In October 2022, the British economy was in freefall. Liz Truss's mini-budget had sent the pound into a nosedive, mortgage rates were climbing at a terrifying speed, and the IMF had issued a public warning to the government to reverse course. It was, by any measure, a national crisis.
Into that emergency stepped Sir Jeremy Hunt who, over a single weekend, dismantled almost the entirety of the economic programme he'd inherited.
But that was just the latest chapter in a political career defined again and again by an extraordinary capacity to absorb difficulty and get on with the job. All while managing a private grief that would have broken most people in any role, let alone one of the most demanding in the country. The loss of his father, mother, and brother, all lost to cancer.
His new book, Can We Be Rich Again? The Surprising Potential of Britain's Economy, is an act of deliberate optimism in a country that has largely forgotten how to be optimistic. Sir Jeremy Hunt joins Andy Coulson for a conversation about loss, resilience, reputation, and what it really takes to keep your nerve when everything is falling apart.
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This episode is powered by Kingsley Napley. Visit www.kingsleynapley.co.uk for more details.
FOUR LESSONS FROM JEREMY:
Start a business in your 20s if you possibly can. You've got no mortgage, no kids, no dependents – it doesn't matter if things go wrong, and you'll learn more from failure than you ever will from success.
You can cope with one thing going wrong. It's when two or three things go wrong at once that life gets really hard – so close down the smaller crisis as fast as you can, even if that means caving in.
The most important thing any leader can build is a team that will tell you when you're wrong. If people are afraid to speak truth to power, you will make bad decisions.
Grief gives you something a successful career can't: a sense of what actually matters.
CHAPTERS
03:34 – Why naive goals are sometimes the most powerful ones
05:20 – His father's greatest lesson
07:50 – The tragedy his family never spoke about
10:35 – What unconditional belief from a parent actually does to a child
13:37 – Why failure in your 20s is an asset, not a setback
17:07 – Why business and politics require completely different skills
22:11 – Starting a business with your best friend
26:43 – The junior doctors dispute
30:09 – How to survive being the most unpopular politician in the country
33:01 – Losing his brother Charlie: what grief teaches you that success never can
36:56 – Walking into the eye of the storm as Chancellor
40:59 – How to restore trust when trust is the only thing that matters
44:20 – Why knowing who you are is the foundation of every crisis skill worth having
44:59 – Why Britain thinks far worse of itself than the rest of the world does
BUY JEREMY'S BOOK
Can We Be Rich Again? The Surprising Potential of Britain's Economy – pick up a copy here: https://shorturl.at/DfIZa
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This was a Crisis What Crisis Production – Rex Fisher (producer), Ioana Barbu (studio manager), James Quinn (research), Johnny Seifert (audio), Jasper Cullen (video)
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