Quite right!: Munira Mirza | part two
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
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Summary
This is the second part of Michael Gove’s conversation with Munira Mirza. After reflecting in part one on multiculturalism and the fractures in modern Britain, this second instalment turns to the question of leadership, and the lessons both Boris and Starmer should learn.
Munira reflects on Boris Johnson’s premiership, describing him as ‘a better man than many of his detractors would admit’ but acknowledging his foibles and lack of decisiveness at critical moments. Was he a good Prime Minister?
They go on to debate whether the wiring of the British state – from the Human Rights Act to the Equality Act – has made effective government harder, and whether Reform are right to call for repeal of both of these pieces of legislation.
Finally, Munira delivers a stark assessment of Britain’s political class, questioning whether the calibre of MPs is good enough, criticising the culture of risk-aversion in Westminster, and making the case for ‘radical candour’ in politics.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, this is Madeline Grant, host of Quite Right alongside Michael Gove. |
| 0:04.3 | If you want to hear the latest episode of Quite Right in full, then you can do so on its dedicated podcast channel. |
| 0:10.1 | Just search Quite Right wherever you are listening now. |
| 0:13.1 | Listeners on the best of Spectator playlist can enjoy a section of our discussions, |
| 0:17.0 | but for the full thing, please seek out the Quite Right channel. |
| 0:20.3 | While you're there, click the follow button to never miss an episode. |
| 0:23.4 | And why not give us a rating and review? |
| 0:25.4 | It really helps us out. |
| 0:26.9 | Happy listening. |
| 0:33.5 | Welcome back to Quiet Right. |
| 0:35.5 | And this week, again, Maddie is away and and I've been talking to Manira Merza, |
| 0:40.1 | Boris Johnson's former advisor, the founder of two very important institutions in British life, civic future and Fix Britain. |
| 0:49.3 | I've been talking to Manera already about some of the problems that we have with division in our society. |
| 0:56.1 | In this episode, we'll be talking about leadership when it's absent, what it looks like, |
| 1:02.0 | and where we find it. |
| 1:07.4 | You talked about the extent to which events after 2019 did not live up to the hopes of that manifesto. |
| 1:14.2 | One thing that I want to go on to is the extent to which reform and also the Conservatives under Kemi-Bednach are seeking to learn the lessons of what went wrong post-2019. |
| 1:26.2 | What do you think went wrong post-19. What do you think went wrong? Yes. That really made it very difficult |
| 1:34.9 | to deliver lots of things that we wanted to. The Boris Wave is the most obvious failed policy |
| 1:42.2 | beyond failure. There's a sudden huge spike in migration just towards the end of the pandemic. |
| 1:47.3 | Yeah, which actually the really large increases happened, I think, after I'd left, |
| 1:52.5 | but the policies had been implemented earlier in 2021. |
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