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therestispolitics.com. That's therestispolitics.com. Welcome

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to The Rest Is Politics with me

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Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. And

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today we have with us Nadim Zahawi.

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Nadim is a friend of mine who

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joined politics with me in 2010. We

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rebelled together on votes in the House

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of Lords and found ourselves left on

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the backbenches together. We traveled

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together to Iraq after

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ISIS had taken over,

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created this caliphate stretching across the Iraqi-Syria

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border as mini-envoys for David Cameron. And

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we went and met the Iraqi government

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and the Kurdish government at the time.

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And we've remained in touch a great

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deal since he is

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somebody with extraordinary backstories. He's actually been

1:00

a theme for a lot of the

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politicians we've interviewed. I feel actually increasingly

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sorry for politicians, some of whom, you

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know, like me, have pretty boring middle-class

1:08

backgrounds because the world now is just

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dominated by people with extraordinary stories. But

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his life takes us from a childhood

1:15

in Iraq, arriving

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in the UK aged 11, unable to speak

1:20

English, settling down, developing

1:22

a deep romantic affection for

1:24

Britain, becoming interested in

1:27

conservative politics. A slight kind

1:29

of poltial for people who I think are slightly

1:31

roguish figures in British politics. We didn't get to

1:33

that. We found a Jeffrey Arch from Boris Johnson.

1:35

We can get to that a bit later and

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you know what he thinks they were and what

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attracts him to them. Set up a very successful

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company, YouGov, a polling company, which again, we should

1:44

touch on a little bit because this is the

1:46

rest is politics and you know, nothing's more central

1:48

to modern politics than the question of polling. Join

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politics, I said with me in 2010, Ravel was

1:52

left on the backbenches and then his career took

1:54

off belatedly, initially

1:57

as a junior minister, then as a

1:59

cabinet member. Minister then briefly as Chancellor

2:02

of the Exchequer for a tiny, tiny period

2:04

before the whole thing kind of blew

2:06

up again. So he's seen every bit

2:09

in, I guess, 14 years of

2:11

politics. He's seen backbench exclusion. He's seen

2:14

massive promotion. He's seen getting the keys

2:16

to number 11. He's had huge

2:19

challenges in terms of media scandals. He's had

2:21

great moments of affection and success in some

2:23

of his ministerial jobs. So there's many, many

2:25

things to get into, and we're very grateful

2:28

that you come and joined us. Thank you

2:30

for having me. That was the longest intro

2:32

we've ever done. Tell the whole story there,

2:34

Rory. Can we start with Iraq? Yes. I

2:36

was thinking last night, reading up on you,

2:38

that Iraq clearly plays a very, very

2:40

significant part in your life, as it does in

2:42

mine, but in very, very different ways. Although to

2:44

interrupt, he's sympathetic towards you. No, I know. You're

2:46

on the same side in this, I think. Well,

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we're on the same side in that I think

2:51

we both had very similar views about the reality

2:53

of Saddam Hussein. Indeed. But just tell us about

2:55

that childhood, what Iraq was like, why you left,

2:57

and what your first impressions of Britain were. So

2:59

I was 10 years old when

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I sort of begun to understand what was

3:03

happening politically. Saddam was then deputy to Ahmad

3:05

Hassan Abedkar, who was then sort of the

3:08

new Baathist president. And I'm being very mean,

3:10

because you're just beginning, but just to bring

3:12

in lists a little bit more. You're born

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in 1967. Yeah. And

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you stay in Iraq, I guess, till 1978? Yeah, 1978, 79. 78,

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79. So this is a country that

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had been a British

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protectorate. And then in

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the 1950s, the King

3:31

of Iraq was killed in a

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sort of revolution. Brutally. Brutally killed.

3:35

Revolutionary government takes over. And by

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the time you are a child,

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the Baath Party has taken over.

3:41

And this very young man, Saddam

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Hussein, is the vice president, but

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is very much the power behind

3:47

the throne. You're living in Baghdad,

3:50

and you're from a family which maybe

3:52

in some ways would not be wealthy

3:54

in modern British standards, but also is

3:56

quite distinguished. You had a grandfather who'd

3:59

been the governor of the the central

4:01

bank. So you're part of the sort

4:03

of establishment of Iraq and presumably have

4:05

seen this very odd transition through your

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grandfather from Britain to monarchy to

4:10

Bath and now this guy who's emerging as

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a dictator. The bit that

4:14

was missing in my knowledge is my grandfather passed

4:16

away at the age of 52. We

4:19

have a history of hypertension in

4:22

the family and high blood pressure. Before I

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was born, but obviously I

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lived the stories of that

4:29

time in Iraq when actually things

4:31

were moving in the right direction rather

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than the wrong direction. Right direction, this

4:35

was a society famous for its education,

4:38

for its books. In the cradle of

4:40

civilization, for as you say, for culture

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books, not just in Baghdad, but in

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the Kurdish areas in Salimaniya and Bill and

4:48

elsewhere. Then you have a series of brutal

4:52

revolutions that ended up with

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the Bath party taking control.

4:56

Saddam was a thuggish character

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and by the time he came

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to power they had pretty much effectively

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destroyed any other political movement, whether

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it's the sort of the socialists

5:08

or the monarchists pretty much gone.

5:11

And I was sort of probably too

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young to understand the full implications of what

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was about to happen, but luckily had a

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father who absolutely got it at one of

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the few Iraqis in those days that absolutely

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got it. He happened to be Kurdish,

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married to my mother who was

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actually originally from Basra. And he

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was simply trying to sort of keep

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his head down, be a businessman rather

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than a political activist in the way

5:36

his father was, my grandfather, but didn't

5:38

want to join the party. And

5:41

in Iraq, and this is the bit that actually

5:43

then we can talk about sort of what happened

5:46

post the removal of Saddam and the mistakes we made.

5:48

Alistair and I are probably on the same page that

5:51

Saddam needed removing. I think where I

5:53

would differ is the consequence of

5:55

what happened afterwards, the lack of planning and the

5:57

lack of pushback. Certainly for the from

6:00

us, as in the British government, on the Americans to

6:02

say, well, hold on a second, what are we going

6:04

to do the next day? And can

6:06

you show us the plan type of thing? Just

6:09

why did your father choose Britain? And I guess

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my other question is, why did you become a

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Conservative? So my father had deep links to the

6:15

United Kingdom. In fact, when my grandfather was busy

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being governor of the central bank and then becoming

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trade and industry minister, and actually, I think he

6:23

was interim oil minister when OPEC was set up,

6:25

he sent my father to boarding school in England

6:27

for a short period of time. And that was

6:29

the link. So your dad spoke English.

6:31

So my dad spoke reasonably good English, but

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obviously had gone back to the Middle East

6:36

again. And that sort of link with the

6:38

United Kingdom, and he had agencies from British

6:40

businesses in Iraq, which was a treacherous path

6:42

to tread anyway, because Saddam had passed legislation

6:45

that if you were found to be taking

6:47

commissions in the private sector as a businessman,

6:49

that is punishable by hanging in Iraq. So

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it was the natural place for him to

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come because he had a reentry visa to

6:57

the UK because of his history and because he

6:59

did business with British companies. But

7:01

also, it was a

7:03

pretty easy target to come after

7:05

because the easiest accusation to make

7:07

of anyone is that they

7:09

are a British agent, you know, if

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they happen to represent any British brand

7:14

or any British company. And what happened

7:16

is that one of his

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employees in his business, who was a

7:20

member of the Baath Party, had written

7:22

a report because he was disgruntled. He

7:25

hadn't received a promotion or a salary

7:27

increase that my father was a British

7:29

agent. Fortuitously for him on

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my mother's side, her sister was married

7:34

to someone who was actually quite high

7:36

ranking in the Baath Party long past

7:38

now, who clearly got or

7:40

was in receipt of the message that

7:43

they're going to come for my father. And

7:45

so we had about 24 hours warning

7:48

over lunch at my aunt's home where they took

7:50

my dad aside and said, look, they're going to

7:52

come for you tomorrow. So you

7:54

try and get out and you left

7:56

and then you followed. Correct. Exactly

7:58

right. And he deliberately.