Steve Baker

Steve Baker was the Conservative MP for Wycombe from 2010 to 2024. He served as parliamentary under-secretary of state for the Department for Exiting the EU between 2017 and 2018, and as minister of state for the Northern Ireland Office from 2022 to 2024.

Rebecca McKee (RM): You entered government in June 2017 as parliamentary under secretary of state in the Department for Exiting the European Union. Could you tell us a bit about the conversation you had when you were appointed and how that went? 

Steve Baker (SB): Yes, it was almost comical. Obviously, we had a very shocking result in the election. Suddenly we found we were in minority government. During the course of the election campaign, it had emerged that one of the factors leading to it being called was this: it was supposed to be the ERG [European Research Group, the research group and caucus of Eurosceptic Conservative MPs] killing election, because Theresa May was expected to win by such a margin, and I was a nuisance running the ERG even before the election. So, one of the ideas was to get a majority big enough that I and others who were around me didn't matter, so May’s team could do whatever they wanted in leaving the EU. That didn't work out very well. 

I think it's important to know that. So when Julian Smith rang me up as chief whip and said, “Steve, the prime minister would like to invite you to join the government. Will you accept if she rings you?” I said, yes. How could I not agree to serve in DExEU [the Department for Exiting the European Union]? I'd run Conservatives for Britain [a Eurosceptic group of Conservative MPs] and participated in Vote Leave [the campaign to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum] and chaired the ERG. I could hardly say, oh, no, I won't solve the problems that we've now created. 

So I said yes to Julian and then Theresa May called me. She hardly had anything to say. And, you know, we're on the phone, I'm almost standing to attention. I remember where I was in the House of Commons. I said “Well, thank you, prime minister. I'd be delighted to accept. Are there any specific parameters or any specific briefing you'd like to tell me about what I need to achieve and how?”

And she really didn't have anything to say. I imagine that, to be fair to her, she will have been in shock at the election result. I also imagine that there was an element of “Oh, no, we've got to get Steve Baker into government now to silence him.” I imagine that was what the subtext was. So hardly anything passed between us at all. And then I headed over to the department to take up the role. 

With the benefit of hindsight, it should have been a minister of state role, not a parliamentary under secretary. It's a relatively minor difference for most people, but the civil service does react to these things. PUSSs [parliamentary under secretaries of state] are regarded as tea boys within ministerial ranks, whereas ministers of state are regarded as possibly competent enough to be a secretary of state later.

But my DExEU job was right across government. On every aspect of preparation to leave, I solved problems people never heard about, like, for example, the Euratom Treaty [the treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community]. Although that work was done by BEIS [Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy]. You may recall that leaving the EU was supposed to be a big problem for nuclear, and it would have been if I hadn't ridden BEIS very hard. But I rode them so hard we got Euratom solved, for example. 

The officials were absolutely excellent in the Department for Exiting the EU, absolutely brilliant and brilliantly led, but that was only one part of the job. I was also responsible for all the legislation and more. I had so much on my plate that Suella [Braverman] was then brought into the department and we thinned out responsibilities a bit. But I still was responsible for all the domestic prep right across government and all the legislation. 

With the benefit of hindsight, it's amazing that we succeeded at all, because we did, of course, get the EU Withdrawal Act [2018] through parliament in minority, and it still worked, and that's a hell of an achievement. And I led the bill team in the Commons, so I'm very proud of that and I'm very proud of the work we did on preparing government. But I was extremely heavily obstructed from doing what was necessary to take us out of the customs union. But I get ahead of myself. 

With the benefit of hindsight, the range and the importance of the job should have made it a minister of state role. But of course, I didn't know to ask for that at the time when I first joined the government. So that would be my main reflection: a minister joining the government doesn't know what to ask for. A little like when you first join the House of Commons, it's rather overwhelming. The prime minister is now asking you to be a minister of the crown for the first time. And you don't know what it's like to have a red box other than what you've heard. You don't know how officials are going to react to you, whether you'll be up to it, whether you'll be okay at the dispatch box for the first time. So it is daunting. 

RM: Before you entered politics in 2010, you spent a decade as an engineering officer in the Royal Air Force and worked as a consulting software engineer in different corporations, including at Lehman Brothers. What were the lessons and skills that you took from those previous roles that have informed your approach to being a minister in government?

SB: Absolutely, yes. The constant theme of my whole career has been leadership and, in particular, what I would call transformational leadership rather than transactional. So I don't like to get people in the room and say, “This is your job, these are the procedures, these are the rewards you get if you produce this much output.” I do transformational leadership. 

So, you recruit brilliant people, show them the problem, set some guardrails and standards, and then encourage and nurture and coach them to succeed beyond their own expectations and grow so that they're happy in their work, surprise everyone with their success, and we transform everything. And that is what I've been doing my whole career. I won prizes for leadership at initial officer training, I did well in the Air Force, and I built and led good teams in software. 

"too many ministers don't have any leadership experience. And you can see it in the poor quality of what they do and, in particular, the poor quality of how they treat officials."

And, you know, I've got the quotes from my software career that say, “Steve's the kind of person who can build and lead a team that enjoys its work” and so on. Those kinds of comments, I think they're on LinkedIn, including from people who now regard themselves as my opponents. But I know what I'm doing leading teams, which I think is reflected in the success of the ERG, for example, which people thought was resourced far beyond what it was. But I'm afraid I just do know what I'm doing. So the whole theme of all my career in its three major phases, and indeed in this fourth one, is about leading other people. 

All of the skills of leadership I brought to bear during my parliamentary and ministerial time. One of my reflections would be that unfortunately, altogether too many ministers don't have any leadership experience. And you can see it in the poor quality of what they do and, in particular, the poor quality of how they treat officials. 

They often don't seem to understand how to treat other people to get the best out of them. And you get, if not bullying, allegations of bullying. People forget how powerful their voice is when they're a minister and you end up with officials dreading going to see the minister. They've got a job to do. It is the job of officials, however inconvenient, to warn ministers of what the consequences might be of their chosen course of action. 

And that does try ministers’ patience and there is a limit to it. But nevertheless, it would be a failure of the civil service not to advise ministers of the range of possible outcomes for decisions they're taking. And ministers ought not to be abrasive, let's put it that way. I will not name names, but there were people who, during my time, had a bad reputation which emerged in public. They treated officials badly and there's no need for it. It's not right and it shouldn't be done. But it's a reflection that unfortunately, too many ministers don't have adequate experience of leading and managing people. Those are two different things, leading and managing. Leading is about transformation. Managing is much more mechanical. 

Jack Pannell (JP): DExEU was quite new when you were appointed, and it was there to oversee negotiations for the withdrawal from the EU. You've mentioned a bit about what your role entailed – what were your impressions of the department, and how did you approach your role when you came in? 

SB: Well, I thought the functions which I took over were high performing when I took them over. The officials who were responsible for the legislation and domestic preparedness were absolutely outstanding. And those officials who worked for us were very high performing. 

There were two notorious problems, one of which deserves to be much more notorious. One was that the prime minister didn't really want DExEU ministers deciding on how we exited the EU. I remember vividly, as I've recounted before, sitting in the corner conference room which subsequently became my office, and all of the DExEU ministers sat there. Myself, David Davis, Lord Martin Callanan, Suella Braverman and Robin Walker, not well known for his hardcore Brexiteer credentials. And we all agreed that the UK had to leave the customs union and leave the EEA [European Economic Area]. Because that was the only way to be consistent with the result which required us to exit the jurisdiction and institutions of the EU. Therefore we needed to leave into a free trade agreement with the EU, which we ultimately did. 

But officials all sat there looking crestfallen. They'd all briefed us individually that we should do something hybrid that involved the customs union and alignment. We all said no individually. So they put on a summit. Again, notice they're managing us, which is a thing to come back to. We gave them very clear directions on what we required as a team. 

"it was devastating to be sitting there, constantly watching the machine churning over to avoid properly leaving the EU"

And the result of that was that Theresa May had officials work to two masters. They worked to the Cabinet Office and her on the Chequers deal [Thereas May’s 2018 white paper for future relations between the UK and EU]. And they worked to us half-heartedly, or rather they were so overwhelmed with the volume of work they had to do it looked a bit half-hearted. But it was devastating to be sitting there, constantly watching the machine churning over to avoid properly leaving the EU. And that was really bad. 

I was not responsible in my portfolio for the negotiation, but obviously my view was sought for collective responsibility. But David Davis was plainly extremely frustrated. None of us were responsible for the negotiation and our direct instructions were ignored. 
My view is it was a major constitutional crisis that went unnoticed, that David Davis, who had the seals of office for a department and a portfolio from the prime minister, was not allowed, in fact, to carry it through and was overridden [by the PM]. Now, when the ministers sat there and said “free trade agreement based Brexit”, if the prime minister didn't like that and wanted a different policy, the right course of action at the time would have been to get us all in the room with her around the cabinet table and say, “I don't want this policy, I want hybrid and to be in the customs union.”

And we would have said, “Well, we're resigning then prime minister.” I imagine Robin [Walker] wouldn't have done, but I think David Davis and I certainly would have resigned sooner and off the battle would have gone. And that is of course why she didn't do it, I'm sure. And it was a terrible mistake. 

Again, leadership and prime ministers, there's an enormous amount to reflect on there. But most of the prime ministers I have seen are poor leaders. I have never known a prime minister have a town hall of their ministerial team. In a big corporate, they're seemingly endlessly having town halls, but they have a good purpose because they mean that those people who are taking decisions at intermediate managerial and leadership levels know what their boss requires of them, and what the tone is and what they're trying to achieve and they have the opportunity to ask questions and to cohere together as a team. 

Instead of doing that, instead of prime ministers honestly and collegiately getting their ministerial team together for a briefing, prime ministers and secretaries of state and all ministers consistently allow the civil service to intermediate between them. This is very much to Dominic Cummings’ [former chief adviser to the prime minister] point about ministers turning up and simply reading out the briefing they're given. It's pathetic and I would never do it. 

I would see other people, they weren't laughing at me, but they were amused because, yet again, Steve's here in the room and not talking to the script. This mostly happened during the Northern Ireland and Cabinet Office job because I was obviously more senior and the Northern Ireland Office is represented at just about every cross departmental meeting, and that meant me. But I’d turn up with the brief, I'll have glanced at the brief, I know what I think, and I'll tell people what I think and quite often go off the Northern Ireland Office’s brief. Because my view is that a minister is there to govern the country. That ought to be an uncontroversial view. 

When you walk into a meeting where collective agreement is about to be reached on, for example, public business, which was a classic. You're not there to stick to the brief that officials have told you to stick to because they've got a different job. They're not politicians and they're not allowed to do politics. And what I would see time and again from my colleagues is that they'd walk into the room, read out the brief they were given and completely fail to do politics. And it fell to somebody like me who doesn't much care for informal or unenforceable rules. I do what I think is right, within the boundaries of the law. I will do what I think is right rather than what I'm told. 

As a result, I would turn up to meetings and stampede straight through the agenda very frequently. But others wouldn’t, and the result was crap decisions taken. It's pathetic. 

JP: And how was DExEU working when you went into the role?

SB: So I'll just recap on the legislation and on domestic preparedness. It was working very well. The reason I went off down that rabbit hole was because, in relation to the negotiation, with historic consequences, the prime minister didn't let the department do its job because she didn't agree with it and then she didn't handle it well. And that led to my other comments. 

The other thing that's worth saying about how it was performing, officials work to the minister who holds the brief. Some of these things are basic and they have consequences. The civil service treats ministers as the client, not the boss. That is a profound dynamic with massive consequences.

For example, there was no point David Davis asking me to prepare the UK to leave the customs union when the Treasury wasn't willing to endorse that decision and all the customs specialists work for the Treasury. Because that meant that I had no expertise available to me, and I wasn't allowed to go and bring it in from outside. I'd been working with the Legatum Institute special trade commission [a working group at the Legatum Institute think tank focusing on post-Brexit trade policy], with Shanker Singham [then head of the special trade commission], and with Hans Maessen [a customs expert]. I knew where to get the expertise and bring it in but it's surprisingly difficult to bring in external expertise when you're the minister and you want to do something that hasn’t been collectively agreed. 

It turns out everyone's very good at shutting you down and squeezing you out, especially if you're a PUSS. I think it's worth saying that, of course, Steve 1.0 in government and Steve 2.0 in government were slightly different things. During the first round I was in government, I am confident, though I could not prove it, that my political masters were shutting me down by bringing me in. 

I don't think they expected me to competently and capably get the legislation through in minority. And I think they thought, “If he fails, at least it's a Brexiteer that's failed.” But of course I succeeded, didn't I? It was a lot of work, but I think I was brought in to fail and I succeeded. I think I was brought in to be shut down. But of course, the events of 2018 –19 meant that when I returned to government the next time, everybody was treading on eggshells unfortunately. I can't pretend I don't like it, but I wish it wasn't so. 

I've said it before, I'll say it again, I wish people would just do what I asked them the first time, because then it'd be a lot easier for everybody. Now, this is the sort of thing people don't like said, and it feels a bit boastful, but I am so frustrated that time and again I've been proven right. People will still disagree with me about Brexit, but we have left the EU the way that I told my constituents we would do in 2016 after the vote and before I joined the government. 

I put folders of information around government saying how it could be done, and I was ignored. And then we had an election and I joined the government. So basically, we got what I said we should get within months of the vote, but it took years of fighting to get it. Net zero is basically in collapse as I said, and I was vilified on that. We now have a terrible problem of mental health in collapse amongst young people and worklessness. And I said that would happen over lockdowns and restrictions. I said years ago in 2013 that the Town and Country Planning Act had to go because houses were unaffordable for young people. That's obviously now right. 

I am so bored of being right, being seen to be right, and people won't do what they're told. I make that point for the record, so it can be read. The corollary is that, because of what I specifically did, everybody was awfully careful once I got into government again. Liz [Truss] had to appoint me and Rishi [Sunak] couldn't sack me, they knew I was unsackable. I would have had to have done something very squarely in breach of the ministerial code. They couldn't decide that they were going to brief against me and sack me. That would have been a disaster for them because I know what I'm doing. 

JP: During this period, there was quite a strained relationship between the UK government and devolved nations. How was the department engaging with the devolved administrations and how did that affect the work of the department and your work as a minister? 

SB: That is overwhelmingly a question for Robin Walker [then PUSS at DExEU], who was responsible for basically all of the subsidiary governments. He would talk with Gibraltar, with the devolved nations and so forth. So during that period, that really is a question for Robin. 

"I think we'd be better off reversing the entire devolution settlement. It's not in the public interest that things should work the way they do. It leads to far too many politicians having far too much voice."

But I would say that from my point of view, the devolution settlement we now have in the UK is unfit for purpose. I'm not standing for election so I'm going to say I think we'd be better off reversing the entire devolution settlement. It's not in the public interest that things should work the way they do. It leads to far too many politicians having far too much voice. It doesn't really serve the public. 

Northern Ireland is a different case because of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. But in Wales and Scotland, if I genuinely thought that some beautiful ideal of democracy was being upheld by having these more local representatives doing things, then I'd be more supportive. But Wales is being gerrymandered. The NHS there is rubbish. I mean, it's not good. In Scotland, the SNP only really interested in breaking up the country, not really governing it. They would collaborate with Sinn Féin. It's just a mess. I am convinced that the public interest would be served by abandoning devolution and just having national government and county councils.

JP: In July 2018, you and David Davis both resigned from the department over the Chequers white paper. Why did you feel that was the right moment to resign? 

SB: Well, I went because David [Davis] went. As I said, I think it should have been a minister of state role, but I was a PUSS. But I thought we were defeated at that point. I thought, you know, we have failed. The prime minister is determined to do something that I don't approve of and there's no way I can change it. 

The whole machine was geared up to do this hybrid exit from the EU, which would satisfy no one, lead to the ruin of the Conservative Party et cetera. David was resigning and I went with him because I thought, I'm not staying here to do this. So I left in a state of defeat and despair. And within a few days, it became clear that wasn't going to be the end of it because of the mood of the Conservative Party and the country. 

"I geared up and made the ERG a weapon instead and overthrew the policy. You know, what a pity Theresa May didn't sit down in a room and ask us what we thought should be done and why." 

So I geared up and made the ERG a weapon instead and overthrew the policy. You know, what a pity Theresa May didn't sit down in a room and ask us what we thought should be done and why. And I would have explained what and why, and said, you know, “This is what we should do, and if you don't do this, I will try and force you to do it.” It’s just politics I'm afraid – it's not personal. She and I have buried the hatchet. She's a good woman, a good Christian woman, and I like to think I’m a Christian man who's trying. We have buried the hatchet. 

So I don't want to open up too many old wounds, but one of the things I have discovered is prime ministers do not like accommodating the views of anyone. Hubris overtakes everyone. David Owen [Former foreign secretary 1977–79] wrote the book [The Hubris Syndrome]. Every time a politician gets anywhere near any degree of success, you see in them and in the staff around them, hubris overtakes them. Suddenly nobody else has a valid contribution to make. Suddenly they're flying high as kites, they can't make any mistakes themselves. Suddenly they know everything. 

For somebody like me who's been an aerospace engineer, which is quite serious because it's about the safety of everybody on the airplane and everybody under the airplane, you can't afford hubris. You also can't afford to avoid theory and facts. And politicians, when they're doing well, they start ignoring theory, they ignore facts, they ignore the possibility of mistakes, they think they can ride roughshod over everybody. 

Hubris is one of the worst features of government. And unfortunately, prime ministers don't like sitting down with their junior ministers and asking them what they think about what's in their brief. They'd rather tell them. And what they're telling them has been decided by special advisers who, God bless them, are very bright people, but compare me to a special adviser in Number 10. Very, very little comparison in what we've done in our lives and the level of commitment we have, in public, to the policy we're trying to pursue. 

"Every time a politician gets anywhere near any degree of success, you see in them and in the staff around them, hubris overtakes them."

Some unknown person in their 20s who thinks they're terribly clever because they're doing well and they're a special adviser in Number 10, so they must be right, because they're a special adviser in Number 10, so they're brilliant. They then come up with a “great idea” and try to ram it down my throat. Turns out, I won't have that. Most ministers will have that because all they want is to be a minister. And this again is where the system falls down. What a mess when all people want is to be an MP or a minister, and then they'll do anything to cling on to their status. And then we're surprised when we get two things. One, bad government, and second, civil servants who despair of the competence of ministers. 

One housing minister was notorious. He was not interested in the brief. Everyone knew he wasn't interested in the brief. His officials knew he wasn't interested in the brief. Every MP knew. Yet he was stuck languishing in this housing brief to the detriment of the whole nation while he waited to get back into the Whips’ Office. What a terrible, stupid thing to do on the part of those deciding appointments. Not in his interests or the nation's, to leave him there because he just wasn't interested. And civil servants have to put up with this. 

It's a thing I've tested with several permanent secretaries. I've said to them, of course, I can see why the civil service is organised the way it is, because you have to assume the minister will be incompetent and disinterested. And they always laugh because that's the way it works. They have to assume the minister doesn't know what they're doing, isn't really interested and wants to get on with their usual political machinations to work out how they're going to be the prime minister. It's pathetic. 

RM: So, in September 2022, you were then appointed by Liz Truss as a minister in the Northern Ireland Office. You had been offered a role by Boris Johnson in July 2019 but didn't take it. Why did you decide to return to government in 2022 and what had changed? 

SB: How long have we got? Boris did a very stupid thing, and I will tell you about it. I wrote 10 pages of notes on the day. I'm not going to give you every detail. 

There was a time when the innermost circle of Boris's leadership campaign was me, Jacob Rees-Mogg [then chair of the ERG] and Boris Johnson. We met in my office. So we were close. As the leadership campaign went on, I wrote not only a 100-day plan, but a checklist of what to do on day one of entering Downing Street. I was right in the middle. 

Boris kept calling me chief on the phone. Bear in mind, by that stage, I had done a lot of organising rebel MPs, so you could see why he'd be thinking of me for the chief. You don't call somebody chief unless you're going to appoint them chief whip. I said to Boris – and forgive me, Mark Spencer [chief whip under Boris Johnson] – I said to Boris, you can't appoint me chief whip because half the party or more just sees me as a rebel and won't take my authority. It will be a disaster if you ask angry remainers and moderates who've been loyal to accept me as chief whip. You can't. It'd be a disaster for you. It won't work. You should appoint Mark Spencer. The prime minister Boris Johnson appointed his chief whip on my advice.

So I had explained that obviously his deal was going to be a bit of a compromise. It was clear to me that I needed to do one of two things. Either I needed to be Boris Johnson's secretary of state for exiting the EU. Because bear in mind, as I said earlier in the interview, in 2016, within a few months of the referendum, I was handing these high-quality binders of information, high-quality information from experts in trade policy, explaining to the Treasury, the Cabinet Office, DExEU, anyone who was relevant how we should leave the EU. So I wanted to be the secretary of state for exiting the EU and get the thing done. Boris then doesn't appoint me to his cabinet. 

"It's because he's a political weapon, because he's political special forces, because he's so effective politically, you cannot have him in the machine because he'll take it over and he'll turn it against you. You cannot have Cummings in the team." 

It is extremely relevant that I had said to Boris in the course of the journey, no [Dominic] Cummings, absolutely no Cummings. He will not allow himself to be held accountable to anyone. And it doesn't matter how clever he is, it doesn't matter how politically talented he is, in fact, quite the reverse. It's because he's a political weapon, because he's political special forces, because he's so effective politically, you cannot have him in the machine because he'll take it over and he'll turn it against you. You cannot have Cummings in the team. 

That's why I was not in the cabinet, why I never made it to the cabinet. On the day Boris became prime minister, I was at Treasury Select Committee. He called me on his way to kiss hands with the Queen, I think. I remember picking up the phone. It'll be visible on the record. He said “Steve, Steve, are you there? Steve?”

And I can't say anything because we're on TV, so I go outside. I say “Sorry, Boris, I'm just on [the] Treasury Committee. What are you doing with Cummings?” He says “Oh, you've got to work with him, Steve.” I said “I can't. I've told you it will work out badly Boris.” 

He subsequently eventually agreed with me that Cummings should never have been involved. So, of course I was never going to be put in the cabinet when I was opposed to Dominic, and Dominic was the one who probably held the whiteboard pen. So on the day that Boris became prime minister, I went and sat in the prime minister's study with Dominic Cummings to have a bit of a chat, which confirmed all my worst expectations. 

While next door, Boris appointed Steve Barclay to be DExEU secretary, which is another story for another day. I ended up expecting to be brought back the following day for the also-rans. So I get the call, and I go up to Downing Street. I'm already furious because I know I'm not going to be in the cabinet. I knew I had to either be Brexit secretary or on the backbenches, because those are the only two roles which would have allowed me to manage the Conservative Eurosceptics over the line to a compromise deal. If I took any other role, I'd be seen as a sellout and lose all my authority with the Conservative Eurosceptic MPs. 

I hope that makes sense to you and to subsequent readers, because if you've got no power with colleagues, no patronage, all you've got is your credibility. There was no point him putting me in any other job than secretary of state [for exiting the EU], because I would have lost my entire authority and credibility with my colleagues, and it mattered because we were in constitutional crisis. 

So I'm already furious. I go up to Downing Street, they stick me in an upstairs room, but they don't take your phone off you. So I’d been up there now for 45 minutes and a journalist, Tim Shipman, texts me and says, “What job have you got then, Steve?” I said, “Minister for long waits”, which he duly tweeted out. 

I was also in touch with one of my advisers who said, “Steve, Cummings is taking the mickey out of you. Just leave.” And I said, no, I can't do that I'm sitting in Downing Street waiting to be appointed to the government during a constitutional crisis. I can't just leave. By the time we got to 55 minutes, I did just leave. 

I got as far as the back of the black door [in Downing Street]. It was like a scene from a movie because officials can't believe I'm about to just walk out in front of the cameras and explain what's going on. So I find myself at the back of the door and the prime minister's press secretary appeared. “What's going on? Steve”, he said. “Well, I'm leaving because you're taking the piss out of me. And, you know, I should have been Brexit secretary. And this is not going to work. And I'm not waiting here an hour. If the prime minister wants to see me, he's got 60 seconds to get me in the cabinet room.”

Surprisingly, I was in the cabinet room within 60 seconds. I threw everyone out of the cabinet room. Bear in mind, the chief [whip in the House of Commons] was appointed on my advice. I threw him out. Boris should not really have allowed me, wrathful as I was, to throw everyone out of his cabinet room. But I did. And I spoke to him in most strident terms about what he was doing and where it was going wrong. 

He offered me minister of state for the armed forces. And I sat there. That was the moment at which I deflated. As I say, this is the abridged version. I said to him, “I can't be minister of state for the armed forces, because everyone would say I've sold out, and they'd be right and it will prevent you getting your deal through.” And so I didn't become minister of state for the armed forces, an absolute dream job for an ex-member of the forces, about which I would have done backflips around the room in any other circumstances. And I said no. 

And that's why I didn't join his government, because it was obvious to me I had to be on the backbenches. Later on, we were in Downing Street to do a parallel negotiation. Myself, Bill Cash, Iain Duncan Smith and Mark Francois represented the Eurosceptic Tory MPs, and were negotiating with Downing Street in the cabinet room while David Frost [then chief negotiator for exiting the European Union] was negotiating with the EU. 

And during this process, as my colleagues were ranting, I would quite often lean back so they couldn't see me and indicate to the people on the other side of the table that they should just calm down and let this happen, and then it would all be all right. That happened again and again. 

"I've held the future of this country in my hands more times than I can remember. I have decided on my own authority which way votes in the House of Commons would go. I've at times put over 70 MPs through the rebel lobby by sending one WhatsApp message."

They all knew on the other side of the table that I was the one managing the dynamic. And at the end of it all, they'd done a deal with the EU, then they sold it to us. I remember Danny Kruger who was political secretary [to the prime minister] said to me, “Steve, we couldn't have done this without you.” I said, “Danny, I know. And what's more, I want a CBE, please, because it's worth at least a CBE. And I don't want a knighthood. CBE, please. It's not too much to ask.” “We'll do better than that for you, Steve.” That's what he said. Did they ever do better than that for me? No, they didn't. And that's how politics works. 

So what changed? I had a nervous breakdown after the election because after all this stress which your readers can only imagine. I've held the future of this country in my hands more times than I can remember. I have decided on my own authority which way votes in the House of Commons would go. I've at times put over 70 MPs through the rebel lobby by sending one WhatsApp message. I've done it more than once, more times than I can remember. Probably not a dozen times, but probably three or four. 
No one should have to do that unsupported. Prime ministers don't do that unsupported. But I have. I don't suppose anyone will do it again. 

Certainly no one did it before because I was the first one to do it by WhatsApp. It took a terrible toll on me to have to take those decisions in those circumstances, with those stakes, and I needed a break. And I didn’t get one because of the Covid pandemic. Colleagues from all wings of the party asked me to do something organised against Covid lockdowns and restrictions. So I did. 

And that caused me to have a slide into terrible depression and, although no one outside my office could tell at the time, have a nervous breakdown, which I've talked about elsewhere. The result of that process, of all of this and reflecting on everything I've always stood for, and, in particular, this phenomenon that again, people will say is arrogant, but I keep being proven right.

What changed is I came to the conclusion that being a rebel and trying to govern the country by organising rebellions from the backbenches is not a recipe for success. If I was going to be an MP, I simply had to get up the ministerial rungs. And if it meant I had to choke down things and compromise, it was time to just choke them down and compromise. 

"I came to the conclusion that being a rebel and trying to govern the country by organising rebellions from the backbenches is not a recipe for success"

Liz [Truss] owed me. For better or worse. I think ideologically she was right. But the execution failed. I got Liz over the line when it mattered. I helped her whipping operation very subtly in ways which didn't upset her own organisation. But I got her over the line so that she was in the last two [of the summer 2022 Conservative leadership race] and she knew it. And that meant that even though I didn't go out and do much media, I didn't do much in the campaign she really did owe me a role in government. 

Suella [Braverman], who I'd been campaign manager for, another story for another day, also impressed on Liz the need that I should be a minister. Kwasi [Kwarteng, then chancellor of the exchequer] kept ringing me up as were approaching her becoming prime minister. He must have rung me four times. 

It's not that I don't like him. It's not that I don't respect him. It's that I can't work for someone who won't hear beyond the first five or six words. So every time he rang me, I would just go, “Oh, hmm, oh, yeah” and that's all I would give him. So I wasn't rude, but I obviously wasn't going to work with him. And that, I'm afraid, gave Liz the problem of, where are we going to put Steve?

They alighted on minister of state for Northern Ireland and subsequently through acting unilaterally, I reset the relationship with Ireland and thereby with the EU. And although I don't like the Windsor Framework [the post-Brexit agreement between the UK and EU on Northern Ireland’s relationship with both parties] very much, it is progress and it did get the [Northern Ireland] executive back. 

That wouldn't have happened if I hadn't issued my very carefully worded apology to the Republic of Ireland [at Conservative Party Conference in 2022]. It was very carefully worded, but it was extremely effective. I did humility plus resolve in a series of speeches, which I'll come back to if you like. But the point I'm making is it turned out to be a serendipitous decision which worked. But that's why I went back into government, because I couldn't any longer be effective by leading rebellions. 

RM: On your time in the Northern Ireland Office, how did you approach the negotiations with different parties and what was your role in facilitating the restoration of the executive? In particular, with the apology you made in 2022?

SB: Well, so there's two different dynamics there. One is the international dynamic with the Republic of Ireland and the European Union. Chris [Heaton-Harris, then secretary of state for Northern Ireland] and I, before we went onto the stage, I said to him, “Chris, we need to reset this relationship. I'm going to make an apology to the Republic of Ireland. I've only told you, if it's okay with you, I'm going to do it.” And he looked at me and he said, not for the first time, “Steve, they're going to credit you with rescuing the relationship.” And they did.

But that's the only clearance I had. It was, you know, a political event, there's no civil servants, I didn't ask anybody's advice. I went on stage, I talked about humility, to recognise other people's legitimate interests and resolve. And we did not always behave in a way which encouraged the Republic of Ireland to believe we would be respectful of their legitimate interests. And I'm sorry about that. 

Very carefully worded, and it was explosive. All the headlines were “Steve Baker apologises over Brexit!” I knew that would happen. Didn't matter. I did a series of speeches where I said basically the same stuff about humility and resolve. And by the end, the resolve was being heard by the taoiseach [the prime minister of the Republic of Ireland, then Micheál Martin], but it just wasn't news. But everybody knew what I was doing. 

And since I'd said all of this in private before I joined the government at the Irish Embassy, when I did it in public, they were able to assure the government of Ireland that I did mean it and I'd said it before and so it was taken seriously by the taoiseach and the tánaiste [deputy prime minister of the Republic of Ireland]. And so it worked and confounded everybody. And sometimes you do need to confound expectations. 

But the Foreign Office rang up my officials and ranted at them, “What on earth does your minister think he's doing?” To which I replied, “You can tell the Foreign Office that what the minister thinks he's doing is governing the country at his own risk. And if they don't like it, what they can do is call the foreign secretary and the foreign secretary can call. Call me and I will explain to him where he's going wrong.” 

So that's the international. The second thing was the domestic. Negotiating with the parties in Northern Ireland to get the executive back up. I respected that Chris Heaton-Harris wanted to make that his responsibility and his triumph. And my main role was to support him however he wanted. And we worked as a team. Chris was very good to me, bear in mind, he and I have had a long journey together. I mean, he was an ERG Chair in a different set of circumstances. Chris said to me, “Steve, I'm going to treat you as an equal.” And I said, “Chris, thanks very much. I'm going to treat you as boss”. And that's the way we did it. He treated me as an equal, I treated him as boss. And so if Chris wanted to be the one who led on those negotiations with the parties, then that's the end of that. And I was happy to do whatever he told me because I respected him, I do respect him. 

So obviously there were loads of conversations with loads of people. But because Chris and I understood one another, and I agreed with him, I just followed his lead and we got things done. And that's the way it ought to work. 

Bear in mind I've said earlier about relationships between successive prime ministers who seem incapable of allowing themselves to lead their own ministers and instead allow the civil service to procedurally intermediate between ministers and the result is disaster. That Theresa May didn't relate to DExEU ministers and the whole thing blew up. Instead, Chris and I understood one another, and I respected him and he respected me and we got the job done without any great fuss. This should be a lesson for all ministers, all researchers, all political scientists. 

People are only human and management and leadership techniques and mutual respect work. But appointing people who aren't interested, aren't competent, don't know how to lead others. They're not trying to lead one another. That is a recipe for disaster. And prime ministers keep doing it. 

And some of the stuff I'm afraid, which goes on in government, just isn't as complicated as people make it. Just lead people. 

JP: You've spoken publicly both about the intense division in Westminster during the period when you were in and out of government and the high-pressure political environment and the toll that took on you. What are your reflections on how you managed that intensity, and what support from, either parliament or within government or the civil service would have been helpful at that time?

SB: When I was in rebellion? 

JP: Both in government and when you were in rebellion. 

SB: Von Clausewitz, a great theorist of war, said war is the continuation of politics by other means. Very few people take the corollary of that to be true. The corollary of that is that politics is war minus the shooting. 

So when you ask me as the rebel who happens to be in government a couple of times. But let's not pretend that Theresa May supported what I wanted to do while I was one of her ministers. She didn't. That's what went wrong. 

I'm a very inconvenient person to prime ministers because I believe in things. Things which I have meticulously researched and know to be true. It's war minus the shooting. There's absolutely no point looking for support. You don't go into the Whip's Office and tell them you've got a problem and you'd like their help, because what will happen to them later is when you're thinking about voting against the government is they’ll say “Oh, Steve, yeah. Oh, I'm sorry you've got this problem with policy, Steve. It's a shame. You know, we would love for you to vote with the government. But anyway, completely separately, about that little problem you had…”

But I know that if a person goes to see the whips to tell them that he's thinking of voting with Steve Baker and he's been quite vocal in the press, and then a couple of days later, he just completely disappears from my side and then pops up supporting the government. I know that what has happened is the whips have said, “Thanks for coming in. What a shame you don't want to support the government. We'll bear in mind your thoughts. But anyway… completely unrelated, how is that little problem you had?”

"Anyone going into politics who thinks it's anything other than war minus the shooting, is kidding themselves."

You do not go to the Whip's Office or ministerial colleagues for support. When I had my mental breakdown, I received excellent support from the Occupational Health Department in parliament. But that is not politics, that's occupational health. Anyone going into politics who thinks it's anything other than war minus the shooting, is kidding themselves. 

RM: What is the achievement that you are most proud of from your ministerial career? 

SB: People will roll their eyes but honestly, I did so much so often I can hardly remember. Probably the best thing I did was reset the relationship with Ireland, but I'm not happy with how it was used in the Windsor Framework. I nearly resigned over that. Rishi [Sunak] told me in private that he'd used all the papers I'd written about how to deal with the Northern Irish border issue. But did he involve me in the negotiation as minister of state for Northern Ireland? No. I was positively excluded and I had to threaten to resign in order to get them to bring me the papers to read two days before they came out. 

And bear in mind that I would sit in my office with top secret strap material [sensitive or classified government information] unsupervised, with my phone in my hand. If a man or woman can be trusted to have top secret strap and their mobile phone unsupervised, they can jolly well be shown the white paper that's relevant to their department, that's going to be published tomorrow. Absolutely outrageous. So I'm proud of lots of things I did as a minister. I'm probably proudest of resetting the relationship with the EU. 

I'm probably prouder still that as a backbencher, I won a Civility in Public Life award for the emollience of my speech as we left the EU, I did not want all this division that we have had and I founded a company called the Provocation People with Remain voting, Labour voting LSE professor Paul Dolan in order to show people that adversarial collaboration can work and we can break out of groupthink. That is something which I hope the BBC will learn from, but that's a business interest and not related to government. 

"Care about your brief, care about people around you and treat them with grace, great decency and civility."

RM: You've given some advice throughout the interview, which I'm sure people will find very helpful. But what one piece of advice would you give to new ministers on how to be effective in the role? 

SB: Care about your brief, care about people around you and treat them with grace, great decency and civility. Remember that you are the minister, you are the government, you are there to govern. 

The officials are there to advise you, but they're not there to advise you on politics. The act of governing is inherently political. It would better to say that officials aren't allowed to be partisan, but unfortunately they say political. Governing other people is an act of using coercive power. It is therefore inherently political. What the civil service does is political, but they're not allowed to do politics. So ministers should understand that the advice they will be given lives within that contradictory context. 

They should know their brief, know what they're trying to achieve, know why they're trying to achieve it, have a good grasp of how they're trying to achieve it. They should give clear instructions to officials after they've listened very carefully to those officials’ advice very respectfully. And they should remember always that they're in hostile territory. 

"[Ministers] should know their brief, know what they're trying to achieve, know why they're trying to achieve it, have a good grasp of how they're trying to achieve it."

RM: And then finally, is there anything we haven't covered today that you would like to mention? 

SB: As you can probably tell, there's a lot more where all this came from. I do not despair of government. I do think it should be mostly shut down. It is a fundamental category error to think that the principles of private organisation in business and in private life apply within government and yet people keep trying to do it. 

There are two ways of organising our lives as people in society. One is the private citizens way, which is prices, profit and loss, free voluntary exchange. The other way is the government's way, which is rule following and coercion. These two ways are different categories of human action. And the government's way is always going to be different to the private citizens way. It is not very effective. 

And the result is that over 100 years from the 1911 National Insurance Act which inaugurated the welfare state, we now face a chronic period of default of the welfare state which can be seen in the OBR's [Office for Budget Responsibility] reports. Politicians and journalists are not facing up to it, and the poor bloody public therefore are getting poor quality services which we can ill afford, which don't serve them well and no one's really doing anything about it. 

RM: Well, thank you so much for your time today. Some really interesting reflections from you which has been fantastic.

SB: I would like to add that I do regard the work you do as extremely important. I think the Institute for Government has become a very important institution in our country, much underestimated in the public debate, but it's very important.