Are the Tories really ready to replace Rishi Sunak?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2024
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The weekend has been awash with talk of yet another leadership putsch. Is Penny Mordaunt on manoeuvres? Is Kemi Badenoch scheming? The answer is probably no - for now - but it points to a sense of inexorable crisis in a party which is only now realising the scale of the loss that may be careering down the tracks towards them.
Could enough of the parliamentary party be persuaded that more of them could survive if they replaced Rishi? And would Rishi REALLY pull the rip cord - announcing an election - if he felt that coming? We speak to the 1922 committee Treasurer, Geoffrey Clifton Brown.
Also, what is Ofcom up to? And is it running scared of GB News? We discuss.
Editor: Tom Hughes
Social Media Editor: Georgia Foxwell
Producer: Alex Barnett
Video Production: Rory Symon and Shane Fennelly
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The News Agents is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/
Clips:
BBC Breakfast: Kemi Badenoch with Jon Kay
The Exploding Heads: GB News/Ofcom
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.0 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:12.5 | Talk about support gathering around your cabinet colleague Penny Morden, |
| 0:17.3 | that she could be a candidate that people will unify around and that the Prime Minister's |
| 0:21.9 | days are number. How safe do you think he is? Well, I'm sure if Penny was here, she would be |
| 0:27.8 | distancing herself from those comments. I've been saying for a long time that the small |
| 0:32.7 | minority of MPs who think that this is something to be talking about should stop it. We have local elections. |
| 0:38.4 | People need to know what the government and local government has been doing for them. I don't think |
| 0:43.0 | that there is very much to these rumours. It's almost the same thing we've been reading |
| 0:46.2 | week after week for the last two years. And we need to make sure that one or two MPs cannot |
| 0:51.4 | dominate the news narrative when 350 plus MPs have different views. |
| 0:57.2 | That is Kemi on Penny. Penny Mordant, who apparently is on manoeuvres and may be thinking about |
| 1:03.4 | trying to unseat Rishi Sunak. It has been an awful week for the Conservative Party, both in |
| 1:09.2 | terms of handling, but also in terms of poll numbers. |
| 1:12.8 | One poll at the weekend had them down to 18%. It's pretty perilous out there. And it would be |
| 1:19.7 | unnatural, it being the Conservative Party, if people weren't plotting. It is almost unthinkable |
| 1:25.3 | that the Conservative Party could crown their fourth Prime Minister without actually going to the polls. |
| 1:35.2 | But what seemed unthinkable? Just weeks, months ago, now doesn't. And the bigger question is, if we're not seeing an election early May, |
| 1:47.3 | can Rishi really hang on to the end of the year? Welcome to the Newsagents. |
| 1:55.2 | The Newsagents. It's John. It's Emily. And this is, we are told by Rishi Sunak, the week for bouncing back. |
| 2:02.6 | Now put everything you know about Alan Parch's autobiography out of your head and treat this with the respect it deserves. |
| 2:09.9 | Because Rishi Sunak has said something to start the week off, which I think is going to get under the skin of a lot of his colleagues. |
... |
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