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absolutely free go to spectator. co-dot UK forward slash voucher. Voucher. Hello and

and welcome to coffee house

Hello and today I'm today I'm joined by Katie Balls James Hill and Financial Times

Stephen Bush who is also a coffee house shots regular and as we near the

end of the year we thought it would be a good idea to look back over

2023 and do a little bit of a stock take.

Now Katie I wondered if I can start with you, it's been quite a dramatic year.

Do you think Rishicinac has made much of a difference this year? If you look at this time last year, for example, he had just become

Prime Minister, he was stabilising a Conservative Party, he was tackling small boats, he was raising taxes, A lot of that still seems to be the same now.

I think if you just go on the polling numbers very little.

Ultimately, he was about 20 points behind at the beginning of the year. He's about 20

points behind at the end of the year. There's been a slight fluctuation here and

there. Springtime was a high for Ritchie Sunac with the Windsor framework, but

then when spring became the local

elections it started to go quite downhill.

I suppose probably the quickest take and one that would make this podcast shorter than it's meant

to be was to say there's not really been any progress. I think if we're being

fairer I would say there has been progress and I think people say this is not a

particularly high bar but taking aside last week and the five families for a wonder situation.

It has been the case that this year the Tory Party has looked comparatively more sane and well-function functioning than it has for about a year

...