Hello and welcome to another edition of the For The Many podcast. I'm Ian Dale.

Hi and I'm Jackie Smith.

And we are both about to become candidates in the forthcoming general election, aren't we?

Because they're going to be, both parties are going to be running out of candidates soon.

I haven't said anything offensive enough recently in order to be able to.

Oh, I have.

I'm sure I can put it right on this podcast, though.

Quite.

Well, you did last time.

I know, sorry.

Right, we haven't got a huge amount of time today because I've got to go out to dinner in about an hour and 10 minutes.

So let's crack on. We're obviously just going to concentrate on the election, but we might also have a little word about the new Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle.

What's remarkable about this first week is the fact that it's all been about process.

And I wonder how, to use that awful phrase, ordinary voters feel about the fact that all

the media is concentrating on candidate misdemeanors and really not talking very much about the meat and potatoes

of policy. I wonder if the person on the street even notices all this controversy around candidates.

I wonder how much that breaks through whether or not people feel that. all this controversy around candidates.

I wonder how much that breaks through,

whether or not people feel that actually has all been a bit low-key so far,

as far as policy is concerned.

We've had some quite big spending announcements this week,

an attempt today with Labour talking about Shawstart centres and extending maternity leave and the Lib Dems in that sort of area as well.

...