Hello and welcome to this special episode of Inside Briefing, the podcast from the Institute for

Government. I'm Hannah White. We are seeing politicians move in directions that are deeply and clearly deleterious to basic democratic government.

There's always been scoped for abuse in our constitution, of course, but in recent times,

so many previously settled questions around our democratic norms have been upended and at southern speed.

Now, that might sound a bit like a conclusion you would expect to find in an Institute for Government Report,

but it was actually a warning from one of this country's most recognisable journalists,

and her words made headlines everywhere.

Emily Maitless, just months after leaving the BBC,

where she had made her name as Newsnight's lead presenter,

used the McTaggart lecture in Edinburgh

to say many things that would not have been possible in her previous job, including an

observation that an active Conservative Party agent was shaping the BBC's news coverage.

She now has a new home at Global, is the co-host of the news agents, which has been declared

the UK's biggest daily

news podcast. And I'm absolutely delighted that she joins me now in the IFG's own podcast studio.

Hello, Emily. Hi, Hannah. Thank you so much for joining us. And congratulations on the news

agent's success. Thank you very much. What's the trick?

Dino Sophos, I think, in one word or maybe two words.

Dino has a really clear idea of what he wants to do and how he wants to do it.

And he is a sort of perfectionist and how he goes about making it happen.

So, yeah, we're all rather indebted to him, I think. And are you completely

decompressed from the BBC now, would you say? Oh, I don't think you ever decompress as a journalist.

...