Hello and welcome to rock and roll podcast, with me, Steve Richards.

Before we begin to reflect on the extraordinary drama being played out between Johnson, Cummings, the rest of the cabinet and indeed the country,

I just want to say thank you to those of you who tuned into the live virtual rock and roll politics on Monday night,

these surreal virtual shows from a room in my house, and to those of you who tuned in afterwards

and watched the recording of the show. And also, for those of you who donated, we got loads of

donations more than the first show.

So I've done two of these virtual shows, and there's another one coming up in June.

And I'll give you more details of that nearer the time.

But enough of that.

Let's get straight to this drama.

Of course, I've been planning, by the way, to record this on certain times and thought, I can't do it because something might happen in the Cummings drama, and it still might.

Of course, there are twists and turns on a near hourly basis, but let's go ahead anyway, because what I'm going to say is timeless irrespective of what happens.

At least I think it more or less is.

First of all, isn't it interesting that to go back to a theme of an earlier podcast, there is no one in this number 10 operation who dares to stand up to Cummings and Johnson,

dares to say before they embark on a press conference of, for them,

huge nerve-shredding significance, are you sure we've got that absolutely right,

is what we are saying there,

bomb-proof, to use the phrase that Blair used to use in advance of any public announcements?

And before Cummings gave his extraordinary briefing in the Downing Street Garden,

incidentally fascinating in itself. No one in number 10, as far as I can tell, thought it was odd that this unelected senior advisor was giving a press

briefing in the glamorous setting of that garden because internally he's so powerful and so

influential that it seemed to them a natural extension

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