Defections, coalitions and China-UK relations
Political Currency
Persephonica
4.1 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2024
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rishi Sunak lives to fight another day after some terrible local election results. But as he loses yet another MP to Labour, Ed Balls and George Osborne ask whether it might be time to play a new strategy and try acting the underdog.
Meanwhile, whilst Labour had a markedly better weekend, it didn’t quite indicate the 1997-style landslide they might be hoping for in the next general election. Is Keir Starmer on track for a small majority? And if so, how should he manage it?
And in foreign affairs, the UK is notably absent from President Xi Jinping’s European itinerary this week. How did Sino-UK relations end up here, and how would a prime minister - current or future - get back on track?
Become a member of POLITICAL CURRENCY GOLD 🏅 to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening to all our episodes, receive early access to EMQs and Inside The Room, and to live show tickets. Try for free: patreon.com/politicalcurrency or on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/politicalcurrency
Remember to send us your questions to questions@politicalcurrency.co.uk
Producers: Rosie Stopher and Ned Miles
Production support: Miriam Hall
Technical Producer: Will Gibson Smith
Executive Producers: Dino Sofos and Ellie Clifford
Political Currency is a Persephonica Production and is part of the Acast Creator Network
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | BP is working to bring more lower carbon energy to the UK, like designing two hydrogen plants, |
| 0:06.2 | and we're keeping oil and gas flowing from the North Sea. It's and not all. That's how BP is backing Britain. |
| 0:13.0 | While today we're mostly in oil and gas we increased the proportion of our |
| 0:16.8 | global annual investment that went into our lower carbon and other |
| 0:19.8 | transition businesses from around 3% in 2019 to around 23% in 2023. |
| 0:26.4 | BP.com slash and not all. |
| 0:29.1 | This episode is brought to you by G.S.K. |
| 0:35.0 | We're lucky to live in a time when many of us can access medicine when we become ill, |
| 0:38.5 | but even better than recovering from being unwell is not getting ill in the first place. |
| 0:43.2 | Yes, G.S.K believes that prevention is the best medicine and that's why they've built one of the |
| 0:48.2 | broadest vaccine portfolios in the world. |
| 0:50.6 | G.S.K. say that prevention to them means pioneering new medicines to reduce HIV transmission |
| 0:56.2 | or stopping chronic conditions from progressing to more serious complications. |
| 1:00.4 | That's because preventing disease is the best possible outcome for all of us and that's why G.S.K. |
| 1:05.6 | Unites science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. |
| 1:09.6 | Visit gsk.com to learn more. So welcome to a political currency and to an extra bit of political currency because we decided to record our program a day earlier for reasons we'll explain in the show and we'd finish doing the whole recording and suddenly this news broke. It's a bit |
| 1:36.1 | jaw-dropping to be honest. The MP for Dover, the Conservative MP called Natalie Elphick has defected to the Labour Party in the last couple of hours just in time for Prime Minister's questions. |
| 1:49.6 | We're not talking here about a centrist Conservative. She's a member of the European |
| 1:53.9 | research group, stepped in to replace her convicted husband Charlie |
| 1:58.4 | Elphick and defended him as part of that, and she's now joined the Labour Party. I'm slightly jaw drops. George, what on earth is going on? |
| 2:07.9 | I do think this is quite significant news, not really because Natalie Elphic is herself a really important or significant political player. |
| 2:16.0 | I've known of her many years and she definitely wouldn't be high on your list of people who were going to defect a labor because she looks like she's on the right of the Conservative |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Persephonica, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Persephonica and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.