Summary
The prime minister says it’s time to draw a line under Partygate. Adam and Chris are joined by former Downing Street chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, to discuss how Boris Johnson continues in office after he survived an attempt by some Tory MPs to oust him.
Also, Countdown’s Susie Dent ruminates on what the collective noun for 148 rebel MPs might be.
And, Justin Rowlatt tells us about how he celebrated his birthday at the Bonn climate conference, which looks to lay the groundwork for COP27 in Egypt later this year.
Today’s Newscast was made by Tim Walklate, with Cordelia Hemming and Alix Pickles. The technical producer was Gareth Jones. The assistant editor was Sam Bonham.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts |
| 0:04.7 | Hello, thank you very much for your suggestions for what we should call the 148 Tory MPs that |
| 0:11.5 | voted against Boris Johnson in the confidence vote on Monday night. A little item I didn't know |
| 0:17.2 | where we were going to do, but your creativity has shone through. Daniel McEwan says, why don't we |
| 0:22.0 | call them the Antiboe? Well that's what reads as Antiboe. Dunston says, the RG-Bar G, which presumably |
| 0:29.2 | isn't in relation to the ERG and the CRG and the fact that there's always an RG, a research group |
| 0:33.9 | going on. Mark Green and Chasha says, what about the 2022 committee? Smart, Mark, but it has been taken |
| 0:40.5 | because that's the new name for the group of female Tory MPs. Do you remember they were in the news |
| 0:45.6 | when a couple of them said somebody had been watching porn in the chamber. And then Matthew says, |
| 0:50.4 | the 148 group, which would be in keeping with sort of the love of numbers that they have |
| 0:56.0 | in the Conservative Party, because there's a few groups with numbers in them. Anyway, we thought I |
| 1:00.0 | should, we should discuss this with a professional. So we've got Susie Dan from Countdown. Hello Susie. |
| 1:04.6 | Hey, I don't know how are you. You must love collective nouns. It's a rich, rich seam. |
| 1:10.8 | It is. And do you know what really fascinates me particularly is that people always think, as always |
| 1:15.4 | with English, that there is an academy that kind of decides what is the correct collective noun, |
| 1:19.5 | but do you know what the primary source for most of our collective nouns is actually put from the |
| 1:24.0 | 15th century. And it was written by a pyrex of a nunnery in Hertfordshire. And she came up with 160 |
| 1:31.0 | group names for beasts of the chase and characters on the medieval stage, etc. So I mean, |
| 1:35.9 | we are looking back centuries and no one actually decides what is the right one, which is why |
| 1:39.8 | exercise is like this is. Okay. Susie, do you want to use your word knowledge to give us some |
| 1:45.0 | potential collective nouns from history that could apply to this lot? And why don't we set it to |
| 1:50.0 | some Countdown-esque music? Yeah, there have been so many wonderful names for different factions |
... |
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