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Hello and welcome to Political Thinking.

For many of us, there is little we can think about beyond the momentous events that now

dominate our national life, the death of her majesty, the queen and the accession of

King Charles III.

However, last we forget, this was a momentous week in politics too.

We have not just a new Prime Minister, but new faces in every one of the jobs at the

top of Liz Truss' government.

And the start of this new series of conversations with, rather the news interrogations of the

people who shape our political thinking about what shapes theirs, their life stories and

their values, we have not won new interview but highlights from three old ones.

With the new Deputy Prime Minister, the new Chancellor and the new Foreign Secretary.

This, to be clear, is them talking to me months sometimes years ago, long before there

had any idea of the dramas we'd witnessed this week.

Let's begin with to raise coffee, Liz Truss' friend and ally, and now not just her

deputy, but the woman interested with tackling the crisis in the health service in England.

She is a no-nonsense cigar-chomping, karaoke-singing scouser, who joined the Conservatives in Liverpool

when Margaret Thatcher was in power, a sign of her independence of thought.

There weren't that many tours in that city at that time, given the terrible scarring

of unemployment.

I interviewed coffee back in July 2020 when she was work in pension secretary, and she

told me about her own experience.

...