Hello and welcome to another election special episode of Politics Theory Other, a podcast from Tribune magazine.

My guest today is Phil Burton Cartledge. We spoke about Tory Party strategy in the election campaign.

If you find these episodes interesting and useful, please think about becoming a supporter of the show.

You can become a supporter for $3 a month, which will also get you

access to extended versions of PTO episodes, including today's interview. You can find the

Patreon page at patreon.com forward slash poll theory other. Phil Burton Cartlidge is a lecturer in

sociology at the University of Derby. He's currently researching the

political crisis of the Conservative Party and he blogs regularly at the blog, all that is solid.

The web address is a very public sociologist.blogspot.com and you can follow him on Twitter. His

handle is at Phil B.C.3.

I began the interview by asking Phil what we know about the electoral strategy of the conservatives and the voter coalition that they hope to put together to achieve victory in the general election on December 12.

Well, I suppose we've been quite lucky.

Boris Johnson has been very loud in telegraphing his intentions about how he intends

to run a general election since before, well, just before the Tory party election contest.

It was quite clear from the off that his leadership campaign was all about Brexit.

And as soon as he got into office, he then set about trying to appear to be this dynamic

figure who was desperate to get Brexit done.

And it was desperate to kind of bulldoze through all the obstacles, whether they were domestic,

either in his own party or in the opposition, or in relation to any kind of obstacles thrown up

by the European Union itself. And part of this is because the Tory's fundamental insight

is that in order to win a general election,

they have to repeat Theresa May's feat in 2017.

...