Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the weekly podcast with me, Steve Richards.

Thank you so much for joining us wherever you are in the UK and around the world.

And as ever, we have got a lot to cram in in our time together. If it's okay with all of you,

I'm going to reflect on British foreign policy now and in the recent past, because I think

there are many lessons, most of them depressing, when reflecting on British foreign policy,

not least in the light of the manoeuvrings vis-a-vis Ukraine. It will include, by the way,

Kirstama's speech last week or interviews he gave around his support for NATO and so on and the articles he wrote

because that too I think raised some questions and then some fantastic questions the great thing

for those of you new to the podcast is that we have this fantastic community of people with expertise in all kinds of

areas. So we've got a question or a point from a brilliant lawyer explaining how odd the

questionnaires that has been sent to Boris Johnson and others in number 10, 50 of them, over

Partygate. The questionnaire sent from the police. We've got

Dominica from France, our French correspondent explaining how the French government are dealing

with the soaring cost of energy bills. It's very interesting to compare with the British example.

Many more. Brilliant, brilliant questions. I'm going to get a lot more in today.

So tune in for those. So before my kind of reflections on British foreign policy,

sound so grand. Just our usual assembly notices. First of all, thank you so much for those of you who've signed up to

Patreon. Patreon began with this podcast last week, and it's great that so many of you are

supporting it. Thank you very much. And please join us. You get all kinds of bonuses,

including, I forgot to mention this. You get this,

depending on the tier, or about five tiers, one of which you get this rock and roll politics

mug with our favourite word, a cup of consequences. I can't wait to get hold of this mug. I haven't got one yet. They're like gold dust.

...