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This week The Rundown is coming from Birmingham as the PoliticsHome team tick off the final conference of the season at the Conservative Party’s annual gathering. Later in the episode host Alain Tolhurst chats with Festus Akinbusoye, one of those hoping to be the Tory party’s candidate for London Mayor, alongside PolHome colleague Harriet Symonds, about his campaign to replace Sadiq Khan. But first PolHome editor Adam Payne joins Alain minutes after Kemi Badenoch stepped off stage having given the keynote address to round off the conference and give some instant analysis of her speech. To sign up for our newsletters ⁠click here⁠  Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron and Nick Hilton for ⁠Podot

This week The Rundown is coming live from Liverpool, where the team have been at the Labour party conference, Andy Burnham’s first since he took over as leader of the party. Later in the episode is a fantastic interview with one of his Cabinet ministers, the environment secretary Angela Eagle, about working with Burnham again after their time together in the Blair/Brown governments, her frustrations with getting things done in Whitehall, and her plans to tackle the water industry and waste crime. But first up host Alain Tolhurst speaks to PolHome editor Adam Payne and Sienna Rodgers, deputy editor of The House magazine, just minutes after the PM came off the stage after his big speech to members, to discuss huge announcements on the triple lock, electoral reform and public ownership. To sign up for our newsletters ⁠click here⁠  Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron and Lulu Goad for ⁠Podot

This week on The Rundown features a fascinating interview with former veterans minister Johnny Mercer, who has just published a bombshell new book - No Way to Run a Country - about his time in politics, and what he sees as the broken system at the heart of it. He spoke to Alain Tolhurst about his own shortcomings as a politician, being lied to by successive Prime Ministers, but despite that helping set up an Office for Veterans Affairs, the mission he had set for himself after leaving the armed forces and becoming an MP in 2015, as well as the absurdity of life in Westminster and the machinations of the Tory psychodrama he became trapped inside. To sign up for our newsletters ⁠click here⁠  Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron and Lulu Goad for ⁠Podot

After a pair of record-breaking donations to Reform UK, host Alain Tolhurst looks at the role of big money in politics, the influence it can bring, why campaigners want to see caps on the amount people can give to parties, and where the pushback against these changes is coming from. Joining him to discuss whether the two £36million donations from crypto-billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne to Nigel Farage’s party will lead to changes in the way our politics is funded, are the Labour MP Stella Creasy, who is leading the charge in Parliament to change the law, as well as Olly Buston, director of the campaign group Clean Up Westminster, alongside award-winning journalist Peter Geoghegan, founder and editor of the Democracy for Sale website. To sign up for our newsletters ⁠click here⁠  Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron and Lulu Goad for ⁠Podot

This week The Rundown takes a look at another political party as it heads into its annual conference, this time the Greens, looking at whether after a huge surge in membership and popularity under new leader Zack Polanski their support might be plateauing after Andy Burnham took over as Prime Minister and it suffers the growing pains associated with all insurgent movements trying to break out into the mainstream. So to discuss where the party goes from here, as well as Polanski’s chances of making it to Parliament after he threw his hat in the ring to replace Keir Starmer as the MP for Holborn and St Pancras, host Alain Tolhurst is joined by a former Green Party leader, Baroness Natalie Bennett, along with Russell Warfield, who has written a new book entitled The Green Socialist about the party’s rise over the past 18 months, and joining them are Louis O’Geran, researcher at the pollsters More in Common, as well as PolHome reporter Zoe Crowther. To sign up for our newsletters ⁠click here⁠  Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron and Lulu Goad for ⁠Podot⁠

This week, as Parliament returned form its summer break, The Rundown takes a look at Andy Burnham’s performances as he got his first chance to speak to the House of Commons as Prime Minister. But after the long hot summer a cold autumn approaches for the new government, with the same knotty problems that faced his predecessor Keir Starmer staring at Burnham from his in-tray, and Westminster is also heading on tour for party conference season, starting with this weekend’s trip to Birmingham for Reform UK. So to discuss how the new PM deals with the big issues like social care, welfare spending, immigration and the economy with a Budget due to be delivered next month, host Alain Tolhurst is joined by Joshua Reynolds, Liberal Democrat MP for Maidenhead, along with two colleagues; sister title The House magazine’s deputy editor Sienna Rodgers, and PolHome editor Adam Payne. To sign up for our newsletters click here  Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron and Lulu Goad for Podot

Has any backbencher caused more of a stir this Parliament than Samantha Niblett, the Labour member for South Derbyshire, although now more commonly known as the ‘sex MP’? She announced back in April in an interview with PolHome that she wanted to kick off a so-called ‘summer of sex’ with her “Yes Sex Please, We’re British!” campaign - a call for lifelong education around healthy relationships, consent and preventing abuse. But it was her comments about pleasure, pornography and sex toys that caused many in Westminster to have conniptions, and for some made her into a figure for fun. She spoke to Alain Tolhurst and PolHome colleague Zoe Crowther, the reporter who first interviewed Niblett on this subject, about the campaign, the backlash to it, as well as the support she’s received from her fellow MPs, and the importance of moral ambition in politics. To sign up for our newsletters click here  Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron and Lulu Goad for Podot

Award-winning chef, TV star and now campaigner for the hospitality sector, Tom Kerridge joins The Rundown this week to talk about why his industry needs help from Andy Burnham's government. He is leading the charge to convince the government to reduce VAT in his sector, as it faces pressures from all sides which are sending hundreds of businesses to the wall, and taking with them thousands of jobs and having a huge knock-on effect across the economy. He spoke to Alain Tolhurst about the importance of hospitality to the UK, why he’s become a spokesman for it alongside running multiple restaurants of his own, and whether the new Prime Minister is taking the industry’s issues seriously enough. To sign up for our newsletters click here  Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron and Lulu Goad for Podot

Next in our series of summer interviews is former Tory cabinet minister, David Lidington, who speaks to Adam Payne about the state of the Conservative Party.   He tells the podcast that leader Kemi Badenoch is “absolutely right” to rule out an electoral pact with Reform UK, saying it’d be “deeply, deeply damaging” for the Conservatives to do a deal with Nigel Farage’s party, adding that it was "contemptible" for Reform's Zia Yusuf to call his former Tory colleague Ben Wallace a "traitor".   The former long-serving MP, now part of centre-right group Prosper UK, also argues that the Tories should do more to win over young voters, like pledging to scrap the triple lock on pensions and build more new homes.   Lidington, an ex-deputy Prime Minister, also explains why he wouldn’t call a snap general election if he were in Andy Burnham’s shoes.   To sign up for our newsletters click here  Presented by Adam Payne, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

In the latest of our series of summer interviews former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips speaks to Alain Tolhurst about government's battle with big tech to make the internet safer for women and children. The Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley said she was “like a kid at Christmas" as Andy Burnham prepared to enter Downing Street to replace him, and reveals how she felt his first few weeks in Number 10 were going, if the new PM was serious about tackling violence against women and girls, and what life is like back on the backbenches. To sign up for our newsletters click here Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

In the latest of our series of summer interviews, host Alain Tolhurst speaks to Carmen Smith, otherwise known as Baroness Smith of Llanfaes, a Plaid Cymru peer who made waves two years ago when not only did she enter the upper chamber at 27, becoming its youngest member, but arrived with the aim of making herself redundant by helping abolish the House of Lords altogether. A former carer, she discusses Andy Burnham’s pledge this week to finally fix the broken social care system, what her party plans to do in office in Wales after victory in May’s Senedd elections, how that fits in with the new PM’s wider devolution agenda, but first, what it’s like as the so-called Baby of the House, and her private members bill calling for the biggest constitutional reform in decades. To sign up for our newsletters click here Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

This week The Rundown features a fantastic interview with the Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride, giving his views on his new opposite number in the Treasury, John Healey, what the new Government should be doing to get growth going, and how the Tories plan to take on Reform. Host Alain Tolhurst also takes a look at Andy Burnham’s first few days in Number 10, how his Cabinet picks and his initial policy blitz are going down with his Labour colleagues as well as the voters, and what else we can expect from our latest Prime Minister alongside two top colleagues; deputy editor of our sister title The House magazine, Sienna Rodgers, and editor at PolHome, Adam Payne. To sign up for our newsletters click here Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

This week The Rundown looks at what those first few hours are like inside Downing Street after a new Prime Minister takes over, speaking to those who were there alongside incoming leaders as they enter Number 10, and what Andy Burnham and his team can learn from the previous transitions of power about what to expect and how to hit the ground running as soon as they step through that famous black door. First up host Alain Tolhurst speaks to James Nation, who was deputy director of the Downing Street policy unit under Rishi Sunak, and Lucia Hodgson, who entered Number 10 alongside Boris Johnson as deputy press secretary. Then later in the show he hears from Jimmy McLoughlin, who was a special advisor on business to Theresa May, and the host of the Jimmy's Jobs podcast, as well as Tim Durrant, programme director at the Institute for Government, who works on the think tank’s academy programme which provides training for new ministers and advisors. To sign up for our newsletters click here Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

As Keir Starmer prepares to step out of Number 10 for the final time, The Rundown looks at what life is like behind that famous black door after a Prime Minister announces they are stepping down, and what goes on in those few weeks before they exit Downing Street for good. Is everyone in the building demob happy, can anything still get done as the civil service waits for the next PM to arrive, how much focus is on crafting the last piece of a legacy, and how much is on preparing the ground for their replacement, and the temptation to chuck a few hospital passes for their successor. So to discuss the strange nature of that interregnum period that has become all too common in recent years, host Alain Tolhurst is joined by three people who served at the side of departing prime ministers: firstly with Baroness Kate Fall, who was David Cameron’s deputy chief of staff for a decade, along with Paul Harrison, who was Downing Street Press Secretary for two years under Theresa May, and then later in the episode Guto Harri, Number 10’s director of communications for Boris Johnson in the months before he left office. To sign up for our newsletters click here Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

This week, as Andy Burnham prepares to take power, PoliticsHome has once again partnered with ThinksInsight, the global research and strategy consultancy, on their bi-annual 'mood of the nation' survey, as they take the temperature of how Brits feel about the government, the economy, and how optimistic they are about the future. They also conducted focus groups with voters in four constituencies who backed Labour in 2024, but are now considering other parties, about what the new Prime Minister needs to do to win them back round. So to discuss all of that host Alain Tolhurst is joined by Ben Shimshon, the co-founder and CEO of Thinks Insight, to talks through the research, along with PolHome editor, Adam Payne, and two Labour MPs; Tonia Antoniazzi, the member for Gower in South Wales and a select committee chair, and Sarah Hall, elected as the member for Warrington South at the last election. To sign up for our newsletters click here Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Ewan Cameron and Lulu Goad for Podot