Can a new political party win?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 13 September 2018
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Tories are split, Labour is split and some people think it just can’t go on.
Once more there is serious talk about the formation of a new political party.
This has been tried before and recent history seems to say that the odds of success are not good.
But what about now? Have the prospects changed?
What might a new party look like this time? And what chance of success would it have?
CONTRIBUTORS
Sir Ivor Crewe, political scientist and Master of University College, Oxford
David Cowling, political opinion polling specialist and former editor of political research for the BBC
Steven Fielding, professor of political history and director of the Centre for British Politics at the University of Nottingham
Jane Green, professor of political science at Nuffield College, Oxford, and co-director of the British Election Study
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Oronovich. |
| 0:06.0 | Together we enter a virtual room and get briefed on the big questions of the moment by people who know most of the answers. |
| 0:13.4 | And if it floats your boat or even if it threatens to sink it, |
| 0:16.7 | please let us know what you think by writing a review or rating us on iTunes or your podcast |
| 0:21.6 | provider and I promise I'll read out your name if you do. This week we're asking, |
| 0:26.7 | could a new political party ever win in Britain? And if so, what would it look like? |
| 0:32.6 | And if you enjoy this podcast, you might want to download other editions of the briefing room. |
| 0:36.6 | In recent podcasts, |
| 0:37.6 | we've covered Britain's housing crisis, student finance, the political crisis in Turkey, |
| 0:43.0 | and Brexit in some of its more interesting forms. |
| 0:58.0 | The Times seem out of joint. The Tories are split. |
| 1:00.0 | Here's one of their MPs. |
| 1:02.0 | The Chequers' answer is threatening to split the Tory party in two |
| 1:06.0 | with even proponents of remaining in the EU opposing Chequers. |
| 1:10.0 | Labour is split. Here's one of theirs. |
| 1:12.7 | There are many Labour MPs that are at breaking point. They see the moves against them locally, |
| 1:18.9 | which by the way the leadership could step in and do something about and choose not to. |
| 1:22.7 | Some people think it just can't go on. I don't think the British people will tolerate a situation where, for example, the choice |
| 1:30.0 | of the next election is Boris Johnson versus Jeremy Corbyn. |
| 1:32.8 | I don't know what will happen and I don't know how it will happen, but I just don't |
| 1:36.6 | believe people will find that in the country as a whole an acceptable choice. |
| 1:40.9 | Something will fill that vacuum. |
... |
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