Emily Maitlis

You talk about the need for welfare reform.

I mean, it was all within your grasp.

Okay, so I totally understand.

As Chancellor, you didn't have long, right?

That's absolutely clear.

And you came in

sort of parachuted in on a 999 call essentially but you were the longest serving health secretary so actually you could have done something fundamental to social care in those what was it six years seven years and I mean maybe that speaks to the point again but that nobody was kicking you out of that job you had a long time doing that.

I'm actively considering whether that's something we should look at, yeah.

Because you quote...

Jean-Claude Juncker, I have to say, I love the quotations that you put in here because they sort of take you into, you know, really sort of pithy places.

And he famously said, I know exactly what to do for the country.

I just don't know how to get reelected afterwards.

It does seem for your next book, this is a fundamental flaw with politics and with democracy, because frankly, I don't believe that you didn't know what to do.

Jeremy, you're a smart guy and you've been in politics a long time.

I bet you knew exactly what to do when you came into pretty much even the chancellor job as well.

But you didn't believe that your party could get reelected if you did it.

I mean, look at the you try and make a case for a 25 percent tax rate.

You say it gets rid of all the fiscal drag and all the problems with people trying to earn sort of less on the upper limit so they don't get.

you know, pulled into a higher band of taxation for very little more money.

And you say the sort of simple answer, let's call it a sort of Scandinavian model, is something like a 25p tax rate.