The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity.

This is a global player original podcast.

So I am in one of, standing in one of my favourite places, which is the square just in front of the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Because it's just gorgeous because it's surrounded on every every side by just classic Oxford buildings and it's just a

really wonderful place to spend some time particularly on a really crisp brisk mid-November

day in Oxford like today but we are here to talk to someone who wants to reconnect. Let's put it that way with this university.

And it is someone who has had more lives, more political lives, and almost anybody else I can

think of. Lord Peter Manelson. They say there's no second acts in American politics. Well,

in terms of British politics, he's had a second act, a third act, a fourth act, and he could be about to have another one as well. I can't think

of someone who has been a player for quite as long. An active player in British politics is Peter

Manelson. First, as someone in the back, the shadows of the Labour Party in the 1980s, becomes

an MP, becomes a cabinet minister, has to resign,

becomes a cabinet minister again, has to resign, becomes a cabinet minister again,

in between becomes an EU trade commissioner.

And there are lots and lots of rumours that he might be about to become, or is certainly

in the running to become, our next ambassador to the United States,

navigating that increasingly turbulent, volatile relationship between the UK and a restored President Trump.

And in between all of that as well, he wants to be the next chancellor of this university,

largely honorific role, but one which comes with a lot of

baubles and is a big symbolic voice for higher education in the UK.

So we thought what better time to catch up with Peter Manelson than right now.

On the future of politics in Britain, the future of higher education, and how on earth we

...