4.4 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 16 July 2021
⏱️ 41 minutes
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It's 60 years this week since Prime Minister's Questions started properly in the Commons. Matt Chorley goes back to that first PMQs in 1961, and recreating what it would have been like with the Red Box Editor Patrick Maguire.
He pauses the action as Harold Macmillan faces questions from backbenchers and the leader of the opposition. Plus legendary Commons speaker Betty Boothroyd joined Matt to tell him what she makes of PMQs today.
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| 0:00.0 | Picture this, static cars, idling engines, angry horns, now picture you, zooming past |
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| 0:30.4 | This episode of Red Box is brought to you in association with SSE, a leading clean energy |
| 0:38.4 | champion accelerating the transition to net zero. SSE is investing over £9 million a day |
| 0:46.6 | in cleaner, more secure, homegrown energy. That includes transforming networks across the country |
| 0:52.8 | to connect renewable energy, households and businesses to a greener grid, pioneering low carbon |
| 0:59.4 | flexible technologies such as carbon capture and storage and building the world's largest |
| 1:04.8 | offshore wind farm, a doggar bank off the coast of Yorkshire. When complete, doggar bank will be |
| 1:10.8 | capable of powering over 6 million homes a year with clean, renewable energy, a major step |
| 1:17.6 | towards the UK achieving net zero carbon emissions. And all this is creating thousands of |
| 1:24.4 | sustainable green jobs in communities right across the UK. Find out more about what SSE are doing |
| 1:32.3 | at SSE.com slash change. |
| 1:54.8 | And so to a move to welcome historic anniversary, the 60th birthday of Prime Minister's questions, |
| 2:02.9 | I'm Manchurly joined by Patrick McGuire, editor of the Times Red Box and together we're going |
| 2:08.2 | to pause the action from the House of Commons on the 18th of July 1961, which is the first time |
| 2:14.8 | the decision was set aside for the Prime Minister to face enquiries from MPs with the help of the |
| 2:20.1 | hugely talented actor, comedian and impressionist Kieran Hodson, will we create this session, |
| 2:26.0 | which was never recorded at the time. We will hear how old Macmillan facing questions, yes, |
| 2:31.9 | about Britain's place in Europe. This is PMQ's unpacked episode one. |
| 2:38.8 | So before we begin with the questions, the Prime Minister, let's hear it from the |
| 2:42.0 | common speaker in July 1961, Harry Hilton Foster, who has by now been in the chair for just under |
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