The New Statesman

Hello, I'm Tom McTagg and you're listening to Daily Politics from The New

Statesman. This week I'm delighted to have John Bue in the studio alongside our political

editor Alva Ray. Both of them, I described earlier to their blushing shame as cover stars of the New Statesman this week.

They've written pieces which I think attempt to explain the moment that we're in.

From different angles, John is a historian as well as an advisor to four separate prime ministers,

recent prime ministers, including the current

one, has attempted to explain the current situation in historic terms about four major disruptions

to Britain's geopolitical position.

So we're going to hear from John on that.

And Alva who has interviewed and profiled the defense secretary, John Healy, who John

also knows well.

So you're kind of coming at this crisis that we're facing from two different sides.

We also, I should say in this week's magazine, have a great piece from Freddie Hayward,

our US correspondent, looking at the

breakdown of the special relationship from the United States. But John, let's start with you.

You've talked about four disruptions to British politics, and you dismiss Margaret Thatcher

as not a major disruption, which is a surprise, I think, to a lot of readers.

Can you sort of give us a flavour of the thesis and why you think right now is a disruption on a scale more than we saw in the 1980s?

Yeah, so my sort of, I mean, this is kind of, as I described in the piece, a bit of a kind

of sub-stack style essay, right?

So I know there'll be in common rooms fellow historian colleagues of mine sort of knocking

...