Hello, it's Andrew Harrison here.

We hope you're enjoying the leftover mince pies and vegan turkey twizzlers.

The bunker is also having a few days off for Christmas,

so we thought we'd bring you a few of our favourite episodes of 2025, ones you might have missed.

We marked our 1,500th edition this year,

so what better way to start than with that

special episode featuring a hero of the pod. Was he the best Prime Minister we never had? That's

not for me to say, but please enjoy the Bunker episode 1,500 with me, Alex von Tunselman and

Neil Kinnick.

Hello and welcome to a landmark edition of The Bunker, your morning shot of news and politics for these past five years.

I'm Andrew Harrison, welcoming you to our 1500th edition.

For episode one, way back on the 28th

January 2020, Ross Taylor, Ian Dutton, I were joined by Barack Obama's former Homeland Security

Advisor Amy Pope. We talked about the Trump impeachment latest and what would happen if a bright

young lawyer called Keir Stama were to win the Labour leadership. What his first big fight be be with Boris Johnson or with continuity, commonism. But time moves on. We went daily and we built up the team with new members like historian, author, screenwriter, and lately presenter of the Luke and Obsession on Radio 4, Alex von Sonserman. Hello, Alex. Hello. Does it feel like 1,500 episodes to you? Yeah, just in the last week. Yes.

You are certainly cranking the mouse at the moment. Listeners, the existence of this part is entirely down to people like you and Patreon backers like you. So for this special edition, we wanted to bring you a really special guest. Today, we're joined by a true heavy hitter of the Labour Party. somebody who led the party against possibly the most formidable enemy it's ever faced, Margaret Thatcher.

In the mid-80s, he strained every muscle to drag Labour back from the unelectable wilderness and restore its credibility. He set it on the road to its historic victory in 1997, and he's just seen a similar cycle repeats itself, ending again in a Labour victory. He went on to be a European Commissioner and Vice President of the European Commission. He'll tell you, and you'll listen, it's Neil Kierke. How you doing? The only person you could find who's 1,500 years old, what time you know? Absolutely. What was it like in the old days? Welcome, and we should tell the listeners, by the way, we're recording this on Friday the 7th of February, because Neil is a very busy man, as you would imagine. So forgive us if we talk about a thing or two that's subsequently overtaken by events. But Neil, I wanted to just start by asking, you mean, this is almost a kind of a repeat of the circumstances of the 1997 government. You know, you see a Labour government elected, you know, winning a landslide after

very long, dark years of infighting and introspection.

A Labour government is always going to be portrayed as a disaster by the Tory press.

But objectively, how do you think it's going so far?

We're like six months in.

In the circumstances that it inherited, I think it's doing quite well.

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