My guest is Jonathan Powell.

Jonathan Powell is the founder and CEO of Intermediate, a registered charity for negotiation and

mediation, and was Tony Blair's chief of staff throughout Blair's 10-year premiership in 1997 to 2007.

Welcome to the podcast, Jonathan.

Thank you, Paul. It was a pleasure to be with you.

Right. Actually, welcome back. We last had on these podcast chats. Could you imagine back in 2017?

So it's about time we had another one of these things. You are much in demand, Jonathan, as you always are,

but particularly in the run-up to the British general election in July to give people insights into how number 10 works of your experience.

I kept away from you then because there were too many people knocking on your door,

but now four months later, some of the dust are settled and of course some of the personalities have changed.

I don't know to spend too much time on that part of the story, but I would like you to start,

if you wouldn't mind, giving us a picture of what it's actually physically like inside number 10.

We know it's not the White House or not even the West Wing.

What is it like as a place to work in terms of its physical layout? Well, so physically, Downing Street is a completely inappropriate place to be an office or

the office of the head of government. It's like a little country house in the middle of London.

And when I came in in 97, I suggested we should move out into an open plan office, somewhere like the QE2

centre where we could just sort of spread out across the building. But you can never do it because everyone wants to come through that front door

10 Downing Street. So you end up with people working in bathrooms and corridors. It's like a sort of

hospital on a bad day. And it doesn't really help the work ethic or approach in Downing Street, but everyone wants to be in there.

Increasingly, people are now in the cabinet office and come through the Green Bay's door, which makes life a bit easier.

As in yes, Prime Minister, that Green Bay's door used to have a key and that restricted the numbers.

Now it's just a pass, electronic pass, that gets you through.

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