A Very British Election

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2017

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When London was attacked by terrorists in the final days of the British general election campaign, it was the second attack to take place during the campaign.

Susan Glasser, the chief international columnist for Politico, has followed politics in Washington DC for over 20 years – in late May she travelled to the UK to bring an American perspective to the election and to present a documentary about it. The assumption was it would focus on the scale of Theresa May’s anticipated landslide for her Conservative Party.

But on May 22nd, as she was packing her bags to fly to London, news began to break of a terrorist attack in the UK that would change all of that. By the time the overnight flight had landed, the campaign had been suspended. A Very British Election is Susan Glasser’s account of the four days after the Manchester bombing when politics stopped in Britain – and how the campaign re-started with the polls tightening – and what this might mean for politics everywhere.

(Photo: People pass a mock ballot box erected to encourage people to vote, Bristol, 2012. Credit: Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading from the BBC.
0:04.0	The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, go to BBCWorld
0:09.0	Service.com slash podcasts.
0:27.0	I have just chaired a meeting of the cabinet where we agreed that the government should call a general election to be held on the 8th of June. I'm Susan Glasser, Chief International Correspondent for Politico in Washington, D.C.
0:35.2	I've covered elections in the United States since 1990.
0:39.4	This was to be my documentary about a British election, called to give Theresa May a mandate to negotiate
0:44.8	Britain's exit from the European Union.
0:48.6	And then, on May 22nd, as I packed a fly to Britain, came the terrible news from Manchester.
0:55.0	And so this became the story of the four days when this very British election stopped.
1:02.0	Police in the English city of Manchester say a number of people have been killed in a possible terrorist incident at a pop concert.
1:09.0	We're standing here outside of the Manchester Town Hall, a big neo-Gothic pile that looks like a carbon copy of Westminster.
1:19.7	We expected to be there today talking to people about the British general election.
1:25.1	Instead, we're here a couple hours north on the train, a place we never expected to be.
1:31.5	So it's about 5.30, not even 24 hours since the attack. You see a somber quiet crowd,
1:41.0	a large crowd of people here in front of the Manchester Town Hall.
1:46.2	There are printed, we heart Manchester signs.
1:50.9	So are you? It's horrifying and that's why I wanted to come down, you know, you wonder what you can do at a time like this and I think standing side by side with your fellow mancunians is all we can do.
2:07.0	I mean I was watching the knees before and I think there was a girl I think she was age
2:12.0	seven or eight. I saw the eight year old girl. Yeah, so from like I don't know about you, but I can't
2:17.8	Only look at that little eight year old girl's picture for a second or two. Yeah, definitely I've got nieces and nephews, you know.
2:25.0	Born and bred it, so I thought, you know, I want to show my support, I'm going to show that me as a Muslim,
2:31.0	like I can come here and it's not, we're not, we should all just unite.
	...

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