Danny Finkelstein in conversation
Rock & Roll Politics with Steve Richards
Podmasters
4.7 • 910 Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2023
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lord Finkelstein has had a unique career. A Times columnist, Tory peer and former advisor to Prime Ministers and leaders, he got his start as a member of centre-left SDP. Now, he’s on the board of Chelsea FC — a dream job, but one that brings with it some dilemmas on match day.
I speak to him about disagreements with his friends in the country's highest offices, expressing his own views as a Tory Lord and his upcoming book Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad...
Rock & Roll Politics is live:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm I'm Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the twice weekly podcast with me, Steve Richards. |
| 0:34.0 | Thank you for tuning in, wherever you are in the UK and indeed around the rest of the |
| 0:38.0 | world. And as you all know, the second podcast of the week, we have a conversation. And I'm thrilled |
| 0:43.8 | today to be having a chat with Lord Finkelstein, Danny Finkelstein, Daniel Finkelstein, known as all kinds of |
| 0:51.3 | things, who has always interested me because in a way, I think anyway, he has the dream combination |
| 0:59.5 | of being immersed in politics but also in political journalism. |
| 1:04.7 | He's just written another book and has also got the dream of being on the board of his |
| 1:09.4 | football team. |
| 1:10.2 | I mean, Danny, I envy |
| 1:11.7 | every element of that. Is it as good as it sounds before we delve deeper? Yeah, the football bit |
| 1:19.2 | is a big responsibility, actually. And when you go to games, I mean, I've been going to |
| 1:22.7 | to Stanford Bridge for 50 years. I'm actually sitting there now, in fact, I've been going to |
| 1:27.3 | Stanford Bridge for 50 years. And obviously, you take all the defeats like seriously, but suddenly you feel actually I've got a sense of responsibility to other fans to try to do something or to make sure that fan views are registered with the owners of the club and things like. So it's added that element into it, but it's an amazing thing to do. |
| 1:45.6 | I hope people always ask me, is it a dream? |
| 1:47.2 | And I say, well, it would be if it ever occurred to me to dream of it, but it didn't. |
| 1:51.7 | See, I'd like to ask you a bit about the football at the end. |
| 1:55.4 | But I've always thought that, in a way, certainly for political columnists, it actually helps them to be involved in |
| 2:05.1 | politics or at least have a desire to do so. So when you took the peerage, I know some people |
| 2:10.6 | tweeted, you know, how can you carry on being a commentator and all the rest of it? |
| 2:15.1 | I didn't think that at all. But have there been dilemmas arising |
| 2:20.1 | from being a Tory peer writing a weekly column? The peerage, not in itself actually, not really, |
| 2:27.7 | because it isn't an office and you're independent, you know, despite the fact that you're nominally |
... |
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