15/02/2025

The Week in Westminster

BBC

Government

4.2 • 239 Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Pippa Crerar, the Political Editor of The Guardian, assesses the latest developments at Westminster.

Following President Trump's announcement of his plans for peace in Ukraine, Pippa brings together Lord West, the former Head of the Navy and Labour peer and Lord Dannatt, the former head of the Army and a now crossbench peer to discuss what this means for Ukraine and Europe.

This week, the government made numerous announcements on its housing policy, including its plans for the next generation of new towns. To discuss the Prime Minister's promises to build more homes, Pippa was joined by the chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee, Labour MP Florence Eshalomi and Conservative peer Lord Gavin Barwell, who is a former Housing Minister and was Downing Street Chief of Staff to Theresa May.

To discuss the challenges that Reform UK poses for the government and the Conservative Party, Pippa is joined by Gawain Towler, Reform UK's former director of communications and Scarlett Maguire, director of the polling firm JL Partners.

And, are political slogans such as 'Take Back Control', 'Fix the NHS' and 'Smash the Gangs' effective in delivering their messages? Pippa asks to political commentator and former Conservative government adviser Salma Shah and Jonathan Ashworth, the former shadow cabinet minister, now chief executive of Labour Together for their take.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. This is Pippa Carrera of the Guardian with the week in Westminster.
0:09.1	Over the last few weeks, the world has had to get accustomed to Donald Trump, back in the White House after a four-year absence, wading in to a series of a ready volatile global crisis.
0:20.1	The UK government has been readying itself
0:21.8	for what the American president might do
0:23.7	about Russia's invasion of Ukraine
0:25.4	after he pledged during his election campaign
0:28.1	to bring the war to a swift end.
0:30.9	On Wednesday, Sir Ed Davy, the Liberal Democrat leader,
0:34.2	pressed the Prime Minister on the matter.
0:36.4	So can the Prime Minister reassure this House that he and other European leaders have given
0:42.0	sufficient support to President Zelenskyy so that he can't be bullied by Trump and Putin
0:49.1	into accepting a deal who effectively hand victory to Russia.
0:55.0	Sir Kier Stama, who travelled to Ukraine for talks with Volodymyr Zelensky just a few weeks ago, responded.
1:01.0	The position since the outbreak of this conflict has been a united position across the House of supporting Ukraine.
1:08.0	And I was able to reiterate my position, which is we must put Ukraine in the
1:12.0	strongest possible position. That matters now, just as much it mattered at the beginning of this
1:16.9	conflict. But within hours of that exchange, Donald Trump dropped his latest bombshell,
1:22.8	announcing on social media that he'd picked up the phone to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
1:27.4	We had a great call. And it lasted for, on social media that he'd picked up the phone to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
1:27.8	We had a great call and it lasted for a long time over an hour this morning.
1:35.6	I also had with President Zelensky, a very good call after that.
1:40.5	And I think we're on the way to getting peace.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.