EMQs: Is the political centre dead?
Political Currency
Persephonica
4.1 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 27 October 2025
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is the centre ground of British politics dead? A 15-year-old listener challenges George Osborne and Ed Balls on the surge of Reform and the Greens, forcing them to ask if the centre can truly fight back against populism.
And why are bats, newts, and even spiders causing such chaos for British planning? The pair dive into the costly industry of species protection, discussing hundred-million-pound bat tunnels, a town centre stopped by spiders, and historic dockyards left unrenovated due to nesting birds.
Plus, the real historical reason for Parliament's subsidised bars, ‘sleepovers with mummies’ at the British Museum and George sets the record straight on what he actually did in his second government job as First Secretary of State.
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Credits:
Assistant Producer: Caillin McDaid
Senior Producer: Silvia Maresca
Video Editor: Oliver Geraghty
Executive Producer: Ellie Clifford
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Chancellor of the Exchequer. |
| 0:02.0 | Getting a lesson from the Shadow Chancellor in how to balance the books, |
| 0:05.0 | it's like getting a lesson from Dracula and how to look after a blood back. |
| 0:08.0 | Ed Balls. |
| 0:10.0 | As steady as she goes, budget. |
| 0:13.0 | What kind of ship does he think he's on, the Titanic? |
| 0:16.0 | Themary Celeste. |
| 0:17.0 | Welcome to EMQs from Political Currency. |
| 0:20.0 | With Ed Balls and George Osborne. |
| 0:27.8 | So hello and welcome to EMQ's ex-minister's questions and George is doing EMQs from California, from San Francisco. |
| 0:37.2 | But also I think he's, there's a paleness to him. I think it |
| 0:40.7 | might be a lingering hangover. I think it might be Saturday's British Museum high roller, expensive |
| 0:48.0 | ticket. George got the only freebie ball. I think I've always had a pallor to me. It's my |
| 0:52.8 | Hungarian blood. So it's not a big hangover |
| 0:55.9 | which lasted five days. It was a good night. It was a great night, actually. We had a big, |
| 1:01.4 | big fundraiser at the British Museum. 900 people came. I am not going to claim credit for it at all |
| 1:07.1 | because our excellent director, Nick Cullinan and his co-host, Isha Ambani, |
| 1:13.5 | organized it all with a great theme pink, which was connected to the pink color in our |
| 1:18.5 | India exhibition. British High Society turned up, and we raised lots of money for a museum |
| 1:24.1 | which is free. It's free to enter. And so we've got to raise money and we want to |
| 1:30.2 | keep it free to enter. And we also want to spend money on things like the international partnerships |
| 1:34.5 | we have, which is where the money from this ball is going to go. |
... |
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