Are British prime ministers too powerful? With Armando Iannucci | Westminster Reimagined
Daily Politics from the New Statesman
The New Statesman
4.4 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2022
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The writer, satirist and broadcaster Armando Iannucci returns to the New Statesman Podcast to co-host our third series of Westminster Reimagined. In six special episodes Iannucci explores parts of British public life he believes to be broken, and is joined by guests from inside and outside Westminster to work out how to fix them.
In this final episode of the season Iannucci and Anoosh Chakelian, the New Statesman’s Britain editor, examine whether Britain’s leaders want to be too powerful. Boris Johnson spoke often of a personal mandate, and Tony Blair enforced more control from the centre. Have our leaders got too strong – and can anything be done about it?
Our guests for the episode are Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s director of communications and now a diarist and podcaster, and Catherine Haddon, resident historian of the Institute for Government.
The panel discusses whether prime ministers have always wanted more power, how much Johnson tried to change the rules of the game and why prime ministers should make the most of their cabinets.
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Transcript
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| 1:11.5 | Hello, I'm Anouche. And I'm Arrando. In this episode of Westminster |
| 1:15.6 | Reimagined, we'll be joined by Kath Haddon and Aleister Campbell to discuss whether our leaders |
| 1:20.0 | are becoming too much like presidents. Now, Arrando, what's wrong with having a strong leader? |
| 1:30.0 | Well, it depends if they're any good, and it depends if they obey the law. And as I've been banging |
| 1:36.1 | on several times in this podcast series, we've reached a point where our constitution, our unwritten |
| 1:42.4 | constitution, allows a Prime Minister with a working majority, unlimited power. That's fine |
| 1:49.9 | if that Prime Minister obeys the general principles of how good government should work. But if they |
| 1:55.9 | get ideas into the head to just carry on how they would like, they're respected of what those |
| 2:00.0 | around them are saying, or what the public opinion is, then we get into serious trouble. And then |
... |
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