Hello there, Patrick McGuire here on the Times Red Box Politics podcast in Matt Shorley's absence.

And today's is a cracker. Lots going on across the UK.

Today we are talking Hums are Youssef and the future of the SMP and asking,

what if JFK had lived in the latest of our series of counterfactuals?

But first, time for a columnist panel.

The columnists with Alibert, Alice Thompson and Robert Crampton on Times Radio.

Lots to get through today, despite it being parliamentary recess.

There's a lot going on out there, not least the strikes crippling the NHS,

as I think we're obliged to say, the leader of the British Medical Association,

but lightning rods for controversy, this crop of leaders,

emerges that while his members are out on the picket line, he's gone on a holiday

while his union is leading the biggest strike in NHS history.

It's not a good look. It's not a good look.

Longstanding family, longstanding commitment to a wedding, apparently.

But it's not good enough, really, is that I don't think they should be on strike anyway.

And if they are on strike, he shouldn't be at a on holiday.

He should be waiting to try and do a deal.

Yeah, sort of, you know, you kind of imagine Arthur Skarge on a stag do.

No, it's an 84, can you?

But it plays to a certain fundamental un-seriousness about him and his co-chair

of the Junior Doctors Committee.

They don't look like, to me, like they're serious people.

...