Hello and welcome to political thinking, a conversation with rather than an interrogation of someone who shaped our political thinking about what has shaped theirs. My guest today was told that he has a reading age ofjust eight. His dyslexia was so bad he had to return to school to study in his 20s for the exams that he simply couldnt pass when he was there the first time. He is now dr peter kyle, a close ally of keir starmer� s and the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, who, if labour comes to power, may find himself having to take a very important decision whether there should be another referendum about the future of the uk. This time it would be about whether Northern Ireland should leave and become reunited with the republic. Peter kyle, welcome to political thinking. Thanks, nick. I say that in the introduction that you have a reading age of eight. Really . And if so, how on earth do you do the job youve got now . Well, ive never known any difference, so i cant describe i cant compare it to somebody that can read differently. One of the misconceptions about people with dyslexia, including particularly people with severe dyslexia, is that we dont like reading. I love reading. You know, im reading a book at the moment. I love reading biographies. I like non fiction. But also over the summer, i like to read fiction, too. Its just itjust is different getting the words off the page into my mind. But im also auditory dyslexic as well as visually dyslexic, so its just about using techniques to get the information into your head. Yeah. So its not clearly lack of comprehension. When we say reading age of 80, its just the speed of being able when we say reading age of eight, its just the speed of being able to take information off a page, is it . Its quite unpredictable. I mean, sometimes i can fly through a sentence, other times i will, you know, really struggle with a sentence and you see the shapes of the words. But they become just shapes. They dont mean anything. Its like the thing that theres something missing in your in your head. Its like a, you know, youve got a steering wheel, but its not connected to the wheels sometimes. Youve had to learn techniques. Yes. Clearly to master a lot of paperwork that you have to deal with as a parliamentarian, that you might have to deal with as a minister. What sort of techniques . Well, the first thing that i learnt quite an early age is ijust accept the fact that im going to have to work harder than other people to achieve the same, to get the same information off the page into my head. Thats actually quite a liberating thing. And i say this to a lot of young people who come to talk to me about these issues themselves, because it sort of unlocks what youve got to do to succeed. And hard work is something i learnt at a very early age because of this. There are other techniques. I mean, ive got a great team and the team provide information to me in a way that is much more easily digestible for me. 0ften theyll cut out lots of the preamble of stuff and get straight to the issue, because i think if youre looking at issues like Northern Ireland, where obviously when you first get the job, youve got to take a lot in, a very broad cross section. Actually, day to day its usuallyjust topping up. So you dont need all the preamble, you just need to get the heart of it. So ill have very, very direct, succinct sentences to get the information in. Other times, ijust know im going to be sitting in the office at 3 00 in the morning, getting all the stuff into my head and push through with it. And this became clear, even though you didnt know it was called dyslexia, even though you perhaps didnt know it was a problem at a pretty young age when your teacher wanted you to read shakespeare . Yeah, i was always ive always been socially aware and socially quite successful. So even in the classroom, i was quite liked. I got on with teachers and i had lots of friends. Its quite painful for me to reflect back on that time and think if i had actually been quite disruptive, if id been Throwing Chairs around the classroom, i probably would have got a lot more support. But the fact is i kind of blended in, but the one bit where i really just switched off from learning was where a teacher was Reading Shakespeare and then just stopped mid way through a page and just said, peter, why dont you just finish off . And i remember thinking at the time, why . Because they would have known that i wasnt good at reading, but i did get to my feet and it was one word at a time and i was so humiliated. And when you get nervous, it gets a lot worse. And the teacher thought it was the funniest thing. The teacher was laughing as i was doing it. But when you look at when i looked around, most of my friends were just sitting there as humiliated as i was, which was nice but it was a very it was a very difficult time. And after that, ijust switched off and Learning School did not crack this for you. School did not crack this for you. You leave with very little. You go to work at the body shop and bizarrely, you have an unlikely heroine, the founder of the body shop, Anita Roddick. How so . I went to work at the body shop. Id been offered lots ofjobs before i went to work at the body shop and then i kept turning them down. Sometimes id go in on day one and say, this company is not for me and leave. And my mum just said, find a company you can work for that you want to work for. The body shops head office is just down the road, so i applied and got rejected. Applied again, got rejected, turned up at the reception and sat there the whole day till they gave me the job. They gave me the lowest paid job in the company and that was Inputting Invoices into the Computer System and arcane Computer System. So i was useless at it. So i used to go into the Company Every sunday and secretly work so that i could keep up to date with my work, go in on monday and nobody would know that i was struggling with some bits and of course there was only one other person that used to go into the company on a sunday and that was the person who ran it. Anita. Did she just come up and say, who are you . Why are you here . I saw her. What do you think . I saw a flit through the office a few times, the other end, going up the stairs to her office a few weeks. But after a few months she spotted me. I saw a flit through the office a few times, the other end, going up the stairs to her office a few weeks. But after a few months she spotted me. And then she came zipping over and said, what are you doing here on a sunday . And i said, well, youre here. And she said, have you got any idea how much im paid . That was the first thing she said to me. Then she took me up to her office, showed me all these stuff that shed just come back from brazil with, asked about me, my motivation, Strategic Issues that she was grappling with as chief executive. We had this great conversation and then a week later i got this memo come down saying that anita cant do a speech this week. Shed like you to go in a place. I think thats the highest paid person in the company, sending the lowest paid person in the company, a global, globally recognised business titan, sending an 18 year old with no qualifications out to do a speech. And she was one of the people who persuaded you. You could go on and study. You went Back To School. You eventually go to university. You do that doctorate. And she convinced you it was possible. But when i was 25, id been an aid workerfor a few years. By then i knew anita very, very well. By then she had taken a role in really pushing me, always pushing me out of my comfort zone, making me do things that would make that would be uncomfortable for me, but telling me thats where the learning is. Not everybody can have an Anita Roddick. Youve long said you believe in aspiration. Well come on and talk about your dad who left school at 16, went into the navy, didnt have a great education either. But given that not everybody can have an Anita Roddick, what does it make you think about how peter cahill� s, about how peter cahills, who are not in the end, as lucky as you turned out to be, can be helped. You have to understand the extent to which anita went to battle for me as somebody who so unlikely to do it. I applied four times to university. I returned at the age of 25 to secondary school, the same comprehensive school, and sat in a classroom of 16 year olds for a whole year. Got what i was asked for by the university and i was rejected again. Then i bumped into anita and she asked how i was doing and i said, you know, ive been rejected again fourth time after going Back To School for a year. Anita then rang. I didnt know this, but she then rang the university and said, if you dont have peter coyle as a student, im going to return my honorary doctorate. The next day i was accepted to university and thats how i got in. So for me, i was always very, very aware that i had to battle to get in. Im very aware that that very, very few people have somebody like anita who will help you break down doors. Thats why weve got to have a government in a state that is on the side, a system that is on the side for those kids who need it. You see, you can draw different conclusions from your story. Some people will draw exactly the conclusion that you have and they will say that is why you need change. Others will say, look, there are always in any generation, one or two peter kyles. Some people think its Grammar Schools that create that opportunity. Some have an inspiring individual. It may be a teacher thats done that, but its interesting that your former leader, jeremy corbyn, hated this idea of social mobility. Didnt he sort of banish it . Ill quote you what corbyn said the idea that only a few talented or lucky people deserve to escape the disadvantage they were born into. Leaving a place in the social hierarchy in which millions are consigned to the scrapheap, results in the talents of millions of children being squandered. In other words, its no use having a system that relies on picking out one or two people who deserve to do better. I dont want a system that picks winners. I want a system that helps young people in particular to figure out what theyre capable of and then encourages them to go and explore it, what their interests are. Anita roddick was the first individual outside of my family that Saw Something in me i didnt see. And helped me explore it. Sussex university, once i got in, was the First Institution that Saw Something in me that i didnt know i had when i was Shadow Schools Something in me that i didnt know i had. When i was Shadow Schools Minister a couple of summers ago. There was a story because we were coming out of covid, there was a story of private schools that were ringing universities saying that they had one or two individual children who wasnt quite getting the grades that they needed, but they thought they had the temperament for university. Now they were doing it using data that there wasnt public, so that was wrong and they should stop doing it. But my initial reaction when i heard it is, well, every school should be doing that. You know, i think State Schools should be doing that. Dont care what the status or the governance of the school is. I want them to be looking at these kids and seeing what potential they might have. Ive mentioned it that les left school at 14, i think, didnt he . He did, yeah. Dad left school at 14 to become an apprentice stonemason. He said where he grew up in liverpool was was a slum. He went to be a door to door salesman, move south, and he ended up owning the company that he worked for. He sounds to me like a classic Working Class conservative. Nice try. Dad wasjust trying. Is it true . Just in the middle of all of that, he also served in the royal navy for ten, 12 years. Dad is an amazing, amazing, inspirational person. He has this incredible work ethic. I have never in my life, in all the people ive worked with, come across somebody who works as hard as dad did when he when he was in work, he was driven to provide better, do better for his family and himself than he had had in his upbringing. But we just werent a very political family. Let mejust explain. Whether hes a Working Class conservative. See, i would. Well, i mean, the whole phrase doesnt really apply to dad, because i think hes so aspirational. I dont think he would class himself as Working Class any more. Do you accept, though, that the challenge of the labour party is not, if youll forgive me to win over people like you or your constituents in brighton and hove, it is to win over people like him. Working class people who maybe have been conservative all their life, maybe have switched to being conservative because of brexit. People who sometimes feel that the labour party has become a party of the metropolitan, the young, the graduate classes. The challenge of the labour party has firstly is not to compartmentalise the electorate and treat each bit of the electorate as different to the other. I think thats one of the reasons why we might have lost some of the elections in the past. The challenge we have as the labour party is to be have a magnetic vision of a better britain, that it speaks with clarity about how we get the economy working for everyone, but having the core of the fundamentals of the economy running properly and Public Services and have a vision for how we will change the country for the better that pulls in voters from all sides inwards. Dont forget i took the seat in hove off the tories in 2015 and then went on to sort of be a part in how we actually have a nationwide offering. I dont want us to be a party that just appeals to metropolitan areas, but what i know, what i know. Let me give you an example that what we call social conservatism, some people call culture wars is a card and some in the right wing media clearly think its a trump card that will get over the things that youre talking about, the fact that the economy is not growing successfully. Do you worry about the appeal of social conservatives and about what weve seen, for example, in the United States about the way its shaped politics . I accept that were in an era where people on some people on the right that have made prominence in the tory party and the republicans in the United States see a challenge that a country faces as an opportunity to have a row, to divide, to show that one side is right, the other side is wrong, and to sneer at them. I aspire, keir aspires, we, the labour party, aspire to see a challenge that our country faces as an opportunity to solve the problems and challenges that the country faces, create new opportunities, but to do so in a way that brings communities together. Illjust say this, nick, about what youve learnt, i guess, from the politics of recent times. Brexit, for example. Brighton hove. Only 31 of people voted to leave, making it a pretty unusual place. And it sometimes made out that those people who voted to leave were, you know, as it were, flat cap people with woodwinds and a whippet in the north of england. One and a half million londoners voted leave. Thats 40 of the electorate. And round about the same proportion of 25 to sa year olds voted leave. I just wonder what you, as someone whos passionate about, as someone whos passionate about remain argued for a second referendum, tried to block some of the legislation. What have you learned from that . Well, the key learning that i had as a candidate in 2013 to 15 in a tory seat was that when you come up against people who voted differently in the past and think differently you listen and learn from it. I mean, i keep saying to to colleagues in the labour party, listening to tories doesnt make you a tory, it helps you beat them. And i think if you look at how i acted during the remain campaign, there was only one occasion where i said something which was pejorative or dismissive of the Leave Campaign and the way that they were using certain arguments, which i felt were, was, was inappropriate. I, ifocused entirely on a positive vision. I tried really hard to use language that could bring people together. Now theres a big decision that keir starmer has taken. He reinforced it this week. Its brexit. Its all in the past. Britains future is outside the eu he wrote in a piece for the Daily Express this week. And it was deliberately, clearly the Daily Express, not in the single market, not in the customs union, he wrote. Not with a return to free movement. These arguments are in the past where they belong. Im guessing that quite a lot of your friends and a huge number i do. Well, it didnt come out of nowhere. This came out of a lot of conversations that keir and i and many others have had, i believe. Painful to say that its all over. We were wrong, gone. I felt the pain the moment we lost the 2019 general election. You know, i didnt you know, lots of people were very upset who were remainers when we actually left the eu. But ive done all the grieving for that in the days and weeks after the 2019 general election, because thats when we handed over on a plate, the majority to borisjohnson to do whatever the hell he liked. And so we have a brexit which is on his terms, which he owns, but we are where we are. They may say some people listening who agreed with you, for goodness� sake, they were remainers. You were. They wanted a second referendum. You argued for one. They wanted to block the brexit legislation, as you did. They may say, hold on, which is winning this argument. Now, the support for leavers at the lowest level is ever been. There is, they would argue, a kind of growing conventional wisdom that its not worked. Even nigel farage says its been a failure on those terms. So, why on earth is the labour party Doing Scooting Off in the other direction saying no, no, no, you cant talk about that any more . One of the things that frustrated me the most during that brexit time was that in the lead up to it was that all of the brexiteers said that every problem had one solution which was leaving. They were wrong. So, i reallyjust urge people who care about the relationship with the eu not to make the same mistake. Dont say that every problem we have as a country only has one solution which is rejoining, because thats not true. Now, talking of referendum, you may have no choice if and i know there are a lot of ifs here if labour win the election, if you become the Northern Ireland secretary and if the final one, sinn fein continues to do as well as it is. Sinn fein won the election in the north of ireland. They look on course, according to the opinion polls, to win in the south. And that could mean that there is whats called in the jargon, a border poll, but to put simply is simply a referendum on whether Northern Ireland should leave the uk and join with the republic. And ive looked at the legislation. Your decision. Not the prime ministers, not parliament. It would be the Northern Ireland secretarys decision. You ready to take that decision to call a border poll . Im ready to adhere to the law and we cant go through everything weve been through with borisjohnson breaking it to say that actually i wouldnt do it if the circumstances emerged. But these things are set out in treaty. The good friday agreement is an International Treaty and its signed into domestic law. And it does say that if there is a sustained majority for a united ireland, the Secretary Of State must organise a border poll. Ive got the law here. If it appears likely to him the Secretary Of State, that is, that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the uk. Then you call a referendum . Appears likely. Theres an awful lot of leeway there. Lots of work. Are you doing the work and thinking, well, how on earth would ijudge . Is it the vote in an election . Is it an opinion poll . Is it looking at the number of nationalists versus unionists . How on earth would you work that out . Those issues i will deal with should the circumstances emerge. Now, right now in Northern Ireland, the there are one in four people waiting on a waiting list for nhs treatment. Its the worst in the uk. 60 of homes are heated with heating oil havent had the same support as others. There is a real set of challenges, economic and social. Economic and social in Northern Ireland. They have got to be the priority. Yeah, but you put it, think i will. I will make sure that i stick to the letter of the law and the spirit of the good friday agreement. I will not be playing games with it, but we are not there yet. And also at the moment, actually, the incredible thing is that even with all of the turmoil of brexit, with all of the change in the Party Leadership and the prevalence of sinn fein in Northern Ireland, there hasnt been a substantial movement in those people who actually would. How they would vote in the circumstances of border poll. I think people want me focused on the priorities that are there at the moment, not these constitutional issues. Now, the interesting thing about thisjob, and maybe one reason youre suited to it, because you get good write ups from critics as well as from friends, is that you have to deal with people you probably wouldnt normally have much that you actually agree with. You said you could learn from conservatives a little bit earlier. Just the other day, the former leader of the dup, arlene foster, said, i think we shouldnt rule out a pact between the labour party and the dup of the election. Youre smiling. Is that a denial . It doesnt seem to be to. I didnt really fall off my chair when i when i read that. Yeah. Its highly, highly, highly unlikely. But when i got this job i really noted that never i would be really quite, quite quite amazed. But, but, but it does show and the thing i take from that is there is Mutual Respect there. You know, when keir appointed me to thejob and he called me up, he said, what i want you to do is restore labour and hopefully from a position of government to being the honest broker for both communities and none. And has that been difficult for you personally . Youre a Guest Of Honour at a golf course recently with Ian Paisleyjunior, of course, the late great ian paisley� s son. Now, Ian Paisleyjunior once said most people in Northern Ireland find homosexual relationships offensive and indeed obnoxious. You dont talk a lot about your sexuality, but its no secret that youre gay. His father famously campaigned to, quote, save ulster from sodomy. And at that moment, you just think this is quite hard, thisjob. No, no, its the opposite. I mean, these are the situations i run towards. I bit his hand off when he asked me to go to his constituency and spend the evening with businesses there. You dont Win Arguments by sneering at people, by not engaging with them, by running the other way and turning the other way. When they walk down the corridor, invite you to their constituency. You Win Arguments by building a relationship by which become the foundation for which you can have these kinds of conversations. And is it right that when you enter politics, when you came into politics, one of the people who helped you with your parliamentary Speech Making was the former tory chancellor, ken clarke. Yes. So. Look, when i when are you look back at my background and i said that i didnt learn to learn at school. I learnt to learn when i was at university. It flicked a switch for me. I Love Learning and i take the process of development or that Old Fashioned phrase of Self Betterment incredibly seriously. When i got into parliament, i found it really difficult. I found the job of a parliamentarian quite confusing. And speaking in the House Of Commons, far more intimidating than i expected. So i did what i usually do. I went in there and sat there for hour after hour, and i thought to myself, why when she stands up and speaks, does everybody put the phone down and listen . When he stands up and speaks, everyone picks their phones up and does their email and catches up on whatsapp. What is it theyre doing and saying thats making them compelling . And then i would go and find these people and sit with them. So some parliamentarians were incredibly generous and i didnt need to stick to just people on my side. Although dennis skinner, hilary benn, Margaret Beckett were really kind and generous to me. Ken clarke, Nicholas Soames and some others, you know, really spent some time with me, me earnestly asking question after question. I went on a parliamentary delegation with ken clarke and we became quite good friends. And he was he gave me some of the best advice ive ever had in politics. Such as . Well, one thing that stuck with me is neverjudge success in politics in one day, one week, one month, because too many people feel that theyre not being noticed today and get insecure. But just leave it. See how youre doing at the end of the week, at the end of the month, the end of the year. And he then turned to me and said, well, i was elected to the House Of Commons the year you were born. I can do it over the decades, he said, because there is ebbs and flows and if you look at people who are the same intake as you or same age or whatever, and theyre suddenly being talked about and theyre being thrust forward, he said. Never get insecure because just keep doing what you do in your own way. And politics has a funny way ofjust finding people and doing the same. Now, thats kind of thats great advice to hear when youre just in the cut and thrust of westminster from somebody thats been around for a long time. Advice you can remember. Is there advice Anita Roddick gave you about this career . She would have wanted you to reach the very top, wouldnt she . She sadly didnt live to see me get elected as an mp. She saw me as a special adviser, and she kept taking the mickey out of me about it being a sort of apparatchik. But she would. I know her. She was very eccentric. She was very driven. She was very focused on on doing things in a way that delivered social change, notjust money, fame and power. So she would want me to do the best im possibly capable of and to be a pretty decent person going about it. That was what she would want for me. I try. Peter kyle, Thanks Forjoining me on political thinking. Thanks so much. When peter kyle is asked to go campaigning, hes often sent to areas that other labour mps wouldnt be seen dead in. Why . Well, the people who run labours campaigns tell him that he speaks fluent tory if hes to progress in the labour party, fluent tory. If hes to progress in the labour party, as many of his supporters think he will, hes going to have to persuade his own Party Supporters that he uses that language as a way to sell labour ideas. Thanks for watching. Live from london. This is bbc news. Indias Railways Minister says the cause and those responsible for the countrys worst train crash in decades have been identified. The governor of the russian Border Region Belgorod has urged citizens to evacuate to avoid Cross Border Shelling as the area comes under heavy bombardment overnight. Thousands of people are on the streets of warsaw protesting against a new law against russian influence but critics say could target opposition politicans. And the Epic Challenge for a group of rowers as they attempt to row around the entire coast of great britain. Hello, im rajini vaidyanathan. A Signalling Fault looks to be the most likely cause of indias