Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the weekly podcast with me, Steve Richards, the podcast where we try and delve a little deeply, reflect on some of the assumptions and orthodoxies around British

politics which become fashionable without being really very much probed and chat to various people

I bump into during the week. This week we've got a great conversation with the legendary

observer columnist, William Keeganegan we met on another sunny morning

for a cup of coffee and he reflects on Brexit in particular and he can of course contextualise

Brexit because he's covered and written about all the turbulent events of British politics

over the last three or four five five decades. So we'll hear

from him. He knows all the chancellors as well. He's been good mates with quite a few of them.

But before then, I ended up on Saturday, that lovely glorious day with a cup final on and everything

else at a Labour economic conference in London.

My heart sunk really, to be honest, when this prospect arose because I had to interview John

MacDonald for a program I'm doing for Radio 4 on Jeremy Corbyn, and I'll talk about that

programme as it's scheduled to be broadcast. Anyway, I've got the message

that John McDonald was available on Saturday, Saturday lunchtime during a break in this economic

conference and I wanted to be doing the park run, the 5K part run in this great weather and then

maybe meet up with the ledge, you know, the lads to watch the cup final.

Instead, I ended up at this economic conference on this sunny day in a windowless lecture theatre.

And I'm really pleased I went because I went, I thought if I'm going to interview him, I might as well go to the conference. And the reason I'm pleased I went was that it did, I said at the

beginning, you know, sometimes in this podcast, I want to probe some of the assumptions and orthodoxies that we carry with us. We, I suppose, I mean, journalists, some some politicians actually. And I was quite impressed with this conference.

And it did, I think, challenge a series of assumptions that are often weighing down,

certainly journalists, but some politicians too, as they perceive and shape perceptions about the Corby Macdonald leadership.

It was packed this conference on a sunny Saturday.

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