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Red Lines

It's the way you tell'em...

Red Lines

BBC

Government

4.674 Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How does the government get its message across during a political crisis?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Try as he might, Boris Johnson can't seem to shake the monkey off his back.

0:04.4

Despite his 80-seat majority in the House of Commons, his future as Prime Minister is far from guaranteed.

0:10.7

Until the Met Police and Sue Gray report back in full about that series of controversial number 10 gatherings,

0:16.0

things look like they're very much hanging in the balance.

0:19.4

In the meantime, Mr Johnson and his closest supporters

0:22.0

are trying hard to wrestle back control of the political narrative.

0:25.8

No small challenge in these febrile times.

0:28.9

Tom, at its heart, this is about political messaging.

0:33.0

Is there any evidence the PM is managing to take back control?

0:39.7

I think you've got to distinguish between two things. I think his main target audience at the moment is not actually the public. It's his own

0:46.0

MPs because they will decide his fit. And so long as they haven't reached the 54 letters that are

0:53.2

required to trigger a election or a confidence vote,

0:58.0

then you can be said that he's succeeding. But two-thirds of the public on a regular basis

1:04.0

now say, Paul after Paul, after Paul, that they've lost confidence in him.

1:10.1

Yeah, and that's the challenge, isn't it?

1:11.7

Laura, as far as getting his core message out there, how's he doing in your view?

1:18.4

Well, I think what's happened is the PM has bought himself a bit more time with the shake-up

1:25.0

of his top team because the argument that he and others around him

1:30.0

are now making to those wavering backbenches who are considering submitting letters with no

1:35.0

confidence is, look, you called on me to shake things up, you called on me to start

1:41.3

investigating real change, let me do that, hold off and just give me a bit of time

1:47.4

and space to sort things out. And I think that has gone down with MPs, but he's absolutely

...

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