333. Sir Jeremy Hunt

September 24, 2025·1 hr 12 min·6 clips

Jeremy Hunt tells his children not to go into politics because it's a random career where luck matters more than talent.

Sir Jeremy Hunt starts with a shrug. The title still feels odd to Iain Dale, and Hunt waves it away with a joke about his surname causing bigger problems. It is a neat icebreaker, but the chat quickly gets less tidy. Hunt talks about his children, public life, and why he would not want them going into politics. He is out of government now, and that changes the temperature. While discussing Can We Be Great Again, he says one lovely thing about being out is that he can say what he thinks. The tone stays dry rather than grand. Even on family, vocation, and the cost of politics, it sounds like two people edging around an answer instead of polishing one for the room. The middle belongs to a Cabinet memory. Hunt recalls July 2010, newly in Cabinet, newly Culture Secretary, and keen to prove himself in David Cameron's government. He has been asked to give the Nicholas Ridley Memorial Lecture and has prepared a case for why David Cameron was not Margaret Thatcher, and why that was the point. Then Thatcher turns up before the speech. Hunt panics, heads to the gents, and starts cutting lines with a red pen, only to find out she will not hear it after all. It is funny, but also a little exposing: the new minister, loyal to the current leader, still measuring himself against an older political hero. Dale then pulls the thread onward, toward the 2019 leadership contest, Theresa May's emotional resignation, and Hunt's place as her Foreign Secretary. The excerpt loosens into event-room banter at the end, with thanks to the audience and a nod to the wider Global podcast stable. The good stuff is in the small reversals: a title nobody quite wants to use, a speech nearly censored in a bathroom, and a politician defending the job while admitting he would spare his children from it.

As heard by us

A reflective political interview with memoir, dry wit, and a measured sense of judgment.

Jeremy Hunt comes across as reflective and guarded, using the conversation to look back on his book, the relief of speaking more freely outside government, and his sense that the familiar gloom about Britain may be overstated.

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Why you'd press play

You want a minister who can tell a Thatcher story and actually laugh at himself.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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