Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the podcast with me, Steve Richards.

This is a shorter podcast than usual to trail the next live virtual show of rock and roll politics,

which will be on the King's Place website.

It's going to be 7 o'clock on Monday evening. That's Monday, May the 18th. And we've got so much to

reflect on live together, if you can tune in, because the last one, the last life show, was the day

Boris Johnson returned to work after his illness, and there was high excitement because the

context of all that he was doing had changed. He had been forced to leave the scene in nerve-wracking, nerve-shreading

circumstances, catching the virus, being in intensive care. And that had created a situation

where he had, through getting the illness become indispensable.

And that indispensability created a second impression of commanding leadership.

That when he had been well prior to getting the illness,

the government had functioned smoothly because at its heart

there was this decisive commanding figure and that that sense of commanding leadership would

return when he returned. Well, we can make a judgment about that now because he has been back several weeks since we all got together for the last live virtual show.

And since that show, Kyr Starma has settled in as leader of the opposition.

There have been several Prime Minister's questions and other activities around him,

which we can reflect on as well. But with these shows, as those of you who tuned in, I hope,

would agree. We all, and I'm using the we as in all of us, because there is a kind of question and answer session. Normally in live theatres we have a bit of a discussion together and make our predictions which are always wrong.

But we all try, I think, and delve a bit deeper. And one of the things I want to do in this live show is to reflect on whether these great seismic national emergencies

lead to permanent change. I'm preparing what I hope will be a series of new talks for the BBC,

these TV talks I do, that are put out on the Parliament

Channel and then on the BBC I player. I want to look at the domestic consequences of national

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