously.
And I mean, it stretched so long.
People were getting very cross and upset and old age pensioners and you know just it's not a way to live.
My parents are 80 and 81 and I know they've really suffered in lockdown.
They would rather see their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren and live a little than be cooped up not allowed to go anywhere and they'd like to take the risk.
So suppose you've been made CEO of Britain What would you be doing now?
Okay, you are CEO and tomorrow morning you take charge.
What are your moves going to be?
So first of all I would say we don't need a social distance.
I mean I think we might need to still look after the people who are vulnerable but everybody else back to work.
The most important thing is to feel confident that we've done the right things to contain the virus.
It's safe now, it's fine now.
And then, you know, I think the government needs to be quite radical about thinking about the economic policies.
There's nothing they can do on interest rates.
I mean, I'm definitely not a fan of negative interest rates.
I think it completely distorts things and there's no sign that it works, no evidence that it works.
So we haven't got interest rate policy.
We need to get money in the real economy, not the stock market.
You know, that's why stock markets are better at the moment because they're pumping lots of liquidity in, but that doesn't get to real people.
We need to build things.
We need to help with education and skills.
We need to focus on broadband connectivity so you and I can see each other from our internet working.
We need to make sure that young people, if they can't get jobs, are in education and they are using this time to really develop their digital skills.
And we need to connect the country better east to west, not just north to south.
So there's a lot of real infrastructure projects, not folly projects, but I think we just need to spend...
Not HS2, I'm afraid, but we need to be bold about, okay, let's have a national insurance holiday.
Let's make sure that at the moment people can keep the money that they earn and let's encourage them to spend it and get the economy going through what's called the velocity of money.
If you have a pound and you don't spend it, it's not going to be as good for the economy as if you spend that pound and then somebody else spends that pound and then we get the whole thing moving.
And you might not have to do it for very long.
I mean, I'm not talking about You know, getting addicted to spend, spend, spend.
I'm just saying, for now, you've got to go out really confidently.
I mean, the Queen sounds so confident about it.
You know, she doesn't have any more facts than you or I have, but she says, we will succeed.
This will be a success.
We will make, and we need a bit more of that from, you know, so a bit more the Queen would be good.
Yes.
You didn't mention that you're going to put the government's heads on spikes, although I hope that would be one of your second or third ones.
I'm a very nice, kind person.
Soft spikes.
So I have a lot of sympathy with people getting things wrong, and I understand why things go wrong, but I want people to admit it, to come out and get our sympathy and our empathy around that, to be transparent about the policies.
I just read this morning, actually, the minutes of SAGE because I thought okay they're releasing the minutes now let's see what they're discussing and they were discussing the minutes that you can look at now were dated the 7th of May so the most recent minutes are the 7th of May so we're kind of a month behind and when one looks at it again there's no sort of sense of maybe we're wrong about things maybe we should get a few other inputs here It's interesting
that they are published, and I do think we should start just for our own edification to read them.
They come out, you know, each day, but they're at this month's delay.
But I just don't see the humility that's needed.
And I think leadership in a crisis starts with acknowledging that you don't have all the answers, that you're confident that together you can make it through, but that we need everybody's ideas on the table, please, and not command and control, not this is what you've got to do because I know better.
So isn't another of your CEO moves then that you say, you issue a kind of a mea culpa, that you say, look, we got it wrong at the beginning because we didn't have all the information.
Is that fair?
I think that's fair.
And I think that would go a long way.
I mean, there might be people who are very angry because they feel they've been locked up for no good reason, but at least then the same mistake won't be made again.
And that's, again, what I think is interesting in different parts of the world where they are analysing and sharing you know in Norway or some of the other countries have shared quite a lot of information about what they've been learning and say well even if we made mistakes and at least it would mean we won't lock down again and get that wrong again.
We won't throw good money after bad as they say in the city and you know it's the only way I think.
I think the economy is really going to hit everybody and The government will be struggling with that because if it doesn't come out now and switch gears because as well people will just think they'll start to feel confident about you know the virus the health crisis being passed and then get the economic crisis and you know there's only so much people can take isn't there?
Isn't one of the problems I'm gonna pick your financial brain here isn't one of the problems that the You say that at the moment they've been kind of pump primed by all this kind of, all the liquidity that's been put into the market by the Federal Reserve and so on.
Which I think by the way, am I right in thinking that this is a future inflation risk?
I mean once that money starts accelerating we could have mega inflation.
It is, I mean we had it already in the Global financial crisis, this is the policy that they used but obviously that didn't...
QE and stuff.
Yeah that's the same sort of thing but it didn't lead to inflation then but yes ultimately it's inflationary, it should be.
But I'm thinking about all the people with pensions and we mentioned people who are on kind of...
they need a kind of fixed income ideally and in the past you had companies like Shell That paid out dividends reliably.
Now we've got a lot of these blue chip companies which have suspended their dividend payments, sometimes for the first time in their history.
How are pensions going to be able to pay out regular sums of money to pensioners in this time of financial craziness?
Well, I think it's going to be incredibly difficult because obviously one of the reasons why they're not paying out the dividend, it's not just so they keep the money, you know, for a rainy day, but a lot of these firms are also furloughing people and taking government money to do that.
So, I mean, Tesco got into big trouble because, or at least criticised, because it paid a big-ish dividend and then it had a similar amount of money coming from the government for furlough.
So they have to be careful for that.
But it just shows, yeah, we've tied ourselves in knot.
The money has to come from Ultimately, we need job creation, we need entrepreneurship, and we need to get the economy moving again.
Otherwise, it won't be any money to pay pensioners for hospitals, for schools, for food.
You know, it's just basic economics, really.
You can keep going for so long just borrowing from the future, but you need to get that.
You need to get people working and we need to be...
You know optimistic.
The reality is it's really hard to be a successful person in business I think if you're a pessimist because you always stop yourself from actually taking the risk and doing something that would be you know ultimately going to create value, create something new and so you look and most people who run successful businesses tend to be optimistic.
I mean you don't have to be completely blithering idiot about it but you know they tend to think that things might go right, not go wrong.
So without optimism, without hope, it's going to be very difficult.
It's funny, my little brother is an entrepreneur and he's exactly that.
He doesn't like negativity.
I remember vividly last year, I said to him, what would you do if there was a major economic collapse?
Is your company geared towards surviving such an eventuality?
And he gave me a really sort of like dirty look because I think you're right.
Businessmen are optimistic and they don't like to think about things like economic disasters.
They have to bet on things going okay.
But sadly, obviously, that means at the moment, I think there's a particular double, you know, disincentive for would-be entrepreneurs because often a lot of people have gone bust, you know, in the recent past.
And, you know, it's...
So many people, they've built up a business very slowly over 10, 15, 20, 30 years, and then it's all gone out the window.
Because obviously, again, we just shut the economy.
I mean, schools have shut.
I'm sure you saw yesterday that they closed the Minster School in York.
I think it was founded in something like 620 or something, 627.
And, you know, the income to some of these schools has just collapsed.
It's going to really change the culture of the country and as well as the economy.
Yes well you mentioned earlier your children are going to have a, well we've got children the same age, that it's going to be much tougher for them.
I mean do you think that, I reckon that this from now on it's going to be the east which is going to rise and that the west is kind of I'm still holding out hope for Donald Trump.
We're worrying on Donald Trump, by the way.
Do you think he's our only hope as I do?
So, no, I don't think he's our only hope.
His language just appalls me all the time.
I mean, my husband is a fan of his.
The language, I just hate the way it feels to me is inciting violence.
My husband keeps showing me that there's fake news and there's this, that.
But it feels to me, my gut instinct is the man, you know, is fueling the cultural wars that there are in America, which is not a good thing at present.
But I think, so no, he's not the only hope.
I do agree with Mike Pompeo.
Are you going to have Biden?
Well, no, I didn't say that.
I didn't say that.
But I feel, yeah, rocks, hard place.
No.
I mean, I've heard Mike Pompeo, met Mike Pompeo a few times, the Foreign Secretary of State, and I think he's brilliant.
One of the smartest men I've ever met.
And I think he's very tough on China.
And I think he's right on China.
So where were we going with this?
Why was Donald Trump suddenly a motive?
I think the West is doomed.
For example, look at Boris's plans so far to get us out of the worst recession in 300 years, entirely self-inflicted.
He's planning on green jobs, taxpayer money, Going into putting up more wind turbines, which only survive through subsidies, which do not generate anything of value.
So making energy more expensive.
HS2, complete white elephant project, which is going to do nothing that we need.
Huawei, getting into bed with the Chinese, enabling them to spy on us.
I'm hearing nothing from this government, which gives me any confidence that we're going to get out of this mega depression.
I look at continental Europe, I see it collapsing.
America, I'm slightly less worried about.
But I think, I look at the East and I look, okay, the Chinese are going to take massive advantage of this crisis.
They're probably going to buy up cheap assets.
They're going to continue their sort of world domination.
I look at places like South Korea and Singapore, which have been very sensible, at least, and Vietnam even, which have Responded much better to COVID-19 than we have.
They've kept their economies open.
So I'm thinking, do you think our children are going to have to move east to find their fortunes now?
Well, that was a lot in that question.
I really think we've got to be on our guard against China.
And that's something that, you know, I mentioned Mike Pompeo there.
I think that Americans have got, you know, China completely right.
And they are right to think of it as wanting world domination, as you're intimating.
And I... I hope my children don't end up having to go east because I think that would be a bad result for the world if there is that, you know, if communism takes over everything.
Yeah, well also just because they want to, you know, bring, you know, they talk so tough.
I mean, they absolutely have no desire or even attempt to negotiate on anything.
It's just their way or the highway.
I mean, look at what they've been saying about Hong Kong and so forth.
And I just think we need to wise up to that and not do Huawei and stuff like that.
I think it's just, you know, we're just sitting ducks if we do that.
And I think we need to be very aware that there's a big threat there.
I do think that there are some attempts.
I just wanted to say something that, so it's not really out there in the public domain, but I know that behind the scenes, and I'm involved in some of this, there are big efforts being made to try and pull together an economic plan.
That would be quite radical for post-COVID. So involving MPs, involving people in the laws, people in business, different small groups, often involving quite a lot of people who voted for Brexit, sort of radical.
So it's kind of people thinking, actually, we can't just kind of say, oh, well, let's just pick up where we left off.
That is not an option here.
Lots of the stuff that we never got around to when there wasn't a crisis.
And I do think in crisis, it makes you think about the things that you Want to do differently that you now have to because there's absolutely no choice.
And so there is, I wouldn't be quite so doomy about it.
Obviously lots can happen between vague ideas and then is it going to be implemented, are these ideas bold enough, etc.
But I do think there's a lot of work, you know, squirrelling away behind the scenes and trying to get the best ideas out there on the table and make sure that doesn't happen, that we sort of, we're not succumbing to the, or surrendering to the East.
OK, it's really good to hear that.
But do you share my view that we haven't really seen much from...
OK, so the MPs have all been locked away at home.
But I haven't really seen much questioning of the Quadrumvirate, you know, of Boris and Raab and Gove and Rishi Sunak and their disastrous lockdown policy.
I mean, why are we not hearing more opposition from MPs?
And why are we not hearing much more vocal opposition from the business sector to this economic suicide?
Well, I scratched my head.
Same as you, James.
I don't think any of us understand why there is this lack of proper debate about it.
I heard Rishi Sunak just before lockdown.
It was the week just running into it when He announced a series of measures that would do whatever it takes to keep the NHS bankrolled and so forth.
And I must say, I think he's very impressive and I think he probably, I would imagine, is trying to fight very hard for the economy within that group of four.
But clearly there needs to be, and this is probably partly because there haven't been proper sitting sessions and it's all felt A little bit weirded out, I think.
It hasn't felt like we've got a proper, you know, house and people even looking at the lines where they were doing the voting, you know, that just all seemed completely bizarre.
We need somebody in charge who's inviting more discussion and, yeah, let's rush it out and let's get some answers.
It needs to be more than just four people.
Well, yeah.
By the way, I've been prompted by the course of our interview so far.
A chat, rather.
Okay, so Trump, you're what I would call slightly unsound on, but then lots of people are.
Obviously I don't go along with the whole women in business stuff, I just think...
I'm sure you're really good at your job, but I just don't believe in quotas or anything like that.
Neither do I. I don't believe in quotas.
We probably are a bit different from that.
I've read enough of your pieces, James.
Yeah, you know where I am.
Still, apart from the weaknesses I've mentioned, you are actually pretty sound.
And what I want to know is how on earth do you get away with this?
Do you not get a tremendous amount of shit?
Because as we know, the corporate sector and the financial sector are now achingly politically correct.
You've got companies like BlackRock talking about how we must Divest of stranded assets of fossil fuels and every company ought to be accountable for its carbon footprint.
All this nonsense.
Corporate social responsibility, diversity, everything that I loathe has permeated pretty much every nook and cranny of the city.
How do you survive in that environment?
Doesn't it drive you nuts?
Yeah, I thought you might find me a little bit hard to pigeonhole.
I know your views about lefties and the people on the right and so forth, and I thought, okay, so I'm a bit of a conundrum for you, presumably, because I'm sound on a few things and very unsound on others.
I didn't think very.
Quite unsound on others.
A bit.
I've I suppose I would say I have you know I put my head down I work really hard and I you know performed as it were in the first couple of decades of my career and I guess I then tried to use whatever power I had which wasn't necessarily enormous but I had you know I was the chief executive of a major fund management company I chaired at one point something called the investment association which looks after Well,
it's a trade body for all the fund managers, about £7 trillion represented by that group.
So I kind of tried to use that to change some things within.
But you're right, it hasn't always gone down well.
People like the status quo if they're earning lots of money and if the system's working well for them.
But I didn't think it was right for the longer term and I'm afraid I'm just wired that way, that if something seems wrong I kind of feel I need to try to I couldn't have shut up about Brexit, for example.
I mean, that was the biggest thing.
In 2013, when David Cameron had given his Bloomberg speech and said we were going to have a referendum, I wrote an article for The Telegraph, which The Telegraph headlined, enough is enough, let's leave the EU. I didn't actually use that expression in my article, but I did say, We need to take that control, effectively.
In my own words, not as eloquently as the slogan eventually was.
And of course, that kind of outed me on that issue.
But I really thought, perhaps naively, that we would have a proper debate and that all ideas would be on the table.
But it wasn't that way.
So I have had a hard time.
But I'm afraid I just couldn't live with myself if I just sort of went along with the so-called consensus because for an easy life, I'm just not wired that way, I'm afraid.
Or maybe it's a good thing, I don't know.
You sort of semi-answered the question that I didn't ask, but you semi-did.
Because I was really asking you not so much about why you felt compelled to speak out about women, as more how on earth, given that you are pretty sound, how on earth you survive in an environment where every bugger, anyone who wants to get to a high level, has to virtue signal like mad.
I mean it's just endemic.
And I don't see you as a virtue signaling person.
I almost see your gender stuff as this kind of Deep cover basically.
It's not deep cover at all.
No, no, no.
So I would never wonder, I mean my husband uses that expression virtually signal a lot, but I do, probably much more so than you, so this might be where you think I'm unsound now.
I do see lots of injustices and how people are treated, whether they've got the wrong skin, the wrong colour or they haven't gone to the right school or whatever.
I guess I've really felt that that is a problem for the country and for the economy as well as for those people.
We make the wrong decisions over and over because you've got a small group of people just deciding for everybody else and they're not necessarily well qualified.
I mean you've been talking about the quad, I can't say that word, like a triumvirate, only four people.
We do need diversity of thinking.
Maybe you don't agree.
I so don't, Helena.
So you think everyone should just agree with each other, but they all have to agree with you, James?
No.
Let me give you an example.
A friend of mine is a CEO of a company.
And one of his female employees was agitating to get on his board and was sending him these kind of insinuating emails to the effect that he needed diversity of opinions on his board and that, as a woman, she was able to give the female perspective.
And I just thought, bonnets to this.
This is just very, very dodgy.
Actually, the only thing that matters is talent.
Of course a decent CEO is going to be colour blind.
Of course he's not going to care whether it's a man or a woman.
But damn right he needs to find the best people for the job.
And if they're all black women, well that's absolutely fine.
If they're all white men, that's fine too.
I don't see a problem with it.
Let me give you a couple of examples then, James.
So just go back to that SAGE, those minutes that I mentioned that were on the 7th of May.
They talked about the bubble idea.
And they talked about it being a good thing for mental health because people aren't going to be on their own anymore, they're going to be in a bubble.
And if you go down the points that they made about risks of the bubble, they were all about, you know, what happens if someone breaks out of their bubble?
You know, you can imagine popping it, you know.
It's a silly expression.
It's a very unfortunate expression.
But anyway, there was nothing in it about actually, you know what, this might increase the sense of isolation.
It might increase the sense of weirdness that we have about the world we live in at the moment.
And then when you looked at it, it was just a purely so-called scientific view.
It was like all about, you know, the kind of facts around it.
It wasn't anything about psychology or about how people really operate in life and, you know, how we like to, you know, hug our mates and, you know, be friendly and, you know, just hang out with each other and nothing about that.
Now, if you had some other thinkers, not just a scientist, I mean, let's not move it away from men and women or anything like that.
Let's say you've got a group of scientists and you've got a group of, you know, people who did history or Philosophy or whatever, sitting around, they would say, well hold on a minute.
No, not philosophy.
Not at Cambridge.
Okay.
I wouldn't let any of those in there.
All right, fair jibs.
Okay, well somebody else then.
Somebody else.
Then you might say, or history particularly, and you might say, well actually, you know what, I don't think that's how people would like to behave.
We're not all machines.
We're not robots, you know?
And if you read the minutes, you think, when I got to the little end of the thing, I thought, the whole section is missing here.
And that's because nobody in the meeting, presumably, Actually, I don't think we've thought it all through.
You know, we have it as if people are just little, you know, machines that we can send off and give them instructions and they'll carry it out.
And I think most people reading the minutes would say, well, that's not, you know, how people work.
But they didn't have anybody like us on the board or on the committee or whatever.
So that's where I mean about diversity of thought.
And I do think sometimes I think men and women are often quite different.
I know you referred to your children as girl and boy.
Just so they know.
Just so they know.
But I have a good sample size.
I have nine children, six girls, three boys.
And the girls have always been very emotionally forthcoming, a bit more complex, boys straightforward, sporty.
I mean, it sounds stereotypical, but I actually think it kind of takes all sorts to make a world.
It's great that people have got different ways of operating, but you wouldn't want to have all girls or all boys at something.
You would want to have, just shake it up and have some different ideas.
And that quadrant, the four people, you know, there's no women obviously on that.
I don't think you should have a woman for its own sake, obviously, but you should be thinking, because when I looked at the list of age groups that were going to go back to school first, I thought, well, I want to know the rationale for that.
Why are they sending You know, reception back when, you know, it's presumably going to be quite hard to social distance four-year-olds and five-year-olds.
Anyways, I just, I think it's more than just about, it's not really about gender, it's about, you know, bringing different ideas.
I can say you've made a very reasonable case there and I agree with you at least on the theory.
I think that's a win!
I think that's a win, James!
You've won it!
No, because you've used what you've done.
By your standards.
You've used your feminine charm and your gentleness, whereas a man would have just said you're wrong and you're a sexist pig he'd have said.
Or something like that.
So that's good.
So I'll give you one last thing.
I know you want to move on from this subject, I'm sure.
So the 30% Club which is set up which is trying to get more women on boards but not for its own sake because we just had a financial crisis and the average person on the board was 65 and been to the same school and just all hung out together and had no other views apart from the little group.
Anyway, It's not a quota, it was voluntary, but persuaded the chairman to support it because these were their boards.
Again, not by telling them what to do, not by saying you're wrong to have all these men, but actually by asking them, you know, what the benefits they had seen were and them talking to each other.
And some of them were very skeptical.
They did not virtue signal at all back in 2010.
They said, I can't see the point.
And then, I mean, there was this one guy who said, who gave me this story about, you know, he was a chair of a real estate company and they were going to do a joint venture in China.
Topical subject now.
And he said there was one woman on their board and they just had their quill pens to the ready and they were all very sort of buffed up with pride and puffed up with pride.
They're going to sign this deal.
And she kind of tentatively put up her hand and said, I think you've forgotten about one of the risks here.
We haven't structured it properly.
And they're all really annoyed with her, he said, because they didn't want to have, you know, stop the deal.
But he said, you know, she was right and the reason I realised that the others hadn't, you know, We'd all been so excited about the deal and so sort of, you know, macho about it.
We hadn't even wanted to spot there was a problem.
And he said, we did end up doing the deal, but we changed the terms.
It was a much better deal.
And I know that she spotted it because she was outside the group.
She didn't feel the pressure to conform.
She just kind of said it because it was on her mind.
So that was much more powerful than me saying, you've got to have a woman on the board because, you know, women are great.
He saw it with his own eyes.
Yeah.
But it wouldn't necessarily have had to be a woman.
It could have been a pop.
I was reminded of what you were saying there, of General Sosabowski planning for Operation Market Government.
And they outlined all this brilliant scheme they had to, you know, we're going to land these paratroops here and there and the Americans are going to move on this road.
And General Sosabowski said, gentlemen, you're forgetting one thing.
And they said, what's that?
And he said, the Germans.
And they hadn't planned for the German, or rather, so he thought, they hadn't really planned for the German fantastic counter-attack capabilities and so on.
And, of course, Swarzybowski was right.
Clearly.
There are going to be cases where having a woman on board is a desirable thing, but you know the counter argument to your position, which is that what it does inevitably leads to quota systems, and what you find is a sort of limited talent pool of women being headhunted from all kinds of directions, and actually some companies having women on the boards who really are only there for tokenism rather than anything else, and that's not a good thing, I would say.
Well, I mean, we're going to have to beg to differ on this because I think when you look at, I mean, we've gone now to beyond 30% women on FTSE company boards and the next 250 companies, but actually you're talking about a few hundred women joining these boards.
You are not talking about hundreds of thousands.
And if you're saying there are not a few hundred well-qualified women in this country who can sit on, or globally, because these are global companies often, I mean, I beg to disagree.
I'm not saying any old woman goes on this board.
I'm saying, look a bit wider than just, you know, your friends from the golf club or whatever.
And, yeah, time will tell.
It's hard.
You can't really have a control, you know, group and say, you companies can't hire any women and you hire lots and see who does better.
You can't do it like that.
But...
Women are, you know, your daughter, I didn't know how old she is, but, you know, I'm sure you're educating her really well, just like your son.
Oh my God, she cannot listen to this podcast.
She would absolutely kill me.
I mean, you know, some of the questions...
Or read any of your articles.
Or read any of your articles.
Yeah, absolutely.
I would not get.
Look, I think we can agree on...
We can find a point of agreement here, which is, I would be happy if the women on every board, if they were like you and Ruth Lee.
Do we love Ruth Lee?
Yeah, we love Ruth Lee.
Okay, it's a deal.
In fact, you're going to laugh because I was just, today, I was just clearing out and I came across, I just happened to have this by my desk.
You probably can't read it.
It says change or go.
So this was the Business for Britain's little booklet.
I mean, it's the tiny version, which had, Yeah, Ruth was I think pretty much involved in some of these charts because she and I used to share a platform from time to time and she'd whip it out too.
So there you go, yes.
Ruth is good.
You see, Ruth is another person actually who doesn't make a big deal about the fact that she's female.
She's just Ruth and she does good things.
Good.
Well, we've cleared that one up.
Any other business arising?
So, are you any good on tips, on market tips and stuff?
I mean, do you follow the markets as an investor?
Yeah, I mean, I'm not regulated to give financial advice as she, so occasionally, so I just kind of, you know, I have to I personally at the moment think markets have got a bit carried away with all of the, you know, they've diverged, Wall Street diverged from Main Street, as they say, and keep sitting record, or not record highs, but going back to, you know, seven months ago sort of positions and so forth.
So I'm a bit wary of stock markets at this level, I've got to admit.
Yeah, you and Warren Buffett both.
Well, good company then.
Using cash at the moment, I think.
Using cash, yeah.
Well, I'm not in the same league on a, you know, Amount of money that I have as Warren Buffett, I hasten to add.
I'm not going to move markets like he does.
No, but what I'm asking is, do you manage your own funds or do you just put it in an investment?
Do you have it managed for you?
So no, I... I look after my own.
I mean, I just, I do sort of quite diversify a bit.
I mean, I kind of, and I use funds.
I don't direct, I don't invest in individual stocks because that would be kind of difficult with other work, with work that you have in the city.
They kind of, it's very hard to prove that you didn't have any, you know, information or something.
So I do invest in funds.
Oh, right.
Which is not so exciting though.
It's not quite as exciting, sorry, yeah.
It's not like horse racing tips that I can give you a kind of, you know, bet on this one.
But yeah, I'm quite encouraged.
My 14-year-old son is very keen on investing and he's just been doing a model portfolio just to show me his interest.
But he's the first one of my children who's shown any flicker of any interest whatsoever.
So yeah, he's very keen on finding stocks that excite him.
So you never know.
That is actually every parent's dream.
We're the same.
Whenever we hear a sign that our children are showing a glimmer of interest in markets, we think, yes, yes, finally, finally they might get it.
But one out of nine, yeah.
I mean, you know, I had to go through a lot before.
When you've got Because of your business success, do you kind of look at those...
I imagine some of your children are kind of drifting towards more arty-farty, I just want to be happy type things.
And how does that make you feel?
Do you fear for them?
No, I mean, obviously I want them to be happy.
They are, as my husband says, they're very, he goes, creative, you know.
Yeah, creative, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, who knows?
I... I suspect it's, I mean, nine, you're going to have quite a lot of different interests in that.
So there are ones that are kind of quite feisty and entrepreneurial and you think, okay, business people, they're going to set up something.
And then others who are more, are more, yeah, they read a lot and, you know, write poetry, that kind of thing.
But, you know, we'll see.
I've got one who's an academic, actually.
So he's 28, my eldest son.
Well, he's doomed then, isn't he?
Well, I don't know.
He's a Middle East specialist.
So that, you know, might not be quite as doomed as there's always going to be somebody interested in what's going on there.
So yes, he's fluent in Arabic and he's at Oxford University.
But anyway, yeah, so who knows?
Can't worry too much if you have nine.
That is one of the upsides of having nine children, isn't it?
I mean, yeah.
Yeah, you don't get sucked into their emotional struggles too much because there's not enough space, is there?
Well, it doesn't work quite like that, but yeah, there are certain things.
We can't live our lives, our children's lives for us is one of my husband and I mantras and it's partly because of practicalities.
And is there a wide range of political views within your family, within your self-contained enormous family?
No.
No, they are all quite conservative, yes.
Well done!
What happened, Mark?
Or is that Dad?
I think it's a mix of the two, but Richard, my husband, used to send spectator articles and so forth to children when they were eight or nine, prep school.
We've always discussed things, political things, and so we may have...
There was a very strong Brexit vote from our household.
All those who could vote did so.
This is my final thing because I think we've delighted our audience enough.
We both sent our boys to Eton and I used to think that you sent your kids to a school like Eton to have them taught to be incredibly sound and believe all the things that we do.
But actually a lot of Etonians are incredibly unsound and Eton these days seems to be as kind of politically correct as a lot of state schools.
Have you noticed that?
So I'm a governor at Eton so I should declare that interest at this point.
Oh my god!
What can I just say to you?
I'm really gutted about what's happening to that school.
Well you'll have to divulge because I'm very happy with it.
Okay, come on then.
I think it's really gone wrong.
I'm very disappointed by each other.
Give me an example.
I mentioned that touchy-feely bleeding heart letter that the head man put out recently about how he wanted to bring more You know, poor kids into the school.
I mean, Eton was already doing a very, very good job of helping boys on bursaries and stuff.
But there comes a point, I sense that this is a headmaster who would very happily ditch that penguin suit uniform in a trice if he possibly could.
I gather the resistance comes from the boys who are more conservative than some of the administrative staff.
But I really sense that that school is embarrassed about being Eton And wants to go down the St Paul's school for girls route, which is to let's pretend we're not a private school.
Let's pretend we're a state school with all the kind of politically correct values that go with that.
That's my fear.
Okay, well, we're going to differ on this one as well, James, because I'm a big fan of Simon Henderson, the headmaster.
I don't think he's bleeding heart liberal.
I think he actually does want to...
He always talks about harnessing Eton's excellence and trying to encourage, you know, state schools to go sort of up and more pupils to have access to it.
And, you know, one of the things they've done, just as an example, which I think takes nothing away from Eton, but actually adds to...
The whole nation is that on the day that lockdown was introduced they said that they were going to make the Eton X courses which are digital education courses available for free to all state school pupils in the country and I think something like 180,000 access codes have been granted so there are 180,000 students who either have taken the courses or can take the courses so far And it cost Eton nothing.
Basically, they've got the courses already.
It's kind of a gift.
And I just think that's a great thing to do.
And I don't see that that's incompatible with being proud about Eton.
I think he stands up for Eton's heritage as well, but he wants to modernise it and make sure that it stays relevant and is well-regarded.
Ah, relevant!
You used the R word.
It's gone for an hour and how many minutes.
Oh my god, Helen, this is like what the RSC does.
No, he doesn't want to ditch the uniform.
He does want to, but he's not able to.
No, no, no.
Well, I've never heard him say he wants to ditch it.
He wears it with pride, and my youngest son is still there and enjoys it.
I've spoken at Societies there.
I don't think it's become...
You know, the views espoused are not dissimilar in some senses to your own, James, but they are welcoming of lots of different views as well.
So I just think it's necessary.
If you're going to stick around, I think Eton has to be, you know, showing that it's contributing and not just for those boys who can afford to go.
So again, I have to disagree on this one too.
So I was sound, unsound, Sound, unsound.
No, your sound, I just think, look, I think it's like, you know, you have to wear the cloak.
You have to wear, you couldn't be, basically, Helena, you could never have got as far as you have if you were as completely outspoken and sound as a pound as I am.
I mean, you'd never get away with it.
Nobody is as sound as me and gets on in the city or anywhere else.
It's just like, The only hope for people like me is doing podcasts and stuff.
That's it.
Or private income.
And it helps.
You add a lot to the rich tapestry of our lives, James.
The gaiety of the nation.
I think it's really...
I have to say, as a final point, I think I have sometimes had to be quite courageous and speak out when the overwhelming majority of people Which is rather I just kept my head down and went along with everything.
So I don't think I've always worn the cloak.
But I have tried to stick true to what I actually believe in.
And it may be that there are different...
I have, you know, what seem like an incompatible set of views with each other.
But I suppose I make my mind up on every issue rather than saying, I'm right of centre so therefore I need to be on this side on every issue and I believe firmly in localism and community and family.
We haven't talked at all about family really and I think the lockdown has been a great thing for lots of families.
We probably shouldn't say good things about lockdown in terms of like a lot of people have suffered but actually it's been a lovely reset moment for lots of families.
We've been 13 in our household for most of the lockdown.
Including my grandchildren.
And it's been an amazing time to spend time with each other, even just playing silly games, you know, that we never did before.
So, you know, we have to, I just, yeah, make no apology.
I'm going to whisper this bit because it's off-brand, but I've secretly quite like being with my family too.
There.
Wow, what a revelation.
You didn't hear that, did you?
Well, your family might listen to your podcast now.
Don't tell anybody, okay?
Just between us.
It's going to kill my career now.
I've been listening to the recording after and checking you get that bit in, James.
Yeah, yeah, right.
Okay.
Well, thank you, Helena.
I don't think you're a...
You're not a terrible cuck, actually.
I think you are pretty sad still.
And thanks for being on the podcast.
It's been a pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
Bye now.
Right.
Bye.
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