So this week we are thrilled to be joined by John McDonnell Labor MP. You may know him and he has been reading along with us actually throughout the entire season of this podcast, so we're excited to get into talking about the book with him as well. Oh, So to start John one thing I'm interested in is your personal political development.

Can you tell us a little bit about it, your youth?

Before I do, can I just thank you?

This has just been during lockdown. This has been one of the joys of the lockdown.

Just hearing your voices has been really terrific.

And the interviews that you have done have been tremendous.

And I like the way you work between you as well.

Some of the stuff I've really enjoyed.

I'm a few chapters behind you which is a bit frustrating because I've been a bit busy in the last couple of weeks

with real problems coming out of the pandemic with quite significant job layoff, sakings and

redundancy. It's been a nightmare. But so I'm a bit behind you, but the interviews you've done have been brilliant.

Sheila Robotoms interview I thought was just superb and I just, what a lovely person she is and what I liked at the end there's

an expression that I don't know if you use it as well you know there's no side to a

person there's no frills or any attempt to be in any way more than you are.

And I thought she was terrific.

And at the end, when she said, at the end of the interview, she said she said was that all right because I'm not very good at talking

Wonderful and she said I'm good at lectures with notes for not very good at talking

I thought one the best conversations I've listened to in years.

It's so self-effacing.

Anyway, my political background very quickly if people are interested, not much.

Well, John, why don't we talk about the layoffs a little bit first?

What has been going on?

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