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

Thank you very much for tuning in again, if it is again, and if it's for the first time, welcome.

And even more thanks for tuning in.

Also, while we're in this mode or mood, thank you all those who tuned in to the live Kings Place stream, which took place last Monday at 7 o'clock,

or watched a subsequent recording. I should have done it in the hall as well. I kind of misread

Tier 2. I was out of London when it was announced London was going to be in Tier 2, and I thought

I better not

better not do this thing live in King's Place. Completely misunderstood the constraints

about to be imposed somewhat confusingly. So anyway, next time I'll do it in King's Place

if we're still in this tier two, this sort of mid-Europea-League type tier of the three tiers that are in place at the moment in England.

Oh yeah, by the way, the audience that evening, the streamed audience, the prediction I asked them to make was would there be a full lockdown before Christmas?

And a majority predicted that there would be.

Well, it's sort of happening by stealth, really, I suppose.

You know, with Wales in lockdown, that had been announced a couple of hours before the show, the live stream show, and then we've got others in Tier 3,

you know, in the sort of top league, none of this Europa nonsense. So perhaps by stealth it's

happening anyway. The case for a national lockdown was made, I thought, quite effectively,

the so-called euphemistically called

circuit lockdown by a sage person who said, better to be done in September, but if not September,

better to be done now than later. So anyway, that was the prediction. So if it's okay with you, for today, I'm going to reflect a little on some of the themes whirling around us, COVID-related themes, leadership-related themes.

Then we've got some brilliant questions from you to come. And if you want to ask questions, please email me. I'll be giving the email address again

at the end of the podcast for you to take notes. As we've kind of firmly established now,

most of you listen to the podcast while running 5K, 10K or doing 150 press ups. So there's no point of me reading the email address out

...