Boris Johnson's orgy of narcissism

Inside Briefing with the Institute for Government

Institute for Government

News, Politics, Government

4.6 • 252 Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2023

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Astonishing revelations and appalling language made for a gripping week at the Covid inquiry, with Dominic Cummings dominating headlines once again with his account of Boris Johnson’s chaotic No10. The BBC’s health reporter Jim Reed joins the podcast team to work out what we’ve learnt from the evidence sessions, Whatsapp messages, witness statements and diary entries. The autumn statement is looming, and chancellor Jeremy Hunt is under pressure to come up with some additional funding for struggling public services – and the IfG’s Performance Tracker 2023, our annual stocktake of nine key public services, published with CIPFA, sets out the scale of the problem. We chat to the report’s author about what could be done to fix it. Rishi Sunak has been busy hosting his AI summit – and taking part in a slightly surreal interview with X boss Elon Musk. How did the two-day gathering at Bletchley Park work out, will the robots rule whr world, and what is the next step to working with this new technology? Hannah White presents. With Emma Norris, Nick Davies and Matthew Gill. Produced by Milo Hynes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Inside Briefing, the podcast from the Institute for Government. I'm Hannah White.
0:14.8	Westminster and Beyond is gripped by the COVID inquiry in the revelations of how Downing Street was functioning, or rather, was overlooked during the height of the pandemic. Now, while we think there's much to agree with
0:24.0	in Dominic Cummings' analysis of what was wrong at the centre of government at the start of the
0:27.3	pandemic, his WhatsApp messages and some of his other views, for example, on what constitutes
0:31.5	misogyny, have left jewels on the floor. So what have we learned? How unusual was Boris Johnson's way of running government?
0:38.3	And what needs to be done to ensure government doesn't, in the words of Boris Johnson,
0:42.3	descend again into a disgusting orgy of narcissism? The COVID inquiry has no doubt made for
0:48.7	rather awkward viewing for Rushi Sunak and a new report from the IFG is hardly to provide a happy
0:53.5	distraction because we've
0:54.9	just released Performance Tracker 2023, our annual stock take of nine key public services, which we publish
1:00.4	with SIPFA. The findings are not, it's fair to say, all that positive. So what's the problem?
1:05.5	What comes next and what should any party aspiring to be in government after the next election be
1:09.5	thinking about? We'll talk to one of the report's
1:11.7	authors. What Rishi Sunak would actually like us to talk about is Artificial Intelligence and his
1:16.4	global AI summit at Bletchley. The world's leaders, or at least some of their deputies,
1:21.9	have been in Britain to discuss what needs to be done to tackle a technology that could end up
1:26.1	taking our jobs, destroying
1:27.8	humankind or just being kind of useful. We'll take a look at what the summit achieved or didn't.
1:33.3	All that to come. With me in the studio are a top IFG duo, Emma Norris, our deputy director and
1:38.9	Inquiry Watcher-in-chief. Hi Emma. Hi, hi Hannah. And Nick Davis, who leads all our work on public services, is here
1:44.7	again. Hi, Nick. Hi, Hannah. Now, I'm delighted that this week we're joined by Jim Reed,
1:48.8	health reporter at the BBC. Hi, Jim. Hi, Hannah. So, let's start with the main story of the week,
	...

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