Hello, this is the Red Box Podcast, I'm Matt Chawley.

Coming up on today's episode, four-and-a-fares are a complicated business.

Jim Hacker said in the S Prime Minister, prompting Sir Humphrey Applemeat to apply, that's

why we leave it to the four-and-office.

But is today's four-and-office up to it?

We're talking that the four-and-office is planning to reduce staff numbers by 20%.

We'll take a look at what's really going on in King Charles Street in Whitehall.

But first, as ever we kick off with our columnist panel, normally on a Monday, it's Liverpool

H, but no Wednesday or Thursday, so today's Libby Purvis, and from the Daily Mirror, Susie Boniface.

It seems that somebody is going to have to carry the can for the Downing Street Party.

And fingers are being pointed at Martin Reynolds at the moment, the Prime Minister's Principal

Private Secretary considered a plausible full guy, apparently, for what was expected to

be a critical report into the parties.

He was the one who seemed to have organised one of the parties, Dominic Cummings, last

week, insisting that there were two very different parties.

The one that he was at, where they sat in the garden drinking wine, was definitely a work

meeting, and the one that he wasn't at, was definitely an illegal party.

What's the start for you then, Susie?

What do you make of this?

Just seems like they're just somebody standing in down a shaker.

Somebody's got to carry the can.

Yes, and before Christmas, I was keeping a list of all the parties that were being discovered

...