I'm Thank you. Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the weekly podcast with me, Steve Richards.

Thank you so much for tuning in wherever you are in the UK and of course

around the world. And as ever, we've got so much to cram in in our time together.

A slightly different this week because I'm doing the live show on Monday night at King's Place

and streaming live. So I'm going to be reflecting on things there, but that gives me the space to answer many more

questions than usual.

And for those of you who haven't sent in questions, don't worry, the questions are so brilliant,

they cover a huge range of urgently relevant and interesting topics.

We've got an update from our exclusive lawyer on the Downing Street police investigation,

a very interesting update.

We've got questions on all kinds of fascinating things. So that will be a way in which we

span the political landscape today. If you're listening to this on the Monday, I hope you can

come to King's Place or join the stream. As things stand, although things are so crazy at the moment they could change at the last

minute um Johnson uh is scheduled to announce the lifting of all COVID uh constraints uh just before the show

on Monday night and uh hail it once more as a freedom day. And I thought this would be a good

opportunity to explore the term freedom. It is the most potent term in my view in British politics

and the most misused word in British politics. It is owned almost exclusively

by the Conservative Party and has been since Margaret Thatcher's leadership, where she brilliantly

seized on this word in a particular way.

And Labour, although Neil Kinnock valiantly tried to seize it back and failed for reasons

which I'll explore at King's Place, Labour have never even tried really to claim it for

themselves since that era.

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