Have Boris's 'lost' texts fuelled the sleaze scandal?
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2022
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
'It’s not going to go down well when people are seriously thinking about the cost of their energy bills over the next few months: how much it costs to buy food, what supplies are in shortage, to be reminded that the Prime Minister was trying to put extremely expensive wallpaper up in his flat' - Kate Andrews
Also on the podcast, various problems are snowballing towards a cost of living crisis. The energy price cap is expected to rise just as household contributions are due to increase from the National Insurance hike. Can the government retain support as households struggle to cope with costs this winter?
‘It is politically imperative for the Tories that they can cut taxes before the next election’ - James Forsyth
Cindy Yu speaks to Kate Andrews and James Forsyth.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Cindy You and I'm joined by James Osife and Kate Andrews. |
| 0:09.7 | Now, James, yesterday we saw the text exchange between Lord Brownlow and the Prime Minister, those texts that Lord Geith, the Standards Commissioner, did not see. |
| 0:19.1 | But is that the end of the story? Because today it does seem |
| 0:21.8 | to still be dominating headlines. I do think it is the end of the story because in that WhatsApp |
| 0:26.8 | exchange, there's a reference to a kind of great exhibition to, which was an idea that Lord |
| 0:33.9 | Brownlow was associated with. And there are now questions about whether, you know, |
| 0:38.5 | what Lord Brownlow idea was being taken more seriously because of his role in the prime minister's |
| 0:45.4 | flat redecoration. So I don't think this issue has gone away. I think Downing Street need to |
| 0:52.3 | kind of hope that they'd be able to kind of clear the decks in the new year, |
| 0:55.7 | but they'd have got all the flat stuff, the party stuff, all that stuff done and dust in, |
| 1:00.1 | and they could kind of start the new year refresh. I think this is a reminder that this is going |
| 1:04.7 | to kind of continue to dog them as an issue. And I also think that, you know, there now is this other question, which is, you know, |
| 1:13.6 | we know from the letters exchange that Lord Guyton and Boris Johnson are going to meet |
| 1:17.0 | to discuss the role of the independent advisor and the powers that they have. |
| 1:21.4 | I think it will be very hard for Lord Guyt, considering how critical he is of the government machine for not handing him various |
| 1:30.5 | things and not alerting him to various things, I think it would be very hard for him not to demand |
| 1:35.4 | at the very least that he is given the right to start an investigation himself. At the moment, |
| 1:40.2 | he can only conduct an investigation if the Prime Minister asks them to. So I think you are going |
| 1:45.4 | to end up with Lord Guy having to be given more powers to maintain the credibility of the role and |
| 1:51.8 | his own. And so I think this story hasn't gone away. And it is just a distraction. And I think it's |
| 1:57.9 | also a particularly annoying distraction for the government at this time |
| 2:01.2 | because at a time when people are beginning to worry about their own living standards being squeezed, |
... |
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