Hello and welcome to Not Another One with me, Miranda Green, and I'm joined in the beautifully air conditioning studio at Soho Radio by Steve Richards. Hello, Steve.

Hi, Miranda. We're all in the studio. We're all in the studio for once, which is actually lovely.

And Tim Montgomery and Ian Martin are here as well. We're all cool as cucumbers. No crises besetting us.

It's a rosy future for the four of us, but our government, oh, it's been a bit

tricky, hasn't it, the last few days? And as the rest of the year stretches ahead from a slightly

disappointing first birthday for the Starma government, we are going to be asking, are they

really in a pit of trouble? Can they dig their way out? And if so, how? So Steve, there were lots

of dramas last week, but, you know, government is in a sense moving from crisis to crisis,

isn't it? Or at least moving from problem to problem whilst trying to keep firmly attached to your strategy.

How much is the Starma government all about the crisis lurching?

And are they managing to invent some sort of strategic direction to save them from that?

Well, I think your language is quite interesting because you can't invent a strategic direction.

You've got to establish one, devise one. I mean,

I think that recent events are deadly serious for a government. Sometimes there are media frenzies,

which you know are kind of feeding on themselves and are far removed from the reality of how grave a

government is in. I remember when John Major was in trouble, a bit of trouble. News night opening

with Jeremy Paxman booming with a graphic of the front door of number 10. Will he be there by the end of the week?

John Major in fatal trouble.

This was 1994.

He had another three years, let alone the week.

So things can get out of hand in the way we perceive fragile governments.

But this government does feel fragile at the moment.

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